Roll up the red carpet and let it travel to all the circuit events. Charge $20 per player for the PAPA Red Carpet Experience™ to cover costs!
2 Likes
Pay the $20 fees collected out to the top 9% Circuit Finalists . . .
Hopefully those finalists will donate it back to the Replay Foundation.
I think this needs to be implemented ASAP.
3 Likes
I can hear @PAPA_Doug laugh menacingly from here, and I’m nowhere near him right now. Goddamn it, you inspired a monster.
I’m scratching my head over here. This is a community that pays 1-5K for a pinball machine in their collection but the world is coming to an end when they have to pay $1 for an evening or weekend of pinball? How much is a beer, or a ticket to watch the Bulls play?
If the answer to that is, “it’s the principle, it’s the poor paying to support the rich,” shouldn’t that principle apply to all tournaments and prize money be completely scrapped? I’m confused and asking a naiive question here.
For me I appreciate what the IFPA does and if they want to run an experiment because they think it will be good for pinball I’m willing to support it. If it sux, then let’s change it. So far the experiments have led to huge growth in competitive pinball. As a TD the biggest negative for me would be remitting these fees, so I am pleased Josh is willing to let TDs overpay and use up credit to simplify it for us.
7 Likes
Some places and countries just have entry fees and trophies. Fine with me, I wouldn’t mind if we scrapped HERB and did that here. Get money out of the picture completely. The “fee to be a ranked tournament” could then just fund trophies for SCS, Nationals and IFPA events.
Bickering about money is the root of not all but a heck of a lot of evil.
1 Like
Just want to point out that many of the people opposed to the dollar fee are not machine owners/collectors. They’re younger, less wealthy players from communities with strong location pinball scenes.
12 Likes
At risk of derailment – I’ve found times recently when I thought it would be nice to have some sort of community governed organization dedicated to supporting location players and TDs.
Not as an alternative to IFPA or PAPA, but a supplemental organization dedicated to both promoting competitive pinball out on-location, and helping TDs deal with the issues that arise in such an environment.
Currently the IFPAPA rules treat many of the issues seen with location based play (keys aren’t available; venue is closing for the night; game settings can’t be adjusted) as exceptions to be figured out by the TD, but I suspect as a community we could benefit from establishing a set of standards.
2 Likes
I’d like to think that Tilt forums is collectively doing just that. 
7 Likes
I do believe from the quick view, it will be seen as a “taking away” from the charities donation received. Because we have goals set to help children’s hospital using real dollar amounts. Anytime people view a subtracting amount taken from the gross amount is disappointing for sure, but what was gain by being invested in the PAPA Circuit? By Kalamazoo having offered a PAPA Circuit event increase the potential audience? Would it have an effect to increase the gross amount to benefit the over-all goal?
I would call it a benefit, because of the potential of drawing more participates to the Kalamazoo Event to raise the gross amount.
Without the PAPA Circuit or IFPA Event- a higher percent on a smaller gross amount could very easily be out shadowed by the opportunity that was lost by not generating more interest and appeal to get people and players to the fundraising event. The effect could be attracting less participates adding to the total gross amount.
This is all base on the demographic make-up of your target audience. I have ran charity pinball tournaments with and without WPPR points in the past and will continue to make a choice in the future based on who will my target audience. By having a sanctioned IFPA or PAPA Circuit Event is going to have no effect? Make the choice to run a WPPR free or do without a PAPA Circuit event.
The beginners to our sport do not know the I.F.P.A. acronym, or what a WPPR point is, so the $1 dollar fee will not be applied for these beginner tournaments. I run a weekly league without WPPRs, people still show up to play.
I believe the real hurt is that we were getting these things for free, now they cost money.
Plus Josh’s quote, “So 133 players participated in the Main tournament, and with that came a ton of money raised for Project Pinball.” It should read as such, “a ton of money raised for Kalamazoo’s Bronson Children’s Hospital so they can enlist Project Pinball help to place a pinball machine on site.” :^)
1 Like
#ExactlyThat
2 Likes
A similar big deal was made about a story that came out here locally not that long ago involving Tom Brady and a charity. People lost it over the fact that he was paid by them to be the spokes person among other things. They immediately said that money should have gone to the charity and it was awful of him and them to do it the way they did. Completely overlooking the fact that because he was paid that 500k I believe, they made 12 million…that the charity and anyone looking at it objectively realized was an investment well spent. Same thing applies here…what is the pool with IFPA points vs without…which is greater? That is something the charity will have to decide, but I think it is clear that points tend to boost almost any event in some peoples eyes and would pull more interest then otherwise. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, so if paying 30 to the ifpa nets you 100 more then you would otherwise have…how is that a bad thing?
3 Likes
I’m pretty sure all the money Brady received did go to charity. He basically got paid for all the time he donated to that charity, and in turn, was able to use that money to fund other charities that he did not have time to fund raise for. They didn’t even pay Brady any money, they made a donation to his charity. I’m not disagreeing with your logic. I’m just making a clarification because I have heard a lot of people that think the money went to Brady, himself.
1 Like
Oh ya I know he used it toward his personal charities, just didn’t think that extra layer was needed haha
I see virtually no support for locations or location players here or anywhere else, unless that location is holding an IFPA sanctioned event. If you read IFPA and PAPA mission statements, they say nothing about promoting location pinball. Charity events are putting pins in hospitals for kids and folks are donating money for streaming gear and tutorials, but no one held a fund raiser to try to keep Pnball Wizard in Pelham open. Which of those things do you think brought more new people into the hobby?
Location play is the best recruiting tool we have for the sport and hobby, yet no effort is put forth to support them. What’s wrong with this picture?
1 Like
That’s your opinion, but location play has been dead in my city for over a decade now and the growth of the scene in that time has been tremendous because of a great local community of collectors who help run our local league. We’ve seen such an explosion that location pinball is starting to finally make a comeback but for us here, it wasn’t location pinball that brought more people into the scene is a was strong community of private collectors.
1 Like
IMO the best recruiting tool we have for the sport and hobby today is actually VIRTUAL pinball (Farsight’s Pinball Arcade and Zen’s Pinball FX2).
8 Likes
There are tons of events happening all the time in our area, all at locations, most of which would probably not exist without inspiration/spurring-on by IFPA/PAPA. There’d still be something happening, but definitely not the 100+ people that are attending the events at 5 or so locations every week. The amount/quality of the games available on location is also growing in response.
So from my perspective, it feels like they are doing a ton of good work for location pinball.
This is probably why I don’t really have strong feelings about the 2018 changes. Every year they make changes, every year there are pages and pages of backlash to digest, every year we make adjustments to our events according to those changes, and every year our community of regular players gets stronger and bigger. Based on those observations, it’s hard to not have faith in the changes. Or at least faith in the ultimate goal those changes are aimed at, with an understanding that it will be necessary to weather some missteps along the way.
9 Likes
Pinball Wizard Arcade closing was not a situation where a fundraiser would have been helpful or necessary.
The best way to support location pinball is to play pinball on location. Operators are running businesses and they will continue to do so as long as it makes sense for them. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
You’re not looking very hard then… you can use a TON of what’s posted here (how to play games, how to run tourneys, what can we do to attract new people to the hobby, etc etc etc) if you’re a location player or a TD running events at a location.
2 Likes
When they do cross over, where do you think most of them go to play a real game? I’ve met these folks while fixing or playing on location and have recruited them into league. More than once I’ve heard they played the video game and ‘came here’ to play the real thing.
There are more pins on location on the west coast, from San Diego to Vancouver BC, than there is anywhere else in the world. Pretty sure there are more tournaments on the west coast than anywhere else in the world. Probably more leagues too. It’s not a coincidence. There is a direct correlation.
Whatever the reason for Pinball Wizard shutting down, there was virtually no discussion of it, other than from folks that live in that area. Not even a blip on the radar. A look at the pinball map will show you that location play is also growing. Not as fast as the collector or sport side of the hobby, but it is growing. It just frustrates me when so much effort is put forth both on the collector and sport side (WE MUST GET THE CASUAL VIEWER!!!) and the minor leagues are completely ignored.
IFPA, PAPA and this forum are all great for TD’s and players, but they don’t do much of anything for operators and business owners. I suppose I should be complaining to the manufacturers and distributors, but they’re too busy catering to the collector market.