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Episode 25 - Operator Spotlight: Inner Orbit
PodcastAnalysis updated 3d ago48 min listen
Highlights
- John has been operating pinball machines since 2013-2014, starting with Star Trek at a board game store.
- John operates approximately 20-25 total machines across 3 locations, with primary focus on two bars: 417 Taphouse and 1984 Branson.
- It took approximately 5 years for John's route to feel sustainable financially.
- John's income is approximately 50-50 split between arcade work and route operations.
- Springfield has approximately 8 pinball locations with around 60 machines on location for a town of 170,000 people.
- Modern Stern games play significantly longer than classic games, making them less suitable for tournament play during weekly league events.
- Jaws had the best initial month earnings of any machine John has operated.
- South Park earns roughly 60% compared to new Stern games despite being themed as a top-tier IP.
- New Stern machines have extremely high reliability with only 2 dead node boards and 1 dead CPU out of 50+ machines purchased by Alan's business partner.
- Ghostbusters performs as the top-earning game out of 30 machines at the 1984 arcade location.
Notable quotes
“location pinball kind of sucked around here. It was the typical laundromat that was half working. So I guess, yeah, it started out just from that cool opportunity and snowballed to what it is now.”
“I probably like incomes 50-50, like the arcade or routing.”
“if I put godzilla in we're there all fucking night”
“I think it's our duty, I think, to throw them out there every once in a while at least just to give people a taste.”
“Stern knows their market the manufacturers know their market they're selling games right now but i'm hoping that we'll get more people out and i'm hoping that as people get into pinball and they go out on location they play pinball maybe they buy a machine for their house”
“So he's really helped a ton too, I think. That's awesome. And like, did he approach you about running some of these events?”
“WPC when when John says WPC to listeners, he meaning Valley Williams game from the 90s. WPC is like the driver board set.”
“I mean, that's why all games are licenses nowadays. Right. Because it's like you need to walk into an arcade and see Star Wars and Stranger Things and Deadpool.”
Entities
- 1984 Branson· company
- 417 Taphouse· company
- Electric Bat· company
- Inner Orbit Pinball· company
- Metagames· company
- Sega· company
- Springfield, Missouri· company
- Stern Pinball· company
- Williams/Bally· company
- Howdy Partner· event
- Ghostbusters (Stern)· game
- Godzilla (Stern)· game
- Jaws (Stern)· game
- South Park (Sega)· game
- IFPA· organization
- Wedgehead Pinball Podcast· organization
- Alan· person
- Alan's business partner· person
- Brandon· person
- Dwight Sullivan· person
- John Dozier· person
- Kale and Rachel· person
- Trent· person
