PROFILE: Pinball Podcaster Kaneda, AKA Chris Kooluris

(Ed. I wasn’t sure whether or not to publish this here. It’s been draft, then scheduled, then pushed back multiple times over the last few months. Ultimately, I decided to publish while I was away on vacation (wimpy, I know lol). Maybe we’ll do more profiles in the future — good, bad, ugly — if readers like these, but I’m not interested in TMZ type stuff. This profile is about a pinball personality that seems to crave attention, to troll-like levels, so we could be feeding a troll here, which is usually not a positive thing on the web)

When it comes to internet personalities, what you get/don’t get, it’s a little like reaching into one of those grab bags. Sometimes the surface level stuff of these internet pitchmen/women are plenty enough to disregard and move off your radar and sometimes these people say or do something you are otherwise interested in learning more about.

This brings me to Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast (patreon.com/kanedapinball — not linking his patreon intentionally), which has amassed some 900+ episodes over the last roughly 9 or 10 years. It’s a mostly paid thing, requiring Patreon, a site I barely have used. The lowest membership is $5/month and it goes way, way up from there.

Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast, I believe, was my first Patreon subscription ever. I wanted to listen to and see what people were voting this podcast as the best in the pinball space and, also, to see what makes him so controversial to others.

Some might exit this article at this point, saying: why give this person any time? I was curious what he had to say, what the buzz was about, and wanted to draw my own opinion on the content itself he’s creating rather than judge solely on his actions at pinball events, how he’s treated or not treated others and so on. Drama follows Chris Koolaris, Kanedea, and, yes, he seems to enjoy creating it, at least based on my research.

It didn’t take me long listening to understand that Kaneda presents a very well produced podcast. His audio is high quality (he’s using pro-level equipment), mixes are solid, his cadence is polished. You don’t hear amateur immediately in his podcast, he sounds like an established radio guy.

Kaneda’s typical podcast runs around 30 minutes or so, which is a good length for commuters or just tuning in and hearing what someone has to say. He doesn’t make more than 3 or 4 podcasts a week on average and he provides his subscribers value for their cup of coffee cost per month subscription.

If you value his opinion, that is.

Every podcast has something to do with pinball, and this is where we quickly notice a pattern in his topics: pricing. Kaneda’s commentary is obsessed with pricing on pinball machines. If you’re looking for a spokesperson for “new in box pinball is too expensive” then Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast promotes that message loud, clear and emphatically.

Take for example, early in 2024 he went on a vacation with his family to Disneyworld. Everybody knows how expensive that place is and his first podcast once he returned was as follows:

While you need to be a Patreon member of his to listen to this podcast, I can summarize the 23 minutes:

1. Pinball is too expensive right now.
2. Don’t buy Limited Editions (LE’s) because they lose $3,000-4,000 in value with every title.
3. Pros are the best deal in pinball right now, because they don’t lose as much resale value
4. People need to be patient and not buy new games.
5. People are afraid (the “p”aranoia) of missing out, so they are buying when games first come out. FOMO, really, is what he’s going on about.

I immediately noticed that he avoided the most important ‘P’ in his title and commentary: playing.

Kaneda does mention playing, but it’s more like: “why are you buying a pinball machine you haven’t played yet?” or “why are you criticizing a game you haven’t played yet?” One of the things Kaneda does say somewhat regularly in his podcasts is you can’t judge a pinball machine that you haven’t played. And he’s right, you can’t. Sure, maybe you don’t like the artwork or the toys or what looks like the flow, or maybe you don’t like the theme/IP at all, but you really don’t know anything about if you like the game until you play it.

We buy games, most that do I think, to play them. Maybe the bulk of Kaneda’s target audience are collectors that buy games and don’t play them (?) If that’s the case, then it makes sense he’s preaching prices, prices, prices to them. They are making a business out of this, buy low, sell higher and profit. It’s his screed — prices — in just about every podcast.

Here’s the exchange I had with Kaneda on his Patreon.

As seen above, Kaneda does interact with his Patreon subscribers, as he did with me. He doesn’t know me. We’ve never met. I have zero history with the guy. And no, he did not reply to my reply above. Sad, because I would love to have carried on this conversation on a (hopefully) deeper level. Alas, we are here, maybe he will show up in the comments to explain more.

I also like how if you are using the Patreon app, it will send you a notification when there is “Patreon member” chat. This way you can stay up to date, almost like you’re exchanging text messages with both the Patreon host as well as the other members. Neat feature that probably veteran Patreon members already know and enjoy, but was fresh to me.

Ultimately, after listening to dozens of his podcasts, including the 30 most recent episodes and a few dozen from the past, I decided to cancel renewing.

It’s not that Kaneda isn’t entertaining, but his content becomes extremely repetitive. It’s way too much about the buying and selling of pinball machines, particularly Limited Editions (LEs), as if his target audience are pinball collectors, business owners and less so players. Buy this, don’t buy that, lose money, make money … that’s what Kaneda’s pinball is mostly about. He is very critical of the pinball companies in nearly episode, which makes sense why he’s garnered enemies in the trade, but his criticisms, sometimes I agreed with. He does have compelling negative takes from time to time.

That and rumors about what might be coming in the future and whether or not a theme will sell well over another. It doesn’t target players very well, unless you want to pay to listen to rumors of what might or might not be coming out new to play. Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast is very good at keeping up with what’s happening in pinball: gossip, rumors, and newsworthy moments, with the pinball companies.

Me? I don’t care that much about rumors. Again, this is more a TMZ thing: gossip, rumors. I would rather deal with the here and now gaming-wise than be too consumed with what might be coming from XYZ pinball company down the road. Yes, it can be fun to talk about IPs/themes we want to see in future pinball games, but like anything else: too much of that, the ad nauseum speculation train becomes monotonous to ride. Kaneda spends a lot of time speculating on rumors and, to his credit, he’s right with some of his sources. I suppose if you throw enough stuff against the wall, some will stick.

Kaneda’s content is simply too obsessed with the market and business of pinball, rather than on playing pinball, which is more the type of content interesting to me. It’s not what he does and if you’re interested in what I described, maybe give some of his hundreds of free episodes on his Facebook a listen (Ed. lately, am not seeing that, btw) before paying to subscribe to the newer stuff. He also does a Saturday “Spectacular” on his Facebook for free which you can sample his style and content.

Listened to plenty enough podcasts from him to decide his content wasn’t something I regularly wanted to subscribe and pay for. That said, again, he has a really professional production and makes what he does talk about interesting and engaging. Maybe I’ll check his Patreon podcast out again some other time and see if his main content direction has evolved and/or changed to be more player/game-focused vs. pinball buyer/seller. He’s targeting a different listener than me. Different strokes, different folks, you know.

I understand he has bought a house — congrats, Chris — and put a Jersey Jack Pinball Guns N Roses machine in his loft upstairs, so maybe he’s playing more now? He also has (had?) a Facebook where he was doing free Saturday live streams, but I don’t see that any more (did he take it down?). Anyway, I’m not keeping up to speed with Kaneda, so maybe this entire paragraph is wrong.

Before closing, I need to mention the terrible interface from Patreon. It’s dreadful. You want to go through an archive it’s got a very generic monthly filter or show content new to old or old to new, that’s about it. You can’t favorite episodes or mark where you’re at in the content so when you return, it’s easy to catch up where you left off. No, you have to scroll back through. If the Patreon has a lot of content, expect to be scrolling way too much. Am not a fan of Patreon’s web interface.

Do you listen to Kaneda’s Pinball Podcast? Are you a long time subscriber and fan? Or, like me, are curious about what the podcast is about? I hope this overview profile proves helpful, but like any sort of entertainment, value and worth are subjective. One person’s treasure, could be another’s “so what” or, worse, trash.

As for why I didn’t link to Kaneda? Because I decided it’s a zero win if I link to him, then he can mock how little traffic or attention he receives from this article? That seems to be part of his gameplan when he dislikes something: that he celebrates how much more popular he is, how many more people like and subscribe to him and how little attention is paid to others. It’s a curious form of deflection that I don’t really have an answer for except not to give him more link juice he obviously doesn’t need, and so decided to just give you where you can find his site and any search engine will take you there.

Most reading this already either subscribe to Kaneda’s podcast, are either a vocal or silent fan, or at least have heard of him. Or maybe you’re completely new to the podcaster and have interest after reading this in getting to know him? Totally up to you. Not trying to sway you one way or the other, really. Kaneda, if you’re reading, or rather Chris (why do you talk in the third person always, btw? lol, bad form, brother, bad form): keep doing you, man. Do what you like. I respect people doing what they like to do regardless what myself or others say. It does suck when it hurts other people, which you’ve apparently done in the past, but that’s a whole other can of worms I don’t want to dig into.

The comments area is open below if you’d like to add something I might have missed and/or share your excitement for this podcast and/or profile. Would you like to read more of these here at PGM? Yes/no? Feel free to recommend some others if you do/don’t want to say anything about this specific profile.