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Jason Knapp from Knapp's Arcade - Episode 6

JBS Show·podcast_episode·36m 37s·analyzed·Dec 8, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

NAP's Arcade operator discusses growth, Wormhole's European game pivot, and Twippies content awards cancellation.

Summary

Jason Knapp of NAP's Arcade discusses his journey building a competitive intelligence-informed news outlet, the Wormhole Pinball's collection rotation strategy (25% games refreshed regularly from a 173-machine pool), and the recent cancellation of content creator awards at the Twippies. The conversation covers his basement arcade origins, European pinball machine acquisition trends, and disappointment over losing recognition for streaming/content production efforts.

Key Claims

  • NAP's Arcade website traffic reached 100,000 views per month during recent reveal cycles, now maintaining baseline of 50,000-60,000 monthly views

    high confidence · Jason Knapp stating traffic metrics directly; specific numbers cited for spring and recent reveal periods

  • Wormhole Pinball plans to build a museum in 2025 with approximately 125 pinball machines

    high confidence · Jamie discussing museum plans; specific 125-machine target mentioned

  • Stern obtained significantly more Jaws assets than Jersey Jack Pinball had access to previously

    medium confidence · Jason citing old Jack Winarsky interview (approximately 2 years prior) where JJP reportedly passed on Jaws due to asset limitations; current rumor cycle reporting Stern secured comprehensive asset package

  • Jaws is expected to release in January with potential Christmas teaser trailer

    medium confidence · Jason repeating industry reporting about release timeline; acknowledged as rumor/indirect sourcing

  • Spooky Pinball sent prototype boards to select content creators for reveal coverage

    high confidence · Jason confirming receipt of Spooky reveal materials; direct participant in announcement process

  • The Twippies cancelled the content creation award category entirely

    high confidence · Jamie directly stating cancellation; discussing it as 'big news' and noting community backlash

  • Jason's Pastimes Arcade trip documented approximately 1,000 pinball machines across multiple Pennsylvania locations

    high confidence · Jason stating goal was to hit 1,000 machines and took thousands of photos; visited Pastimes, Kickback Cafe, Helicon Brewing, and Pinball Perfection

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm really good at sifting through a lot of information really fast just because I'm in competitive intelligence and consulting for my day job.”

    Jason Knapp @ ~mid-episode — Explains his methodology for sourcing news without actively pursuing manufacturer contacts; reveals professional background informing his approach

  • “Once I got that pinball bug, it's just really tough to go back.”

    Jason Knapp @ ~early-mid episode — Describes transition from video game/arcade focus to pinball specialization; illustrates personal investment in the hobby

  • “For one night a year, I get to geek out, dress up, wear our Wormhole stuff, go down to TPF and hear our name being called. And they took that. That's gone.”

    Jamie (Wormhole Pinball) @ ~final segment — Emotional response to Twippies content awards cancellation; illustrates impact on content creators and community recognition

  • “None of us so-called content creators make any money. Well, one of us does. That is true.”

    Jason Knapp / Jamie (exchange) @ ~final 10 minutes — Acknowledges financial unsustainability of pinball content creation; reveals unequal monetization across the community

  • “I can't even say out loud how much money I've spent on this because she'll hear me.”

    Jamie (Wormhole Pinball) @ ~final segment — Illustrates significant personal financial investment in streaming infrastructure and content production

  • “You got to have Quint in the game. You got to have 'Show Me the Way to Go Home' multi-ball.”

    Jason Knapp @ ~Jaws discussion — Specific expectations for Jaws content licensing; critical character and musical elements to meet fan expectations

  • “This year we were on a roll. Maybe this year we might have been able to do it.”

    Jason Knapp @ ~Twippies discussion — Indicates competitive trajectory before awards cancellation; suggests NAP's Arcade was gaining momentum in community recognition

Entities

Jason KnapppersonJamiepersonTimpersonNAP's ArcadeorganizationWormhole PinballorganizationSpooky PinballcompanyStern Pinballcompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Wormhole Pinball expanding into museum development (2025 target: 125 machines) with infrastructure investment in dual-rig streaming systems

    high · Jamie discussing museum build plans and new streaming transmitter system investment; planning Texas State Championship with advanced streaming capability

  • ?

    community_signal: Twippies cancelled entire content creation award category, eliminating streaming/content creator recognition and causing significant community disappointment

    high · Jamie emotionally describing loss of annual recognition moment; discussing domination of social media posts/talk about cancellation; Jason acknowledging community disappointment

  • ?

    community_signal: Wormhole placing machine collection on PinballMap with specific game lists to support tournament preparation and player education

    high · Jamie explaining decision to add Wormhole machines to PinballMap so players can practice Cosmic Princess before Texas State Championship; addressing Colin McAlpine's practice concern

  • $

    market_signal: European pinball machines gaining collector interest post-COVID; Wormhole pursuing rotation strategy featuring Spanish manufacturers and obscure European titles

    medium · Jamie describing Tim's European collecting pivot post-COVID; Jason documenting Spanish manufacturers from Pastimes Arcade trip; machines like Andromeda, Robot, Mystery Castle, Jolly Park now rotating in

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas State Championship (January) at Wormhole with top 24 Texas players; Texas Pinball Festival (March) where Twippies awards occur

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.110

0:00
hey uh hello and welcome to the wormhole my name is jamie virtual and you are listening to and are watching a podcast called wormhole pinball presents today i'm joined by jason knapp of napps arcade welcome to the wormhole virtually jason napp thank you so much hey how's it going uh so we were talking and bologna and cheese and before so i thought hey let's just start the That makes sense. Why waste good talk? Yeah.
0:28
In my background, we do have the Cosmic Princess Barracora and trailer and then the German Kiss, which you can see. Oh, OK. So I've seen a European Kiss that has even different cabinet, I think, than that. It's like, I don't know, it's like a completely different cabinet shape. It's pretty rare. I think it's like German or something. So yesterday I sent you some pictures of the Wormhole. Yeah. Like a pre-post of what we're going to do today. And, you know, we're ever-changing. And I was telling you, we were just talking about, we're trying to rotate, I think, about 25% of the games through. I mean, Tim has a collection of 173 that is growing tremendously. It's a pretty big pool to choose from. It is, but he's really geeking Jason down this European road. Well, that's what I just went through when I went to pastime pinball. I've been, you know, the Rob Burke's place in Girard, Ohio. so let's start with that how cool is that place right oh my gosh i see the pictures you're posting and we're like we've got one of those oh one of those that one's really cool we got one of those coming in and so it was it's been a really cool venture that you're you're taking us down thanks you know i i've been sharing uh from the pastimes trip i went to uh that whole trip we went to pastimes kickback cafe pinball pa um helicon brewing uh where else oh and uh pinball perfection we went to so i i must have taken i i can't even imagine it's a good thing i have like a couple terabytes of cloud storage i must have taken thousands of pins that's cool we actually hit on that trip that was the goal was to hit a thousand pinball machines on location so you know i i took pictures of as many as i could and i've been sharing the But lately I've been sharing the European ones from past time because, you know, I probably shared on over on Instagram and Facebook over the years, probably like a hundred Adams families and like, you know, a hundred Twilight Zones and stuff. But, you know, some of the European and a lot of Spanish manufacturers, I was like, what is this? Like, I've never seen anything like it before. So I've been sharing a lot of those. Tim geeked down on that, Jason. That went down a road right after COVID where he geeked on. We have a robot coming. Oh, Zachariah. Cool. And we had a mystery castle here. We had Jolly Park. We had a lot of the more common ones in the beginning. Yeah, I played the Jolly Park. And as he's delved into the more, the Andromeda, I think, is coming.

“Whenever we're looking for a place for lunch, they make sure I'm not just looking at pinball places.”

Jason Knapp @ ~early episode — Anecdote about family integration of pinball hobby; reveals extent of pinball prioritization in daily life decisions

Jersey Jack Pinball
company
Jaws (Stern)game
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Spooky)game
Looney Tunes (Spooky)game
Twippiesevent
Pastimes Arcadeorganization
Rob Burkeperson
Colin McAlpineperson
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Pinsideorganization
Cosmic Princessgame
Morristown Game Vaultorganization
JDL Pinballperson

high · Jamie discussing Texas State Championship infrastructure; Jason acknowledging TPF in March coincides with son's lacrosse season preventing attendance

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Stern Pinball secured substantially more Jaws licensing assets than Jersey Jack Pinball could access, resolving previous deal-breaker barrier

    medium · Jason citing Jack Winarsky interview where JJP passed on Jaws due to asset limitations; current reporting indicates Stern obtained comprehensive asset package

  • $

    market_signal: NAP's Arcade website achieving 60,000+ monthly views baseline with peaks of 100,000 during reveal cycles; becoming primary news source for competitive players

    high · Jason citing specific traffic metrics: 50,000 views spring reveals, 100,000 views recent reveal cycle, baseline now 50,000-60,000 monthly

  • ?

    personnel_signal: JDL Pinball (European streamer) emerging as influencer on streaming best practices; Jamie planning consultation on dual-rig optimization

    medium · Jamie stating JDL is 'my go-to of what I want to do' and planning interview to pick his brain on streaming setup optimization

  • ?

    announcement: Spooky Pinball announced two new machines: Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Looney Tunes via phased information rollout with Q&A, gameplay videos, and Friday pre-orders

    high · Jason and Jamie discussing announcement timeline, Jason writing articles same day, Spooky Q&A happening during recording at 7pm Wisconsin time

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jaws expected to release January 2025 with possible Christmas teaser announcement prior

    medium · Jason stating 'reported that they might do a teaser trailer right around christmas and then release it in january we'll see'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Evident frustration within content creator community regarding uncompensated labor (stated: 'none of us so-called content creators make any money') combined with loss of recognition avenue

    high · Direct statement from Jason/Jamie exchange; Jamie's emotional final segment; discussion of significant equipment investment with no revenue model

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Jaws requires specific character elements (Quint) and musical licensing ('Show Me the Way to Go Home') as core content expectations

    medium · Jason emphasizing critical importance of Quint character and specific multiball music licensing for fan satisfaction

    • 3:03
    They had that at Kickback. They had an Andromeda. Yeah. Just really cool collections that you got to see. and I can't wait to play them here in the warm hole. And then, you know, for everyone that comes here, they'll get to play them too. So that's really nice. That's fantastic. I'm jealous. I want to come out. You know, we were talking about what places you've been to. Anything else you want to come besides Houston? We'll talk about Houston later.
    3:27
    Where would I like to go? I want to go to Next Level. It's in Oregon, I believe. That's a good one. Okay. And I want to go to the VFW in Michigan.
    3:37
    Those are two, like, humongous locations. Probably the two biggest, two of the top five biggest locations in the country. But obviously, I'm in New Jersey, so Oregon's not exactly close. No, I know. I definitely want to go in the Northwest. Yeah, the VFW is only open like twice a year. So with work and kids and stuff, it makes it kind of tricky. But those are the two I'd like to hit while they're still, well, VFW, I want to say while it's still around. Next level is expanding, I think. So that should be around for a while. So put us on your 2025 list, okay? Oh, for sure. Well, my wife expressed interest in going to Texas. So I just need to be like, oh, well, we'll go to Houston and then we'll randomly. And it's funny, we have we've always liked taking road trips as a family for years. And we have like a running joke in my family. Whenever we took a road trip, I'd open up pinball map and try to find some place for lunch. But I didn't tell them I was on pinball map. I'd just be like, oh, I know this great lunch place. And we'd walk in. I'd be like, oh, there's pinball. So now it's like our running joke that whenever we're looking for a place for lunch, they make sure I'm not just looking at pinball places. That's so funny. We just put ours on pin map. Oh, you did? No, you just told me that because I looked at that's where I took the list for the article. We just put it on because we are open to the public, contrary to popular belief, and we are open three days a month. I know it's not a lot, but we are also available for rentals. So we wanted to put out here's our current list of games, and it's ever-changing. and then we've got the Texas State Championship here in January. That's cool. And so I wanted people to be able to go online and see these are the games because where are they going to practice the Cosmic Princess? Probably nowhere but at least they could maybe pull up some videos on it and see how it works. A tutorial or something. Yeah, just something. That levels the playing field a little bit when you have stuff no one's ever played before. It really does. And so like Colin McAlpine geeked out on us and he sent us a note. He's like, you guys have Cosmic Princess. How the hell am I going to practice that? I go, well, you can get here Thursday. I don't think I've ever played one, actually, and I've seen a lot of stuff.
    5:44
    Yeah, we've got some neat stuff coming through that even I geek out on and that Tim geeks out on. It's going to be fun. We've got the museum that we're going to build in 2025 with what will probably have about 125 pins there. Oh, wow. That's when I need to come down. That's why I said 2025 I have an idea for you because then we'll have the museum in, uh, you do East, East downtown Houston. And then we've got us, which we're in the Heights of Houston. And then, so two real good destinations. And then we're really lucky because we have so many great arcades here and so many great operators that we can keep you busy all week playing pinball. I'm sure. I don't know if I make it a trip with my wife. She's actually a pretty good sport about it. I don't know about all week, but you can take it to Galveston. You can take it to Galveston. We'll take, We'll take her to a nice steakhouse, a Texas steakhouse. Yeah, that works. Where in Jersey do you live?
    6:40
    It's like northern. I would say it's considered northern part of New Jersey. Because I lived in Clinton. Okay. Near Morristown. Yeah, yeah, my wife's from Morristown originally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Morristown story for geeking out, right? So I'm from Long Island, but my father moved us for AT&T, moved at Morristown. And Lucent Technologies back in the day. Anyway, so the Morristown Mall wasn't open yet. Oh, wow. That's how old I was. I'm 51. So I moved there, and there was no mall in Clinton. There was nothing in Clinton. Huh. There wasn't even a McDonald's. The downtown of Morristown has been really revitalized. They have a good friend of mine open the Morristown Game Vault. There was a big bank in Morristown, and he opened an arcade in the bank. and he has a safe cracker in the safe that was at the bank and stuff like that. Yeah, that's pretty neat. We had a safe cracker here. Getting that quarter is the coolest thing. I don't even care if you kind of cheat and use the video mode. It's still really fun. It is a cool feeling, yeah, unless you run out of them or the machine doesn't have them. Oh, yeah. Well, I guess you can find them online. I think someone reproduced them. I don't know. Oh, that's what I think. I don't own one, so I'm not looking for the tokens for it. So let's start with your origin story, if you don't mind. When did you start building this wonderful basement that you took us through a couple weeks ago? Oh, the basement. A couple days ago. Because during the spooky reveal, I took everyone through when you were drinking beer and you had a good health update. So that was fun. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I bought, you know, like I was always into arcades and video games and stuff like that, but I didn't have anything. So, you know, when you start, you don't know anything. So the first thing I ever bought was a four-player MAME, giant four-player MAME cabinet that we still have. But the kids, when they had friends over, they played the heck out of NBA Jam and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and stuff like that. So that's always popular. But then I just slowly started getting into a lot of the – I'm trying to think what my first – my first pinball machine was World Cup – well, unless you count Baby Pac-Man. Baby Pac-Man was one And then World Cup Soccer was number two It's the only Pinchin I own, Jason It's World Cup Soccer It the only one I a big soccer fan And he didn have that in his Papa collection And I like well I get this Yeah I love it Yeah for sure That a good game But then I pretty stern heavy at the moment You know, I kind of worked my way up. I had, like, one of the largest Gottlieb collections around probably for a while. You know how it is. You're, like, working your way up through, like, the lesser expensive pins, and then you buy and sell and buy and sell, and all of a sudden you've got, you know, whatever you're looking to get. So I was into vids for a while. I used to have like Asteroids Deluxe down here. I still have Cruisin' World and stuff. I don't discriminate against the video games, but it just seems like once I got that pinball bug, it just really, it's tough to go back. So how did you start NapsArcade.org and your Facebook page? Like, give me a timeline. How the heck did that come about? The Facebook page actually started out I bought one of those Arachnid darts You know like the video The commercial dart boards that have the video screen in them Like cricket and 301 Yeah I bought one of those And my kids and I had a Charity dart tournament for St. Jude's Children's Hospital and we invited all their Friends and their friends' families And stuff like that and I wanted to Just put a Facebook page up Just so everyone could RSVP and stuff like that or whatever. So I made like the NAP Arcade Charity Dart Tournament Facebook page. Cool. Yeah, and then it just sat there. You know, we had the tournament. We raised a lot of money. And then the page just sat like it still existed, but I didn't know what am I going to use it for at that point. So I used to hang out in the New Jersey Arcade Collectors Forum on Facebook. And that was back when you could still get good deals on stuff on Craigslist. like now it's like a wasteland but back then you know you could if you actually knew how to search and how to do it and i had so many deals that i was getting like every day i'm like i can't buy everything so i started sharing like uh the deal of the day or good deals in the new jersey area on the new jersey collectors page and then all the collectors that used to hoard all the deals for themselves started getting angry with me because i was like showing other people how to do it. So I was like, all right, screw you. I'll just go start doing this on my own page. So I changed Dart, Charity Dartboard to Nap Arcade. And that's kind of like the whole thing. Yeah, that's how the whole thing started. It was on Facebook only for a long time. Okay. Did you ever think that you would get scoops like this? Did that ever come into your...
    11:46
    You know, it's funny. I honestly don't even really search them out. It's not like I have moles and like people I'm like grilling. It's just, I'm really good at sifting through a lot of information really fast just because I'm in competitive intelligence and consulting for my day job. So I read and sift through information really fast. And then there's a lot of cool people out there that reach out and kind of offer stuff, but I never want to like squeeze things out of people. And I'm not really like, you know, I'm not like trying to go to people who work at manufacturers and pump them for information or anything like that. I was just always wondering how it works. I mean, like, you know, the Spooky reveal, they sent a few of those boards to just a few people in the content creator world. And you were one of them. And I thought that reveal was really cool. Yeah, that was fun. You know, that was only maybe the first or second Facebook Live. I think I did one other one when I was waiting for the Silver Ball Museum in Asbury Park to open. And I was just standing on an empty boardwalk. So I was like, let's see what Facebook Live does. And that was a couple of years ago. I don't do a lot of video stuff, but I can see getting into that. It's fun. It's all a question of time. I mean, I work an actual job, and I had two kids, but one is now off at college. So as the kids get older, my youngest is a freshman in high school, and as he gets older, I'm going to be like, oh, no one's here. So I'm going to need something to fill in that space. So I think probably I'll do a lot more road trips and I'll focus a lot more on content for the site and stuff. But you know, as the kid, as my youngest son gets older.
    13:22
    Yeah. Well, that happened to me. I'm, I'm an empty nester. Right. And I'm already, I'm already on. And, uh, I'm a grandpa. Oh, wow. You're really ahead of me then. I'm only five 49. It's not like I'm that much. I know two years. Actually 50. I'll be 51 in January. You were busy during those two years, apparently. so uh but i have a little grandkid and he's just the absolute best man congratulations but you know he he turns into a little shit and i could just go like this and not my not my problem to worry about it so yeah um that is what did you think let's talk about the spooky reveal i mean two machines what do you think about that dude the way they did it they just kept trickling out information they were actually it was funny we were joking back and forth in the comments so like here's another update for your post, Jason, like Spooky was saying it. Because, like, every time they were doing it, I was like, oh, I've got to go back in and add this stuff and add this stuff to it. So it's been really spread out over the last two days. But it's been entertaining, you know. When you take a step back and look at it, it's kind of fun to have all the information trickle out a little bit at a time. Yeah. I think they're doing – it looks beautiful. You know, I'm going to be honest with you. Like, you know, I did all this stuff yesterday when they announced the titles. and then today I wrote two articles one for Texas Chainsaw Massacre and one for Looney Tunes but like I was so swamped with work today so I like cranked out those articles like I'm fast at getting articles out and I was like I gotta go back to work so I haven't even really sat down and just like looked at like the trailers that closely yet so I know they're doing a Q&A actually literally right now 7 o'clock it would be 8 o'clock because they're in Wisconsin So we'll get you off in time so that you can watch that. Well, you can always watch it on delay. Oh, that's true. Yeah. But it was an entertaining reveal. I can't wait to actually sit down and look at it. I assume they're doing maybe a gameplay video at some point. I know they said Friday they're going to start taking orders.
    15:26
    So I don't know if they'll do a stream. Maybe even tonight they'll stream some gameplay. What do you think about the dual play field with different theme? like they did with Ultraman in Halloween. What do you think about that? You know, Halloween has actually kind of grown on me. I mean, I wasn't, I'm not like a huge horror film guy, which is not great. It doesn't mesh well with a company called Spooky Pinball, but they do a lot of other stuff too.
    15:52
    But, you know, I like Halloween. I don't really have a lot of time on Ultraman. For me, I kind of think, like I just played in, and obviously you guys are really familiar with it, is the labyrinth and labyrinth was designed from the ground up to be a labyrinth you know there's i have a good imagination so i i mean there's no pinball machine i don't like very few right but i think ideally i would want something designed from the ground up but i'm always pretty open-minded i mean i want to play them all you know first and see what what the story is i mean that people are always critical of this and critical of that and like i know i try to have like a positive persona on my site but honestly there's not too many pinball machines i don't like i'm not too picky i just have fun playing you know no i think the positivity that you have shines through and i think that's why you've become really your your popularity is kind of skyrocketed if you think about it for for news i mean i get a lot of my pinball news from naps arcade oh thanks yeah yeah I think it's just because it's positive and we don't have to worry about it. It's just here's the information. Here it is. Here's what we think. Yeah, the site's really been getting a lot of traffic. Remember when we had in the spring, in the spring when we had all those reveals earlier in this year, it was like a string of like seven reveals. And I think the site traffic was hitting like 50,000 views a month or something like that. But when we got to this last stretch, there was another stretch of reveals just a little while ago. We were hitting like 100,000 views a month. So now it's got a baseline of 50 probably. I think we're sitting at about 60,000 this month or something like that. I don't know. That and a couple bucks will get me a cup of coffee.
    17:41
    But anybody who does anything in life, you have a little competitive spirit. You want to see it do well. Absolutely I look at all of our numbers Is there a moment where you went Oh wow This got a lot of views Is there like the first one where you went You know what got a lot of views Actually was the I should look how many it is The walkthrough I did of pastime pinball And I've gotten better I started to try to do a little bit more with video And I figured out I should have put that on stabilization But still that video went bananas I don know many tens of thousands of views I don even know if it was over 100 views on Facebook or something it was just like off the wall numbers and they were pretty happy about it so that was good no that's that that's fantastic our our first one I think that really got us was we did TPF two two years ago and no one knew who the hell we were and we streamed I actually remember that. I watch a lot of tournament streams. I like tournament streams. Tournament streams are my absolute go-to. If you think about what we do, Warm Up Pinball, 50% of what we do is tournament streams.
    18:55
    I love the tournament streams. It's my chance to be a commentator and just enjoy it. I kick back on my sofa and just watch them on my iPad all the time. It's like watching a Yankees game. For your hat there. It's like watching a Yankees game for me or watching uh like i'm actually really into it but i which is funny because i don't play a lot of tournaments uh once you go down that world though jason it is a yeah i think i would i think it's it was always a matter of time because if i go to an arcade a lot of times i'll have my boys with me especially when they were little and i'm like sorry guys i have to play in a tournament for six hours you know i get it it doesn't work it's a time suck and my golf game suffered when i had the kids too when they were right because yeah i didn't have five hours right right to go now you know but now they're out of the house i play pinball competitively all over the place i suck i'm not playing very well i'm and i'm like stuck i'm very hit and miss i'll gc a game and then i'll just like be a dream monster like i don't know why i'm so inconsistent uh you know it's it's It's interesting. I'm trying to learn to dead bounce more and it is not natural. Hmm. Yeah. Cause you want, that's like the center post. The center post is always like, I'm always afraid to use it. And then I'll, it'll hit off the center post and I'll have my flipper up and it'll bounce back. Oh, I know. Yeah, I know. But one of the things that I love about competitive pinball is how inclusive they are. That is cool, yeah. And they're just like, here, let me show you what you're doing wrong. You see these in lanes on the top? You got to change your lanes, man. You got to spell, you know, whatever. You got to spell this and you got to spell that. And that is where I started getting hooked. Yeah. I was like, so it's a video game, but I have some control. Oh, sure. I mean, there's one thing about tournaments, though, that, like, I know, especially the games I own, I know the rules like the back of my hand. But something like Star Wars Where you're screwing with the multipliers And stuff like that I'm going to get destroyed by someone who knows what they're doing They're going to kill me on Star Wars too I look at it Get it on Next Step's match play And I'll go well there's a strike I'm like wow that's a lot of work to think about Like the multipliers and stuff I just want to play We don't have a lot of sterns here Because they'll play them forever So we only have two here which is the lowest amount of sterns we've uh the new sterns that we've had here we only have an le foo and a double s7 le oh yeah i saw those yeah le's too fancy yeah that's me that's i am the enabler of tim and i appreciate him very very much and uh you know the way i think he looks at it is if i'm going to sell them eventually i'd rather just have the le yeah you know what do you think about when like let's talk about jaws i mean how excited are you for that pen i mean what what have you heard what are you hearing that looks just incredible all the rumors that i'm hearing but i don't yeah i was a little worried about it at first because there was an interview a long time ago with jack winari it was on a podcast like maybe two years ago or something he was saying jersey jack passed on jaws because they couldn't get all the assets and uh you know what we're hearing now is that Stern got like a ton of assets so that's good I was worried especially like Quint that's the guy's name right the shark but that guy's fantastic you got to have Quint in the game you got to have a show me the way to go home multi-ball don't you that would be fantastic so I know I'm really looking forward to it I mean if I haven't personally heard any of the stuff I've just been repeating what other people have been saying about it but uh you know if half the things people are saying about it are true and it's an l win anyways so you know that's good yeah right yeah no i'm looking forward to it i guess january maybe we'll see it i don't know you know i who knows i think it's being reported that they might do a teaser trailer right around christmas and then uh release it in january we'll see those things are going to be everywhere at least so i won't have to worry about being able to play it they're going to sell their factory right they're going to be a ton of them everywhere they're going to sell a ton they're going to they're going to sell a lot of them yeah and then that'll be a tpf are you planning on going to tpf you know i've actually never been to tpf before i that would be fun to go sometime so it all depends on because tpf's in the spring right yeah it's march yeah because that's my son plays uh high school lacrosse so like i don't like to miss his games that much so i figure maybe another year or two when he's done then i'll go to every i've been saying i'll go to every single uh arcade and pinball convention there is, but when he's still playing, I only have a couple more years left. No, Justin, you can't miss those. You can't miss them, Jason, because both my boys play lacrosse. I have an LSM, and my oldest went to college to play LSM. Oh, wow. Yeah, both my guys are D. Oh, okay. They play both LSM and D. Long poles for life. Long poles. And my youngest was attack. Oh, okay. Just a real pain in the ass up there.
    24:16
    It just really exploded here in Texas. You know, we really had it. It was definitely more of a Northeast thing, but I didn't even have that when I was in high school. They didn't have it in my town. I did, because I went to North Hunterdon up there, and they had it. Well, the Long Island area. Long Island was like the, yeah. Anywhere that had a Native American influence, you know, we had a lot of lacrosse.
    24:40
    But it's great. Do they want to play in college, do you think? Well, my oldest son goes to Virginia Tech, and it's just club lacrosse, but I think they won the club national championship. But he just plays in the fraternity league for his fraternity. Yeah, join a frat, bring your long stick, and have some fun. He didn't bring that. He's coming home for Christmas. He's going to bring his high school lacrosse gear back with him. He didn't want to bring it the first semester because it's too smelly.
    25:09
    I know. That stuff gets nasty. We've been through it, especially here in Texas. Yeah. So you want to talk about the Twippies? Do you want to talk about it? I would. I mean, let's talk about it. What's your take on the cancellation of the content creation portion of the awards? It's kind of a big deal. It's kind of big news. Let's spend a minute on it. Yeah, I mean, that certainly has been dominating a lot of the posts and talk lately. I don't know. Well, I mean, it's kind of a tough situation. I mean, obviously they felt like they were under pressure and maybe they slightly overreacted to that, I guess. I don't know. I mean, I always lose to Pinside in the twippies for best website anyways. So it's not a whole lot of skin off my back. Although maybe this year we were on a roll. Maybe this year we might have been able to do it.
    26:04
    I don't know. Pinside just gets so much volume and so many people. Like, if you always look at the top, they'll be like, there is X hundred people on it. This it's on like the does it does. Like, well, I don't have X hundred people on my site right now. That's for sure. I don't know that I would have ever beat Pinside anyway. So does it really affect me? I guess. I don't know. Well, I could see a lot of people are certainly disappointed. I've been thinking about it. Right. I've been thinking about like what to say here. Like and let me let me start with this. Right. Because I've been the Texas Pinball Festival last few years. I love the Twippies. I like it. I watch the streams of it, like the live streams. I love the streams. I love the buildup to it, Jason. Like, you know, last year was our first year. We were not a very good stream, but we got nominated. And that was like bigger than anything for us. We were joking and laughing like, oh, my God, we got nominated. Right. Yeah. I like to pretend that I don't care about accolades and things like that. But, I mean, you know, a lot of work goes into, you know, streaming or writing articles or producing content or doing social media. Like, it's a lot of hours. And it's gratifying to be recognized, even nominated, you know. It's a ridiculous amount of hours. It a ridiculous amount of money that we spending right Like you know I don know if you could see it I got these transmitters that I just bought I building this two system It a joke around here right Oh, nice. But I can have two rigs. You can just push a button and switch, like, in between. Switch, switch, switch. Yeah, that's cool.
    27:41
    We're doing the Texas State Championships here. So top 24 in Texas will be here. And there's some really darn good Texas players. So I want to be able to go from dialed in, boom, to Blackwater. boom you know and move it around well you can move one while the other one's streaming and then you totally see it's seamless otherwise you have the it's just like the top of someone's head that's amateur hour and I'm really getting better at it in fact next week I'm interviewing with JDL pinball if you follow him he's a European streamer guy yeah him and they're fantastic and he's like my go-to of what I want to do yeah no I watch those streams all the time And he's got a two rig system and I'm going to pick his brain on how to make that really good here and all that stupid stuff. But I mean, look, none of us so-called content creators make any money. No. We don't. Well, one of us does. That is true. I often wondered if I opened up a Patreon, what would happen? I don't want to say I don't want to go behind a paywall, though. I want it to be open. So if it would just be like a tip jar or something like that. Oh, yeah. I, I, we have a tip jar here and we get a bunch of, you know, people take, cause we, we give them free waters and free drinks and stuff. So there's a jar and that sort of thing. But I mean, I can't even say out loud how much money I've spent on this because this and she'll hear me. Right. Okay. But you know, I love it. I, this is what I love to do. It's a hobby. I mean, if you think about it as an investment in your mental health, like for me, a hobby, I have to have a hobby. I'll sit around and I'll just be like, my mind will be wandering. I'll be like, it's just not good for you. I like having something healthy and positive to focus on. And I do too. And I love, I'm really having the time of my life here with this stream. And for one night a year, I get to geek out, dress up, wear our wormhole stuff, go down to TPF and hear our name being called. And they took that. That's gone. I can't get that. Right. Right. And what's what's a pisser is I actually go up against the Twippies. We stream TPF finals Wizards tournament. The Twippies are on YouTube on stream and live on competitive pinball. Oh, wow. Right. And this year, Janine goes, my wife, Janine, grabs me and goes, you're coming down there.
    30:09
    You're going to hear them announce Wormhole Pinball. You're going to either win or lose and then you're going to come back here. So get someone to take your spot as a competitor. And so I guess you don't have to worry about that anymore. I don't have to worry about it. Right. It was a really special moment, like to hear our name being called. We didn't win anything. Jack Danger is going to win everything. You know, Jack Danger was not really streaming that much anymore, though. That's that's another pisser. It's like because I think competitive pinball this year had a really good chance. I think, you know, this was the year for Fox Cities and J.D.O. I was just going to say Fox Cities I watch all the time over at District 82. He's fantastic. Tom does a great job with it.
    30:50
    Again, him and J.D.O. are my, like, this is where I want to be, and I'm getting there. But they have the best players, right? I mean, they have the best players and just a really great, great stream. So that's gone. And so they took that from us. So it's just, at the end of the day, I don't really care who started it. I just want them to finish it and just fix it. I don't know how they're going to fix it because it is you know it's not I mean it's all about saving face I guess at this point because there's nothing that says you couldn't just be like all right we'll do it you know so I don't know I don't know what would prevent it from coming back I'm not sure and I don't want to start my own or any of that well people have reached out to me and they're like you should start the nappies I'm like it sounds like a lot of work for no money it's like it sounds like an awful lot of work for nothing other than that it's a tremendous amount of work yeah i don't know what it can go in its place it's just it's just unfortunate and uh you know the way i look at it is it was a nice sandbox we're all playing in this nice little sandbox and 50 of the sandbox is now gone all right and worm we're just really happy to be in the sandbox building a nice little castle on the side and um if at all possible i try to stay out of the drama i mean you know being especially when you know there's so much traffic on my pages and stuff i mean there's things inevitably happen there's people who are trollish and everything else but if at all possible i try to just remain neutral and stay out of all of the side choosing really good it's a really good move for you i watch what you post because you'll post something, right, and say you make a minuscule mistake. Well, someone's going to tell you. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm the king of typos. I know that.
    32:44
    Because I'm like, I just, because I said I do it so fast. I'm like, get it out. And I'm like, I don't really care if it's a typo. I'm not getting paid for this. What do you want me to do?
    32:54
    But then people actually email me and they tell me and I welcome it. I'm like, good, please tell me. That's like an army of proofreaders that will help me out. But no, you handle, and if you do have someone that's a little trollish, you handle it really well. I love when you, on the comment section on NapsArcade.org, you do a really good job. And on the Facebook.
    33:14
    I don't have the patience for it. It's not easy. I think I've definitely developed a thicker skin than I used to have.
    33:22
    You know, at first you definitely would be like. You can definitely feel, get the anger rising. But you just got to try to just let it roll off your back. And I've done it. I'm working on it. There's a lot of money going to my therapist right now. And as much money as possible to try to get that headspace right. Either that or beer. Just beer will help you. I don't really drink. I don't drink that much. No. I'm trying to lose some more LBs. That's definitely the anti of losing pounds. That's for sure. It's just not conducive. So I've got really nothing else for you man I didn't want to take up too much of your time I wanted to just pick your brain Of how you got here How did this start It's a fairly interesting origin story I guess Someone stole naparcade.com I still don't know who has it It's like an anonymous person Who would register that That's why it's .org Because I had the Facebook page for years Someone probably saw it had thousands of followers and just registered and trying to sell it to me or something. I don't know. You never got an email that says, hey, I own this. Give me five grand. Five grand. I'll give them five bucks. I have a company and I had to put B in front of my company name because somebody owned the virtual group. Somebody owned virtualgroup.com and I was like, there's not a lot of virtuals. What the hell? And I found it was my uncle who owns it. Oh, really? All right. Well, I want to buy it from you. and he can't even figure out how the hell to transfer it, so it wasn't even worth it. I thought we were going to have to go down there and break your uncle's legs, and then maybe read it.
    35:03
    He's fine. He just doesn't know how to operate computers, so it's like, get it. But there's not even another nap arcade. I think it had to have just been out of spite. I don't know who has it. One of your competitors buy it, you think? I don't know. Who cares? They can have it. Yeah, they can have it. It's theirs.
    35:21
    Thank you so much, Jason. I really appreciate it. Anything else? Anything new you want to break? Do you have anything exciting coming down the pike that you could break for us? I got nothing for you. If I have it, I usually write it up pretty fast. Do you know everything about Back to the Future that you want to spill? That's not mine. That's Kaneda's story. He's the one who said it all. Yeah, I mean, boy, I hope he's not wrong on it, but it looks like that's going to be a hell of a pin too, right? Hey, Jason, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I know you've got kids to feed and your wife's out of town, so thank you so much. And we've got coming up in 30 minutes, so you've got to love Thursday night. football. I will be posting this tomorrow at noon central standard time on not only YouTube, but also on Spotify and Apple podcasts, wherever you can listen to and download podcasts. So thank you so much, Jason. I really appreciate it. Awesome. Thanks. I'm looking forward to watching it and then being like, do I sound like that? You know, I go back and I edit and I don't like the way I sound or look. So I really prefer the way I sound more than I look. I have a really a good face for radio yeah i was gonna say that's the ultimate uh comment that goes along with that i know all right jason thank you so much i really really appreciate it yeah great talking to you thanks thanks so much man take care bye