Unfortunately, I've heard from 2 different smaller distros that they're moving their Stern prices up by $100 in 2020, but they wouldn't specify why. Guess we shall find out soon enough.

Only thing scary thus far is my wife said we must get a Stranger Things LE. Makes me wonder what she bought herself for Christmas.

I think there should be a casual mode that is objective based instead of score based. My kids and non pinball friends respond to objectives so much more than what any amount of “score” shows up on the DMD or lcd, thus when I have a casual pinball night majority of my games get put on settings that allow objectives to be easily achieved.

Using Iron Maiden as an example, putting the power features on their lowest setting and having a visual count of their progress towards the multiball is extremely fun and rewarding for these types of players.

Of course pins are objective based in practice. But just like you said, objective = score, which the vast majority of any casual player I’ve talked to or encountered that plays a handful of times each year, do not care about. Hence the need to have a mode that wipes out the scores in favor of objectives.

Plus there already are separate rulesets on most modern pins. I don’t see the harm in simplifying this even further for different casual or party modes in a home setting.

I’m still waiting to play it myself and know nothing of the modes.

Heard back from a couple of friends that played on location. General feeling is, just avoid shooting the middle altogether and rely on every other shot as it’s a fairly simple shooter with a super raw code. This ended up yielding scores ranging from 1-2.5 billion.

While I agree it’s not necessarily fair to the design team, once any product goes to market for consumers any judging of said product becomes fair game.

Star Wars and GOT are far from shallow overall, but they’re unbalanced enough to where one could completely ignore different parts of the code options in the game and still blow up in the tens of billions. Haven’t had much time on new Ghostbusters to comment.

You just gave me flashbacks to when Gunnar Optiks wanted to sponsor me during my video game days. Maybe it’s time to whip those bad boys out on the Stern Circuit

For me personally, there's a big difference between cosmetic things on the cabinet and a topper on the backbox compared to something that is part of the gameplay itself under the glass.

The feature is pretty cool and looks great when it happens, but the Upside Down is also a huge part of the Stranger Things and as of now, it doesn't feel like one will get the full experience intended for this pin by Brian Eddy unless they shell out additional money.

What I’m really curious about because quite frankly I have no idea, but would doing this to a playfield cost more than a general playfield and if so how much cost would that be to manufacture? Because this would literally mean every Stranger Things buyer has purchased a product with a hidden feature baked into the BOM that’s not even accessible without spending additional money on top of the purchase price.

This is business 101.

Stern hid this because they planned on cross-selling this feature from the beginning to make money. I've got nothing wrong with the practice of cross-selling itself, but there's no way they hid this because they thought it would create excitement after the fact. If they wanted to create excitement and do their fan base a solid, they would've installed these into the LE's unannounced and then offered it as a cross-sell for Pros and Premiums.

Instead, the vast majority of buyers and potential future NIB customers are left wondering if any game that is purchased in the future will be lacking items under the glass that directly have an impact on the experience itself with code and mech integration. Quite simply put, as a business they violated the trust of their consumers. If they're really wanting to build a lifestyle brand, in which a core foundation of that function is brand loyalty through consumer trust, they have made quite the error in judgment with how this product was rolled out.

Honestly? By running and investing in multiple businesses. No one said anything about an illegal tactic. I'm speaking from a business perspective because I have actual real-world experience building brands.

Miscalculating one facet of a product rollout does not equal the equivalent to someone being completely ignorant in their overall business model.

I'm not going to divulge private information or make my equity stakes public knowledge. You asked a question on how I get through the day and I provided an answer for you. I'm not speaking or giving my opinion based on emotion, I'm giving my opinion because I recognize business tactics and understand these principles. If you disagree with my assessment then that's perfectly fine.

I'm giving my critique of the current situation. If you feel my critique gives the impression that this is the worst thing that any company has done, then I believe you might want to re-read my previous opinions of the situation because I feel that's a bit of an exaggeration of my stated opinions.

The UV light may not be a big deal to you, which is perfectly fine. We can't, however, ignore the fact that the response from the community to this has been overwhelmingly negative.

I'm at a loss for how this furthers our conversation if you're quoting something I said and responded to it.

If you want to discuss why you believe Stern's handling of rolling out this feature is positive for their company, we can discuss the merits of that.