Tim Sexton joins the JBS Show with Jamie Burchell

Tim said on the JBS Show:  pinball is a sport, but if you’re too competitive, you eventually need a life outside of it.

Tim Sexton told me exactly how he went from learning pinball rules in college to becoming a Stern lead developer, then to walking away from competition in 2023 because it started feeling like his whole life.

Great games matter, but so does not letting one thing own you.  Sometimes the smartest move is stepping back before the grind kills the joy.  And honestly, that’s why I love these conversations - they’re not just about machines, they’re about the people building them, playing them, and trying to stay human while doing it.

Full episode is up if you want the whole story.

#Pinball #PinballCommunity #SternPinball #TimSexton #JBSShow

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Hello and welcome to another edition of the JBS Show. And today I'm real excited, of course, to be joined by Tim Sexton. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Doing good. Just got home, decided I was going to join the JBS show, which I always wondered why it was JBS show, but now I know it's the Jamie B.S. show, and now it all makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It all it's all coming together, right? The JBS. Yeah, it wasn't a JB Jamie Birchell show show. No, it was Jamie Bullshit show. So there we go.

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

So I I Googled you, and to you know, get an understanding. I've met you before. I doubt you remember this, but I'll tell you.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I remember at Houston.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was back in the old days and uh Space City open.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Space City Open, and you were streaming, and then I was in the tournament and I made the finals, and then I played like Mark and Colin.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

And I remember Phil was a hoot, he was cheering us all up. You guys were like down here in down here in Houston, we do it differently, and everyone was screaming and cheering at the tournament. That was exciting.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

I enjoyed streaming the Space City Open. That was my favorite. I didn't enjoy streaming TPF. It was too much. I had to bring all my shit all the way over there. But Houston, home base, no problem. I quite enjoyed back in the day streaming that. But uh, you know, I don't like streaming tournaments anymore, and you don't like playing in them, so we'll talk about that later as well. So I Googled you, and I'm gonna share my screen, okay? Because there's something really cool that you could do here. You gotta see this. Here it is, ladies and gentlemen. All right, Tim Sexton Pinball, software engineer, right? You got your LinkedIn profile. But check this thing out. Okay, I'm in AI mode, yeah. Okay. Have you seen this? Have you ever done this for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:16

No, I don't think I've clicked that button.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Okay, this is like your own Wikipedia page. Look at this. So instead of me, you know, doing this, I thought it has my year of birth on there? Yeah. Look at this. So let's read this out, ladies and gentlemen. Tim Sexton is a highly prominent American pinball game developer, software engineer, and competitive player based in Chicago, Illinois. This is freaky, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

He is widely recognized for his multi-year tenure as a lead game developer at Stern Pinball, where he designed the rules, code, uh, code architectures, and feature progressions for some of the industry's biggest pop culture titles. And then there's your early inspiration.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

Yeah. So yeah, it says my year of birth, and I was my first exposure was playing virtual space cadet, which is true for anyone who kind of had, you know, when they first started putting PCs in schools. Right. And they didn't know how to turn the games off yet.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 3:19

That was the best.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

That was really fun. That was good. So 90, look at this. This is sick. This is kind of crazy. And then your notable pinball machines. You've got lead developer on John Wick, Rush, and Led Zeppelin.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

And it says I was support on Black Knight, but that's not quite true. And all those other games, I did work on I did put them all on my website, so I guess it is pulling from there. I'm getting I'm seeing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

So you supported Black Knight sort of race.

SPEAKER_01 3:52

No, I was the lead developer of Black Knight, but there were a lot of people on that game. I had like Lyman worked on it for a week. I had the Dean, Wyson, Mike Kizivat, Brett Rubin. Um I'm probably not aiming everyone, but yeah, there's a lot of people on that.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

Anyway, that's really wild. You have like your own Wikipedia page.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Well, at least you put it up with Tim Sexton Pinball. I know there's other Tim Sextons that are like.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

No, you gotta put Tim Sexton Pinball. I put Jamie Virtual Pinball and it freaked me out. So that's it. It was good or it wasn't? I don't know. You want to see it? Let's look. Sure. Let's look again, ladies and gentlemen. They they know what they're in for, they watch me. Alright, Jamie Virtual Pinball Share. And we'll click the AI mode. So all my round table, all the stuff that I do here.

SPEAKER_01 4:43

Searching. And it has like kineticists when it's searching. Oh, formerly connected to wormhole pinball is highlighted. He stepped away. Wow, it has your uh reasons. I I never said this. This is an hallucination.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

This is this is wild. I've never read this. The JBS show formed around 2023. Deep Dive, Pinball Roundtable, live streaming. Alright. That's pretty wild, man. It does have your co-hosts Retro Ralph and Kale on there. It does. Yeah. That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Or Birchill teams up with. Alright, stop this nonsense. I apologize. Okay. Um, no, but I thought that would be funny to just like introduce you to people, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

And say, how did you get into this crazy hobby? And how did you get in? Because they everyone's gonna want to know who don't know who you are. Like, when did the hell did you find out that you were really fucking good at pinball? Like, when did that hit? Instead of the origin, like, what's your favorite machine? Bullshit. Like, when did you go? Holy cow, I'm good.

SPEAKER_01 5:52

So I really started playing when I was in college, and I went to Papa, which was a giant tournament in Pittsburgh.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

But I didn't go on purpose. I just kind of like I played in the summer league, and then I lived in Pennsylvania, and I happened to be in Pittsburgh, and I heard, oh, there's this huge pinball place in Pittsburgh. And so I went there and I played in like Papa C division in Papa 16. I think that was 2014. And I was not good at that point, but I met some people from New York when I was there, and then when I got my first job out of school, I started playing in the Rock Fantasy Pinball League in Middletown, New York, and then I started playing at the Sanctum in Connecticut. And that was when I started kind of going every week I would go to a pinball tournament, and then I knew some of those guys from Papa, and then I started going to things like Pinfest in Allentown. And I knew by by like 2015 or 2016 that I started making finals, and then pretty soon after I started, you know, actually I like won a couple bigger tournaments in 2016, and then I felt pretty confident. So it was like two years I sort of started playing. I started playing like from college and then I got a job after college. I was at the end of my uh undergraduate degree, got a job in New York, and then started playing every week, and then pretty quickly I was just like, Oh, I just want to be the best at this and beat everyone here. And I was very competitive. Yeah, you gotta addict it, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:26

You just got addicted to and then you have to learn all the rules and everything that goes into each game, and and my patience for that is is thinning.

SPEAKER_01 7:35

I was really good at learning the rules. That was like I noticed that we would get a new Stern game or something, and then people would be like, Oh, there's so many rules, and I was like, Oh, it's you know, you just do this. But now I realize most people can't just like see a game and go like, oh, I know what to do immediately.

SPEAKER_00 7:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Yeah. So you when did you retire? Like, when is your official retirement date? Did you announce your retirement? Did you go on the kineticist and announce your retirement? How did you do this?

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I just posted on like a blog post on my website. I just posted a picture of like two lawn chairs at the beach in August 2023, and I was just like, Yeah, I'm done with this. I think so. It was actually Alexander Kesmarchik, and he's this guy who's even younger than me, and he was really good. He was like a top 10 player. And I ran into him at at uh Trent's uh like Tilt Amusement Show in Ohio, he does every year, and I was like, Alex, I haven't seen you in a while, what's up? He's like, Oh, I'm retired. I'm like, you could do that? You can stop. And then I was just thought it was so funny to just imagine like everyone playing in this pinball tournament, and I'm just like sipping out of a coconut on the beach, like, oh, you guys have fun, I'll I'll be over here. So it was already tough because I kind of like so I was playing a lot 2016, 2017. I got my job at Stern, very beginning of 2018. So I moved to Chicago and I was really focused on work, and like you don't have a lot of vacation when you first start. So I was like, I'm just gonna be really focused. Like, this is a whole you know, this is kind of what I wanted to do when I was in school, and then I had the chance. I'm like, I'm gonna really focus on this. I was playing a lot less. Then COVID, we couldn't play for like almost two years, and I was like, I really miss it because I'm just here and I'm like, I got pretty good at it, and I never really like took it to another level. So when they started back up, I started like playing all the time. I was going up to District 82 in Wisconsin and playing like the six a days or whatever they were doing, and I was getting to the point where I just realized that it was a lot to juggle, like trying to keep my rank up to get to the next to states or to the IFPA tournament. I was just like, I don't know if I could do this much pinball, because it's if it's my job, which it was, it's your whole life. It's like Monday, you wake up, you go to work, you do pinball, you go home, you go to pinball league, you like you do it. And at some point I was just um like I need to kind of make a you know, add some interest to my life that's outside of pinball. And the the particular tournament where Alex is like, I retired, it was like 85 degrees, like 90% humidity, and we it was just like concrete floors, and I was like, retiring, and I just I just kept going to this place where I was just like relaxed and going, ah, I can retire. And then I've played maybe like five or six tournaments since then, not too many, um, but just kind of like when I have friends there, or you know, just wanted to check the place out. I played at the one, I played one last month at the Pinball Capitol. It's a new place in Chicago, it's got like a hundred games. It's really cool because they're gonna do Papa there, and I was gonna see if I wanted to do Papa, but then I just decided like eh, I'll let, you know, pop, I'm not gonna do pop. I just I don't know, I just go there and I go, like, do I am I enjoying this? And I I enjoy winning, but I don't want to be doing all the studying of all the rule sets and all the strategies and keeping up with everything anymore because I can't go and just have a casual time. I like I need to win. I'm just too competitive and I know that, so then it's easier for me to just turn my brain off, not pay attention to my whoppers, not pay attention to all that stuff, and then just kind of focus on other stuff. And I just started to focus on like the content creation stuff on the side because that gives me a sort of different approach to it.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, yeah, just different outlet. You're still involved in pinball, but now I can do some content creation on the side, and there you go. Yeah, I I do content creation because I sock a pinball.

SPEAKER_01 11:50

But you're playing all the time at Eureka Heights, right?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

All the time. All the time, yeah. We had a guy show up the other day looking for me. That was kind of weird. And uh he was from Canada. I don't know. He thinks I live there. I I do live an eight-minute walk from there, so I am there almost every other day, but you know, no, I don't live there. I do have a home and I don't just play pinball every day. But I do love it. But the cool thing about Eureka to give them a plug, it's all new. So, you know, you don't have to worry about Creature of the Black Lagoon or any of the older ones that you move my car, which are easier, but the problem with the new ones is they're so deep, right?

SPEAKER_02 12:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

And they've they've got, you know, they got a Harry Potter, that's deep as hell. They've got yeah, all these deep, deep pinball machines. And I I'm trying to learn Transformers right now.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

And they just changed it.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

And they just changed it. So I went over there yesterday to go see it, and it you know, and but I'm not good enough to get to the modes that matter. So I'm like, you know, I'm just dropping coin in there, so no problem.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah. I just played actually the new code for the first like the my one game on it tonight, and then I you know, it's hard, you gotta play it a couple, like even if you've learned the game, you gotta play it a couple times if it does change. And then if you're really trying to go in Papa on Transformers, you have to sort of know what your path is gonna be to beat Z Mac on that game. And you know, it it's it is getting very complex.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

I will they're so good, right? He's so good. He takes too much time in between balls, it's pissing me off.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

Uh Zach or Jason?

SPEAKER_00 13:36

Jason.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Jason, yeah, he takes a long time.

SPEAKER_00 13:39

But you can uh how much time? What is the clock on this, Josh? You can call a clock and then I would call a clock right on him, right off the bat. I go.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

But that's called slow. You you play poker, that's slow play.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Yeah, I I understand, but I would call clock on a slow player in poker too. Uh no, I'm just having a go. Relax, people. He's very good, but he can speed it up a little.

SPEAKER_01 14:03

Yeah, I some I one thing I'll say is that there are some tournaments where if the if his opponents know the rules, he's at the game pretty quickly. And some opponents where his opponents don't care, and then they are just sort of like, that's where you wait for him. I it's certainly annoying when you're watching the stream because there's not a lot of like cutaways in these pinball broadcasts to be like, oh, and by the way, here's my you know, Goodyear ad from the blimp above the pinball venue. Right. You know, you're just kind of waiting.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Speaking of being addicted, I got really addicted to streaming pinball at the old joint. I I had these double rigs, I had there was never a minute of dead time on my streams.

SPEAKER_02 14:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Okay. You know, I I produced it like a fucking television show and I loved it. But it just got so stressful. You know, when I moved all the gear to Eureka, I've got this YOLO box. Have you seen this thing?

SPEAKER_01 15:01

No, I've heard you talk about it on your show. I don't know what the YOLO box is.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

It's just this this box of heaven to make streaming easy, and uh it's now they got a telestrator on it. Oh, it's just so fantastic. So I'm gonna stream once a month with my buddy John at Eureka Live.

SPEAKER_01 15:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

But we're just gonna drink and have fun and uh take chats and take calls. It's debacle, really, but it's it is it is a ton of fun to I I gotta tell you. Next time join it and and see where we're going. And I'll tell you what, next time, let's see, one of your games. Yeah, 007. We'll stream 007.

SPEAKER_01 15:38

Oh yeah, one of the I always did uh a couple modes on that, but that was that's Lonnie, Lonnie Rop, and um he worked with Mike Vinicor and George Gomez on that.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

But I'm just trying to see which game because we don't have a wick anymore.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Well, it was not your favorite. Oh, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 15:55

I was nervous about this talking about this. Let's talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

I do listen to the your roundtable shows.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I know. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

You guys have a good report. You, Kale, and Ralph. You don't have to apologize to me at all.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Um no, I I I'm just a nice guy and I can't help myself when I get uncomfortable. I go crazy. And uh I look, I like Wick, right? I just I I need to give Wick another chance because they just streamed it. Uh I got to see the experts play it at uh whatever, Pimberg or whatever the last one that I just watched. And I said, I texted Ralph and I go, Hey, I think I need to give Wick another chance. He's like, and then he sends his emoji of going guy going crazy because he is a huge Wick fan. You know, he he he had it leave the his uh collection now, it came back, and it it seems to be bolted for him because I've been busting his balls about it, but uh I'm gonna give it another chance. I everybody says the code is fantastic, everything is great, but I can't hit the shots. I can't I can't hit it. There's no code to fix that. I don't think no, there's no code for my skill set, right? There's no code for that.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

I guess maybe if we had a really advanced system where you know you put a camera on the game, you detect that the player's not making any shots, you start flipping for them to like auto-aim.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I could I would be better than 4500 in the world if that happened. I guarantee you that. I just noticed I'm wear I put a new background here. Yeah, and I'm wearing a black shirt, and I just look like a floating head.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:30

That was a mistake, Tim. That was a mistake. I you got the JBS show and a floating head. My son just walked by nodding his head, like, yeah, you're an idiot. That's okay.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

I got a shiny head. They they gotta put makeup on me when I do um whenever I was on camera at Stern, they'd they'd go uh did they really? Yeah, I always have a shiny forehead on camera, but luckily Rebecca would always come in and like give me whatever probably just like foundation or something, just like put it on there. I don't worry about here.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

That's good. You you look like Charlie Day. Most do people tell you that?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

No, no, they don't.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

Get what I hear.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

No, I've never heard that. But I've got to be a little bit over the years and never Charlie Day.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Alright, hold on. You don't think you look like this dude? I'm doing another search thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

I used to get um that I used to look like the lead singer of all time low when I was in. Maybe now. I think I'm maybe aging into him a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Or he's aging into you.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

He's aging into me.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

There you go. Alright, these like these sharing things. I just learned how to do this, ladies and gentlemen, so just bear with me. I'm having fun with it. It's my show. Relax, people. Uh all right, so they the round table, speaking of, they sent me some questions. Okay. So these are from Ralph and Kale, okay? Okay. They said, can we have them on the round table? I said, No, we don't do guests on the round table. Okay. Uh but you know, if I were to do another guest, if we were to have like a second host sometime, or a fourth host, I really enjoyed Franchie. That was fun. He's good.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

You had a good time. He was beaten up on you right in the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 19:17

Yeah, everybody kicks my ass.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

That's your role on that show, though.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, I just get beat up. Yeah. I'm okay with it. Uh one time I got beat up so bad though, I got a bunch of texts to ask me if I was okay. I was like, the guys, I'm alright. I'm okay. All right. So, first of all, how did you get into Stern? Like, how does that offer happen? Like, do you do you just call HR and say, hey, I want to come? Did you answer an indeed ad?

SPEAKER_01 19:44

I so I didn't even know like I I started going to school. I went to Penn State. I didn't even know pinball existed. And I was just studying computer science. It's just because like okay, I kind of I did some programming courses in high school and I just sort of did it in college, and then I got like in the middle of college, there was like one place that had pinball on then that Pittsburgh Papa facility. I was like, I got so into it. So I remember just as I was looking for jobs kind of last semester of school, going to the career fair, and then you'd go hand in your resume. Stern's not coming to Penn State, you know. That's it's not where you're gonna find him. So I uh would I just messaged the Stern Facebook page one time and I was like, hey, you guys hiring? I'm like about to graduate with a degree. I'm really into pinball. And someone I someone who ran, maybe it was Jody ran the account at that time, and he was like, Oh, you can email George Gomez at Stern. No, I didn't hear anything. You know, I sent it in, I wrote a cover letter, just nothing. It's like 2015. Um, one time I saw on Pin Side Keith Johnson posted like Jersey Jacks hiring a software developer and wrote his cover letter, send it in. You know, it's it's just kind of like I knew I wanted it, so I just would see if any of those opportunities came up. I made some noise to my friends. One of the guys I played with in Pennsylvania asked him one time, I'm like, Yeah, I'm trying to get a job at a school. What's the chance I can get in the pinball industry? And he's like, You see the gap between my fingers? It's this small. And I was like, All right, well, you know, no reason not to try. I guess I'll keep trying. So yeah, I just played a bunch and I had my first job. I wound up working at IBM up in Poughkeepsie, New York, doing like mainframe firmware.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Like which mainframe?

SPEAKER_01 21:36

The Z series.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

Okay. You do know as a tech recruiter. No, I'm an IT tech recruiter, ladies and gentlemen. This is a pitch for me here. I don't I don't take any uh sponsors, but I do sponsor my IT staffing. And if you have a client out there that's looking for candidates, email my ass because I love IT staffing. All right, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

So I think my problem with that job was mainly. That you say to someone, This is what I do, and they have no idea what you're doing. You know, it's just kind of like it's a job that's completely business to business. You know, the people who even know what you're doing are kind of all over the world working at their own companies in IT or something. So there's not really a community. You leave work, you go home, and you've just got nothing to talk about. And uh it just I was like, ah, this isn't this whole like business to business stuff isn't for me. You know, I just started, you know, talking to people when I was at pinball shows, I'm like, hey, do you guys know anything? I'm trying to, you know, I'm young, I'm ready to move, move on to something. And I saw Zach Sharp at a pinball tournament, and he had just started working in marketing at Stern, I think the beginning of 2017. And I went to the Northwest Pinball Championships. My brother lived in Seattle, I was staying with him, and I saw Zach there, and I was like, Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of looking for I'm in no rush, but I'm sort of looking to see what there is. And he's like, Oh, okay. And then a couple months later, I think I got a message from Zach. Maybe he contacted me on Facebook or something. He's like, Hey, do you think you could send me your resume? Um, and that was like end of 2017, and I was like, Oh, this is really happening. This is like right after Keith got started. I think Keith started also beginning of 2017. So Stern had finally, I think, started hiring some people from the community. They brought in Zach Sharp, they brought in Keith Elwin. I think when they brought in Keith Elwin, they're like, huh, there might be some talent in the community. Let's see what else we could find. And then so Zach knew me from playing in the tournaments, and I was playing in you know, some of the more competitive tournaments at that time, and I was just streaming Twitch and stuff, so people just knew I was doing pinball stuff. And sent him my resume, he knew I had a computer science to grab mention it, and they're like, hey, they're looking for a programmer, they're looking for a junior programmer. And there was another guy that Stern hired. Stern did a lot of hiring, I mean, all the whole time I was there, but in 2017, Mark Witorelli is a guy, his name a lot of people don't know. He came in from he was at DirecTV before they merged with AT ⁇ T. So he came in, he used to be at Midway, California. He knew George Gomez from way back. He came in as sort of the software manager, and I interviewed with him. I interviewed with Tanya, Kleiss, Dwight Sullivan, Lonnie, Lyman, and then talked to some of the other people who were there, like Harrison and Elliott and mechanical engineering, and they brought me in like end of 2017, and it all started moving pretty quickly, where I realized like they were looking for an entry-level person who really was into pinball, and I was like, I know everything, you know, I was studying all the rules, I know everything for these tournaments, so I was really excited to do it, and I had the exact technical background. I had a you already had a four-year degree, so then came in there right at the beginning of 2018, and uh Mark Bedarelli put me on Iron Maiden to do some light shows right at the beginning. So it was like two months before Iron Maiden came out, and no one was really talking about like Keith Elwin games at the because he was a new designer.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

Brand new, right?

SPEAKER_01 25:20

And then Keith, it was like just did a couple light shows for the game, game comes out, and it was a big hit. And it was kind of an unexpected hit because Iron Maiden people didn't think that was gonna be like a number one game. So I worked on that, and then Tanya was working on Deadpool, so I worked started working with him on Deadpool, and then Steve had Black Knight, so Tanyo finished up Deadpool, and then I went over to Black Knight because I think Tanya was supposed to work on it, but then schedules like got rearranged, and then pretty quickly I became um because I was in the office in Chicago, one of the lead developers, so I started working with Steve on Black Knight. So Zach Sharp got me the job at Stern, and that's I don't know how to tell anyone else how you get a job at Stern. It's like convince Zach Sharp when you're 23 years old that you're a good channel. That's pretty, pretty wild.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

It's pretty wild, especially for a guy who's you know coded mainframe, comes from Penn State, and uh, you know, great pinball player. That's a great story. Yeah, I think it's probably a little bit true, right? They probably look and said, We we've got this guy that just designed this archer machine that's now gonna be you know Iron Maiden and it looks incredible, and maybe we should go to the community and see how many other you know geniuses we got out there. That's really awesome.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, because I think it I I'm I mean I've been around now a long time in pinball, and I've been in the industry for some time. A lot of people come into pinball and they get super into it, right? But it's like people start trying to learn everything they can. But depending on when you come in, you might not remember that Stern, it was just Stern and Jersey Jack in 2017, 2018. And Spooky was there, but Spooky wasn't really who they were today.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

I don't even know if TNA was out at that point, but you know, it was just kind of like the industry was just the Chicago thing, and there were so many people from the Bally Williams days at Midway who, you know, from 99 on, that was your talent pool until I mean really the first designers I think that ever came in, not from that Williams talent pool, besides Spooky, was Eric at Jersey Jack, Keith at Stern. Those were kind of your first outside people, next generation people coming in. But there was no next generation of pinball developers from you know about 1995 to 2015. It was just the same people and fewer than I mean, the number of people working on pinball decreased tremendously after 99 when William shut down.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

So were you there when they almost filmed this uh reality show? Were you there?

SPEAKER_01 28:03

No, that was I did I love that. Uh that was we would send that to people at Stern. Like if you were there, once you got through three months, you'd be like, okay, you've been here long enough. Like once you know the people in that show, but that was that was before they moved to the second Stern building. They weren't like Melrose Park, Elk Grove, and then Elkgrove, the big building.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

That live video we did um with with that video. Uh how did that not get out? How does have no one seen that yet? I mean, how did that's just crazy?

SPEAKER_01 28:40

It's it's hard to say because that was probably around 2013 they put that together. And that's like peak reality. That's like American Choppers, totally a monsters. Yeah, it's exactly in that vein. And I know it was one of those things that Jody kind of he just knew a lot of people in the entertainment industry, and I think they put together it was like a six or seven minute kind of demo. But pretty much all those people you see in there worked there for a pretty long time, and it like Ralph, I think Ralph was laughing the most on that, but it's Yeah, because he hadn't seen it.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah, it is very times. I couldn't stop watching it.

SPEAKER_01 29:27

It it isn't that far off of how the culture was. Like there are exaggerations and there are clips out of context of people saying things, but you know, the Rother Mel kind of answer of like, I think Americans are assholes too. Like, that's something he might have said at work.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

Or Lonnie talks a lot. They put that she said that three times.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

Yeah. I love talking to Lonnie. You can talk to Lonnie for hours, but you'll have a great conversation about it.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Yeah, this would be a guy I'd love to have on the podcast. It'd be great.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

Yeah, because you could talk, I mean, he was there from the very beginning. He did uh Torpedo Alley.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

So I think he's I mean, he's not the first employee. It really was Gary, Joe, and Shelly, but he must have come in not too long after that to get started with the programming of those games and was there the whole I mean, he's still there. It's like Lonnie's I a lot of people don't know Lonnie because he doesn't do a lot of podcasts, but Lonnie's like one of the champions of pinball. I mean, he's worked on more games than probably any any programmer in the history of this business. Lonnie's done twice as many games as they have.

SPEAKER_00 30:42

They definitely you know played him up in that trailer. Okay. Wouldn't that be cool? Wouldn't that be great? He just seemed like such a cheerleader. It was so neat. Uh did you ever see that before? Did you ever see that when you were there? Okay, so being a stern employee, you guys have seen that, but not.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Yeah, we had the it was on our Slack. It was like something on Slack we would send. If someone was new to the company, we wouldn't send it to him right away. But once they kind of knew all the people there, we'd be like, by the way, we could have been a TV show and you send them it. And I think everyone's reaction is like, How did this not become a TV show?

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

I don't know the answer. I mean, it was it was in and out before I was there, but that is the one of the funniest things I've ever seen in my entire life.

SPEAKER_00 31:32

We're not even talking about the kimono.

SPEAKER_01 31:33

So do we even give the audience context? There's a you guys got a hold of this like seven-minute reality TV show demo of Stern around 2013 when it was a really small group of people, like right after Dave came and invested, and it was like maybe 20 people worked in the office or something. And it was just kind of the drama of how can we be a functioning pinball company in the current environment when game sales were were quite a bit down from where they are now.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Now Stern's all professional. I don't think it would look like that anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:08

No way. It would be boring now.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

You know, at Stern. But you could do Spooky Luke could do it. That could be funny. But uh anyway, we got it, we got this video from the Midnight Plunger. If you watch the Pinball Roundtable, that we have a uh deep throat secret spy, and his name is the Midnight Plunger, and he only talks to Kale. I don't even know him, I don't know where he is. All right, but the Midnight Plunger gave us this video, and we played it live on the round table on the uh our live channel on the JBS show on YouTube. You can go back and watch it, and we stop it a few times because Ralph had never seen it, Tim. And the rule the joke is one of us we don't like all of us to know something, so we want our reactions to be real. And like we know American Pinball's next title, and Kale won't tell me because he wants me to be. He wants me to hear it. Yeah. So anyway, that's what we did. It's back, you can go on the JBS show on YouTube and you can check that out. But uh, this is the video that we're talking about, and it's hilarious that you guys would send this to new employees.

SPEAKER_01 33:21

And uh But only like yeah, you had to be like they didn't know it was coming. It'd just sort of be like we we'd kind of at lunch, we'd be like, You think so-and-so's ready? Like, no, and then we'd come over and watch them watch the video.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

Did um did they ever film an hour? Did they ever film more, or is that it?

SPEAKER_01 33:44

I think that's it. I mean, we did, there was a lot of media stuff, but nothing on the reality TV level.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

What a cry and shame. What a cry and shame. So you you were you were there for a long time. Another seven years, yeah. Yeah. And what transitioned the move to play mechanics?

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Oh, that's a big question. And you're a recruiter, so you know it's you know, no one ever leaves for like one read, you know.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

There's always a lot of stuff going on.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

How does that recruitment happen as a recruiter? Did you get a headhunter? Did a headhunter call you? And did they make a placement fee off of you? I mean, how does that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 34:26

Um, so I mean, it ha it's over time, you know, but you know, Stern. I really liked working at Stern. I had like a really good time. I really liked the people there, right? Like, it was a really good environment. I thought it was like the best environment possible for someone. Like I had my first job, it was you know, firmware for a 40-year-old product that you know is used by legacy customers, and it's very rigid, and it's very like, you're gonna do this, this is what's in this time frame. There's so many layers of management, thousands of engineers go into Stern, and it's like there's 10 engineers, and you're one of seven in the office, and there's all these games here that need stuff done for them, and you can kind of go into someone's office and go, like, hey, how's Deadpool coming along? Hey, how's Monsters coming along? Hey, how's uh Black Knight coming along? And you just sort of see, like, uh, we got this done, we might, you know, and then you people just talk about like what's going on, and then you kind of talk to other people, like, oh, I'd love to help on Deadpool, I've got an idea for this. And then people were just sort of like, Yeah, that sounds good. You want Tanya was like on Deadpool, I just asked him about what was going on with the game, and he's like, I've kind of got this map of the rules. Um, you know, what do you think? And I was like just kind of thinking about what he had, and I was like, you know, what if the team ups, like you could kind of they'd give you power-ups in the mode? He's like, Well, that's a good idea. You want to do that? And I was like, sure. And I just sort of jump in and do that. So that was the environment. You know, we were pretty small, but we were definitely growing, and we knew it. We knew we knew we were number one, you know, like we knew our games were great, like we knew we had hit after hit, because you'd put a game like we put Iron Maiden out. That was like my first game. So we put Iron Maiden out, we went to MGC with like 30 to 50 games, something huge. It just took up the whole Marco booth, and every single one of them was sold, but like show price sold by the end of the show, and you kind of just are like, wow, like this is going well, like everything just feels good, and um you're like this will last forever, right? And then no, COVID happens, right? And that like completely you're like, wow, where did this come from? No one can play pinball anymore, and then something else crazy happened in COVID where it's like, oh, because no one can play pinball, there's now more demand for pinball. And then you would you would go to um like 2021 or 22, you'd go to these shows, and it's like the same thing. Like the games are now if they're at the show, they're all sold, they're already spoken for even before they got to the show. Like people don't even have to play them anymore. And then, you know, it there was a lot of focus at the time at Stern of just like this is so awesome, this is great. And then it was like, you know, almost like immediate, it's like, whoa, okay, this now everyone's got their games again. We're like in a new reality, so it kind of kept snapping back to different realities, and just along the way, I started really kind of paying attention to like, all right, well, you know, the ride is kind of crazy, but like, how do I kind of make this more you know stable? And like, what's the secret here? Because like you can't predict COVID, you can't predict like home sales going through the roof and all these new people coming in, you can't predict like these price things. And I was like, you know what I really want to do? I really like think that what I want to do is just kind of set set. I'm 33, I'm a lot younger than a lot of people in pinball, and I'm like, I gotta think 30 years, like, how can we kind of like keep pinball going for a long time? And I came up with like, I think it's really important that you just get a great team, a couple great teams make great games, and a lot of the noise of you know, marketing this and changing this stuff. It's like if the games are good, I think that just helps you. You know, no matter what happens, that just kind of gets you through it. Yeah, so um I started talking to Josh Sharp. Josh has consulted with Stern for a long time, but Josh works at Raw Thrills and Raw Thrills and Play Mechanics. Uh Playmakes is a subsidiary of Raw Thrills. And I've known Josh, like I knew Zach. Zach helped me get Zach helped me get a job at Stern, and then Josh helped me get the job at Play Mechanics.

SPEAKER_00 38:51

I love this.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

And he kind of is like, you know, we're working on something here you might be interested in. And sort of started talking to him, and then uh you know, wound up kind of talking to Mark Ritchie, George Petro, and I just I just felt like you know, if this is the time that I'm gonna kind of like jump into building something up from the bottom here, I think this is the time for me to do it. And like I wish everyone, you know, it's kind of hard. Like you you work with these people, they're all your brothers and sisters, like you're working with them a long time, and it's like I don't wish anyone anything bad. It wasn't like there was any bad blood, but I just kind of felt like these uh the guys at Play Mechanics had something really interesting for me to work on, and the challenge of the project was really exciting for me. Because I really do like progression in my life and you know the ability to get better and better at something. And I think that the challenge these guys gave me of like let's bring let's bring something up here that's like you know different.

SPEAKER_00 39:54

Like that's cool. You're young enough to make that move and to say, I can take this risk, right? Yeah, at 43 you might not do it, right? At 53, my ass. Right. But at 33, I at 30 years old, I started my first company.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 40:09

And uh I started my own staffing firm, sold it, and then um started another one. And uh unfortunately I had to close that one. Uh but uh you know, you you take risks and it it it sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don't. But uh it seems that it's paying off for you, right? It's been you're having a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 40:29

I'm having fun. I think um, you know, the thing I care about absolutely, the thing I've care like, you know, now that I've been doing this for eight and a half years, you know, what I've seen is just how much better everyone feels, customers, like players, everyone, just when the game's great. You know, just when you can go up to a game and play it and you want to play it again, you want to play it again, you want it to play it again. And it's like, if you can just get there, and it's like it's obviously that's the work to make people on that side of it feel great, if you can just get people to where they're like, this game's awesome, and I want to keep it and I want to play it, and other people want to play it, when they come over, they want to play it. Like if you can just make something that's really cool, you know. To me, that's that's important at this point in my career. That's like if I can make a really great game, like I want to be, you know, I want to make number one on Pin Side, like I want to be the best game, you know, and just like have everyone well, not not everyone's gonna love it, of course, but it's like I just want to do something really awesome. And with the transition we're gonna see, you know, from the time I'm 33 to I'm 43 to I'm 53. Who we have no idea what pinball, I don't have any idea what pinball is gonna look like now, but we know even from when I started, the way they've said like, oh, it's now home buyer, like that's a completely different business than what you know, Stern in the 2000s was chasing was like, let's get some Pirates of the Caribbean and Chuck E. Cheese, let's do all this, it just changes all the time. So the only thing I can really do to be consistent is just try to make great games. And then you know, the team here at Play Mechanics was like, Hey, you want a big challenge? Like, who's who's ready? And I was like, Okay, I'm I'm ready. I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Awesome. I know you can't tell us what you're working on, no worries. But yeah, the question is do you do you work on just pinball or are you doing other things for play mechanics?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Uh I don't have to answer that question, I don't think. But I'll say I I I uh I've been working on pinball.

unknown 42:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 42:31

So I'll just say I work with Mark Ritchie, I work with George Petro, he's the president of the company, and then Josh Sharp pops his head in from time to time to see how we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

There you go. And it's you got you're you're still based in Chicago, right?

SPEAKER_01 42:44

Yeah. Out in like it's a western suburbs of Chicago, but it's close.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

And you're a New Yorker, huh?

SPEAKER_01 42:51

I I was born on Long Island, but I really grew up in Pennsylvania, but I live Poughkeepsie, New York for three years.

SPEAKER_00 42:58

Okay, so I'm still Giants Mets Giants Mets?

SPEAKER_01 43:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:03

Okay. Giants Mets Islanders, Rangers?

SPEAKER_01 43:06

Rangers.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

And uh Mets, Yankees.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

I take Knicks, I get now.

SPEAKER_00 43:11

Yeah, we're Knicks fans.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

We're all Knicks fans now.

SPEAKER_00 43:13

We're all Knicks fan now. And uh uh all right, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 43:19

But Penn State football. I that's the only Pennsylvania team I took.

SPEAKER_00 43:22

It was Penn State football. I couldn't get into Penn State. Couldn't get into Penn State? No, my grade sucked in high school. So well.

SPEAKER_01 43:31

But I was in state.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

I mean you were in state.

SPEAKER_01 43:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

So I I I lived in Massapo, Long Island, okay. So I was a Long Islander forever. But I did live in Jersey for a little bit in Clinton, New Jersey.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

I know where it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:47

Okay. Yeah, nobody knows where Clinton is. And uh near Morristown. So I lived there for a hop, skip, and a jump. And then I moved to Florida. And uh now Texas. And now Texas. I've been here since ninety So I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else. Should I say I'm from Houston?

SPEAKER_01 44:07

I think uh I know at this point I do feel like I'm starting to say I'm I'm from Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Okay. That's what I was wondering.

SPEAKER_01 44:15

Yeah, I think you could say it.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

Okay. I'm from Houston now, ladies and gentlemen.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

But if you were a Yankee hat.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

I love the Yankees, dude. Matt's uh my brother's a Met fan. But he's a Jet fan. And he's a Jet fan, which is a big thing.

SPEAKER_01 44:27

Oh, the Jets Jets really stink.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

They're terrible. They're terrible. Uh people are gonna text me that I talk sports, all right?

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

I talked sports with Kabamani the other day, and uh because we're big Yankee fans, and we'll I could talk Yankee baseball with anybody, but uh but I just love talking sports. There's so few pinballers that like sports. There were like a dozen of us tops out of like the 70 that would show up at the old joint, 60, and there would be like five of us sit there watching the games. But I love sports, I I'm addicted.

SPEAKER_01 45:05

I do too. I mean I I feel like competitive pinball is much closer to you know, you're playing like a sport, like you're at a location than it is like video games, because I think mostly I play video games just at home by myself. Competitive pinball, I go out and I'm like with people, and then you're physical with the game and you're on your feet all day. You are it's like the sport to me, it was the sport for people who weren't able to play sports because they were too short.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

I was a good one. I don't know what Keith's excuse is, he's six feet tall. Yeah, he's tall. Yeah. I uh no, I just got addicted by John Spades. He got me. He got me, and he he he sat down and he showed me World Cup soccer. I've told the story before, but it's just don't just score goals, idiot. You gotta light these. I'm like, why? It's so great. I'll just keep scoring goals. He was not even lit, look, and he's yeah, he yells at me. Okay, and that's how I learn from this guy. But he yells at me, which is a pattern in my life. I I might need to talk to my therapist about that. But he's like, You gotta build, look, you gotta build the cities, you gotta do all this. And and it was like an aha moment for a video gamer, right? Yeah, I was like, holy shit, it's not just keeping it alive. I gotta score points, and this is how I score. And uh right now I have Batman 66 in the house. That is one of the greatest games that I've ever housed. And if I I can name Batman 66, Black Knight Sword of Rage, was and Medieval Madness, original medieval madness, as the games that I just went bananas for, code wise. Like I just couldn't I can't stop. And I'm addicted to this uh bookworm bookworm freeze, yeah. Uh and uh egghead won.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

So do you explore the other or do you kind of lock in on your path and just try to get that perfect game?

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Um lately I'm trying to lock in. Yeah. Because I got 15 Bill the other day.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

That's a lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:11

Okay, and that's how I did it. But I'm I'm trying to lock in now on the King Tut strategy. Okay. So I'll go bookworm freeze and then tot. But um that damn TV targets, you know, like if they if they have to update the code, which it's sacrilege, but I know, but if you could update it a little, maybe once in a while a mystery can give you a TV letter. Yeah. Spot a target. What do you think of that? I'm not able to help you with this one. I know, but that would be really neat, man. Yeah, spot me a TV target. Anyway. What else do you want to do?

SPEAKER_01 47:47

You want to talk about content creation, any? Because I don't know. No one does. No one respects me as a content creator, and I'm secretly getting all these YouTube subscribers.

SPEAKER_00 47:57

How many YouTube subscribers? Do you look at your YouTube subscribers? Everyone does.

SPEAKER_01 48:00

Everyone does, everyone looks at their numbers. Everyone's in YouTube studio all day.

SPEAKER_00 48:04

I know. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 48:06

When Retro Ralph's like, here's exactly how much money I've made on my revenue tab all the time.

SPEAKER_00 48:14

You know what? That's our currency, right? Is views, right?

SPEAKER_01 48:18

So when I Well used to be Whoppers and I switched.

SPEAKER_00 48:21

Yeah, you did. You totally just swapped from Whoppers. I got addicted to Whoppers for a little. I'm not gonna lie to you. I got addicted to that.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

What feels better than the number going in the right direction, though?

SPEAKER_00 48:32

Nothing. Isn't that a weird dopamine rush, though? It is. You know, for someone that drinks eight Diet Cokes a day and zins all day long, the dopamine rush of a reel going doing well is pretty exciting, especially when the I started the round table with Kale and Ralph, I just had this idea, right?

SPEAKER_02 48:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:56

I said, I want three guys to be in a on a Zoom or call together that really, really like each other and that really love pinball, and we can take our text string to this. That was my idea. So I pitched it to the boys. My initial idea was that we would rotate hosts, but that didn't work. It was too fucking confusing, and people they I I drive the bus with my friends on the round table.

SPEAKER_02 49:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:23

But content creation is is fun, right? You you're I get to scratch the itch of being a broadcaster, you get to scratch the pinball itch of doing content creation. What's the name of your channel? Tell everybody.

SPEAKER_01 49:35

It's just my name, it's just Tim Sexton is all my channels now.

SPEAKER_00 49:39

It's very unique.

SPEAKER_01 49:40

It is, but I just started I really got obsessed with the fact that I think here's what happened. I went to I went on a vacation in 2024, and I just noticed that everyone around the world is on TikTok and it's on YouTube and Instagram reels. And I was like, huh, we're you know, people are here to look at the David, but they're all looking at the phone. So this is where people are now. And then, you know, I'm like, well, what's the use of being the millionth person to photograph this? Why don't I turn the camera around and do something goofy? And so then I kind of got obsessed with the idea that the camera is kind of like really powerful, and it's a great like with pinball. I think the problem that pinball always sort of has, what it has had since the arcades died, is how is the next generation gonna know about pinball? When you go to a pinball show, let me ask you, Jamie, do you see a lot of not children, but like people my age, like young adults at the show? No, yeah, of course not. And it's like I kind of been doing this for a while, and I'm like, still no one, yeah, no one here that like looks like you know, they remember the YouTube videos I watched in 2006 or something like that. Like no one's kind of on my like exact pop culture level or anything of like where the particular millennial or whatever I am. So it's just kind of you see people, I especially in Chicago, I see people go into the pinball bars and then they ask, like, they'll see my game, how much do those cost? And then it's an it's a number that's just over their head of like a house yet. Like, how am I gonna rage this? And I almost have to apologize sometimes where I'm like, well, I do it, this is my job, so like I never paid full price. I'm like, what if I apologize? I should just lean into it and be like, yeah, I'm super rich, man. You know, but it's like it's just kind of that barrier has just been the um the owners love it, the owners talk about it. And I bought and buy and sell games and I'm at a dentist's house or I'm at you know, someone's house where they've got like their houses paid off in you know 2011 and they've been like they haven't been making a mortgage payment or rent, and it's just kind of like, yeah, I just kind of get pinballs and fill out my basement, and then I like kind of see the next generation, and they're like, I'll I'll go to the bar once in a while and play them. But then when you get to that that sweet spot, especially with like the parents and their kids, like Jason Zahler, you know, I know Jason and Steve forever because they were living in New Jersey. Like, those kids are just like, Well, I'm gonna be really good at this because my dad had a few games in the basement, I've got to play every day, and they've kind of got this competitive thing, and we all watch them, and we're all like, Wow, we played pinball and this is awesome, but you don't necessarily have that connection of people who don't know how hard the things they're doing are, and you kind of need to constantly be, in my opinion, like someone who's trying to grow pinball for my career, is like how do you remind people pinball's there? So I was just trying to do some type of content that's I try to do stuff that's when I think about the video I'm gonna make, I have to filter out the ideas I have from you have to know a month a bunch of stuff about pinball to watch this video, to you could know nothing about pinball other than it has flippers and a play field and a start button and still click on it. And when I did the tutorials of like how to flip the flipper, how to get multi-ball, then that stuff wounds up doing pretty well. And then I have a couple other tricks that I think pinball people should use, like put your face on the camera, you know, so people see like a consistent person there, like, oh, this is the guy who does the tutorials, or this is a guy. And a lot of people just point at the game and they're like, look at how awesome the game is. That's not what people respond to on social media, they respond to like here's an interesting, you know, humans just good at looking faces and like, okay, this is like someone's being funny, or someone's being informative, or someone's being interesting. So I just sort of started going that way, and still I've made some attempts to kind of break out of the pinball group and do some other like tangential stuff. It doesn't quite work. I would say right now, most people watching me are hardcore pinball enthusiasts, but you do get some people who are just a little more casual and then go into it.

SPEAKER_00 54:05

And I think it's some crossover, I think. You know, some little uh crossover. I'll post something about non-pinball, and sometimes it does well, and sometimes it doesn't. Uh yeah. It there's the I haven't figured out the algorithm yet. I just don't get it. I I've I get no views on TikTok. Zero. Like nobody's watching me on TikTok. But I do pretty well on Instagram, and some of my shorts do pretty well. But I don't I just post the same thing, the three spots. Yeah, I'm too lazy. I'm not gonna do all this. Yeah, I I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I'm not I have a full-time job. Yeah, I'm gonna have to do that. I have grandkids now. I have grandkids.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

I was trying all the short stuff, and I just kind of realized like I'm never gonna compete on the shorts. Uh I had a friend though, so I had a friend in high school who got into really into some comedy stuff. He used to do it, but like he'd make his own. He made a movie. I was in high school, and he wanted me to play the role of boner kid. That was like he wanted me to be an extra in his movie, and it was like I it was a stupid thing. Like this kid at the lunch table, everyone we knew he had a boner at the lunch table. And now his comedy is, I think, a little more like thought-through than that.

SPEAKER_02 55:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

So I was like showing up one day on his like little high school set, and I was 17, and now he's got two million subscribers on YouTube, and he I was talking to him, he's just like, I like your like pinball. You know, there's kind of a solidarity between like we're all out here trying to get views, we're all out here trying to get our numbers up. And anyone who has like a new angle on what you're doing, I think that's interesting to people who are like he kind of had some breakthrough hits of like a duck duck goose parody video. It got really like that was his breakout hit. Like, just the stupidest stuff you'll post will do really well. Like, no one's figuring out the algorithm. No, you just kind of keep going.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

My biggest post on on Instagram, I'm not even in the damn thing. It's with uh my dog is all over me. Sorry, bagel. Uh is with Jeff Dodson and Serge talking about call outs. It got like 450,000 views, and I'm not even I'm not even into that. It's just on my channel. But you don't make any money off of that. Very little. Yeah. You make nothing. Like 15 cents a reel. Yeah. Maybe maybe a dollar. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 56:31

And this is this is really in the weeds, but did you see YouTube's now changing it? Yeah. So like if you need 10 million views a month or something on shorts to it's I know. Yeah. I'm they're telling you they're telling me to quit. I'm I'm done with shorts. I can't do it.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

I'm not gonna quit. I like just holding the camera up and just s saying something. And then people like that, I think. They they send they tend to like it. Uh, but I can't film with my son outside because I go in this my patio, and sometimes my son hangs out the patio, and and then I can see him looking at me, and I'm I fuck up and fuck up and fuck up. And he goes, and he just gets up and he leaves and he goes, I'm leaving, I'm leaving. There they I just get nervous. I really do have anxiety. That is not a fake thing. If you do watch my shows, I I I believe you. I do, I suffer from it sometimes. And and if I sit there, I I'm not retro Ralph. I can't just turn it on and boom go and and have those skill sets. I wanted to be on the radio for God's sake because I wanted nothing to do with YouTube.

SPEAKER_02 57:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:39

But so what other things do you want to do on that channel besides?

SPEAKER_01 57:44

Um right now I just I'm getting close to 5,000 subscribers. You get nothing but the number change. And it's like it just gives you the little carrot. You're like, oh, 5,000. I can't.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

5,000. It's a big number.

SPEAKER_01 57:57

It's a big number of subscribers. But I just um I think right now what I've settled into is usually like Sunday is the day I chip away at my next video project. And I try to now do it so I have a script and a plan, and then I record it all, and then I put a lot of effort into the the uh video, and if I do like a 20 to 30 minute video, I stick the mid-roll ads in there, and then it's like now you do. And then I get really happy when like the hundred and two dollars hits my account. It's like there it's like nothing compared to you know what you make at work, but they know, but they know how to hook you, man. They know how to get you to do all this work.

SPEAKER_00 58:40

But it pays for the mic, right? Yes, maybe once in a while, and it pays for I'm going to see the boys in uh two weeks. And uh I made a couple of super chats on the live when we posted and Rob Burke in the bathtub. We made a couple of bucks, right? And I never expected to make money. So it it's paying for half an Airbnb. So that's kind of cool, right?

SPEAKER_01 59:06

Yeah. Yeah, pays for the equipment and just pays for you to be able to like do something that's I think a little better than just like laying on the couch watching sports or something on Sunday. It's like, okay, that gives me something. You know, my fantasy football team's not gonna my lineup's set. I'm not gonna have to worry about it. So let me go and just edit my videos.

SPEAKER_00 59:25

You don't watch the red zone and watch every channel and watch everything, and when your player's on, flip to that channel.

SPEAKER_01 59:32

I do watch it from noon to three. I watch that first like seven, eight game block, and then I try to be like, okay, let me go for a walk and let me trace a chance.

SPEAKER_00 59:41

I literally don't do a fucking thing on Sunday.

unknown 59:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 59:45

Saturday's my rest day. Saturday is when I just like don't do anything.

SPEAKER_00 59:48

Yeah, but you got Penn State football on Saturday.

SPEAKER_01 59:50

That's true. But they're usually on like 11 extra. That's true, they are on earlier. They're like earlier, so you can't.

SPEAKER_00 59:55

Yeah, they're on early.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

Yeah. I I was talking to Ralph, like our content creation is at a peak, is at a high right now. But football is good. Football is it goes way down. Like, I don't do anything Monday nights. I don't do anything Thursday nights. Like, John wants to stream Eureka Heights on Thursday nights, and I'm like, Sergeant I football on Amazon Prime, brother. I can't. I got players. Okay. So it's Friday or nothing, dude. That's it. Because there's no sports on Friday. And then, you know, of course, it's October, then October comes, and I don't um I barely miss a Yankee game.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

Yeah.

unknown 1:00:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:32

I'm I watch 150 a g a year, so I'm fucking crazy. So I can't miss this stuff. But uh yeah, my content creation in the pinball space is gonna decrease in about a month and a half.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:43

Okay, yeah. Or it's three weeks away. It's three weeks. Yeah. I think uh the next block of preseasons, you might even be off this weekend. I don't know how if you even care. I don't care about preseason.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:54

I'm a Cowboys fan.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

Okay, so your Yankees, Cowboys, what are you?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

Uhlanders Lakers? Islanders, and I love the organisation.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:06

Islanders, of course, you got you picked all the teams when they were winning, I could tell.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:09

Well, I was born, I was raised in the 80s.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:12

And whatever team was, you're about that's by the way, in the 80s, by the way. That was a rough go. Yeah. Okay. But um But Islanders and Islanders were very good in the 80s, but I lived in Matsupiqua, which is right by Nassau. Okay, I can give you a give me the Islanders because I was five minutes away. The Cowboys is a weird one because I fell in love with America's team, Roger Starbach, and I never left them. I've literally never missed a Cowboys game.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:41

Really?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:42

I yeah. Like we got married on uh a Saturday of Thanksgiving week so that I could miss, you know, because Thursday so I can watch the Thursday game. That's how crazy I am. I don't miss the cowboy game. But they're gonna they're just a major frustration.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:00

Well, the uh who you think is gonna win the NFC East? Washington?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:05

No? No.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:06

No, I it's gonna be Eagles again, you think?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:08

I think Eagles are Giants.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:10

Or Giants?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:11

I don't think I don't I'm very worried about your team.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

You are?

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

Yeah, I don't like Scataboo at all. Uh I don't like your quarterback at all.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:20

Look, the MetLife turf will have them all out by week four. You won't have to worry about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:24

That's what we're hoping. That's what we're hoping. No, good good team. Uh Giants are a good team.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:30

You think Odell Beckham makes the cut? He's on the D V again. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:34

What is that about? He had one catch against the Cowboys, and all of a sudden he's the greatest player in the history of the world.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

He had a good run. He had a bunch of thousand-yard seasons, but he didn't even play at all last year.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:45

All right, I can see our viewership dropping. The football talk section at the end. Tim, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate you joining me. Uh it's been a pleasure. You've really done a shitload of work in the pinball space at such a young age. It's pretty impressive, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:03

I have. I'm pretty dedicated to it now. I don't think I can leave at this point. I think I'm chips are all in. Your chips are all in, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:10

You pushed all your chips in, and you're you're addicted. I love it. I love that you're addicted. You can see the passion in your face. Uh, congratulations, whatever the hell you're working on. Thank you. We'll try not to spoil it at the on the round table. Okay. But Ralph's not good at that either, too, by the way. So you gotta worry about it.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:26

No, he puts um he puts weird characters in the background of his videos sometimes.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:31

But well, you know who made the thumbnail that I sent you today, which we won't talk about that much, was Mason. You know, Mason does my thumbnails.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:41

I outsource that too. Why would you not outsource your thumbnails? I I can't do it. I'm not good enough at this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:48

I've I do it all right now. I don't have anyone do anything, but then I'm also kind of in this crazy idea of like, if I don't get my money back for my mic or something, like then it's it's a waste. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:01

Yeah. I just look at it like my i because I have so much anxiety with with this, I I just look at it like, is there one person out there that thinks that this is their favorite podcast? Or that thinks I'm one of their favorite people, right? And I guarantee you there's at least one clown out there, and I I appreciate them very, very much. And that's who I do the podcast for, right? I just do it for them. And if they if I if they think they're I'm one of their favorites, then God bless them, and I'll just keep on going and and until there's that no people watching me. So we're having a good run.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:44

You know, we're having a good run. There's a shit ton of us out there. There's a lot of pinball content creation. When you started, what were there, four podcasts, three podcasts when you started it?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:54

I mean, Nate, like coast to coast, people used to say like that was the only pinball podcast way back. And I was probably around then. I used to do the slam tilt podcast. I used to go on with Ron and Bruce all the time. But it was you could listen to them all in a week on your drive to work, and you would you would get all the news.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

You get everything you need.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:14

Yeah. And now I don't think that's possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:16

You know, no, there's too many of us. I don't think there's too many of us. There just is too many of us.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:20

But a lot of people will start them and then they'll kind of take it to the point where they're kind of done with it, and then maybe they'll team up. You know, people, it just kind of changes now.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

Yeah. Yeah. My podcast has evolved.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:31

You know, I if you're not going to be able to do it Yeah, because you added the round table is probably like the the thing you get the most consistent viewership on, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:39

Oh, that's our number one podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:41

Yeah. And that's a three hour, up to three hour kind of like blowout of a show, yeah, where you guys are just on going and going.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Going and going. But the Midnight Plungers added a little more to it. That's been a lot of fun. And just that we we really do like each other, you know.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:58

You can tell from like Listening. You can.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:01

That's good. That's great. I I still freak out when people come up to me and say they love it. It's just out of like, uh But uh no, I when I I came up with the idea, I pitched it to Ralph and Kale and I was like, guys, this is a show. It almost like Seinfeld, like this is the show, right? This is the show. And they're like, really? You know, like, yeah, this is the show. And it's it really has been fun. And then I do these just when how I want to do them.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:31

You know, like I just texted you and I'm like, I think we'd have a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:35

You're the only one, to be honest, you're the only one who's texted me who's like, Why can't I talk to Tim not around a game? You know, because I think most people kind of wait to kind of latch on to the game or whatever, but I just wanted to talk to you.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:46

I just like to do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:47

Yeah, I haven't talked to anyone in pinball in a long time.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:49

So I was like, well, I've got to do pinball for a little while, yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:53

And I did, Jamie. I do like your interview style because you do let your guests talk, and I know I talk a lot, so it was like, you know, you ask thoughtful questions, and it's it's it's we pay attention because it's like at the end of the day, we're all sitting like everyone is, like in our office doing our job. The amount of time between your game not coming out and your game not being the star of the show is like years, so you're just kind of like, oh, what are people talking about this new game? What are people talking about this stuff? Yeah, and it's like you kind of just you get a little bit of like on your you know 30th Monday of the year, driving into work, you get like you guys talking, and you guys are actually like excited, like you, especially like Ralph and Kale, and then you are like, every game's gonna be this could be the best year ever. As a professional, you're like, how could every game be the best? But you guys are just so excited, it just makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:51

People get on me. Jamie says buy it, and he doesn't have any pinball machines. Why would I have pinball machines? I live eight minutes from an arcade.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:00

It doesn't make any sense, right? I might as well take the family out on a trip rather than spend money on a machine right now because I know Eureka's gonna get it. So don't I mean that makes no sense? Yeah. But uh, you know, I like the fact that we have uh an arcade player, an arcade owner, and a uh a collector.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:19

And a home collector, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

Yeah, I like that dynamic.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:22

And the collector, I I mean, Ralph, I think he really, to me, ri indicates like he's that collector who will buy everything. It might not last more than four days, but he'll buy everything and he'll play it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:36

But he's in that that bell curve where all of a sudden it his hi he's already filled his capacity, so now he's gotta make really selective decisions, right? And now that he we know what's coming up, we're like, he's got decisions to make. And I like going on that journey with him and bringing bringing the viewer on that journey with him. Like, what's gotta go?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:00

Yeah. I mean, that is the decision. I think that is something I used to talk about with Keith Owen all the time. Like, there's only so much space everyone has in their house. I mean, there's like um Josh tells me, like, he grew up in a house where pinball was in every room, and he was like basement only. Like, if I can fit 30 and I will not put a 30 first, like it's it's one in, one out, like every time on a game. And I think that's how most people are. So you do have to think, I think, about that. Like, I'm making a game, is this gonna replace someone's seventh best game in their collection? Yeah, or to me, that's like that's what makes it worth doing. Like, how are you gonna replace that game? And I think you should be able to because you've seen all the games that have come before you, you have all the technology at your disposal, you have all the lessons learned of the industry. So I do think like you should always be aiming to be better than everything that came before. Just keep building on it.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:59

I love that. I love that.

unknown 1:10:02

That's good.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:02

That's how I feel. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a motive, right? That that's what that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to spread the love of pinball. Yeah. And you're trying to build the machine that is going to replace someone's bolted to the floor. Because even the bolted to the floor gets, you know, gets a screwdriver. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:22

No disrespect to demolition man, you know, but it's like, hey, if that's your seventh vest and I can do better, I'm going for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:31

Do you use the handles for demolition man? Yes or no? I do, yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:35

You get more points. You get more points.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:39

All right, Tim, thank you so much. This was a blast. I really appreciate it. Hour and 11 minutes. Thank you so much. Remember, you do have to hang on. Where can people find you? Tim Sexton on YouTube.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:49

Tim Sexton on YouTube and also Tim Sex on Instagram and also Tim Sexton on TikTok.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:55

How's your TikTok tone? I'm gonna go subscribe to you to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:58

It's like 560. I don't know. I don't pay attention to it. 400.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:01

I've got like 400. I can't ever break the TikTok mold. And then like someone like Mel and Aaron Winnick Anthony, they they explode TikTok.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:12

Have you have you My number one video on TikTok is uh I documented someone's plastic facial plastic surgery, and that was like my number one video. My number one video on Instagram, which is hidden, is me unclogging a storm drain on my street. So there's no I don't know the algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:31

I don't even think boy, why do we choose pinball? Why? I just say this joke.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:38

I was like, all I need is a stick at rain and I'll fire it.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:43

I filmed my wife moving a beehive and it got more views than anything I've ever done. What am I doing? Uh but you know what? Janine was at a she was uh at Mahjong tonight with some friends, and I said, hey, I'm gonna podcast. So there you go. Thank you so much. All right, Tim. I appreciate you. Thank you, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

All right, thanks, Jane.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:02

Take care.