In North Carolina, Flippers was a PAPA Circuit event last year and is a major PAPA Circuit event this year. This has helped the business owner who also operates the games with some help.
We also have Boxcar in Raleigh and Abari in Charlotte running selfie leagues.
Abari is also a Stern Army member which made it eligible to be an official Launch location for Aerosmith as well as priority shipping of the pin.
These are just some examples…
Other than tha launch party, those folks wouldn’t have gotten any help if they didn’t run a tournament or selfie league. They got help because an individual started the ball rolling, not an organization. Wouldn’t it be nice if we had an organization that could help locations before they have their first tournament?
A ton of my IFPA time is spent connecting those “individuals” with operators and location owners in given areas that have reached out to me for help. We’re here to help 
IFPA/PAPA check different pinball location directories and as new locations pop up they send them a welcome/goodie bag? For IFPA they can share state rep contact info?
IMO, but wouldn’t it be great if a group of people who were running a business trying to turn a profit would take it upon themselves to try and better their business? I’m all for helping TD’s, PAPA, and the IFPA because these are essentially volunteer run organizations that need all the help they can get.
I’m less inclined to put my time and effort into helping someone else make more money. If I’m going to put my time and effort to try and help someone turn a profit I’m going to want a cut of that pie.
Not all operators are in it for the dollar. Instead of hoarding games in their basement or garage, they’re making them available for everyone to experience, while paying their bills with a day job.
That’s exactly what I did for more than 10 years. I had to stop because I couldn’t afford to do it any more. There are no pin operators getting rich these days. They all could use help.
If I gave the impression that I think IFPA or PAPA aren’t doing their job, that wasn’t my intention. They both do exactly what they say they’re going to do and I fully support both organizations. I’ve made suggestions to Josh exactly twice on how IFPA might help new players. Both times I’ve been shot down and I didn’t pursue it any further. Both organizations help new players and new locations indirectly, which is appreciated.
Someone earlier in the thread was wishing there was an separate organization to help new players and TD’s, which is basically what I was agreeing to. It’s disappointing to me that most every time I bring up supporting locations and location players here, I get negative replies. Since I doubt those folks would prefer that location play would go away completely, I can only assume that I’m not communicating the message properly.
The west coast is the example. There is a direct connection between public locations and tournament play. If you can’t agree with that, I’m not sure what else to say. None of this is related to the topic the thread was started for, so I’m going to try to make this my last reply in this thread. I’ll pay the $1. Thanks again, as always, to Josh and the rest of the folks at IFPA. Your efforts are appreciated, even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes.
IFPA has helped with location play by doing the Stern Army thing which means prizes from Stern and some schwag too. I think for the launch parties it’s been pretty good as those seem pretty popular. Gotta say though that the old style of launch party trophies I liked way more than the newest ones for Aerosmith.
I know really what’s also helped with location pinball is players demanding more from ops. Here in San Francisco, people bugging some of the entrenched Ops has gotten us better maintained machines as well as new locations with machines from pinball loving operators too 
Gotta say me slaving away in the shop at Raw Thrills making and packing them game after game was way harder than the “trophy shop” order that Stern did for Aerosmith 
were the old style trophies an IFPA idea/thing vs Stern? It was pretty cool to have a toy from the game as part of the trophy and all. I actually won a launch party for TWD in Colorado and not getting the trophy was the worst part (not sure why the location didn’t have one 
My idea, even though it meant a ton more work on my part.
Depending on the production line needs, sometimes it’s harder to get parts out of Stern for it.
Josh, I knew you did the trophies for Scs but I had no idea you did all those for the launch parties. Some of them are very cool. I have one for IM, Metallica, GB, and WWE. I remember the one for Rolling Stones was super cool. Thanks for making all those trophies!
I think this idea is absolutely brilliant. I can’t wait!
Josh, can you give us a bit more detail about the logistics for setting one of these up? I have some questions such as
A big advantage of this system is that it can help to even out ratings across the globe. If a particular region has better players than another region but that is not reflected in the ratings, when players compete the players from the stronger region will take back home ratings points from the weaker region. This is what happens in our national squash ranking system over here in Australia. See http://squashmatrix.com/#About
This squash Matrix system also has multipliers based on the score. A 3-0 win/loss adds/subtracts more points than a 3-2 win/loss.
I can see this being very popular and the approval process becoming a burden. Perhaps submission of results could be automated, with both players getting an automated email of the results so that nobody enters fake challenges. The key to making this self policing is making sure players lose rating points when they lose.
It would be submitted through the IFPA calendar submission process like any ‘normal’ tournament, as a non-points event.
It can be submitted before or after the event. I have to believe most of these matches will be impromptu matches . . . maybe you’re out playing at a bar and run into someone else there. Spur of the moment you decide to play a match. That’s the kind of competitive activity we’re looking to promote.
No limit . . . anytime . . . any place.
It doesn’t. The result would be submitted with the winner of the match is 1st place, and the loser of the match in 2nd place.
Anywhere . . . public venue, pinball show, someone’s basement, etc.
We definitely have some collaborative plans in the works to push the concept of Ratings forward in an extremely positive way. With over 7 months to go until we go “LIVE” with this, it’s just a matter of figuring out what we can be ready with by the time 1/1/18 hits. There’s a ‘blue collar’ way for us to make this work, and a more ‘white collar’ way for this to be implemented that’s currently on the agenda.
How will “hostile” challenges be handled? Do both players have to opt-in ahead of time and/or the series be completed for it to count? What is the objection process for an incorrectly reported challenge?
I forsee at least some people informally agreeing to a challenge (unrecorded) and then bowing out after 3 bad games, or people only get in a few games and then part ways. Same thing with people challenging opponents that don’t fully understand the system or people not telling their opponent that they’ve been keeping track of their “friendly” games for IFPA reasons.
Both players have to agree ahead of time that you’re actually playing a match.
Similar to our system now, TD’s have plenty of opportunities to lie about who participated in their event, manipulate the final standings, exaggerate the TGP value, etc. We’ll deal with these match issues as they happen.
If a player send a complaint into us after playing a match, and flat out lies, “I have no idea how Jimmy recorded this match, I was out of town on business this entire week.” . . . I’ll do exactly what I do now . . . contact both parties and work that out between those players.
We have some naughty list flags in our database where we highlight who the problematic TD’s have been. It allows us to take a more skeptical look at the results submitted from that TD. We can use a similar method to highlight any players that find themselves in interesting situations time and time again with respect to these matches.
So - no new processes though, seems like the workload is going to increase! Thanks again for keeping things going.
On the incomplete challenge thing - if one player cannot or will not complete a challenge after both players have agreed to it, will there be any guidelines on submission?
I’ve had players storm out partway through events a couple times (the same player, actually), normally that just leaves them losing whatever match they were in and it is submitted as such. If someone does something similar in a two-player event it’s a little touchier. Same thing with some of the more savvy players deciding partway through a match with a newer player that they don’t want to risk a ratings hit against an undervalued opponent.
We have something in the pipeline that would be a new process for this. It would certainly help with the workload on our end and make things easier for players looking to submit these match results. I’m not sure if this new process will be ready by 1/1/18, but all efforts are being made for it to be ready and available as soon as it can be.
Assuming the match is agreed upon before it starts (which is a requirement), those players are committed to completing the match from an IFPA perspective. Any withdrawal from the match, either storming out in anger or even a “legitimate” issue (player has to leave to deal with a family matter), that’s a forfeit of the match and should be treated as such. We’ll be fine if both players want to postpone the match and pick it back up later, but there’s no way we would allow a player to concede partway through the match without dealing with the Ratings consequences of that loss.
So these matches affect rating only? If so, cool. Didn’t really understand that before so it will be cool to follow that more closely.
Yes . . . Rating ONLY. There are no WPPR points associated with any of these challenge matches.