Daily streaks doing anything inevitably come to an end. Someday. Somehow.
My longest daily streak for Stern Insider Connected ended when my wife and I traveled somewhere that had no IC-connected pinball nearby. The hotel we stayed at actually had a Jurassic Park pro, but it was not IC-connected.
So, my streak ended at 162 days.
Am not (too) bummed out about it, really, because I have a much longer gaming streak that continues: the #GameADayChallenge that has been running since January 1, 2022 and as of this writing is closing in on 1,000 days in a row. 162 days versus nearly 1,000 days doesn’t really register too much to me on the disappointment scale. I’m much more personally proud of my #GameADayChallenge streak. Maybe I’m one of few people in the world that know or care about it, but that’s an important streak to me.
The IC pinball streak? Not so much. If I owned a machine at home, I’d probably be more into it. Yeah, this is all easy to say now that the streak is over, but some kind of weight has lifted off me with it being over and for that being gone, it feels liberating.
Unless you own a Stern pinball machine — and I don’t — or have very regular, easy access to (I do), then it’s much harder to maintain these streaks. I’ve seen a small few others say that they have managed longer streaks than mine and don’t own pinball, but I’d guess my 162 days without owning a machine myself, is probably putting me in a very small group of people. The last update at 150 days showed as follows:
Again, these streaks are more for Home Use Only (HUO) players than people like me that don’t own a machine (yet). It’s just too freaking hard, logistically, to play pinball every single day if you don’t have very convenient access.
And then there’s the whole issue of vacations.
Internet connected pinball streaks don’t lend themselves kindly to every spot in the world. Heck, there are still plenty of rural locations that don’t have internet … some don’t even have good satellite coverage.
What happens if you are away from home and in some area where there aren’t any Stern IC pinball machines? At this point you could ask somebody else to play for you, which is not something I’m personally interested in doing. My attitude is if I get help from somebody else playing instead of me than it’s not a legitimate streak. That would have been the only way I could have continued this last streak. And I easily could have called my son and asked him to a play a game for me — and he would have — to keep the streak alive. Nope, not for me.
And no, not judging others that may want to do that for their streaks. I wrote another article about this topic, so we’ll revisit this in more detail another time. All that matters here and now is that I played all 162 days of that streak myself. And on day 163, I didn’t have a machine close enough to play.
What about the future?
Yeah, will I start another streak? Not rushing into it at this time, but probably someday again. Not in a hurry, winding down this week and feel more free now that I don’t have “hey, I need to get a pinball game in today” in the back of my mind every single day. That’s the negative side to these streaks: that it’s additional mental baggage to carry around in your daily life. For a game that’s supposed to be fun, something you want to do, there comes a point it’s not as much fun.
And by the way, I was by no means someone with the longest streak. I belong to a group online with multiple people with over 600 day streaks currently active. I don’t think there are many of those folks, like you can count them on your hand and surely there are hundreds that have streaks longer than 162 days right now as you’re reading this. Some will fall off like I did, fewer will continue. I wish them all the best either way.
Realistically, I’m learning toward a time trying again when/if we have a pinball machine that’s IC-connected in our home. Even if we owned one at the time my 162 day streak ended, we would have been in the same situation, however. Nothing really changed.
And the reality is if I bought a pinball machine tomorrow or next week, it likely would go in my son’s house, next or near his Jaws pinball (related: Our Son Bought a New In Box Jaws Stern Premium – The First 40 Days of Ownership – What’s the Experience Really Like?), it wouldn’t go in my house. Pinball machines need brothers, sisters, neighbors, friends. They just don’t look as good alone. Now, if I bought two or three pinball machines, different story, I bring the lot of them home 😉
Then again, the idea of buying a $7,000-10,000 pinball machine and leaving it somewhere else seems a bit … wrong. Selfless? Yes, but off, somehow. So, who knows.
I digress. These IC pinball streaks, readers, what do you think of them? Like? Dislike? Something that are more for those with pins at home? I think it’s a great idea that Stern tracks these streaks, don’t get me wrong, and not everything pinball-oriented has to be for all pinfolk.
Streaks, however, yes, I think they are more for those fortunate few that own these beautiful, fun machines. Do you have a great IC streak going? Share with us in the comments.
What?! I thought 120 was the cap! I’ve been going out of my way to hit 120 because it looked like the badges stopped there.
Is there a streak cap?!
There was a few months ago a cap at 600 days, as far as badges go, but they fixed that and continued adding beyond 600. Once you clear the first page (pictured above) You’ll see more pages, similar to the games played. I don’t think they plan to have a hard cap, but the actual badges being tracked might hit a wall again, like it did at 600. In the group I’m in, a couple people that have 600+ day streaks were being somewhat vocal about Stern fixing this. They did, but I don’t know how far beyond that they went.