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The Pinball Show Ep 149.5: D&D
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago1 hr 32 min listen
The Pinball Show Episode 149.5: D&D Hosts: Dennis Kriesel & David Dennis Dennis and David recount their predictions from years ago on what would happen to pinball in the COVID-19 pandemic and...
Highlights
- Stern reduced operations and shut down their factory in April 2020, installing sneeze guards between employees
- American Pinball and Chicago Gaming Company completely stopped production (not just reduced) because they only manufactured 100 games per year
- Jersey Jack was in the middle of moving from New Jersey to Chicago during the pandemic shutdown
- Spooky Pinball shut down completely due to Wisconsin state mandate
- Multimorphic projected next steps and communicated plans to build modules at home during prolonged stay-at-home orders
- Deep Root Pinball was planning to reveal seven games at Texas Pinball Festival 2020 before the pandemic caused postponement
- No pinball manufacturer actually failed during the pandemic shutdown, except Deep Root (which had unrelated financial issues)
- Economic recovery was so rapid that pinball machines became extremely valuable on secondary markets; WWE LE copies appreciated significantly above retail price
- At the start of 2023 in the US, 20% of Americans had never had COVID-19
- The host caught COVID-19 at a private home pinball tournament but was asymptomatic; family later contracted it from daycare
Notable quotes
“I don't know why people do cruises, but apparently they're very, very popular. But speaking of popularity, I have something even more popular than a cruise from Disney or any other named brand, and that is the famed David Dennis from Silver Ball Chronicles.”
“I'm able to pay homage to this fun hobby that we have, do all of that stuff, and generally stay out of all of the commentary and stuff that ends up getting you in trouble. And everybody just remembers me as being an amazing person.”
“Multimorphic did communicate about next steps. They were telling people that they would still be able to build the modules, not the full machines, but they would be able to build the modules at home if the stay-at-home orders were in a prolonged format. That's pretty good. That's pretty – what do they call that? Pivot, right?”
“It was – the manufacturers and their reduced production capabilities and supply chain issues couldn't keep up. And, you know, everything got expensive, every like bad game, like WWE became more valuable than its sale price was.”
“When you think of the equity markets, particularly stock markets, it dropped so quickly. Then all this government stimulus comes into the market to sort of stabilize it and then it jumps right back up in like a month, maybe a half a month, month and a half depending on the type of market. That's what we call a v-shape recovery.”
“No manufacturer failed. Well, except for Deep Root. But that's right. But that wasn't the pandemic. So, yeah, they turned out to have a lot of other deep-seated financial issues not related to COVID.”
“I think the quality of the episodes has improved. I'm starting to pull more than just, you know, a couple of old podcasts and then regurgitating that. I have to do a lot more digging now.”
“When we tie this all back together, that's the confusing part about listening back to that old episode is like we didn't know what was going on. And then when you think about what we thought was going to happen and then what actually did happen, you're like, man, we couldn't have been more wrong.”
Entities
- American Pinball· company
- Chicago Gaming Company· company
- Deep Root Pinball· company
- Jersey Jack Pinball· company
- Multimorphic· company
- Spooky Pinball· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Turner Pinball· company
- Texas Pinball Festival· event
- Raza· game
- WWE (Pinball Machine)· game
- Silver Ball Chronicles· media
- The Pinball Show· media
- TopCast· media
- David Dennis· person
- Dennis· person
- Raymond Davidson· person
- Ron Hallett Jr.· person
- Zach· person
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