The Great British Pinball Podcast Episode 11

Great British Pinball discusses forum moderation drama, community culture, and recent Stern releases.

Synopsis

Neil McRae and Scott Rundle discuss pinball community culture, moderation policies at Pinball Info (a major forum), and recent pinball game releases. The conversation touches on hygiene in the pinball community, controversial moderation decisions regarding player Colin, forum culture drift toward excessive censorship, and recent game acquisitions including Jaws and Pulp Fiction by Stern. They also critique recent releases from Pinball Brothers (Blues Brothers, ABBA) and discuss the secondary market.

Highlights

• Colin received a six-month ban from Pinball Info for making an insensitive joke (reference to 'Jaffa') on a post about fertility struggles
• Neil McRae is permanently banned from Pinball Info and has also been banned from Canada's Pinball Club
• Pinball Info forum culture has shifted from toxic to overly censorious, with stricter moderation applied inconsistently based on user popularity
• The Blues Brothers pinball machine by Pinball Brothers is poorly designed, borrowing layout from an old EM (Stars) without innovation
• Jaws by Stern is at code version 0.aa and has excellent theme integration including atmospheric night fishing/night swimming modes
• The Pinball Brothers team composition has changed and is no longer the 'original' leadership
• ABBA pinball game features a helicopter mechanical element that is innovative but the overall artwork and presentation looks cheap
• Elton John pinball has strong market momentum despite being a music-themed game, setting a difficult bar for competitors like ABBA

Entities

• Pinball Brothers· company
• Stern Pinball· company
• ABBA· game
• Alien· game
• Blues Brothers· game
• Elton John· game
• Jaws· game
• Predator· game
• Pulp Fiction· game
• Stars· game
• Stranger Things· game
• Canada's Pinball Club· organization
• Pinball Info· organization
• The Great British Pinball Podcast· organization
• Colin· person
• David· person
• Kaneda· person
• Keith Elwin· person
• Mandy· person
• Neil McRae· person
• Nick· person
• Scott Rundle· person
• Domino Arcade· venue