It doesn’t take anything away from location play. Those that play at locations aren’t losing out on anything and will still continue to go. I just want it to create a little more exciting vibe in my home Gameroom and try to get my buddies to up their game and try to beat my scores haha

Yea I noticed the lag logging in to IC as a player too.

Yep I was disappointed to hear George Gomez on the recent Super Awesome Pinball Show say that not having home leaderboards is a "business decision" to keep it available only for operators.

Nice job by Stern here to annoy a pretty large segment of their machine buyers. Until now I've been very happy with my Stern machines and IC, but I don't think this makes any logical sense at all and it creates a bit of a sour feeling for me. Not having a leaderboard at home doesn't cause home players to go play on location any more often than they would otherwise. And I play plenty on location in addition to playing a ton at home.

I'd bet it almost never happens that someone thinks along the lines of "Hmmm, I'd like to invite people over to play today but I can't have a leaderboard here so let's go to a location instead."

If people want to play at home, they play at home. If they want to go to a location, they go to a location. Leaderboards could come into play in deciding which location to go to. But they're not going to be a deciding factor at all in playing at home vs. going out to play.

FFS just open up home leaderboards so we can enjoy leaderboards as a feature wherever we play.

Been super laggy all day and dot all games are recording.

I agree with all your points. It’s tough in Colorado as I don’t even know a single location that has a board, if they did I would not even look at it unless I was on location.

That sucks. I was looking forward to setting one up. Business decision means money. How much could it really cost stern to run the website that serves up the leader boards?

IC needs a simple page like this showing current status by service...
https://trust.salesforce.com/

Disappointing Gomez said that. I asked about home leaderboards on FB and stern replied “Stay tuned”. Got my hopes up…Guess that was stay tuned for a hard “no”.

Yep he said it's not a cost or technology issue at all. It's purely a decision to keep it as something only operators have as a favor to them.

All decisions are not good decisions
Hopefully Stern reconsider down the road.

I've got a couple coworkers who come over every so often to play at our house (One of them is borrowing my Batman 66 for the holidays, actually).

I periodically go to the IC page and check his stats (to see how many games he's played on the loaned Batman 66) and check the High Score Table for that machine in my collection. It's been fun to get messages from him that say "Check out the HST for Batman, I had a pretty awesome game last night" or for me to jab him with a "Still can't beat that factory 500M GC? What gives?!"

Would be fun for guests who know I have a Deadpool/Batman66/Mandalorian to be able to check my basement's high scores from their phone if/when they see one of those machines on location. Then they can kind of mentally compare their scores on location to the scores on my home leaderboard. It's more fun to compete against people you know than strangers, imo.

I like the idea of having a URL that makes that process a little less clunky.

Also, the more obvious "reset the high scores for the night" is a really cool benefit for the home leaderboard when you have people over to play. Nobody wants to try to beat a GC that has been set on a game I've owned for two years, but they *do* want to try and beat the high score that has been put on a game for the night.

YES

I think, like mentioned, that the decision is only to cater to locations. But I can't see in any way a leaderboard makes an impact for locations, whereas home owners with many machines it would be awesome.

I think Stern should then adopt an upcharge. Like $25 to unlock more leaderboard for paid IC users.

The missed point is when locations want new games where do the old ones go. Well for me it's to home buyers that said we are part of the life chain of games and getting home users more involved with leaderboards actually supports locations.

Stern should think this through. Once (if?) you have home leaderboards, that will most certainly factor into future acquisitions by home collectors. We're a "completist" lot, most of us. Many folks will want as many games on the leaderboard as possible. When you're deciding between a Stern and another manufacturer, this will become a factor for many once home leaderboards are a thing. The possible edge this gives to the home market is probably a greater benefit than any potential loss of sales to operators. Personally, I can't think of many negatives from an operator perspective, if any.

I for one can confirm IC has led me to buy more pins.

Yeah, I had this problem with the IC scanner in my Stranger Things Pro. Eventually the lights on the scanner just went out and stayed out, so I opened a ticket with Cointaker and Eddie Yates in Stern Support, and Eddie sent me a replacement IC Scanner under warranty, then unbelievably (or quite believably in this case), the replacement IC scanner started doing the SAME thing.

Eddie wants me to take a scanner from one of other pins where the IC scanner is working fine, and swap the scanners between pins to see what happens, then report back. I need to do that ASAP. Maybe they'll send another.

I've created a separate thread about the home leaderboard issue. I've never been big on creating separate topics, but I thought maybe having this question in its own thread could open it up to a wider audience than just the people who visit this thread. It might or might not be of interest to people, but I thought why not post it and see? Please hop over there to leave comments/thoughts and let's see if it can gain any traction. Here's a link:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/no-home-leaderboards-for-stern-insider-connected#post-7280704

I have been holding off buying IC kits until home leaderboards launched. Stern teased home leaderboards would be available, I was hoping by the end of 2022.

I would be pretty fired up if I purchased a kit expecting home leaderboards to launch. I could care less about using IC in my gameroom now, what a bummer Gomez.

Yep. This would be great to post in the other forum as well if you wouldn't mind.

I know you really want Home leaderboards but you can't see how this makes an impact for operators? If I play on location and put up a score in the top 10 to be featured on the leaderboard, I am probably going to be motivated to go back and play that game again if I either get bumped off the top 10 or have my score surpassed. Especially if the person who passes you is a friend or acquaintance. It creates a sense of rivalry between players and a call to action to come back and defend your scores.

Further, if a leaderboard for 1 game I am already interested in puts the hooks in me, I would be more motivated to play ALL of the location's IC games to put my name up on those leaderboards. That is the draw for operators to be able to use IC to generate more coin drop and grow location based play.

Having said that, I completely understand the frustration with the lack of home based IC features and I am right there with you as I expected more by this point. But if the last few months have been an indication, development seems to be picking up so I am hopeful going into 2023 that we will see some exciting things.

Yes, as you described I agree that leaderboards are a good way to bring in business to a location and that's awesome! But I don't think having leaderboards at home would eat into that business in a meaningful way. Heck, it could even enhance it by wanting to be on a board both at home and on location.

You have a machine but still go on location to play and get on a leaderboard. I have GZ, AIQ, JP, and EHOH and I still go on location to play games and I like it when they have leaderboards with them. It's fun.

I just think leaderboards really shouldn't be considered an either/or situation for playing at home or playing on location. I'd guess current home owners living near locations that have good machines to play still go out and play on location occasionally. And I don't think the amount those owners currently play at home vs. location would change in a meaningful amount if home leaderboards were opened up. Just my thoughts though and, as you said, I hope more fun features are on the way.

The hilarious thing to me about the "home leaderboards eating into excitement of location leaderboards" line of thinking is that you could make exactly the same argument about pinball in general. Having pins at home decreases my likelihood to go out an play on location.

Perhaps Stern should stop selling to home buyers so that people are "forced" to play on location. Operators would love it!

That brings up a good question. Does an operator feel the home market has taken from their profits? While I have many I think we are a small group. Also most home owners, I guess speaking for myself, drop plenty of coin on location and even more so if they keep buying the new games.

I totally side with you about on-site leaderboards, as I am on the top 5 of all games in multiple locations. I meant to say I guess if they have them and it drives play it would also drive play at homes of friends and makes me want to play more. For home play maybe the way would be to link multiple homes to a virtual user created board. The sad point I have seen is locations don’t see value in the boards and one location usually even has their TVs off. The few hardcore IC members thou know it’s out there.

That unfortunate those locations are not taking advantage of making those publicly viewable. The arcade we have in town has a large TV screen at the base of the stairs in the entrance. As you exit the arcade the leaderboard is right in your face before you head back up the stairs. Pretty good solution given they don't have the space to mount that near their pins and a nice reminder for yourself if you put up a few good scores in that session.

And don't get me wrong, I think Home Leaderboards are a great idea for many of the reasons you mentioned there. It could get casual members of one's household more engaged in competition which could then drive more excitement and demand to get more pins or replace with new ones.

So a few days ago, I was at a venue with a Godzilla Premium registered on IC using a personal account (no "Verified" checkmark). It had what appeared to be a little network signal indicator at the top right of the login screen (the screen with the spinning Stern tokens). Anyone know when that was added, and if it's available on Verified machines?

The games show a wireless icon in the top right corner when in the NET menus

The games also now show a verified checkbox and green symbol on an attract mode screen.

Sorry in advance if I missed something about this.

When insider connected came out I paid $39.99 to create ‘Goldenbeards Gameroom’. I currently have 2 pins registered to the gameroom and will soon have more.

I tried messing around with it yesterday as I wanted to get into my gameroom to see how to create or make leaderboards and then planned on displaying them on a monitor on the wall since most of my family and friends now have an IC account.

From what I’m gathering (and gut feeling) I can’t do this.

Is there anyway I can do this? Do I need to make a commercial account? I have no problem registering everything through my business. It basically already is now. Just pissed off and it feels pointless that I’m paying $40 a year for basically nothing.

Only verified locations can get access to those operator accounts, you cannot get in by paying. So until they enable Home leaderboards there isn't anything to be done unfortunately.

As for what you paid for, you had access to those few Bond LE's Stem was selling directly and I think you get access to some explosive podcasts and such. But yeah, not really worth it imo.

Its not worth it yet I agree. I have a little issue with when I signed up it mentioned forums and other benefits and that has not happened yet.

To get a pro account you need to provide where your games are public, when distributer you buy from and your company name. I almost did all of that to get the pro features.

I think Stern misses that some of us have more pins then any local locations. Thats a huge investment and we get no outside funds coming in for it. I would think we would get a little icing on the cake being owners.

You also get annual swag/merch like the Spooky Fang Club.

I sent stern a nice website contact form asking for home leaderboards. If enough of us fuss about it, maybe they will give it to us.

If they are being stingy about leaderboards I am surprised they did not close the backdoor of getting on insider connected without a scanner.

The LED light that is failing on the insider scanners, can you get at it easily? We could probably find what LED bead they are using and get replacements. Changing the current limit resistor to dim the LED would probably help lifespan too. LEDs get driven too hard too often and it effects their life, probably what is happening. Spec out a slightly larger LED and don't run it as hard. Heat spreads out, LED is more efficient away from the top current limit, and it will last way longer.

I haven’t received anything and I signed up I think almost immediately. Kind of sucks.

I’m sure I could just have a place of business and say it’s public to get into the pro account. List it on the website haha no one will be able to get in.

I have two locations, one with weak as hell signal and one with longish distance from the router.
I'll the besting random fixes like extension cords on on the usb dongle asap to have them outside of the cabinet thru the topper hole.

Operating pinball machines isn't very profitable. Spend $7000 on a game that collects $1 per play and often have a 50% split with the location. 14,000 plays to break even? No one is getting rich from a pinball route.

Not sure why I would need a home leaderboard, I'm the only one playing the games.

I run 7 games on location. One place I get 100% the other is 90/10 split. Make a couple grand with it and sell it for close to what you paid. It’s a damn good business

davegauth How did you do login stuff with Yodeck? I just got my device and am setting it up for the first time.

For the last week, I have been using just the browser on my smart TV. Sometimes it stays logged in, and other times it forgets. I have a suspicion that it might be if I log into Insider from another device (like my phone), that logs me out on the monitor. The constant session timeouts (even when only using it on one device, like my phone) causing me to log back into Insider Connect has been a big source of frustration. This isn't my bank account. If nothing else, Stern could make the leaderboard display urls function without a login. I don't see what the harm would be.

It’s all location dependent and it hasn’t always been what you’ve been experiencing currently.

In 2013 routing pins was pure novelty.

Good times and bad times like everything else.

Ryan, I can help you later with this when I see you on location today !!

I liked this idea. Someone in the No Home Leaderboards thread said they'd spoken with George Gomez yesterday by phone and he said the intention is to bring leaderboards to homes. I'm a skeptic by nature but I tend to lean toward believing this person (why make up a story about this?)

But I still just sent an e-mail to [email protected] and [email protected] anyway because I figure it can't hurt to contact them to request the feature for home users.

I went to a 007 launch party today but everybody that played didn’t get the special badge. Did anybody else experience this today?

same here
we had multiple issues with leaderboards as well
could not create a new one and current one disapeared
we were able to change the date for a past leaderboard and run that

we tried multiple browsers and devices
emailed stern, they are trying to resolve currently

Same- did launch parties Friday night and today and no badge. I assumed it required updated code that they were expecting to get out before this weekend but didn’t.

Hopefully the badges are retro'ed for everyone.

I didn't get my 007 launch party badge either.

I sent a message to the IC Team and I am sure they will be all over it on Monday!

Kiosk links don’t require logins
Updated version of matchplay has a login-free projector view

Works fine in yodeck

Ryan, I know you were busy tonight with the Launch Party and our Tourny, let me know when you free and we can work on it.

Ryan I just PM'ed you the direct link that needs no login.