For the future, I'd suggest using Google Forms, given you have a Gmail account already established. It offers the choice options you used in Survey Monkey, and has no submission limits.

It's an interesting dichotomy. Pinside (because of its size and activity) is a very useful tool in podcasting. The latest rumors and speculation, to-the-minute happenings, it is positioned as a go-to source of unfiltered information. And that's setting aside that Robin is directly very helpful (I don't know if other shows have done so, but I've contacted him several times for data pulls so I can exploit the mass use of other features, like the game ratings, to see what is happening in the hobby). Pinside is easily the most useful discussion venue on pinball, period.

That said, the forum reputation is not unearned. I basically avoid debating topics here outright, and that's what works for me. My co-host, while having an account, never posts here. Too toxic. When he follows the discussion threads that are hot topics, and sees how negative and personally attacking some participants (not the majority) are, it reaffirms his decision. I imagine he just reads This Week in Pinball now instead, as that's more what he's looking for, but I haven't asked recently.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm always worried I'll make it too dense for consumption. Thanks to Jeff for hosting it and suggesting the topic to me!

The subscriber count is a great idea I did not consider.

I did try to find a comprehensive collection of show counts with attendance data, but could not find a source. I believe one could build this out by directly contacting most of them, but you would need to prep a lot of defined categories to try and make sure everything is apples to apples.

I also attempted to get locations and # of pins per location, but none of the mapping data sources I contacted logged information in a multi-year way that could really be used as evidence (a long-shot since none of them really need their data in such a format, but it would have been interesting and with my assumption that hobby operators in particular have grown recently I'd really have liked to seen some evidence proving it).

Sadly, it falls under one of the flaw categories I listed (self-reported ownership; as you know it introduces a lot of issues). That data is incapable of distinguishing ownership increases' causes (be it just site growth or something else). It's why I do not actually provide a correlation value with a statement on statistical significance, because I can't really detect that without knowing the manufacturing quantities. And, if I had those, I'd just use that for ownership (since all games not destroyed would be owned by someone, and we'd just accept the flaw that we can't track destroyed as a small price to pay), though then we could compare ownership counts here versus production counts and probably get a sense of what percentage of owned games is reflected on this site (I wouldn't have bothered, but it would definitely be interesting).

My non-data based assumption at present is Pinside growth is collector-oriented and should, in theory, benefit all years, particularly since the range of examination is still "modern". Because people getting into the hobby now, or joining the site for the first time, still have access to all the games in the period of examination.

But your point is well taken. It would be like the idea of reporting Pinside's membership growth. The growth itself would be true (obviously), but we'd not be able to prove (statistically) that the growth was due to new hobbyists (in theory it could all be old hobbyists finally finding/joining the site). We'd need some other data source (surveying the members when they joined) or, we could use it to fuel our suspicion and then try to find another data source to help shore up what assumptions the data we had were making us think (what I tried to do with the IFPA data; more on that below).

Where I'm more concerned (and why I noted the flaw that the site seems very collector oriented) is when looking at the ownership count of Stern Pros versus Premium/LE. In several cases, the Pro figures are LOWER than the Premium/LE. I do not think this corresponds to reality (I think Stern sells more Pros than LEs and Premiums combined; don't know it for sure of course, just my suspicion due to costs). However, if the site's bias holds true (towards collector-grade games) then at least I feel relatively safe in assuming that's consistent across years. But I can't prove it, so the best I could do is list the flaw and move on.

I gathered the competitive data after the owner figures here because I was pretty disappointed with how many assumptions I had to make about ownership. Since the exploration was on if the pinball hobby was growing, I thought another dataset would help shore that up (since what I do have on ownership was suggesting things are more produced/owned now than 10 years ago). The IFPA data offers a lot more samples and a lot more consistency, and so it helped reassure me that the ownership trends on Pinside fit with the narrative (that pinball, the hobby, is in a growth phase).

Maybe, but the style evaluations are cursory and there were a lot more names that could be included, especially if you wanted to focus even earlier on the industry.

Neyens has led an interesting life. Have you owned any of his games? I had a woodrail of his; it had a fun middle-pop that got a lot of play. Never really owned anything else like it.

Interesting in that he is still alive. The last of the great EM designers to my knowledge. He just turned 100. I believe Pinball Magazine's latest issue, going to print now, features an interview with him of significant length.

Sort of. Imagine a better voice instead. Christopher Lee is a good pick!

I thought Head2Head was taking it over. @falconpunch and @martymainframe can add it, and @zmeny compete against it. Like Coca-Cola Classic versus New Coke (I'll leave it to everyone to decide which one gets labeled New Coke).

I think I've probably been on a bit too much. Not bad to dial things back. But EGP does have a new episode planned this Sunday so that's a given regardless.

Could use the time to focus on a different writing style. Interesting criticism this go-around, wanting more drama or focus on the experimenting of boards. Good ideas, though not a narrative strong-suit for me. I'm less of a written drama guy and more of a here's-data-organized-in-a-clear-way guy. Or neither, I might just be terrible. Regardless, more focus is a good thing!

...

I think you're correct, something like head-to-head format would better suit TV. And if the desire is for a televised sport, I think changes to that extreme are what is required, versus thinking we can significantly grow an audience around the typical, existing tournament structure.

Here are the hurdles I see pinball having compared to the typical sport (eSport or athletic):
1) Screen format: Pinball is a vertical game, and you are streaming it to a horizontal display. Viewers will not be expected to have vertical pivoting monitors, so you have to remember that a bunch of the screen real estate is wasted. You have two choices: accept this waste (what currently happens), or decide to broadcast pinball sideways and indicate the left/right is "up". Would it work? Definitely doesn't for regular players. This I think is a huge hurdle and one that is not really overcome easily.
2) Long games: As noted above. Competitive video games have matches that tend to run pretty short per round. A game like Overwatch is normally 10 minutes or less before a team switches sides. In a fighting game the whole match is over within 5 minutes. In pinball a match on a single pin can be over half an hour at the high skill level on modern machines.
3) Game diversity: If you want to watch football, you need to know one set of rules. You watch a fighting game, stage diversity is just aesthetic, and character diversity offers differing movesets but the same basic concepts apply to all (parry, block, etc.). Point being, you learn ONE game and then the rest is nuance. With pinball tournaments there tend to be lots of games, each with their own rules. The viewer won't know them all. Can your commentators explain them quickly enough? What about people constantly coming and going from the viewership, will they know?

Head-to-head format tackles a lot of this by providing for a set of objectives that can be explained at the start of the match. Game diversity is less of an issue; it's always about explaining that ONE objective (not how to get to Mustang's wizard mode in an efficient manner). Biggest problem is how we display the playfield, everything else is pretty much solved by the format.

It's standard protocol for corrections to be provided in the publication where the error was listed. Since you reported his statement as fact, it only made sense to issue why the statement was false in the publication as well, like any newspaper would. Obviously, last week off delayed things, but I respect that you took the trouble to clarify why TWIP countered against the rumors so strongly based on the direct statements TWIP was receiving from the company.

Outside of indicating you cancelled your order, the rest of the statement fits with how any media entity I've seen has dealt with a person/entity caught lying to them (denoting it publicly when it impacts the reporting, because there is a tie to credibility).

No idea, but TWIP seems to try and apply journalistic standards to how information is reported (denoting rumors as such and placing, until now at least, a higher denotation on official statements from the organization versus less vetted intel). Whether that's a pinball media or not I don't know, but I respect what TWIP is trying to do. The phrase "no comment" exists for a reason; I was very disappointed in the decision to lie to TWIP and I'm glad it was publicly indicated. A lot of people in this hobby, especially if they were in this position, I think would have been too scared to say something and upset the apple cart. One of the first signs of a media is when it is willing to report the facts, regardless of potential fallout. I can't imagine Jeff was comfortable doing this, but I think his decision was the "media" decision. My two cents anyway.

I think the Microsoft computer playing is trying to showcase one of their Cognitive Service APIs: the vision one I assume. A combination of visual review to try and understand what is happening while the outcomes let the machine "learn" to do better and better at the task.

I actually found very little about the pinball demonstration in any write-ups, though there is a pretty interesting summary of the Vision API and the five core elements that make it up: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/02/13/cognitive-services-apis-vision/

So if the idea is how artificial intelligence can learn to play a physical pinball machine, I'm guessing those seemingly random flipper flips are part of its learning process to figure out when flipping might somehow influence the ball. That or it lost track of it entirely.

Still, I think it's an interesting use of the AI technology versus the usual object identification/photo ID stuff we're more familiar with seeing.