Stern Pinball IC

It’s amazing that no other pinball company has figured out QR codes. JJP has been working on it for several years and still nothing. The current Stern app upgraded a few years ago to be more graphical but now I watch a spinning disc as it tries to load data. I think my account might be worse because it has to loads my 1000+ badges in the background. Overall the team does an amazing job keeping us engaged and entertained. I would love to see more creative thinking on the Thursday monthly game badges. Repeating the same Achievement with a new graphic is not the way to go. And asking us to play all 32+ games on a promo has been way overdone. Bright spots are the high scores and telling us what percentile we placed amongst everyone. The tips and tricks on how to get weekly badges by Marc Patenaude are very helpful. But by far the best feature is the year in review because who doesn’t need to know what day of the week you play the best/most and on what ball you slay. I look forward to some top 1000 leaderboards with all the data they have collected. People love to compete with the world ! Keep it going Stern and let’s not forget the backend of the app for the Operators that seems to have been forgotten. I would love to adjust my sound levels and put on free play for event from home!

Is there room for improvement? Absolutely. But this platform augments the pinball experience, adding achievement tracking and leveling up the experience. As an owner of a Stern home edition plus table, I have recruited my friends to create accounts so we can track their progress and celebrate epic achievements. This also makes me want to track down arcades with connected machines to explore more games and achievements. Hoping they iron out some of the bugs and improve the UI, but this platform definitely adds value and provides Stern with a competitive advantage.

Love that this app exists, but struggling with the new app updates to find anything. Get caught in endless loops sometime. Appreciate trying to make it better, but the latest update is a step back in making it user friendly. Tracking your latest play or data is buried deep in the app, if you’re even able to find it. Very much want IC to work again, right now it’s just too hard.