I listened to the podcast and just heard red flags everywhere

https://poormanspinballpodcast.libsyn.com/episode-105-ian-and-barbra-join-drew

Why do people want to jump into incredibly complex manufacturing before finishing one personal homebrew game?

This isn't exactly Charlie putting his life savings into Spooky and not charging people till games were being prepped for delivery.

Basically half way there

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She emptied her office due to the whirlwind of hashtags and brain storming taking place.

They know the magic word is “innovation”

Let your imagination run wild, only to be disappointed when it turns out no one actually wants innovation.

If Ballarama is still hanging around, I listened to your new sample of the background music for your space pinball game. I highly suggest you reconsider it...

It sounds like a brooding industrial horror movie soundtrack where rich folk torture the poors to feel alive. It's very slow for a fast paced pinball game and not very outer spacey.

But hey kudos to your social media team member. Over 5,000 likes. Nick should take more notes from her to get the Buffalo page that popular. She must know all the hot click farms for driving up counts. That's like $200 worth of fake people!

I just watched this dude pull three pop bumpers out of a Marcos box. Ain't no game

https://www.fbpostlikes.com/

cyber monday sale! 5,000 likes for $56

although more reputable click farms ask for closer to $150-200

Clickfarms are such an interesting industry that popped up in the social media age. You can buy like/followers for all the major social media sites. It's also risking getting your account being shut down if caught buying them...

Of course it does work to some degree. I've heard some comedians joke about buying twitter followers which actually did help get them noticed early in their career.

Gotta make sure you have the patents before having a product to sell or a factory to make it because otherwise what’s the point.

Sometimes I wonder if the Pinball Adventures guy is channeling Andy Kaufman, but he at least showed off some crappy homebrew games in someone else’s factory.

You Buffalo guys are boned when the legion of Ballarama fans get their mitts on you

Python Angelo liked to describe pinball as a sort of theatre experience. You set the stage, the music, the lights, and you tell a story with the silverball. Barb's experience as a costume designer and seamstress will no doubt pay dividends! I believe in Barb more than some other team members...

That said, I think the focus should stay on Ian since he is the visionary driving the bus.

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The Ballarama army is strong. 6,096 followers but only 6,020 likes. 76 toxic haters who don't want innovation in pinball

Their posts get a lot more likes here

>By being a part of our Waitlist you will be given deeper insights, the most valuable information and the hard facts of what it is like to go from 0 to building our first pinball game.

Oh I'm super excited for this part

>This game is nothing like you’ve seen before

Because it doesnt exist

>we understand that the pinball landscape is starting to boom and we are just going to add to the mix and make it more diverse and enjoyable.

Nothing says diverse like older white people

>Watch out for our other emails, to ensure you receive all of our communications make sure you whitelist our email address so we don’t end up in the sneaky spam folder! No use for us there!

I promise to cherish every communication and wait on bated breath

>In a few days we will share the history of pinball because to understand where we are about to take the pinball landscape you need to know where it all began.

My body is ready

God he really needs someone to spell check stuff...

If he did make a game, you know the inserts would have typos

Gotta get the likes up before the big reveal. They already passed CGC and aren’t far off from Spooky Pinball.

I just want to see him make a single homebrew game. He's so unfamiliar with pinball he could be an outsider artist, the Henry Darger of pinball.

It's been about a month, and while the posts have slowed down some...the followers just hit 7,000 today!

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You mean no funds. This is more Vonnie D

The lesson I look forward to

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Did you do an all new layout or another retheme? CNC playfield or free hand? I've been freehanding on a busted game/retheme for funsies the past year. I've done a lot with a simple power drill, a dremel, a cheap handheld jigsaw, and a ratcheting crimper (so much crimping). Coding is another matter, but it's slowly coming along.

It's almost like you don't need a large investment from other people to make a homebrew project...

This guy was grossly mistaken about what year AFM came out.

I’m skeptical he knows enough about the history of pinball to patent things that don’t already exist or are actually interesting to a pinball company.

Hell even the JPop patents are mostly worthless, and he knew the history and industry, because pinball companies don’t want his bat shit ideas.

Spending time and money on patents instead of a factory…

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I and the nearly 8k followers can’t wait to see these brilliant original ideas worth all this effort to protect.

Also unless I'm using the Australian trademark database search incorrectly, they should probably trademark the name of their company?

You could say the same thing about the ideas they want to patent ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Get hype!

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Soon my pretties

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By the way, I just want to point out that I haven’t gotten a single email from the newsletter

Natalie was great and all, but let me present my findings
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In conclusion, invest in Ballarama [insert diamond, hands, rocket, and moon emoji that pinside doesn't like]

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>Every buyers name included on all machines (unless a buyer prefers their name left off the list)

The later is the excuse for when there is exactly one name on the game. Also I guess pound sand early buyers? Gotta wait till all 300 sell

>Variable backlit backlight art

Oh boy, the figured out how to dim LEDs like every other manufacturer

>4 attack fighters - lit and semi-animated

Idk what that means. What is semi-animated? It is or isn't animated... is it crap on a spring?

>Plunger with 3 real skill shot choices

Get out of here false illusion of choice!

>5 spinners

I love spinners, but bruh...

>6 flippers

This game is going to be so expensive and draw so much power

>1 x 3 bank 2 level Flipper Targets

So really tall stand up targets?

>1 x inverted drop backflip target (pinball first)

As pointed out, it's already been done

>3 x 2 level bumper assemblies (pinball first)

Ok this is at least a different idea that I'm surprised hasn't been done before. Maybe because it's pointless, but that's beside the fact

>1 subterranean transfer

best new name for subways I've heard

>extensive upper fully playable playfield

Well thank god it plays

>12 pinballs - 6 balls installed and 6 spares provided

lol why?

>Now we would be silly not to include the clause that specification is subject to change at the manufacturers discretion, so here it is! But we will not less the complexity and challenge of what we provide, only possibly the combination of items. Non [sic] of the Pinball Firsts would ever be omitted

ie the game hasn't been fully designed and finalized yet

>automatic fault finding and reporting - online and local (pinball first)

The online part is new, but local fault finding and reports has been a thing for almost 40 years. Hell High Speed knew how to compensate for certain broken parts

>Inbuilt solenoid protection

A fuse?

>Total LED colour balance control - (pinball first)

Most manufacturers just balance it before you get it? I don't really get this.

>online game updates
>online control of your machine settings
>online high scores and tournaments

Make a game before making luxury accoutrements most owners won't use. Also this is pure crap

>Award system that gives you real advances in game play

Ian hates fake advances

>Customisable audio, text and video content

Supply your own, because we can't. (What does their staff musician think of this?)

>All games saved online with tracking and tips/hints

Here's an online tip, don't give these guys any money

Are you thinking of their Angry Birds concept game? I don't recall two level pops, but it was a multi level structure that would rotate and sink into the game to expose different elements, such as a scoop. https://www.thisweekinpinball.com/angry-birds-concept-pin-sketches-and-notes/

This. Knapp is adding legitimacy to someone who doesn’t deserve any sort of benefit of the doubt.

Pinball wire coloring is long overdue for some innovation. Thank you for your brave service in using other people's money to develop a prototype.

People are dying to know if the leg bolts are in metric or US customary

Lots of deep pocket collectors who are sometimes blinded by their dislike of existing manufacturers and/or unfamiliar with the amount of work that goes into designing and building a game. And there are speculators who hope to get a bargain on the next Big Bang Bar.

I don't find that hard to believe. Haggis is incredibly more productive and viable than deeproot. They really don't compare.

Though I think it's totally valid to wonder how much more cash on hand they have and if they can survive till they're firmly out of the red.

Also some of those cheerleaders definitely seem like they're mostly interested in flipping the game. There's no reason to own more than one otherwise lol

Hoping everyone is ok and feeling well

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I'm a big fan of them considering all people on the waitlist as basically confirmed to order one

I noticed the growth of their Facebook has tapered off significantly as of late. I'm guessing they paid for 10k followers. 141 followers for them sounds much more likely of what they would have as a pinball "company" without a product or a very engaging social media approach.

Getting a lot of followers might help them get more traction in the almighty algorithms that rule what content people see. Granted, they have piss poor engagement which is what the algorithms really use when surfacing content.

It might also trick some dumb investors

Look at how they use social media. They don't know how it works. I don't think it's surprising if they thought buying likes would get them more attention.

Don’t ascribe malice to that which can be adequately explained by stupidity

I imagine no updates till he gets the patents sorted out because he thinks they’re that special.

Let's not bring Haggis into the conversation. They're totally different than the Ballarama and deeproots of the world. They're struggling yet making progress vs never having a chance.

Meh, meh, and meh.

I agree things aren’t sunshine and rainbows over there, but they do actually deliver games to customers (however slowly). They may go out of business. I don’t know. But it’s not a comical trainwreck where it should be obvious to anyone with common sense that it’s a disaster.

My guess is they’re just facing the same sort of chip and part shortages, and very long shipping times like everyone else.

I think they can pull out of it if they stick it through

This post got a lot of engagement, but mostly because I think people were confused by the shared post and are thinking Ballarama Pinball has all these games

Ballarama Pinball Facebook.pdf

Ok, so now that he has protections on ideas no one wants to steal…show a game

Also surprised they didn’t try to patent a double decker flipper

What might be more interesting is to take the disappearing pop from Gusher/Cirqus and make it a multilevel pop. Then the pop can be totally gone, on the main playfield only, or on the main playfield and on an upper playfield

Is it a good idea worth trying? Eh... maybe if the layout is cool.

The core idea of the Ballrama multi level mechs is pointless to me. It's basically making an upper playfield that's the same the main playfield. That seems extremely restrictive of layout possibilities and likely repetitive.

The silent ten thousand strong Ballarama army keeps faith, yearning for the radical game designs, industry first features, awesome game feel, solid and robust construction, updated code, reliable spare parts, and liftetime support Ballarama is known for [putting on their website]

Website seems down, Instagram page seems gone, but the Facebook page is going strong at just under 10k. Natalie did her part!