Paraphrasing from 55:00 onwards, " A lot of people have emailed me and said they have played the TBAG pinball machine and have said they don't like it but won't voice that on our local forums and also have specifically asked for their name not to be mentioned or attached to the criticism".
It would be interesting to hear some of the genuine feedback correspondence read out on air and the numbers involved without breaching confidentiality as it would provide a far more accurate perspective rather than the usual local cheer squad in the "official" TBAG thread.
Despite your assumptions I would surmise the real reason for the lack of genuine online feedback and unwillingness for those critical of the machine to have their thoughts publicised is that it is less about hurting Homepin's feelings and more about local pinheads protecting their forum reputation and fear of potential ostracism from the local online community.
If that is the case, then it simply reinforces how much of a handicap to hobby growth our local forums truly are given their cliquish commercially driven biased nature particularly to any international readers who will have no real opportunity to play this in person and will instead be relying totally on Australian based feedback which they presume will be objective and free from either fear or favouritism.
How quickly we forget when a local member provided the first piece of honest feedback on TBAG from the previous years Pinfest to the pinside forum and was threatened with banning from AA as a result.
PS: TBAG prototype number 1 is currently sitting in the backroom of a pinball dealer whose "employee" is the Admin of AA. This was because the prior arranged launch party at a different venue cancelled when they felt that homophobia and racial slurs weren't conducive to the clientele of their establishment.
Apparently this is all industry standard stuff, there are no secrets or surprises here. LOL.