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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 63 - UNFILTERED Conversations with Stern Pinball!
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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 63 - UNFILTERED Conversations with Stern Pinball!
Hosts: Joel Engelberth, Tom Graf and Travis Murie
The three of us united at Stern’s Media Day to experience King Kong for the first time. What we did not expect was the opportunity to interview Keith Elwin, Chuck Ernst, Jeremy Packer, Matthew Geyer, Gary Stern and George Gomez. How this podcast was given a chance to talk to such an amazing group of pinball legends will forever be a mystery. Buckle up because this one is EPIC!
ps. Kong is REALLY Freaking Good.
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Travis' stuff: https://www.youtube.com/@ThePinballCompany
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Shoutout to Jackson Gee and his incredible artwork. jacksongee.com
Shoutout to Brad Johanson and his company Alter Creative Media for his intro video. Altercreativemedia.com
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Transcript
Excitement and Setup at Stern
00:00:24
Speaker
All right, we're here. We are at Stern, sitting literally at their conference table, recording an episode. I didn't i didn't ever think this day would come, but we're here. Yeah, there's going to be no technical difficulties for me today. Travis, you should just vanish.
00:00:39
Speaker
I might have just jinxed it. Let me make absolutely sure. It's all good. Yeah, we're
Working on Kong Game Mechanics
00:00:43
Speaker
fine. So we are here, and we're here with Keith. We've played Kong. We're having a lot of fun with that game. That game is awesome. And you were just you just you were out on the line, right?
00:00:51
Speaker
just I was out on the line. They're rolling down the line now. I think Monday they should start going out. Wow. So when you're on the line, what are like, what specifically are you looking for on the games?
00:01:04
Speaker
Are you adjusting, tweaking? Yeah, so pretty much any time there's a mech or a spotlight or something, you know they don't know where you know where the spotlight goes, how this mech actually is supposed to interact with the ball and everything. And it's a particular case like ah King Kong Mech itself has a whole bunch of little calibration tweaks you can do. So you want to get maximum movement without smacking into the train or the side.
00:01:27
Speaker
So it's all about dialing that in and and teaching the but line workers how to do that. Nice. And I know the King Kong mech, it hits the glass. And that's something that's funny is hearing it like tap, tap, tap as you're going is is a cool
Game Difficulties and Mechanics
00:01:41
Speaker
little.
00:01:41
Speaker
Well, see, there's a trick to you. You want it to just barely hit the glass, but you can make it. I think you saw in like one of the flyer photos, yeah ah the glass wasn't on. His arms are way above it. So that one definitely was not calibrated. So you would not be able to put the glass on if he was like that.
00:01:56
Speaker
And I know um you said calibrate the spots. There are two large spotlights on top of the slings. They're kind of hidden there. Yeah. And that illuminates that middle of that play field really well.
00:02:07
Speaker
Yeah. So the combination of those two and the two in the apron, in fact, it was so illuminated that Jack actually taped off the bottom two for the the stream because it was too bright in the middle. Okay.
00:02:19
Speaker
ah Speaking of too bright, Tom, what are your overall thoughts on – I mean, youve Travis played this a bunch. He was texting us in the background. Oh, my gosh, this game is S tier. It's so great. Just wait. Because it is. It is. It is. Are you going to say to Keith's face it's not?
00:02:33
Speaker
No, I prefer to make fun of you. but it needs a little work. It does. It does. just I will say, though, Travis has admitted he's scared of the gong. He is scared of the gong.
00:02:45
Speaker
Well, Keith saw what it did to me continuously. Everybody else fine. We have a term for it, but this is a family-friendly show. It's not a family-friendly show. I don't know. I was told today we have 12-year-olds that listen to this. Oh, okay. Well, shout out to you. You got gong screwed. Gong screwed. So what we're saying is the gong on the premium and LE, because of the way you designed that mech, is it the spring that's pushing back on the ball or there's a coil that's pulling that gong back towards the So there's a coil that engages that pre-wounds a spring.
00:03:14
Speaker
Okay. And so when you hit the gong, that it just puts all the energy in a spring and then fires back at you. When the coil disengages, it ignores the sp spring entirely. And that's what we're saying where if you expect that to be a safe shot, and that's a very important shot because the gong shots lead you towards your island modes.
00:03:31
Speaker
it's a It's a scary shot.
Game Design Challenges and Innovations
00:03:33
Speaker
It is. It is. It's a scary shot. It is, but you know, there's no pop-umbers or anything to like throw down the drain. So I had to put some riskier shots in there. So we got the pit magnet right there and we got the gong right here on the pro. going to be a little more work to light those modes.
00:03:49
Speaker
Oh, okay. Travis thinks it's right now. It's too easy. We're going fix No, I like it. I like the how the pro, how you light it. Because it's kind of like Iron Maiden, right? You played Iron Maiden before. I have. Okay. You shoot around. Right. yeah Yeah. It's a little too easy now because every shot's lit. We need to go through and give that another difficulty. Are you going to do it like the Eddie letters?
00:04:07
Speaker
It should get more and more difficult, but it doesn't because that's something we implemented in the last minute. Right. So it's kind of like it's on like Joel mode right now. wow Yeah, it's Joel mode. I'm not the one complaining about the Gogg. I bet the center ramp center ramp probably spots you like three shots, doesn't it? Something like that.
00:04:22
Speaker
ah Probably should. So you're you're saying, so premium in LE, you hit the gong a few times, then once it's solid or flashing, that's when the next time you hit the gong, it's going to go all the way through. you start your mode. Yeah, there's a little yellow insert.
00:04:34
Speaker
And when that's lit, that means the gong is loaded and locked. It's going to fire back at you. When that insert's not lit, you can shoot through it. Okay. and But you're saying on the pro, because there is no gong, you're going to have to hit a arrangement of shots or a certain number of them, and then it'll be lit to start your roll. Yes. My worry was, since that feeds a Vuck right to your right flipper, that tournament players going backhand, ah trap up, backhand gong, trap up. i was like, this this is pointless. I'm going to defeat this before it even happens. So but make it shoot some other shots to light that. and He's a fun hater. fun hater. I know. Tom, what's your favorite shot?
00:05:11
Speaker
I really like how um you made you made it so like the little flipper, you can go up that ramp, it'll come back and then you can shoot it back.
00:05:23
Speaker
ah How did you come up with that? I mean, was that like pre-planned or did that just kind of come to be? Yeah, that was that was hopefully my plan. it was really, really tough. The hardest shot to get dialed in on this entire play field was that that upper shot from the upper right flipper. It's like a little U-turn and it was so clunky, so clunky. And we were like, oh, man, we have to have to cut this shot.
00:05:49
Speaker
But oh wow we gave it another try. We lowered the side ramp down a little bit and that was the magic sauce. It it feels it feels really good. So I would encourage – so there's so many really cool shots that if you just step up to this game, you know, what is it that I want to hit? What is it I want to do?
00:06:04
Speaker
But that shot, you know, what Tom was saying was if you can feed that upright flipper, you basically shoot under the ramp. But you you don't see in any of the pictures, but it's a very quick – horseshoe and somehow magically feeds that mini flipper on the left yeah well and consistently. yeah And so you can do this kind of crazy figure eight type shot between the ramp and that over and over again. And you have a whole mode based on that. Yeah. So ah we, you know, I first designed that we didn't have the diverter in place yet. i was like, oh, this is really fun, but you know, an expert player can just do this all day.
00:06:37
Speaker
And so when we put the the diverter in, it's like, OK, perfect. Now we're going have certain modes where you can do that. you know You can't do it all day because you're going to reach the end of the mode. um and So you can you could experience that a little bit. you know it's It was everyone's favorite mode during the process because they can you know try to get a perfect yeah getting going across the log there. And that diverter he's talking about, the it pops up the log diverter, is that what you call it? Yeah. It pops up to the left of the mini flipper to feed that. And so you had made a comment on Loser Kids that you feel like that upper area is kind of like a mini play field but not.
00:07:08
Speaker
And it truly does feel like that. You're either up experiencing that kind of situation or the ball goes where right by it. And you made even going down the river like a cool visual thing.
00:07:19
Speaker
thing and the way it feeds the left flipper is smooth and consistent. It's yeah. When I was very young, I would play a game called, um, I think it's knockout by belly.
00:07:30
Speaker
oh yeah. And it had a little, ah the little wiggly, uh, wiggly thing in the middle. And I was like, Oh, that's so cool. But then, you know, you play today. It was like, yeah, it's all right. I was like, well, what if this actually served a purpose? What if it actually slows the ball down where I can shoot the ball in a loop? It'll be flying through there, but it slows down enough that you can actually make another shot. So it's funny if you actually pull that sculpt out of there and then try to loop like Josh was doing last night. It's so fast. It's impossible.
00:07:59
Speaker
Because, you know, Jaws, you just had that straight down. Yeah. Yeah. Jaws, I intended that to be super fast. Yeah. And this one, you you didn't want that. Well, so you said that shot under the ramp, multiple iterations. Yeah. So start all the way back at the beginning, you know.
00:08:13
Speaker
Are we saying Keith is admitting to make an aclucky shot? he doesn't he He doesn't need just one Whitewood. Yeah. No, no, no. I don't know. Start wherever you want on the play field. Certain mechs is this. I mean, obviously we've experienced the final iteration, but,
00:08:28
Speaker
um I think you said on Loser Kids there was at one point there was a drop in front of the cave. But other than that, everything's in the game. I'm just assuming it took a little while to get to where it's at. So I had to drop target in front of the cave and it wasn't satisfying because it basically just sent the ball flying over the flipper.
00:08:44
Speaker
And then we discovered needed a second coil for the gong mech. So that was an easy, all right, hit the road. ah We used that drive to basically move that coil to the gong mech to get more kinetics out of it.
00:08:56
Speaker
The whole play field was designed around the right orbit, ah not an orbit, whatever it is. It's the punch back, back to the upper right flipper. The hole whole layout was designed around that. And then I put in the upper left little mini play field area.
00:09:12
Speaker
And originally had two pop bumpers kind of in the middle where the biplane ramp is. Really? Yeah. Weird. Would that have fit? but um So I had more targets going up the middle, kind of where the spinner shot is. Okay. I'll have to dig up that CAD file if I can find it. but
Game Rules and Player Strategies
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah, it was something like that. And I was like, eh, I think I'd rather have like a side ramp that just screams down at you.
00:09:37
Speaker
So I told Harrison, let's make the tallest ramp we can make and have it come flying down a helix. You know we'll call it the biplane ramp. So we designed that. And yeah, no no regrets there. I don't miss the pop bumpers. That's the one thing too. Like the pictures don't really show how tall that ramp really is. yeah If you see it in person, it looks like it's going through the glass.
00:09:57
Speaker
like And then somehow the ball... gets around there. Like there was a couple of times we got it to the very top and it almost felt like it wasn't going to quite get there to kind of stall for like a few. And then would just go flying around. Then other times it'd just be a perfect feed yeah and yeah, it's, it's fast and it's satisfying. Yeah.
00:10:13
Speaker
Especially, uh, what is, what that mode? Save and I think is that to where you got to hit the kickback. Then it comes back. Is that what it is? Okay. Yeah. And then you hit the kickback and you keep building up the value over and over again to cash it in eventually. Yeah.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah. but So when you hit the punchback target, it just sends the ball flying the upper flipper, which I think, in my opinion, makes that ramp really easy to hit because it just it just screams up it comes around. Yeah. It's a little bit harder to hit when you do the crossover and it's coming at much lower velocity, but it's definitely definitely still there. Well, i I wanted to see if I could hit the left orbit shot from the right flipper. And it's tight, but you can you can do do it. It's actually not that tight. like it's just It's visually – For Joel, this is a tight shot. yeah.
00:10:57
Speaker
that's It's a visual thing because it's so far in the back and there's so much stuff in front of it. But it's actually one of the biggest shots in the game. Yeah, it's cool because you don't realize how far back it is. yeah And then there was one point where I ricocheted off something and somehow hit from the right flipper the back left ramp.
00:11:13
Speaker
And that's such a surprise when that happens as It's actually designed that way. it's ah It's called the ricochet shot. There you go. As we saw it happen, we're like, that's cool as shit. Look at that. We actually have a rule for that.
00:11:26
Speaker
there Seriously. You'll say ricochet. Yeah, and you get $5 million. Oh, hey. so detect It detects. It detects. That's awesome. um What about, so is Kong always going to be back right?
00:11:37
Speaker
was Yeah, Kong was always back right. Originally, i had he was on an Empire State Building, and he was you know climbing and climbing and climbing, and when he got to a certain point, ah he could divert the ball to a lock.
00:11:50
Speaker
ah The problem was that um in order to use Empire State Building, we had to get the proper... you know scale and everything and that whole thing just is turned into fiasco it's like okay let's make our own building but then ah it was just a scale you know george wanted this giant king kong back there and in in order to have him climbing any kind of building we had to make him so small yeah yeah it's like okay this is extremely underwhelming he's like think of something else guys so um Then we had him pretty much the same size he is, but grabbing a ball, picking it up, and then we were going to try try to throw it at the player. But it was too hard to actually, you know, magically pick up the ball.
00:12:29
Speaker
And then what, you know you know, player two drains, player one comes back up, and he's a wisey hole the ball. And ah and it was like it was harder to get rid of the ball out of his hand, and it just wasn't worth it And George was a big fan of the three ball dump on Godzilla. So he's like, you know, give me something where all the balls just come flying at you. So Harrison and I was like, well, you know, and know he likes bashing up trains. So, ah you know, why don't we load up a train car with balls and just have him smash it over and they come flying out.
00:12:58
Speaker
yeah it's yeah Yeah, we all started, we've all experienced multiball. um I will say the sweepable drops when you hit it feels good, I assume. I haven't swept them yet. but But i do I find that shot, to hit the drops from the right flipper is a challenge in my for me.
00:13:14
Speaker
But yet the fact that you have options, though, backhand with the left or hit the river shot to feed the upper flipper, which you can then cradle and pick it at that way, um I do think that's going to be a challenging multiball for a novice to get. Yeah. But yet the Spider-O-Beast multiballs are very easy to get. Yeah. yeah So ah that the sweep rule, actually, you only need two targets to initiate the sweep rule.
00:13:38
Speaker
Okay. So if you hit any of the two targets and the ball goes all the way around to the upper right flipper and you shoot biplane ramp, you get this the sweep combo. So you just need two. The more you sweep at once, the much higher values. If you can do all four and do the super sweep combo, it's like 50 million.
00:13:53
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah. And I know there's there's a lot in the game right now. Like that's something that the fact that you can choose your mode, there's five modes, I think, in the game. Is that yes is that five total ever? Or you there's additional modes you're going add after that? Or it's just five island modes? Oh, the island modes? No, we have a bunch of New York modes to add. The island modes are done. We have a wizard mode for the island.
00:14:13
Speaker
ah That's it. that Then we have a few more New York modes. And we obviously, we have some modes associated to shots. We have biplane mode, the rapids mode. um Even the 2x scoring phase is kind of a mode because once 2x is going, you can shoot.
00:14:28
Speaker
There's one random flashing stand-up target. If you shoot that, it's worth points, and that keeps growing. So even if you have nothing running, there's still a mode. Okay, because that's what I was, at least when I was playing in there, it's like, okay, I did an island mode. I've done the Kong multiball. I've done the Beast multiball.
00:14:45
Speaker
At that point, it's like I could focus on climb arrows, right, and try to work towards a a New York mode. Otherwise, I'm going to keep... chipping away at island modes or yeah there's plus you know the the climb arrows are almost always lit and you're always getting credit towards working towards a kong letter yeah so you spell king it lights the skill shot mode the dead eye you spell king kong it lights the t-rex battle yeah did either of you experience dead Yes.
00:15:12
Speaker
Yeah. i I did, I think, two of the skill shots. I was like trying to find it. I'm like, where is it? You got a palm punch. You can just rapid fire. What's cool is, too, as soon as you get three, right then you got to go to the rapids. Yeah, i saw that.
00:15:28
Speaker
That's a really cool nuance. There's three targets in the beast area. So any of those will count? Yep. And then in lane or out lane? Yep. Pretty much anything that's a switch on the left-hand side will count. Yeah, because I was hitting posts all day. You can't fell it, Joel. It's designed for you not to fell it. It's awesome.
00:15:45
Speaker
I think it's a really mode. did you complete it? I did not play it. Oh, haven't played yet. But the people I've seen play I realized. I'm just kidding. You can fell it. I felled it all the time. I was just hoping you played it and you...
00:15:57
Speaker
So you have to hit three of them and then it lights the the jackpot at the river, but you can keep hitting more if you want before you go for the jackpot? But you know ideal in an ideal world, you hit three, you'll get the super jackpot and then get another three and another super jackpot. Or you can just try to cash in the super jackpot at the end. but I kind of like just cashing the points while they're there other than risking it all. True.
00:16:18
Speaker
you know um You know that Travis gets a lot of joy out of filming gameplay videos of how to break the game. How to break the game. How to break the game. Here's your launch party strategy. Here's all the points.
00:16:31
Speaker
What's the script that he should use on Kong? is it Do you feel like, ah you know, do you already know of a way to break it? or are you thinking through... Well, since he hates the gong, that's actually the most viable mode is save which we probably need to score balance for the pro.
00:16:46
Speaker
But yeah, so save and if you you, the more shots you hit before hitting the gong, the more it's worth. And then at the end, there's a hurry up but based on all those values you collected. We discovered that one earlier.
00:16:57
Speaker
Yeah. So if you're on a easy. Don't tell Keith that we know it though. Oh yeah. He won't vote that out. Yeah. who's um Who's all on software? I know Rick Nagel, but who besides Rick? Joshua Henderson. Okay.
00:17:09
Speaker
Who blew it up on show the other night. He's world-class player. yeah Yeah. He knows what he's doing. So Gieske is not on this? Nope. Oh man. Okay. she see She's a dragging dungeons.
00:17:19
Speaker
She's, okay. She's dragging dungeons. Wow. well no
Unique Layout and Player Experience
00:17:24
Speaker
Well, good for her. But um what else do we got? i mean, just it's it's just a great game overall. I mean, playing it, and we've talked about that before, that For you, to me, it's like when I see this this layout, it feels like something that's different, but familiar to me, right? There's just a lot of callbacks that I see from like Bally Williams days, and I see it pulled into the modern era.
00:17:51
Speaker
And to me, that's not something that we typical like typically see for modern pens that works, right? It all still feels like it works. It doesn't feel like it's Frankenstein together to where you're like, oh, well, I'm not going to do that anymore.
00:18:03
Speaker
it just It all feels really good. so I know it sounds like I'm sucking up to you right now, but i I've been very... It feels good, but it very does not feel like anything else out there. It's unique, for sure. It's very unique. and I think people are going to find that out as soon as they start playing it. it's just I haven't seen a layout like this to where it's very difficult for to show what this is like on video, in a trailer.
00:18:26
Speaker
You have to see a full gameplay. You have to play it yourself, and it really... Really shows it off. Just the ball pass, the shots, they're smooth. And I love the return to the upper flipper, the right flipper. well We've talked about that a lot. He figured it out to where that ball does not spin away. It's clean every time nope that that makes the game feel so much better because those two shots, the the side ramp and then U-turn are accessible yeah all the time. You're not reliant anymore on just a good feed. You have a great feed yeah every time. So no excuses. Now you got it. You got a clean shot. You got it.
00:19:00
Speaker
How much tweaking did that take that whole? Well, we originally did have a keyhole exit ah drop off to the upper flipper. And it it's just I remember from Avengers, sometimes it would just drop it nicely. Other times it would throw it you know sideways on you.
00:19:16
Speaker
And we took that lesson and it's like, hey, we need to rethink this. So let's try, you know, let's try this or something that pushes it up. and harrison's well you know that's not a very steep ramp the ball's really slow we can try it and then tried it and he's like oh yeah this does work so there's yeah the end of the wire form on the what do you call that wire form the uh it's the cliffs ramp the cliff okay so that it's it's at an angle in the way that and there's rubber there so it bounces the ball up but not only is the feed there really good but also the feed from the kickback or the punchback that shot i'm assuming that took a little bit of tweaking to get that to work no
00:19:53
Speaker
No, first try. First try. First try. That's why I think it's going to become industry industry standard at this point. is Like just that that return, the way it feeds the flipper and just makes it so much easier. yeah Why do anything other than that now?
00:20:07
Speaker
That's good point. i mean it only works on something like that. You're not going to feed the bottom flipper like that. Right, right. But I mean, up there, it's it makes sense, right? So don't know. I know if I design a pin, I'm still in that. I'm putting that like in five different spots because if it works, right? So the left orbit, it only is an orbit from the left side. Is there a, I'm assuming it's elevated?
00:20:29
Speaker
Yeah. So it kind of falls. It jumps. Yeah. It jumps over, lands underneath Kong and then wraps around to the upper right flipper. That's awesome. um Okay. Have we decided what we're going to call the upper flipper yet with the log?
00:20:45
Speaker
Can we call it flip log or log flip? No, we haven't patented. i don't want to keep saying the diverter up by the mini flipper. Like we got to have a term for it. There's no term yet. Well, because in the story, they're crossing a chasm on ah on a log that had fallen across the chasm.
00:21:00
Speaker
Okay. So chasm flipper but that doesn't roll off the tongue. as you You have a few actual patented things being you patented flip block, right?
00:21:11
Speaker
Uh, probably. Oh yeah. I'm curious if there's something here, here in, um, calling that you pass somewhere. American pinball is like, we're bringing it back. It's ours now.
00:21:22
Speaker
I don't know because, yeah, the legal department looks over it and they decide all that stuff. So, Tom did ask me yesterday, he asked, do you wish Joel that Kong had extra flipper buttons that enabled you to tap pass? yeah And I was curious if ah if you've thought of adding those into your games.
00:21:42
Speaker
Because Joel needs them. i yeah' i'll tell um That's all tournament players need. He's like, hey, let's make this easier. um What else? I do feel like I need to apologize. of ah We have brought attention to the size of your calves.
00:21:56
Speaker
think you're aware of that. Oh, my God. Everybody's coming up to Travis. At the expense of Travis. Why you I mean, he should be apologizing to me. He's going to walk around with those every day. And people Google him. you know You wear pants now.
00:22:10
Speaker
So... He's never wearing shorts again. he's I wore shorts for one day at TPF. One day. He took like a dozen pictures with other people. Everybody. So bash at the beach or wearing pants. Next year I'm going to wear a thong, Tom. I don't care. We're going to go all in.
00:22:29
Speaker
Well, i ah do you guys have anything else for Keith? He's a busy man. I don't want to him down from getting away. Post pass. Post pass. You can do it. I've done it. You can. I did it. So this is the major departure from all my other games. The flippers are offset to the right, yeah and the slings are closer together than anything I've done. Well, there's one other major departure too.
00:22:49
Speaker
Center post. Yes. Center post. Was that always a plan, or when did you throw that in there? Yeah. Always a plan. Yeah, George is against it. And I said, well, I need it for ah the center ramp. And then Jack's like, dude, if you're putting a center post, I'm putting a center post on X-Men. And then, yeah, they after X-Men went to the center post, i was like, yep, this it has to stay.
00:23:08
Speaker
Yeah, I was surprised that I hit something in the back left and still. I bet you were, buddy. still were miss I was like, I trusted that center post. that That ball went the entire length of the play field and somehow I drained.
00:23:22
Speaker
There is a target. It's on the bottom edge of the drops. I think it's called power up. There's a tiny little target. What does that do? Nothing yet. Oh, okay. there You found it though. I did. mean, it's in a weird, it's in a very unique spot that you might be like one of five people even realizes it's there. I looked at the play. I know you only look at the first six inches of a play field, but I looked at all of it.
00:23:42
Speaker
I like it all. Okay. I love center posts. I always have really this just adds an element, uh, you know, being able to knock the ball back. The very first pinball machine I've ever owned was Xenon and it it wasn't a center post, but it did have a post that was kind of angled off a ramp reject at a weird angle, but it worked. You know, if the ball's coming down at that angle, you can you can use that post to get it back up. And I was like, that's ah actually, it's a skill.
00:24:05
Speaker
Yeah, and I saw, I forget who did it, but um over on the left side, the fact that you have in lane, out lane, in lane, essentially. I saw somehow the ball went down the out lane, but there's a you you added a post down there that they were able to nudge it back in. Yeah.
00:24:21
Speaker
And it's way harder than the nudge on Jaws. I mean, but it's it looks doable, and I'm excited to see somebody pull that out in a tournament to keep their ball up. It is intentionally a bit harder than the one on Jaws, but it's there.
00:24:33
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. The other cool thing with the center post, if you drain just right, it hits the center post, goes up the left out lane and then through the gate. Well, Jaws, I know you had mentioned it on Loser Kid that you're still clipping Jaws videos.
00:24:47
Speaker
So you're there's more to do there. Yeah, yeah no, we're we're we're still chipping away at it. The problem is it's a, you know, it's not a minor update. Yeah. So it's not something we're going to rush out and just, all right, it's done.
00:25:01
Speaker
It's the final wizard mode, right? Oh, there's two. Okay. All right. And then live another show you we we made eye contact. That's good enough i'll say um No, that's awesome.
00:25:13
Speaker
Well, more to come. um I know Loser Kid asked you about accessories, so we're curious about that. um I'm looking forward to streaming it. I know you'll be making content. Once the LE is coming out.
00:25:24
Speaker
I know. Tom wants like five LEs. Have you committed to an LE? Yes. Okay. Last night, you didn't seem like you had committed. Yeah. I don't know. was committed. He was just playing with your heart. He was playing it up for the crowd. I was like, you're telling Tom's about to buy pro on this game? I didn't think so. Tom might get a pro premium and LE. Just get them all.
00:25:42
Speaker
You're going to get a premium and take out the gong because you're scared of it. I don't mind the gong. It's a spider that freaks me out. The fight oh spider freaks you out? Well, yeah. Have you ever seen Arachnophobia? Yeah. scared So you're scared of spiders?
00:25:55
Speaker
Well. You know it's not a real spider, right? But I like John Goodman, though. Oh, okay. Yeah. You need to release an of accessory of a different something to put there. just need to put googly eyes on the spider. Does Monica kill the spiders for each other? Yeah.
Interview with Chuck Ertz: Art Direction
00:26:10
Speaker
Maybe. Maybe.
00:26:12
Speaker
Well, Keith, we appreciate you, I don't want to take any more your time. I'm not trying to kick you out, but you said 15 minutes and we're at 26. We're rocking it. Yeah. No, this game's awesome. I'm excited for people play it. I George was looking for you, too. Oh, yeah. He wants you to get back to work.
00:26:28
Speaker
um But, no, this i ah home run is overused, but i our initial impressions are nothing but positive. and I have no doubt that people are going to enjoy this game. Great. yeah Awesome. All right.
00:26:39
Speaker
We're back. we ah We've ah ah Tom feels we've taken over Stern. We've taken over st Stern. It was awesome talking to Keith. And we said, Keith, who else should we interview? And you were the first person he thought of. He said, you talk to Chuck.
00:26:51
Speaker
The very first one. You were the very first one. And we said, okay. That sounds good. So this is Chuck Ertz. He is the CG art director. so Yeah, video video art director, not to be mistaken for the cabinet, play field, banners, everything else that's 2D that you see in the on our in the hallways, at the trade shows, all that stuff.
00:27:10
Speaker
That's ah handled by Jeremy Packard's division now. Yeah. And I handle the graphics. But we're we're kind of a catch-all for... ah You know, we do some of the stuff for promotional, like, you know, marketing.
00:27:24
Speaker
um And we also do a lot of the sculpts that you see on the play field. Yeah. A lot of, you know, a lot of us came from video games and ah digital sculpting and model making for, you know, characters design and stuff like that. So it kind of all overlaps. So whenever we get into a situation, we'll get a model from like, you know, from the licensor and go like, hey, here's here's ah here's the model. You got to pose them and get them to work, you ah in a different environment.
00:27:48
Speaker
We'll generally do that in our my department. um Anything that's 3D kind of falls into our camp. um ah Yeah, so a lot of ex-video game guys yeah that got sick of the grind.
00:28:02
Speaker
yeah And also the fact that they make a product that is on a phone. and you you know Like, what do you do? I do this thing. Hold on. It's in the app store. you know It's just not the same as a giant cabinet that you can point and go, I made this thing. you' So it's it's it's a it's a it's a ah good job for people that are just sick of working 95 hours a week making. In my case, I worked at i worked on Mortal Kombat for 17 years.
00:28:28
Speaker
Blood and guts and stuff like was my specialty. Physics for you know intestines flying out of people. you were my entire childhood. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So, yeah, working on this is, you know, we we get, you know, it's it's a little different. Every game is different. We make, you know, three to four products a year. So it's not the same grind over and over.
00:28:48
Speaker
It's always a variety. A lot of problem solving. So you you're over all the games then? you Yeah. Yeah. I have my hand in everything. So obviously we're here. We just played King Kong, had a great time with it.
00:29:00
Speaker
So this is one of those situations, though, where you're – I'm assuming you were given nothing. Everything on the screen was all you guys. And it looks like three d animation is consistent throughout the whole – Yeah, so yeah we we try to mix it up between games. um Like, you know, if you see like we did on Foo Fighters, that was like kind of our – don't know, we call our Scooby-Doo game kind of thing where it was all like animated characters and stuff.
00:29:24
Speaker
um But we got an X – Warner Brothers animator that' that works on my team now that helped on that. and That's awesome. He pulled in a couple of his friends that he worked with in the past to help get that game done.
00:29:36
Speaker
um But yeah, generally we try to do a variety. like so We don't always want it to look the same. You don't want two games next to each other that look like it was kind of the same world. So we try to we try to switch it up. but um And then a lot of licenses we get, they have video clips like Jaws. So we have to kind of do the in-between parts between those movie clips and make it look like it kind of still belongs in that world. Yeah.
00:29:57
Speaker
and And sometimes you can't. So then you have to go way outside of it. to So like this is pinball world and that's video world kind of thing. Yeah. um But it's every game has got its own challenges, licensure challenges. And this game there wasn't a licensor.
00:30:10
Speaker
So but then when there isn't a licensor, you have a lot of people that Or like, cool, I have ideas too. And you're like, oh, I wish we had a licensor. So who who makes the final say? Is that you or is it Keith who makes the final say of an animation that makes it into Generally, keiths Keith's opinions or Keith's wants are higher you know higher ah you know priority than anybody else's, the designer.
00:30:33
Speaker
But usually there's a lot of back and forth where somebody will show you, like I want to do this scene from Independence Day where he blows up the White House. and' like, cool, not going to happen. So we could, we could kind of, you know, like it's all about like picking your battles. Like we want Godzilla to like, you know, step through the city and destroy everything. And you're like, those are simulations of buildings coming down.
00:30:57
Speaker
um how about his tail just does, you know, like, just and then i like, the and then the building comes down and then we don't have to show all of the street with all the cars and and that kind of stuff. So yeah we we kind of do a lot of that, like it implied, you know, implied destruction, um,
00:31:13
Speaker
you know like big you know like um I remember working on Black Knight and Steve Ritchie wanted a million soldiers coming up over a hill. billion-hundred thousand. and i'm like, how about we don't do that?
00:31:27
Speaker
and you know so and it's like You do a close-up of like horse hooves and soldiers' feet. and then you know It's like the old-timey you know movies where you just show the same six people going by. yeah You're like, cool, there's your million soldiers.
00:31:39
Speaker
There's a million people, you know, so it's that kind of stuff. So like a storyboard or anything like that? Yeah, so it's very much like a movie production in that you start with storyboards and then you kind of pick and choose how they, and then you animatic them and then you just kind of get them timed out.
00:31:56
Speaker
And then sometimes at that point you do the animatics, like, this is not going to work at all. So at least you've, you know, yeah you made a mistake. You made mistakes, cheat mistakes, we call it. like you know, ah early instead of trying to render out all this stuff and then finding out it doesn't work. And then even then we get stuff to the finished state and Keith will go like, yeah, I see this a lot on the screen. Like one particular scene is like, you'll see it on King Kong where he guy throws the car. Yeah. Then he throws the car, then he throws the car. And then so after watch playing after you see it in the game, you're like,
00:32:26
Speaker
Yeah, we need probably about four more of those you know so we're not seeing the same shot over and over again. So some of that stuff comes after the game is boxed up because you can't really predict how often it will be on the screen until it is. sure And then you go, oh, this is totally not working here. How how do you balance – Travis here is has openly admitted that he hates LCD screens and he and he doesn't look at them. um so Well, nobody does. That's what I'm saying, not invalidating you know what everything you do, but he doesn't like it. like the information on it.
00:32:55
Speaker
Oh, yeah. He just needs numbers. That's all I like. Well, that's all right. Well, you see, Keith's very much a numbers guy. Like, you'll see Keith's games where it's like, he's not trying to tell some crazy story. It's like Hulk smash, you know, Kong smash, Godzilla smash, and then score. And then that's usually, like, the extent of, like, this is all I want on the screen.
00:33:14
Speaker
And then you got other yeah know other designers that were like, I want everybody to follow the the the storyline crests and then yeah and then you got a conclusion and then like and then at the end nobody cares.
Integrating Animations in Pinball
00:33:25
Speaker
So you're like, thanks. you know there I'm saying, do you almost prioritize, like how do you find that balance of knowing, okay, ah you know the graphics that are displaying during a multiball, that's probably not a moment they're looking at the screen because of the chaos of the multiball.
00:33:41
Speaker
But yet there are other situations where you land that jackpot shot or mode select, you know, like obviously you're prioritizing moments where the ball is stalled. Right. Right. Yeah. for Chaos, you know, or you get those situations of overlapping animations where it's like the ball's finally stalled and then you have four animations to work through. So I'm assuming yeah soling that is a challenge. Yeah. So we.
00:34:01
Speaker
we The programmers, you know our our operating system, our pinball operating system has like a priority. and you You can weight things that are in there, like each scene or each you know each effect. we We just call everything on effect.
00:34:14
Speaker
Each effect has like a weight on it, like what's more important. and By default, like you know jackpots are higher priority than you know spinner award or whatever. like you know so like Those things will just nuke the other effect out.
00:34:29
Speaker
um Or if it's really if it's like three or four things are the same priority or same importance, it'll wait till each one's done and then display it. You know, just like I got to make sure the person saw that they got the thing.
00:34:39
Speaker
um But but you if you notice Keith's games, he does a lot of like throws out everything. except for the full screen effects and maybe the score frame. Like he doesn't like some of the other games look like, you know, it's like there's only this much video on the screen because it's just got so much all data. Yeah. And um and he he tries to avoid the data. I always i always make the joke. I'm like, yeah, man, we should get some more text on there because kids love to read. Just put a little more... let's read Let's read some more because pinball sucks. You need to read. i like reading. What's the solution? that Because I know like we've brainstormed before. um like i just I love DMD animations. I just think the art form of a DMD is really cool.
00:35:15
Speaker
But screen... like screen like Would it make your job easier if the size of the screen was like wider and thinner? or Or having dedicated screens? You know like you have Bond 60 that has the screen in the middle of the game.
00:35:28
Speaker
or Would you want more screens in a game? Would you want... No, okay. What would make you... So somehow pinball was really fun when the screen had no date on it.
00:35:40
Speaker
like like you know like i mean It was fun. That's why we all got into pinball. Not quite the 14-segment displays, but... The dots, they were still fun. like yeah You go play Creatures from last but Black Lagoon and you're like, oh, this was an awesome game. Or or you know so one of my favorite packages is Circus Voltaire.
00:35:58
Speaker
yeah you know the whole the whole it's just an art piece. but also just you know simple display so We're trying to get back to that because like once you add the screen, everybody wants to play video games on it. or you know or Oh, yeah. you know it too like they just you know like We could do so much now. And I'm like, the game's under the glass like like over and over again. like And that's Travis's argument. yeah yeah That's his biggest argument. No, I agree. Sounds like Chuck and me are on the same page. That's what it The director and he's on your page. No, i like I'd rather have less higher quality stuff than you know just a ton of
00:36:33
Speaker
whatever we can get done in four months because that's about how long we get for each game yeah so which is how many animators are actually working on a title uh we have 10 in our department 10 10 and variety right they're not all animators so we got a lot of 2d and we got technical guys and then we got you know stuff so weve we get 10 people and we generate hours of content a year which is well like you know If you look at like Hollywood's budgets for 10 minutes of content, it's like $20 million dollars for 10 minutes worth of computer graphics. And we do two hours for 10 people's salaries for a year. yeah's it's
00:37:11
Speaker
yeah i keep I keep trying to get more people. We don't have enough people. Were you involved with Stranger Things? Yeah. So that premium LE situation with the projector and the projection mapping...
00:37:23
Speaker
That was a pain in the butt. and Because you had all the display. So you had to you had to code it for a pro, but then you had all the additional data for a premium LE that you somehow magically had to work. Yeah. so So that one, I try to... It's one of those things where i mean whenever we spitball on ideas, you're like, this sounds like a really bad idea. they're like, no, it's not that bad. And then at the end, you're like, I told you it was a bad idea. It's a lot of work.
00:37:47
Speaker
So it was like basically one and a half times pinball machines. yeah You know, like it's it's you had to create for another screen and then if it was just that it would be fine. But then somehow get that data up on the display and not have it step on top of everything was that was a nightmare. Yeah. And then on top of the whole thing with like,
00:38:04
Speaker
You got a projector. What does the projector see from that angle? You know? Yeah. So we had to take the CAD files in and I had to basically mimic where the projector was in 3D, figure out what the field of view was, and then project registration lines on everything and then figure out where all of those like, because everything, the ramps are all on there. Everything's on there. Like everything lights up.
00:38:23
Speaker
And then to get it all you know to get that all to line up. Because all your rendered content is distorted. Pre-distorted. It'll be undistorted once it... Yeah, so it's actually... found so the So it's rendered from the view... of the from It's projected from this view and recorded from this view. you know like yeah So it's like you want to... Like the chevrons and stuff all have to look like chevrons. yeah If you actually see the rendered vi videos, they're just totally...
00:38:50
Speaker
Like totally distorted. yeah that just That sounds like a whole lot of work. Yeah, it was. right Well, i I don't know if this will make you feel good or not, but that sounds like so much work or Stranger Things, but Travis did participate in an entire tournament where he was playing a premium and didn't even realize it was a premium.
00:39:06
Speaker
you never even lost her He never even looked up. Well, okay. Here's why. to my defense To my defense, the projector works really well if there's no lights overhead. But if there's a ton light coming in.
00:39:18
Speaker
And if you're doing broadcast or the recording, they tend have lights on. Oh, yeah. The media for that. Thank you, Chuck. You two are a-holes. I'm going to start a podcast with Chuck. He's on my level. So how upset do you get when Brian Eddy and Dwight come in and say, guess what we put in our next topper?
00:39:37
Speaker
Because they keep putting screens in their toppers, which means more work for you. Yeah, so I probably shouldn't say this, but i got in a heated argument. He's argument about that, actually, because D&D was already D&D was probably twice the amount of content we've ever put in the game, period. Hands down.
00:39:54
Speaker
But I'm I does look amazing. though yeah Yeah. Yeah. But and and i and I told I told this to I've told this to many people before. I'm like, listen, I don't think you understand the fan base for D&D.
00:40:05
Speaker
is not going to like you can't labat you can't you can't sell them like D&D light or just so like or what you think D&D is. Right. like Like movies do. You know, it's like, you know, it's minecraft like that's why I'm like, Minecraft could have been the worst thing ever happened because it's like, you know, that that crowd know, you they don't want you that be condescending to their their their thing that they're really into. And I played D&D when I was in middle school, you know, back in the seventy s and and you know and then my
Design Philosophy and Mechanical Preferences
00:40:34
Speaker
daughters both play dnd now you know and so it's it's a age range from like you know 60 down to like 10 playing playing dnd um so i was like this you got to be faithful to the game and dwight's a big dnd guy so like we're like we need to have a variety of monsters if you're just fighting the same monster over and over again you've got doom
00:40:54
Speaker
you know like At that point, it's like the four monsters in Doom. So I'm like, you can't do that. So when he pitched like like a lot of creatures, management went, whoa, cut it like down to nothing. And I'm like, that's not this game.
00:41:10
Speaker
yeah yeah you know like In the future, let's cut things. But this one here has to be like all all in. It'll probably be the last game for a while that is that big because There was a lot of people upset about it.
00:41:21
Speaker
But ah but it it was even supposed to be bigger because Dwight wanted another screen on the play field that had all your stats on it. Oh, wow. stat screen. Wow. And I'm like, yeah, because kids love to read. Again, with the reading.
00:41:34
Speaker
I love that. So I was like, no. Because every time we do another screen, I try to explain to them that it's like, i used to get I used to have uncomfortable meetings with accounting when they go, what happened?
00:41:46
Speaker
And I'm like, you added another screen. you know yeah So then they go, don't do that. And I'm like, that sounds like not my pay grade to tell people what they can and can't do. So anyway, so we add another screen and I go, this is you know Star Wars. It's like another screen. And it's like, it's just not doing anything. I'm like, yeah.
00:42:02
Speaker
yeah you know Because it's a screen. It should do stuff. So and then you you do the thing for the screen and everybody gets like, then they're like, Anyway, so then we're not doing we're not doing another screen. We're not doing another screen like and then it's like Stranger Things comes out. I'm like, we we said no screen. It was a projector, right? Well, he was like, I wasn't here for that when you said that.
00:42:24
Speaker
And then we get done with that and then it's like, you know, in the case of like, you know, the the the Venom topper, yeah you know, that wasn't supposed to be a screen. So I was not involved in said topper until it was no longer feasible and then turned into a screen. yeah So I'm like, wait stop with the screens. So, yeah, it's it's.
00:42:42
Speaker
Well, I do know Dwight listens to this podcast. so So, you know, if he hasn't heard it before. Yeah, no. he just heard it again and and And I've i've had a ah billion times with him and he laughs and he's like, his joke is like, all right, we got four screens in the next. Yeah. no But, but I also think screens are kind of a cop out, right? Like,
00:43:00
Speaker
I couldn't come up with us guys on your page we should switch i couldn come up with a cool mech. you know So i put I put a screen there. you know like and i and i you know I'm like, no, come up with something that does something. yeah you know I like to think of that the play field as like ah if you could shrink yourself down, like what you know coolest carnival ride ever kind of a thing.
00:43:18
Speaker
And and then when you got screens all over everything, it's just it's like that TV, you know, more TV. You know, it doesn't. Data is fine, but I want to see something spin or crash or fold or collapse or yeah you know that that kind of thing. so You want pinball to be pinball. Pinball is mechanical. It's a mechanical game. yeah yeah yeah i just I never quite understood the whole...
00:43:39
Speaker
you know like i I don't know. Whatever the companies that have the whole screen is the play field and it's digital. And it's just missing something. Sounds like you want a job there. No. Because kids like to read. Because kids love to read. I think that's awesome. Yeah. Do you have a – I know Kong, i'm I'm enjoying what I'm seeing in there. I know that's a very – is it cel-shaded or what you're – not done yet.
00:44:03
Speaker
like But you're rendering – there's a – not cartoony, but kind of a cel-shaded style to it. Yeah. yeah So we try not to – okay. So i don't know if you guys have heard the term uncanny valley where where it's like stuff is photoreal. so But the human eye goes, ew, something's wrong, right? Like that's what – yeah whenever you like that's why Pixar looks so cartoony because soon as you get into that like Tron you know Flynn Tron really like yes wax museum from hell kind of the thing so we we we try to kind of stay in the cartoony world we try to get it to match the cabinet or at least get close to whatever the cabinets displaying that whatever it's obviously if it's a clip license that's hard but when like when you know Jeremy draws something we're trying to kind of like look at that and go like he's always got like a hard light
00:44:50
Speaker
you know, hard light, hard, you know, fill light, that kind of thing. And we try to, we try to replicate that. And a lot of times that ends up looking like, you know, claymation or, you know, or something along those lines where it looks like the renders are kind of real, but the characters aren't.
00:45:03
Speaker
kind of thing. um And we try to stay away from humans because humans are the first thing that everybody flips out and goes, ah! Creepy humans, right? You get like, they make realistic humans for movies and they spend $3 million dollars on it and you watch and you still go, like I don't like that at all.
00:45:18
Speaker
yeah And we don't have $3 million, dollars to you know we don't have that kind of budget, and so we just kind of skip the fight. Yeah, I know ah Turtles is one of my favorite games. it's It's a dream theme of mine. And I have zero complaints of the animations, but some people, April, that's the only game.
00:45:32
Speaker
You have all the stuff in the game. All that in the game. April was the... They're like, April. that's like And also the licensure made us make changes. So we didn't have a lot of That's where a people don't realize. Yeah. Yeah.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah. They go like, no, no, it's got to look more like this, you know? So and and also that whole crowd has some weird fetish thing with April. Well, yeah. There's a little bit of that like, why don't you make sexy April? like Stop.
00:45:58
Speaker
What's wrong with you? It's probably the kids that don't want to read. the kids Because they can't read. Deadpool. I know Deadpool has a crazy animation style. i don't It was some interview that said you essentially rendered everything out in 3D and then applied some sort of 8-bit.
00:46:12
Speaker
No, we redrew it. Oh, wow. Yeah. So um and that was another one. The licensure went, you could do anything. You you could do anything with this. It just can't look like the video game that was canceled.
00:46:24
Speaker
OK. It can't look like the movie. Yeah. Can't look like the cartoon because there was a cartoon or something in and it can't look. So is anything that you could draw, it can't look like or do 3D.
00:46:36
Speaker
But anything else is yeah you could do anything you want. So I was driving home after that meeting and I was losing my mind. yeah and i was like How are we going to do this? And I called George. It was just like at nine o'clock at night and i was contemplating to going to straight to a bar. And I was like, I'm like, George, I'm like, I got an idea. He's like, okay, you know, hit me.
00:46:57
Speaker
I go, 16-bit Deadpool. Doesn't look like the modern video game. Yeah. But also, and and he goes, where are we going find artists to do that? And I just what happened, my daughter, who was just graduating college for our her whole, i don't know what you call a thesis or senior project or whatever was pixel art.
00:47:18
Speaker
Like she went and did she chip off the old black. She's a big pixel. Pixel art is like everything kind of thing. And so I'm like, well, I got one of the best. you know She's he's like, who i know my daughter? He's like, oh, of course.
00:47:30
Speaker
yeah So anyways, it was so i I got a couple of the other artists like up to speed. in our And if you guys can look up the software, it's it's not a secret. It's called ProMotion. It's by Cosmigo. Anyways, it's the pixel it's the pixel animation software that if you were doing like Game Boy Advance no and that kind of stuff.
00:47:47
Speaker
So it's real we use real software that you make real pixel games with. you know And so we basically needed to kind of block out all the animations with like 3D models.
00:47:58
Speaker
And then we went in and drew over them to get the pixel look because you needed, shouldn't, it didn't, i I didn't want it to look like you put some crappy filter on it. It needed to look like real 19, you know, 1989, you know, pixel artwork kind of thing.
00:48:13
Speaker
And, and then the result was like, hundreds of hand-painted frames for each character. And so it was my, which would kill me because like, you know, you get on Pinside and Pinside's like, Stern totally skimped out and cheaped out and went off easy on making this whatever. I'm like, he has no idea. It was four times harder. It's cost per pixel, clearly. Yeah. It's like if it was 3D, it would have been done in half the time.
00:48:36
Speaker
Wow. But we wanted it to look like it like it was hand-drawn and so we hand-drew it and everything you see in there is all hand-drawn. There's no filters. There's no... you know, anything crazy in there. And I'm really proud of that because it flew through the licenses in two seconds because they're like, perfect. yeah Doesn't look like anything out there. Yeah. And then and also it had that nerd factor. And then oh George is like, well, if it's you got to have 1980 sound effects in there, you know. Yeah. So he's got like a little bit of you could hear a little bit of, a you know,
00:49:06
Speaker
you know, asteroids and, you know, just Defender and stuff is in there a little bit. that he's He snuck in stuff everywhere in there, which was a callbacks. And it kind of worked because Deadpool was kind of he's living in that whole wham, you know, the 80s was his his his time period. So.
00:49:23
Speaker
Well, what and you don't have the answers you don't want to, but is there a I mean, with all the different styles and all the different games that you've done, is there a game that you're like, thank God it's over? Or is there one you don't like, which was so challenging or just so much work? So every game I'm thank God it's over. yeah Yeah. And you can even talk to like George will confirm this too. When he's done working on a game, a lot of times he's like, I don't want to don't want to see that game again. And then a year later, you're like, oh, yeah, that was fun. Yeah.
00:49:49
Speaker
It's I like it to like that's why there's more than one child in every family. You know, like immediately after giving birth, you know, like I'm never doing that again. And then a year later, it wasn't too bad. And then you're like, I got two kids now. Oh, that's right.
00:50:02
Speaker
I'm never doing this again. You know, but ah yeah, there's there's yeah, there was. There was just a few moments where it was just like, like and we're much better now. like everybody else's Everybody's seasoned, and we've got some designers that are not insane.
00:50:19
Speaker
And so it's a lot better now where everybody's kind of like, just tell me what you can do, and then we'll work around that. Where, you know, when I started here 10 years ago, was just like, I'm the...
00:50:31
Speaker
yeah This is how we make this. You need to do what I tell you to do. And I'm like, it's never going to ship. And then you're going to be the guy that didn't ship the game. don't want to have to answer to management on why the game didn't ship, but you will.
00:50:45
Speaker
So yeah, it's it's it's ah Every game is is is a challenge, but like like I've said before, it's every game is different. So i'm not you're not you're not doing the same. you know Like Mortal Kombat, I did Blood and Guts, and then Blood Guts, and then Blood and Guts. yeah and And my joke is if you saw my search history at work, you'd call the police. Because it's just like you know gore yeah all day. you know Like, what is this? Skulls.
00:51:12
Speaker
you know, forensic files, you know, stuff like that. and you're like, this guy's got a problem. But yeah, no, it's ah it's you all of them have like a challenge, which is a blessing in in from just not getting bored with what you do. But also sometimes it's it's <unk> hard.
00:51:29
Speaker
But I also like them figuring out that, you know, the workaround like this is never going to work. How do you make it work? And then sometimes you you it comes to you like when like in the morning, you're like, hey, what if we just not do that and do this other thing, and it'll be the same result. you know So a lot of times we'll ask the designer, like what's the point of the mode?
00:51:48
Speaker
And it's just like, I just need Kong. but you know like In the case of Godzilla, Godzilla smashes that's this whole mode, it's just smashing. I'm like, what does he smash? He's like, that's you're you're the artist, you yeah make him smash stuff, I don't care. Keith's like, they whatever. I'm like, all right, so we got you know smash the bridge, smash the whatever, smash whatever.
00:52:07
Speaker
And in this case, they want him take out the bridge so take out the bridge And it was like, at first it was like Kong and then the bridge and then train and and all this stuff. And I'm like, you know, how do we do this in like three days? It's like, you put the you put the camera in the train yeah and then you foot.
00:52:24
Speaker
yeah And then you're, I got a foot and ah in ah in this shot and and and and buildings doing this and it's all over, you know, instead of like having to create this world that takes 16 hours to render, it's all taken care of in like two days worth of work.
00:52:38
Speaker
So it's yeah. So sometimes when you come with a solution, you're like, oh, OK. And then it always like nobody knows that the crazy scene that you had planned. and And so that's it's kind of nice until you do one of these podcasts. Yeah. when You're drinking Jack. It's 3.20 in the afternoon, everybody, if forre if you want to ah Spilling the secrets. Elvira. Elvira, you had, was this the last, I think I had heard that there was like one of the last times that she had, ah Cassandra had become Elvira and you got film footage from that.
00:53:10
Speaker
And then you guys, so were you, are are you a part of any of that? Like the filming of any of that? No, so Paul Chemnanket, Another guy that worked on Mortal Kombat back in the day, i pulled him in i sucked him into this world. um he one of That was one of the first projects he was on here, and he flew down, was it Texas? I forgot where it was, but anyways, wherever she lives, so um and they had a studio nearby, and they had to they had you know they she put on the outfit and did the whole thing. they she had something like 1800 lines or something like that. And she is the most professional, like hands down, like the most professional performer.
00:53:49
Speaker
She just went, she just cranked like through these lines. And then like every once in a while, a plane would fly over and she'd go, all right. And then she just hit that she would just hit it again. Like yeah she was directing herself and and Paul was like directing her on on like, you know, I need to, you know, this, whatever.
00:54:05
Speaker
So, but it turns out she was supposed to be like on the couch you know she And turns out that the couch got auctioned off or cut up into pieces and sold. Cut up and shipped with the SEs. Well, I think it was yeah it was already cut up by then, right? So we didn't have the couch. So we 3D rendered the couch and then composited her on the couch.
00:54:27
Speaker
and and And so that whole that whole thing is fake. So she was just on a green screen, just wow on a big screen. you know and a couch with green screen tarp over it and we filmed her on that. For 1800 lines. Yes. But yeah, that was that was and still one of my favorite games just because the simplicity ah that it's a it's a really well designed game and Lyman, you know, killed it.
00:54:50
Speaker
And Greg Ferris is, you know, one of my favorite artists, very clean. You know, his artwork was very clean on the side of the cabinet it was very much as Elvira spiral, you know, nothing, nothing going crazy.
00:55:02
Speaker
um you know it's it's i think it's just a really good art piece too you know and and also she because she was so involved in it all the ah audio call outs um and all the video content was uh from her you know it's all not open source is's the term of domain public domain oh cool video that she put in her own dvds as as like a mystery science theater 3000 kind of thing yeah so we just use the same the same ah videos, same movies that she used and then had her do like commentary the way she did on the DVDs, but in the game.
00:55:35
Speaker
So yeah, that was that was fun. And I know so many people that have the first two L-Virus and they're like, and got I got the first two. I have to have the third. You got to have house they all have to be in the they have to be in a row, you know. So but I bet you we sold probably 100 just people that had the two other ones, you know, yeah sight unseen just because they needed all three. Yeah.
00:55:54
Speaker
So. Well, maybe we'll just end on, unless you guys have any specific questions, but what's your favorite, do you have a favorite, like animation or a favorite clip or something that pops up on one of your games that just makes you smile every time you see it? Kind of, we just saw, we just saw Kong eat the ball, you know, you get an extra ball. We need to, now everybody's got eat the ball now. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. T-Rex. Yeah. Gotta eat the ball because everybody throws a fit about the ball now eating. The eating. Shark's gotta eat the ball. Shark's gotta eat the ball. Everything's gotta eat the ball.
00:56:27
Speaker
um i think I think the one I'm i um probably, yeah probably the animation, and I didn't do it. just Alex Borre is another artist that I go way back with.
00:56:38
Speaker
he He freelances every once a while on projects with us. ah He's the one that did it. But it was um fourth wall Deadpool. Yeah. That was a static image.
00:56:50
Speaker
Oh, and it was all puppeted um with vertices. Like if you guys are on top of the whole 3D thing, it was because of memory constraints. We couldn't play flip books that were as big as the screen, you know, as big as that thing would have to have been.
00:57:05
Speaker
And so it was basically just a puppeted single image that looked like it was 3D, you know, and it was such a trick that it was, uh, like it it solved so many problems because this thing had to stay in memory and be come up whenever whenever it's called.
00:57:21
Speaker
So it took a you know, if it was an animation, it would have taken up like too much memory and it wouldn't have worked. And so, you know, I came up with the idea of making it a like a puppeted thing. And then Alex is like, I could crank that out.
00:57:34
Speaker
And then and then he has like something like 600 call outs that it's all synced to. Well, I mean, it too. So That one and then the other one, which people, again, because nobody watches the screen, is the, if you look at Aerosmith, everything is synced. It's all lip synced to the songs, everything on there, because nobody wanted to see Aerosmith today.
00:58:01
Speaker
aeros smith today yeah they They want to see Aerosmith like they remember them you know back in the day. And so when it came down to, we couldn't get any video footage of them but in concert. like They don't own it. like the Other companies bought it and that kind of thing.
00:58:16
Speaker
So we had to put something on the screen. And that's what I was just like, we're going do cartoon Aerosmith. and and And Gary was just like, no, no, no more Scooby-Doo. Nobody wants to see s Scooby-Doo.
00:58:27
Speaker
So it was but we ended up doing it and everybody was like, this is going to be a nightmare and nobody's nobody's going to care. And then the end result was like, everybody's like, thank God you didn't put Steven Tyler all over this. Revolution X, the last game he was in, and that was like 30 years ago. yeah So um I'm like, but that one there, like from a technical standpoint to get all those animations to be synced.
00:58:48
Speaker
and all the all the the band and the guitar to kind of look like they're actually playing the instruments ah for a bunch of people that don't play instruments. yeah yeah That was that was ah was ah quite a feat. Wrote some custom tools in you know Python scripts and stuff to make that happen.
00:59:02
Speaker
um and and it And it worked. so those are the Of course, that was that was one of the very first video effects that we did on the screen, and then everybody wanted to see everything on the screen. So it was like yeah it was a lot of pressure.
00:59:14
Speaker
That and Batman 66 were the two first Spike 2 screen games. This was back in 2017 or sometime around that. Yeah, 2017. Yeah, yeah. Well, I lied. I have one more question for you, which is we're good friends with Ray Day, or I assume we're friends. But I know Ray, whenever I message Ray, it's like, how do I do this? And he's like, read the freaking screen because he's like, I do all this work to put the text on the screen. Yeah, he does text. He fills the screen with text. He does, but I do need to give him a shout out because everything that he's done in Metallica is fantastic. And I will say the art direction that you went, like, I like DMD, so I like Metallica's animations. But the fact that you took the DMD animations, made them 3D, but made them stylized in this black and white, gritty style. Fantastic. Total accident.
01:00:00
Speaker
Really? Yeah. now How was that a total accident? Well, OK, so um Reese Cooper did the the art, right? Yeah. And um he he the way he does art, he he does all the art.
01:00:12
Speaker
pen and ink. And then at last minute, he and then he decides what the colors are. okay He doesn't finish a piece and then finish a piece. It's all like it's all this you know holistic approach to the art thing.
01:00:23
Speaker
Right. which is Which is, his that's his art style and that's how he does it. but Great. But that doesn't give us anything to work on. like So when we started that project, all I had was black and white pen and inks. Oh, wow. And I'm like, what's the color scheme? And they're like, man, we haven't decided yet. I'm like, oh, Jesus. so I'm like, OK, we're going to go black and white for now, and then we'll color it when you color it.
01:00:47
Speaker
And then I'm like, but until then, like a lot of times when we show stuff in production, you get a lot of people that don't understand like process that will go like, is this going to be colored? They'll always ask stuff. So you're always whenever we show work in progress stuff, it's always kind of a hit or miss, depending on who the audience is. and in that case, we we had all black and white in the in the game.
01:01:09
Speaker
And everybody lost their minds and went, that looks done. um Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly what we were going for with with the done. You know, and then we have a couple of color things that pop up on it, but just rarely to sure accentuate certain things. But it's it's yeah we went with that.
01:01:26
Speaker
And in the whole idea was like kind of your Frank Miller, you know, you know, since the in city yeah kind of a vibe. And we had to do an all three d because we didn't because there was two games stacked on top of each other. So we had to split the team.
Licensing Challenges and Creative Solutions
01:01:40
Speaker
And so half of us were working on X-Men, half of us were working on Metallica. And so we went all 3D because X-Men was a 2D nightmare. you know we did We had no content for X-Men. The licensure gave us nothing. So we like all had to learn how to draw comics. Which is a shame because the X-Men, the that latest animated show just came out, which was fantastic. Right.
01:02:00
Speaker
So I know i was I'm a huge X-Men fan. So I was like, oh, if they get access, nope. No, well, they told us specifically don't make it look like that because that's a separate license. that's yeah X-Men 97 was its own thing. According to Pinside, it's all the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. According to Pinside. Oh, God. Oh, God, I love Pinside.
01:02:18
Speaker
Yeah. It was like, there's everybody there is a pro. The joke I always tell is like, you know, like that Pinside, they're like, Stern is so stupid. Why didn't they get, you know, why didn't they get the whatever, like ah lincoln in Aerosmith? Why didn't they get Dream On? It's a no-brainer. And I'm like, did Dream On cost, just this song cost more than the entire other license with all the other music, just one, yeah and they don't own it.
01:02:42
Speaker
right It's Sony or whatever. So I'm like, you know, and i don't I don't come to Best Buy and tell you how to do your job. you know whatever just The little bit that I've learned in a few years of doing this is most decisions that Pinsiders have, you guys already had that idea, and it's typically a licensor or a – like a license. It's always related to license. Pinside is license-free.
01:03:02
Speaker
That's the difference. They forget that part. They're license-free. They have no budget constraints. not right no They have unlimited labor. But they're also super mad if the cost, like, if you're like, cool, we got Dream on, now your pinball machine is 12 grand. yeah And then we're like, yeah there there's a cash grab. Really? Now it's a cash grab. i mean like If we actually had to pay for all of the ideas you guys had, you couldn't afford this. this wouldn't be an like We were very cautious about the decisions we make to try to keep the games as affordable as we can.
01:03:33
Speaker
Sure. and And it gets harder and harder now with, you know, the steel costs. Everything's gone crazy. So we we, you know, we we tried to we tried to we try to keep it, you know, in that in that realm of like yeah not everything in the kitchen sink. That's why you don't have four screens like Dwight once. You only have the one screen. Well, you know, yeah ironically, that the the screens are cheaper than the Max.
01:03:55
Speaker
So that's why they're like, you know, they blow their their budget. And they were like, I got $30 left over. Yeah. Screen. Yeah. You know, you're like, no, no, no. How about just don't just. Can the screen be a solid color at all times? Yes. On the pro.
01:04:09
Speaker
On the pro. It'll be a piece of plastic with a sticker on it. And then everybody will go like, no, don't do this. Stop with the stop with the stickers. Well, so. We very much appreciate your time. I don't know what Keith told you, how long you'd be. you probably said five minutes. No, you just just get in there. Oh, well, thank you. I just do whatever Keith asks. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. He's the goat.
01:04:29
Speaker
Yeah. no ah and everything i mean everything we're seeing so far in King Kong looks fantastic. And obviously, you've been a part of Stern for a long time. So congrats on every this whole catalog of stuff. I was just telling the game, when you see all the machines in one, generally, we don't have, like, at the previous building, we didn't have a room to have all everything we made.
01:04:48
Speaker
Yeah. Out there and you walk past it and you're like, you know, I've worked on over 30 titles in 10 years, you know, compared the video game world where you work on one every like three years, you know, it'd be like three titles. This is like 10 times that, you know, yeah and sometimes I'll see an animation I did and I don't remember it.
01:05:05
Speaker
like actually making it you know like oh my god yeah oh that's right oh i totally forgot i did that you know so it's that kind of stuff where get called a meeting like remember that thing you did i'm like no no was it good was it good yeah are you gonna yell at me because then i don't yeah yeah well it's something be proud of for sure that's awesome collection of work but um No, appreciate you coming on. You guys sticking around for pizza?
01:05:27
Speaker
ah yeah Yeah. That's really, I think that's the only reason people are coming. yeah yeah They're like, get an extra recording. I came here for the ball picture and then the pizza. yeah Awesome. We'll take you to check. Good meeting you. All right. so Take it easy, you guys. Thank you. See Good meeting Appreciate it. Until next time.
01:05:44
Speaker
Okay, ah I have no idea how I'm going to get this together, so I i don't know if to put it. It doesn't matter. Separate episodes. Yeah, it doesn't matter. We're just pulling more people in. um And, ah ah yeah. Look who we found.
01:05:57
Speaker
Yeah, we found Zobietti, Jeremy Packer. First and foremost, congrats on the promotion. ah Thank you. ah Your new title is your director of... Studio art director. Studio art director, okay. Which sounds great because it has, like, more words.
01:06:10
Speaker
But... what it what it really mean no raise yeah what really well now it know what what What it really means is that I now have to manage fires from the top of the buildings as opposed to the bottom of the building Yeah, so I know Chuck clarified that he basically, he is the, what was it, CG art director? So it's basically everything graphics on a screen. Yeah, all the motion stuff. So you are print, is that correct? or Well, 2D art is what they call it, and and and we work together. um
01:06:45
Speaker
Obviously, like there's times on all projects where 2D art and 3D need to meet up. Yeah. And stuff. So um and I've always had a good working relationship with Chuck and on my projects, I would always contribute if they needed me.
01:07:00
Speaker
um And and I'm hoping that all the artists that I hire and work with are as capable in that regard. Sure. Because that would be fantastic. So I know, obviously, we if you look at like X-Men, X-Men was a ton of, like he was saying, all the graphics there are essentially 2D graphics. Yeah. So a ton of hand-drawn art.
01:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. You obviously designed, you did all the art on the play field, you did all the art on the cabinet. How much of your art was brought into the screen as well? So um i don't know if you know this or not, but the way things work here is we're always working on 3 billion games at a time. Okay. Okay.
01:07:39
Speaker
three um And at this time we were working on four. Oh, wow. And no, it wasn't quite that many. But but um but ah what happened was when I got done with the actual game art, Chuck, their team was in need of of some stuff.
01:07:55
Speaker
Yeah. And so I actually took like a three or four week period where they would sort of throw me animatics and different things like, hey, we need this pose. We need this pose, whatever for this character, that character um as to what is mine versus theirs.
01:08:11
Speaker
Well, that's a tough one. Not a lot, I would say, because they had had a lot done before I got into it. There was just, you know, a few holes here and there and stuff they wanted to match up a little better and and stuff like that. But um But you essentially established the style guide of that game. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Usually it was most of the games that I work on. um That's sort of one of the things that I get to do. and And obviously Marvel's been really nice because I've never had any revisions from them. They've always been oh nice really, yeah really kind.
01:08:41
Speaker
And that's, I think, probably why I've done as many Marvel games as I have. Which is both good and bad, I've read on Pinside. Everybody here loves Pinside. We established earlier that Pinside is fantastic. They know everything. No, yeah i'm I'll be honest with you. It it helps me tremendously um because I can find out exactly what people want. Apparently, um very desaturated yeah simple.
01:09:11
Speaker
Play fields. Simple play Okay, let's talk. Obviously, we're here we're here for the King Kong Media Day. Oh, yeah. And um first and foremost, the game is fantastic. Not only does it shoot great, the rules are up, but visually, we we all love the game.
01:09:25
Speaker
So I know this is a unique situation because it's three artists all day. So do you want to clarify? like Tell us which parts you did so we can tell you which parts we actually love. yeah which We're going to make sure of this. is So this before I answer this question, because I but get asked this ah quite a bit now that you know people are seeing the game.
01:09:41
Speaker
First off, what didn't you like? And then I'll tell you what I did. and That whole side of the cabinet? Yeah. That wasn't me. No. yeah I personally...
01:09:55
Speaker
I love the color purple. like i genuinely love the color purple. I love the color purple. So when X-Men rolls out with all the purple, yeah I'm like, this is so great. And then to see this, I was worried that King Kong was going to be greens and blacks and browns. So this is funny. This is funny.
01:10:11
Speaker
Like if you look at what I've done, and and I know a lot of people don't appreciate it, but but what I set out to do when I did Ghostbusters, They were still using Photoshop style. guys Yeah. and And cabinet sides were real simple.
01:10:28
Speaker
And I said, oh, man, these people are paying a lot of money. i had gotten you know, I'd been working with, you know, John Papaduke and all that failed stuff. And and I go, here's my shot. I want to prove that we can do this. And now there were limitations. I came in very late and I had very little time.
01:10:45
Speaker
And that's why you did like the back glass and translates are kind of variations of each other. Also, also due to licensing approvals, it was very difficult. ah Bill Murray doesn't have an agent ah trying to track him down. Yeah.
01:10:59
Speaker
We're like, we got one shot. We got one shot. Anyway. so So like my whole goal in pinball all along was to try to elevate the quality of the art, ah whether people like style is another story. but um But so over the years, whenever I work on a new game, I try to set myself up. I go, well, I'm gonna try something a little different here.
01:11:20
Speaker
But my mindset, because I was moving so quickly from game to game, like there's some overlap, right? And there's some things that I like personally. And I come from the gig poster world. ah which is silkscreen, which is why I always love the visuals of pinball pre Photoshop was because it was all silkscreen and and in that process sort of creates a little bit of the style.
01:11:41
Speaker
And um what what happened over time, in my opinion, was ah some of my games would would have like this little seed of of something that i i just got either stuck on or i really liked i can't determine which now um and they would make their way over for instance um what was the game that i did right before godzilla and and everyone goes well it was avengers right in infinity question it wasn't even though it came out
01:12:15
Speaker
It was turtles. Oh, so Godzilla being green was all because of the turtles. And people don't realize that. That's a lot. Yeah, it's a huge. I was hoping I could come up with more for that. lie No, I was like, but no way that that's the. But yeah what in actuality, what I was getting at was the fact that there there are things you will see that that do cross over. And in particular, when I was working on X-Men,
01:12:42
Speaker
um I was trying to do a love letter to ninety s X-Men that I grew up with. Oh, yeah. um and And a lot of those covers and palettes and a lot of that was due to the the printing process limitations at the time.
01:12:54
Speaker
We had those beautiful you know purples and magentas and everything. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm definitely going lean into that. Yeah. And then what what happened is when I came into Kong, here's the thing.
01:13:06
Speaker
I didn't even come up with the palettes for Kong. Yeah. That was done by Kevin O'Connor. And Kevin O'Connor had gone through and and done um all of this fantastic legwork ah to sort of get the game and create this world.
01:13:20
Speaker
But they brought me in because they were still kind of uncertain on, so you know, certain. I don't know, you know, like, yeah how do we approach Kong and the other? and And so Kevin and I worked together on the LE back glass and that's sort of where everything started to click a little bit.
01:13:35
Speaker
and and um And then all of a sudden, you know, we went forward. But by having said that, the smoke, i on on the premium, very magentas and purples. um That was part of the palette, but I purposely chose it because I knew it was going to be a large swath of it um as sort of this, you know, just...
01:14:02
Speaker
reaction to having my brain still attuned to how I was working on X-Men. Interesting. It's just a bizarre thing that in in hindsight you get away from it and you look back on it and you go, oh, that's why people hate me.
01:14:15
Speaker
Well, no, no, I. I think it's, um I don't know. our Art is so subjective. Art is so subjective. Now, obviously, there's a challenge with pinball art, specifically on the play field, that not only does the art need to look cool, but it also needs to communicate yeah what you're doing. yeah um are Do you have any art on the play field of Kong, or that's all? ah the The Kong heads.
01:14:37
Speaker
The Kong heads. The Kong heads are mine. There's a few there's a few other things, um little things, some bananas. Yeah. Are you the 2.43 billion bananas or whatever that is? Greg had actually done that area.
01:14:51
Speaker
And then Keith keith had like a change. like He's like, oh, wait a minute. He's like, I want to do this. And so he wanted me to make a few changes or whatever. And so there's actually... Okay, this is going sound bad. i don't know I don't know if I'll get fired for this. So Greg had... You know the... ah the ah the ah homage to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, but it's a banana mobile. Did you see that on the play field? I have not. It's on that right side. You got to find it. Anyway, Greg had this trail of smoke that was coming out of the back of the car that looked like banana splooge. Oh, OK. All right. No worries.
01:15:28
Speaker
and Can we say so anyway? Yeah. whatever But and and so I'm not sure if this is supposed to be official marketing talk, but banana splooge. And and so what ended up happening was that we're like and I actually see was the one who brought it up as a joke. I'm like, do we really want the banana splooge? And then all of a sudden everyone fixated on it. They're like, oh, yeah, that doesn't look right.
01:15:50
Speaker
So anyway, so they're up that shot. I think he he talked about it when you when you hit that um that orbit. and And if it doesn't have enough momentum, it it can drop down to get that. that So right around that area, um i put a banana peel with some banana splooge to signify that you slipped And missed it. If you go to it whatever.
01:16:19
Speaker
But that was my that was actually for for Greg, ah because I had to take we had to take a splooge out. I know what to look for. I know what to go out there and look for. But well having said that that, the play field was ah Greg.
01:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm almost in in by the way. um it all It made sense to me, too, because like this is this has the most inserts of a Keith game, and in my opinion. like like and And so I looked at it, and even his ah arrangements, and I think, you know obviously, it was intentional based on his love for the games of the era, because he really wanted to to kind of do this as a homage to, I used homage twice.
01:16:57
Speaker
You did. You used sploogs like four times. Can you give me a thesaurus? We were told earlier that Stern, because of this license, that Stern can actually possibly make t-shirts and stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Banana sploogs. And toys.
01:17:16
Speaker
And toys. Well, I don't know if we want to make a banana sploog Maybe they're going to be toys for an older. That 12-year-old listener we got. For the older demographic. For the older. It's not a good idea.
01:17:26
Speaker
so this That's the first thing. Listen, it's been fun being the art director for, well, until today. You probably won't be fired, but demoted. Whatever. No, that's awesome. but yeah So so greg the play field is really great.
01:17:45
Speaker
And I think you know he did an amazing job. yeah really you know and And I heard saw somebody say it. It looks like Elvira. And I'm like, yes, of course, it looks exactly like Elvira. doesn't look Yeah, but but but I get it's just the style choice.
01:17:58
Speaker
But um I know we don't have a ton of time, but I've always wanted to ask an artist, the key chains, at what point in your design of a cabinet, do you start thinking about the graphics you're going to put on a key chain?
01:18:12
Speaker
Because you you do you're free yours are pretty creative. Well, it depends. so It depends. By the way, i will i will i um wanted to see if I could actually get one. it So um on the LE, and you guys didn't get to see the LE, and I apologize. That's my fault because there was change. I have one on order. What's going on? There's a change to the cabinet front.
01:18:32
Speaker
um that that it's the right change. But because we didn't have one that we could build up with the right cabinet front, they didn't want to show. Sure. Sure. And I get that. I get that. But at the same time, you got to see it because it is all the art looks way better.
01:18:45
Speaker
No, no, no. I'm not saying it looks better. Yeah. See, this is going to get fired. No, the metallic. Yeah, it really it really. it Yeah. It makes things look look like a million bucks. And so um ah Now I got off track there. What was that? Keychains. The keychains. Well, I didn't ask that. He wants to know about keychains. when it comes to bless.
01:19:06
Speaker
I got to get one of these for you. But the LE is going to have an actual ah lockdown bar plastic decal to to give instruction. Now, why only the LE? I don't. Listen, I could.
01:19:23
Speaker
I don't know. But but but by having said that, I mean, I guess it's because it's the l LE. You know, you get extra stuff. But but I was was working with Keith. It was ah over the weekend. And, and like, ah i'm I'm, like, passing stuff back to him. And and I'm, like, you know, like – What is it supposed to say?
01:19:40
Speaker
like you know What's the instruction here? What is it or whatever? And so I just i worked one up and i'll I'll send it to you guys. And it's basically just use action button to fling poo.
01:19:52
Speaker
and And it's got Kong flinging poo at you. Anyway, we we didn't go with that one. No, that one.
01:20:03
Speaker
But having said that, that's sort of how keychains come about too. Okay, just jokes. Yeah, it's just sort of we toss things around. Sometimes there's ideas that, you know, requests.
01:20:13
Speaker
um ah Lots of times, you know, jack Jack always has certain requests and then others will like, do what you want. And so it it just kind of happens um naturally. Usually I'm exhausted by the time we even get to those. yeah So it depends. But...
01:20:30
Speaker
Well, I know i I appreciate them. I know there's plenty of people that just leave them in the goodie bag. But i i'm always I look at that as those are the Easter eggs. Those are the fun little things. I like them. Maybe one more question because yeah I know you have to go. Designing for a mirrored back glass. I know Tom over there, he's he's a fan of the LEs.
01:20:47
Speaker
i know i love i The mirrored back glass are incredible. I wish you sold them separate. I understand why you don't. But designing with a mirror in mind. How challenging is that or incorporating that type of effect into the art?
01:20:59
Speaker
It's actually for me, i don't consider it terribly challenging, but only because I've done so many now and i I kind of have a really good gauge on on certain things that I know will work and won't work.
01:21:10
Speaker
um the The thing you have to keep in mind is mirror is either going to be reflective and and bright and light or it's going to be black. and So so when you when you think about that, keeping it, and you'll see this a lot, and this is the way they've done it for years, is a lot of times you'll see sort of a stroke around line art.
01:21:32
Speaker
Yep. Because essentially you're just extending the line art and you know that's going to work. So that's and not not that i I don't put a lot of thought into it. I'm just saying like as a baseline, you know that will work.
01:21:43
Speaker
So you start there. Then you try to find interesting areas where you can create glints or fills where you can be. Oh, I want more mirror. I want more mirror.
01:21:53
Speaker
And obviously logos always you know get strokes and and things like that. But um but like, for instance, I plan Ellie's that way. So like on and and I know we're we're supposed to be talking about Kong, but like, for instance, on um X-Men.
01:22:06
Speaker
I said, OK, this is going to be Danger Room because Danger Room will allow me to get more metallics. OK, I'm going to have Colossus right up front because he's metallic. I mean, like you know, you you kind of try to plan things that way.
01:22:19
Speaker
um and And right now, stepping into the new role, I'm working with a cadre of artists for different projects um of various stages. And I'm kind of trying to impart that onto these. And some of them have never done pinball art before. for instance. And and so it's it's really kind of a fun thing to analyze and look back on that I haven't.
01:22:43
Speaker
I've just sort of been running for you know the last 10 years forward and and not, you know, I think things through in my head, but I don't necessarily communicate them. so So it's just one of those things. Now it's interesting. I get to kind of look at it differently. Sure.
01:22:57
Speaker
And of course, remind them to make sure there's very little color. Yeah, more color. Make sure that you simplify art on the play field because people don't want that. I read it. Yeah. Keep it simple. I've also requested from the designers no more than three inserts on any play field. So with your new role, though, does that mean, I mean, are you going to be drawing less or no?
01:23:24
Speaker
For a little while, probably. yeah Okay. Until, until, um, uh, you know, I can, I can, you know, get a good, sort of, um, I guess control over everything and, and yeah trust, cause I'm not going to take anything on that. I can't do the way I I'm going to do it. Like, i like when I do something, uh, like I, I'll give you an example. When I came into Kong,
01:23:48
Speaker
um I did not take an evening or weekend off until this past weekend. Wow. And when I came into it was, you know, right around the holidays.
01:24:00
Speaker
So I am exhausted and need a vacation right now. ah which I hear tomorrow is Good Friday. That's a start. but but but But i I go deep and and that's why, honestly, to to be honest, like I realize art is subjective.
01:24:17
Speaker
yeah The only reason I ever let anything get to me at all is because of the fact that I literally make myself miserable while I work on these things. So to see that some people are not, you know, like enthralled, like I don't care if they they go like, it's not my cup of tea.
01:24:32
Speaker
But when they go, not only is it not my cup of tea, but it's the worst thing I've ever seen. And I hope he dies. Then I go, well, wait a minute. That seems a little bit much. A little strong. Yeah.
01:24:44
Speaker
Well, um. Yeah. Sorry to those few pin side guys that get that upset. Few? I can. I'm telling you, they're growing. Well, the three of us aren't aren't in that crowd. No, no, listen, listen. I don't like you don't have to love everything I do, right? Like you don't have to love everything everyone does.
01:25:03
Speaker
I mean, if you do, you're probably a very nice person. yeah I'd like to be your friend. But um but but yeah, no, it's it's it is what it is. it's I only bring it up now because like now is like we're under a magnifying glass and all of the most, you know, vile comments are out there and we pass them around to each other.
01:25:25
Speaker
I know we actually, Tom and I talked about this last night um on stream that, you know, Godzilla, when Godzilla came out, yeah it got, it caught a lot of shade for the art, but fast forward, nobody talks about that anymore. They talk about great Godzilla It's number one on pin side. guess it was fantastic when it turned black and white though. Well, now everything's going to be black and white. I read that. I read that. Yeah. And to just for black and white art packages, I mean, you just open up the file.
01:25:51
Speaker
You just go to no color mode, black white. done, right? You don't have to redraw anything. No, there's actually quite a bit of work that goes into it. um and And a lot more on that one um initially. and i And I actually tried to on that one. I tried to do... um ah some some embossed matte layer on the package. and and And I'm like, this is going to be beautiful.
01:26:16
Speaker
We've got all this stuff, you know. and and And then we saw it next to the metallic, all metallic. We go, damn it, it looks better. like i did all this extra work to try to make this thing like next level. And I'm like, oh man, the all metallic looks way better. yeah I don't know why. just is just the way it turns out. But...
01:26:34
Speaker
um But yeah, ah to answer the fact that you did not ask a question there, I'm tired. That's fine. And I know you got a long drive ahead of you. So, hey, we appreciate you. Thanks for doing what you're doing. Congrats again on the new job. Thank you. um Yeah. More color.
01:26:53
Speaker
More color. No, less. my less color i color horse My goal is to, and by the way, I think this is why they hired me as art director. is to get me out of the way.
01:27:04
Speaker
They're like, oh we got to get him off this stuff. Yeah. So when Marvel calls, they say, oh, he's not an option anymore. He's a director. Yeah, no. Hey, by the way, all you people who hate my guts, good luck on them style guy Marvel games, whatever those are. I know.
01:27:20
Speaker
I don't know. i Honestly, i don't there's no I don't think there's any Marvel games planned right now. Good luck. Good luck with those. I hope you enjoy them. No, um i yeah, no, no, no.
01:27:32
Speaker
um My goal really is to try to facilitate and bring some new blood here that that I think can elevate things in ways that I couldn't. yeah My goal is to make people better than I was. So, well, I hope it happens.
01:27:47
Speaker
Yeah, no, that sounds awesome. Yeah. And and um and no easy feet for sure. No, it's not. But but, you know, I thankfully I've worked here, you know, I've worked with Stern for 10 years and before that with John Papaduke, which, yeah, I mean, that's like the worst thing in the world. so So like when I came to Stern, I'm like, this is great by comparison. And little did I know, it's also awful.
01:28:09
Speaker
And then, no, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But no, pin pin pinball is just pinballs just not a straightforward no process. And so what I want to do is take my knowledge and insight from the last 10 years and and um try to help ease people in that may not have been able to do it because of the schedules or because of, you know, whatever it is, and and just, you know, find the shortcuts um to help them you know, free up and and do good work. Yeah.
01:28:41
Speaker
We'll see if it happens and maybe you guys will be back sometime and you'll be like, it didn't happen. What's up? Yeah. When were you starting that process? Because it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. yeah or Or you'll be you'll be here talking to my replacement. Yeah. Next week. Yeah.
01:28:57
Speaker
Well, hey, we appreciate you. Keep up the great work. Thanks for coming on this and chatting it up. know you've got to start a drive, but um yeah. yeah Your artwork is great. Well, I appreciate that you think that. Well said, Tom. I appreciate that think that.
01:29:09
Speaker
All right. We'll see you. Take care, guys. Okay. Well, um we just keep finding – we're just moving up. We just keep finding more and more people to talk to.
01:29:19
Speaker
And, yeah, thank you so much for joining this little conversation. We have Matthew and Gary, um and we're loving Kong. So really weird. to I mean, how many how many weeks have you been here? I've been here forever.
01:29:32
Speaker
Three and a half weeks. Three and a half weeks. And you've been here how many years? Well, I've been in the pinball business, I tell everyone, for 78 years because ah my father got in the pinball business. He started as a game operator, ah then a game distributor. And he went to – he was in Philadelphia, went to see 35-year-old
Marketing Pinball to New Audiences
01:29:56
Speaker
punk kid. I can say that because I'm turning 80.
01:29:58
Speaker
He went to see his supplier, Harry Williams, in 1947, sat behind Harry's desk, kidding around, put his feet up and said on the desk, said, why don't you sell me the company? So Harry flew around this city in his little Bonanza airplane for ah three hours, came down and sold Sam half the business. So I say that I've been in it 78 years.
01:30:22
Speaker
This company. Started as you all know, Dade East Pinball in 1986. Sam, did he died in 84, so he didn't get to see this. And then we sold it to Sega. And then I but i myself and as my associates bought it back. And since then, Dave Peterson joined us. But, you know, i um I've done all this stuff before, but ah and Matthew's joined us. We're going to talk a little bit about ah and His, ah marketing you know, marketing, why it's so important for us to enlarge that. Yeah. And what his background is. But, they you know, you you've asked me, you know, some question.
01:31:03
Speaker
ah But you guys you guys are, by the way, you don't have to ask me a question. You guys know I just will talk. But tell us tell us, tell your audience, let's talk about why are you here and what have you seen and has this been good and have you enjoyed it?
01:31:17
Speaker
And let let's we're going to interview you guys. Tell me about this. Tell me about it. I was just going to do some simple math to say collectively we're at a little over 78 years of pinball experience. Is that the... Well, that's right because he's... But he's got lots of game experience. Talk about your game experience. I've been in the video game business for 24 years, 25 years.
01:31:37
Speaker
Started at Activision, worked on really big brands like Marvel and and disney Then I moved into working at Warner Brothers Games, which has a lot of big IP as well. You know, the DC Comics, like Batman Arkham series. Nice. Original IPs like Mortal Kombat.
01:31:53
Speaker
And then also more family-friendly titles like Lego and Harry Potter. So worked on a lot of different cool a lot of big brands at Warner Brothers. And then I was at WWE overseeing and running their video game business. So worked specifically just on the WWE IP.
01:32:08
Speaker
But yeah, i've been collectively in the video game business for 25 years, working on console and mobile games and PC as well. So a wide variety of platforms, yeah a wide variety of IP, ah primarily in the entertainment space.
01:32:23
Speaker
za Zach has done a great job for us. Joe with Zach have done a great job. Yeah. Largely with the community, but also, know, pass it into ah just general publication and so forth. And it's some of the like the CES show or trade shows.
01:32:40
Speaker
um And Zach speaks well of pinball and makes a great presentation. We need to enlarge the community. And when I say enlarge community, the games I used to make years ago,
01:32:53
Speaker
We're a lot different than today. You guys are gamers. You guys grew up as gamers. We had to have simple things for people like me, make it easy for me to get multi-ball, but deep rules for you guys, yeah you know, and let these games go to to do things that I will never get to see unless I stand next to Keith while he's playing or something like that.
01:33:13
Speaker
So we need to market to a broader audience of gamers. And I was just, I digress, I was just at GaryCon, which Seth sent me because I'm Gary. yeah But Gary Gygax created um ah Dungeons and Dragons. So we were up there, I go up there, had a nice few days with 3,800 real gamers.
01:33:35
Speaker
Many of whom, what the game itself, of course, ah Dwight really designed it for yeah for Dungeons & Dragons players. And so these people loved it. We had six games up there. ah where we are Kingpin was with us, and they're going to go to more. Chris is going to go to more of these kind of shows.
01:33:56
Speaker
um But that's important that we... market to other gamers and enlarge our gaming community sure with other gamers. And thus, this gentleman has has joined us.
01:34:09
Speaker
And I've just digressed with that because I asked you guys a question. Tell me about today's event. Tell me how you liked it. What what was so great and besides the game? Tell me about Well, I think of the things that we talked about, we talked about this earlier, Tom, when we were doing the factory tour, it's magnificent to see manufacturing like that because i think a lot of people underestimate what goes into these types of games and how many people truly it it involves overall and i think that's it because it's like anything else you see promo videos you might see like the designer the artist you might see george or even yourself gary and people underestimate
01:34:50
Speaker
just how many people are a part of these projects, just the conceptualization of it, the ideation of it. And then once you get to the manufacturing part, yeah just going from start to finish, it's amazing to see something like that, especially here in the U.S. Like just U.S. manufacturing has just always fascinated me.
01:35:10
Speaker
We've always been u manufacturers, proud to be that regardless of the politics. We are U.S. manufacturers. We are dependent on a lot of other local manufacturers and local suppliers and some things that aren't aren't so local.
01:35:25
Speaker
um We've always made them here. And partly because one reason we never went offshore is A, we're American manufacturers. ah I don't want to live offshore.
01:35:37
Speaker
ah But also, you know, we like our engineers, designers to be right there with with the product. ah Having said all that,
01:35:49
Speaker
We manufacture the product. It's important that we make it. it's We are manufactured, but we're really game designers. yeah And if you look at our you know creed on the wall ah vision, we yeah manufacture is not in there.
01:36:03
Speaker
We are game designers in that you know and and that's what these guys do. And that whole studio of George's does, they design games. It's all about gaming. It's all about games. So I think that, and that begs the question. is where he comes Right, exactly. So when you see something like this, because I remember the first time we met just yesterday, and I recognize you immediately. And you haven't forgotten that. It's only been a day. remember I remember it. I remember it.
01:36:28
Speaker
But we were talking about WWE momentarily. Yeah. When you see something like this and you're pulling in from your previous experience, like how do you apply that to pinball in general in order to grow it to the type of audience that Gary just alluded to? Yeah, I mean, like there's over 14 million people in the U.S. that are considered pinball players. And so there's a huge audience that we can look at and tap into from a social perspective. So community, to me, it all starts with the community and really just focusing on building that community out
01:36:59
Speaker
showing them what they like, um you know showing the amazing games that we make as a company. And so really focusing on the community is what what is really the first part of the marketing process and approach.
01:37:09
Speaker
you start You start there and then you just grow from there you know with other activations that you can do in marketing, whether that be like user acquisition or email marketing and some of the other tools that we have. in our toolkit. But at the end of the day, it just comes down to, you know, really catering to the community and in building that core audience and then growing it into the more mass market, which is where video game experience really comes into play because, yeah you know, there's hundreds of millions of video game players in the world. And so being able to convert some of them, that's obviously the goal that that I came on board to really focus on is to really drive conversion of those players, just given how, how broad it is, you know, from a global perspective. Right. And do you find that, at some way, you find the segmentation between getting a new player, right, or somebody new to enjoy pinball, to enjoy it on a location? Is that the goal, to kind of get them like more coin drops for location and then eventually convert them to a buying customer of just wanting a game in their home? Is that kind of like Yeah, location is critical, you know getting people playing the game. like
01:38:11
Speaker
The more we can get people playing pinball, we win yeah in the long long run. So, Gary, don't know if you want to admit. On ah on a narrow and on a narrow sense, we we have a cycle. And the cycle is that, you know, the 20-somethings are playing in the bar arcades or the breweries are just the the local bar.
01:38:32
Speaker
ah Rebecca's sister and brother-in-law have a pool hall that they've put a big... game section into maybe that's a good set of locations. I don't know for a pinball to have more people see it.
01:38:46
Speaker
ah Okay. Now that 20, 20, 30 year old ah gets to be 35, 45 and he wants a game for the home. And we want him to have played our game in the street. So he buys it instead of buying an iPhone, yeah you know, 30 years from now, because you know, they're playing games there too.
01:39:06
Speaker
So, you know, That's how you get your first time buyer is he he knew what pinball was and everybody knows what pinball is. as A lot of people still say do they still make them, but everybody knows what they are. 30, 40% of the first time buyers buy a second game.
01:39:26
Speaker
If we can, you know, if they buy more games, they become like you all, enthusiasts, collectors, whatever you want to say. Yeah. So we go from the the playing in the street, which is ah which is our free advertising, if you could say, for the games, to ah to buying a game for a home, ah hopefully not waiting for another COVID, ah and to buying more games at home, to maybe having so many games, you don't know what to do with them. So you go put them out on the street.
01:39:55
Speaker
And the head of the AMOA, they were just retired president the AMOA, he started with one pinball machine. He went to a bowling alley and said, hey, you don't have a pinball. How about putting mine in?
01:40:07
Speaker
This was 20 years ago Now he's got thousands of games in operation and that's his main business. And a lot of the new game operators are pinball enthusiasts who decided to operate the street a couple of their games.
01:40:21
Speaker
Yeah. So it's all part of a cycle. and it And by the way, when those operators those new operators put games on the street and they probably put them pretty good games in pretty good shape and who's playing them?
01:40:34
Speaker
The 20, 30-year-olds who's going to, in another 10, 20 years, buy one for the home. It's a cycle that that we create, and he's going to enlarge to a group new whole new group of players. Exactly. I think you hit the nail on the head earlier that it's about, like there's a full demographic out there, millions of people, that they may say something to the extent of,
01:40:55
Speaker
I didn't realize pinball was still around, but yet we see it growing location wise. So it's almost like, how do you go about finding those people if they're not necessarily just going to a location to find it? Like, how do we go about finding those? Because that will be the lifeblood eventually for them to, you know, yeah convert. I mean, i think, again, it first starts with the the building the community out. So focusing more of our resources on building content that caters to the community so then they understand ah you know where Pinball is at and and they acknowledge that it's that it's there. And so
01:41:28
Speaker
starting with the community, but then you know there's other levers we can pull, you know specifically with market when it comes to traditional marketing. So, you know like user acquisition, you know going on Google and Meta and some of these platforms and advertising our games on on those channels, i think plays a huge role from a global perspective.
01:41:45
Speaker
um We also have a very large email distribution list too. So just making sure we tap into our into our audiences that we already know through insider connected platform I think that's a huge critical marketing application that we have to leverage going forward. and we're going to build a lot of really cool programs for Insider Connected.
01:42:04
Speaker
Now I'm an absolutely horrible interviewer because I started with you guys telling us about the event. yeah And so um we're going to go back to that. tell us First you can tell us how great the game is because we all know that. It really is fantastic.
01:42:16
Speaker
But then talk about the event, the other influences are here, the people you meet that you know that you know already or that you haven't. Tell us um something about the event. it's a It's basically a community. We're here for you know with the pinball community. It's great to interact with different content creators.
01:42:38
Speaker
you know i i do a lot of tournament streaming. you know Somebody else like Joel does a lot of streaming at home. ah You know, other people do publications. It's good to good to interact. But ah as far as the game goes, the game's phenomenal.
01:42:55
Speaker
ah You know, Keith Elwin, you know, I always say this about Keith. every Every time he makes a game, he hits a home run. You know, the the game just it flows great. It it shoots great.
01:43:10
Speaker
I mean, it's awesome. Yeah. And these media days, this is my third. And I, I think this is probably fourth for you guys. Um, they're fantastic. Not only, ah you know, in the creator space, a lot of us know each other because we're all making very similar content.
01:43:26
Speaker
Um, and we're friends, but also just the openness, you know, to be able to pull in people like yourself, interview you guys, interview did the the design team, really get firsthand experience of these games.
01:43:37
Speaker
Um, super grateful for for the overall media days. Well, right. And I think one of the key parts to days like today is when you when you guys at Stern and pull back the curtains and you guys give us ton of access.
01:43:50
Speaker
And what that allows, I think there's a lot of people here that are learning just more and more. And then that they can pull that into their content and then therefore their other people learn even more from there. And I think that's the key. it's just It really comes to just further education on like, what is all this, right? Because everybody has their their mind made up or in their head what pinball actually is. But then when you see it up close with the experts, with the people that live it day in and day out, that are super passionate about it, that have a few years experience in the industry, it's it's definitely fantastic just ah to be around that for sure.
01:44:28
Speaker
I know we certainly appreciate you all taking the time and coming in here and past today or other days like this to having the interest in pinball and in growing pinball and educating pinball and telling pinball that, hey, it's fun and we're here because that's all it is about is fun.
01:44:49
Speaker
Yeah. Well, so you're, you're three weeks in three and a half, three and a half weeks in, um many years marketing a video game. And I know, uh, other content creators compare, you know, we compare pinball to video games a lot, but one of the core concepts is one, a video game takes up this much space on yourself and it costs 60 bucks.
01:45:08
Speaker
Pinball machine takes up the corner of your room, $7,000 plus. thousand dollars I mean, that alone, that challenge alone is something you've, I'm assuming, have obviously recognized in the last three weeks. Oh, yeah. Where do you even start on that? How do you, you know, this is a, to buy a video game at this point, you can download it, right? But like a pinball machine, there are people that are having to rent a U-Haul to get it to their house. So, I mean, I assume this is a whole new level of challenges that you're going to have to market around. It's definitely a different challenge from you know from a pricing perspective because like a mobile game that's free to play versus you know spending $10,000 on a pinball machine, it's definitely different. so
01:45:43
Speaker
But at the core, it's it's entertainment. sure And so love... people love love entertaining and if they you know with disposable income, they they'll be able to buy you know a pinball machine. And that's what we're really focused on is finding all those people that either aren't aware that they're available um and easy to access to you know the big fans that have ah been repeat purchasers as well. So we're looking at everybody right now and figuring out how best to target them, how to get them as excited as possible.
01:46:11
Speaker
um And to your point about having the space you know yeah in in your house, that obviously plays a pretty pretty critical role. But as Seth says, you know what's cool about having a gray box under the under your TV versus having this big, beautiful piece of art in your house? that you know It it made a statement that you know makes a statement about you, the owner. It makes a statement in general.
01:46:36
Speaker
ah But two two things to point to point to um First thing is and one of the things that we learned with some of our market research, is because it is big and because it's expensive, people who want to think about buying a pinball, their friend has a pinball, they think about it.
01:46:56
Speaker
And They're scared. Am I making a of good choice? Is this smart? Am I going to be able to take care of it? And what they need is for you all in particular to be their Sherpas, to help them yeah you know help them, to guide them, to hold their hand. If you have a friend and tell youre you know you're you're the people listening to your podcast, if they have a friend playing pinball of their house,
01:47:19
Speaker
that may be interested in it, tell them don't be afraid, help them, show them that you you can get the game fixed and the game has value and you're not gonna blow and your wife's not gonna think you're an idiot if she's actually gonna have fun with the game. you need People need their hand held a little bit, they need a Sherpa.
01:47:36
Speaker
So that's the one thing that you guys can really do with your listening ah public is yeah tell them you want to enlarge the community, enlarge it, do it yourselves.
01:47:47
Speaker
not just Not just for Matthew to do, each of you as a is an ambassador and ah can be a Sherpa for somebody who wants a game. And the other thing that we just would be remiss if we didn't mention Insider Connected.
01:48:04
Speaker
so yeah Which is connectivity is the future of the world. ah Without connectivity, it's a box on four legs. And yeah, some people like others other games from other small manufacturers, but they're not connected. And you can't build a community without connectivity. He can't build a community if we didn't have connectivity.
01:48:25
Speaker
And that's, to me, that is the major future of this product. I just got in Vail, my apartment, I got a um um gas fireplace. I'm going to put wood in it. It's dirty and all that. And I got a gas fireplace very late. Everybody else had one.
01:48:42
Speaker
I've got a thermostat that when I'm going to come up the mountain, my phone tells it to turn the heat on. Yeah. I go online to to do my ah Zoom meetings, whatever, in Vail.
01:48:58
Speaker
I hit my, you know, ah connect my, you know, whatever it call it calls, you know, Gary Blop Blop, sign in. The next one is Samsung dryer. There's somebody with a Samsung dryer that is talking to them in my building. Because that's the future of everything. And the same is true with these games. And you guys know what we've done with it and can do with it.
01:49:20
Speaker
That's the future. yeah Yeah, Gary's touching on a really important point, which is social. Like when I come from video game background, like it's all about social interactivity. ah That's where, you know, everyone's playing. They want to play with their friends and their families. And so that I think is another thing that I can look from a marketing perspective from video game, traditional video games into the pinball community as well.
01:49:42
Speaker
Meanwhile, you guys are watching your watches. You want to throw us off and do somebody else? Oh, no. no You're perfectly fine. no um we're We're making sure we're not going to run out of time because we thought we had till 6. I think we're only going till 5 today.
01:49:55
Speaker
What? I think, right? For pizza or are we going till 6? No. No, I think you're going. We're going as long as you guys want. Nobody tells me anything. yeah no They just wind me up and tell me to show up or don't show up as I might want to. No, we appreciate you guys being here and and yeah it's a fun time. So you guys can be here as as long as you want. There's no so set time and So what I'm hearing is we can stay here 24 hours a day and keep playing calm. Yes, you can. Yes, you can. There won't be anybody here tomorrow to monitor you because it's Good Friday. And it's ah for us, that's a ah a business holiday here. was about say, I better not then. I'll get stuck in the – I got WrestleMania this weekend. I got to watch too.
01:50:36
Speaker
Are you really? Oh, yeah, really? I'm into wrestling. yeah That's why I recognize It's in my hometown this this year. Yeah, in Vegas. Oh, yeah. yeah Are you going back to it? I'm actually not attending this year. You're not? yeah This will be the first year that I haven't attended. I've been to the last few. Oh, wow.
01:50:52
Speaker
Jody and I went one year when we were doing the wrestling game. And... Some people thought, who's the wrestler with the big white head of hair? Oh, wow. the Ric Flair? No, no, no, no, no. There's some guy who's a bad guy. I'm not sure. Anyway, they thought I was him or something walking around, except little. Did you just tell him you're the Gary Stern? That's what you should have done, right? I'm Gary Stern. No, that's awesome. But I don't three and a half weeks in, I feel like I don't want to ask you too much. I know it's still, it's probably drinking out of a fire hose. I'm learning every day, absorbing as much as I can about the industry, about the people, the players. You were at TPF too.
01:51:30
Speaker
so i was. That was probably an eye-opening experience. That was awesome. you know I was really happy to see lot of families and a lot of diversity and in the ah the audience that was there. So that was really cool to see everyone.
01:51:42
Speaker
ah Playing the games and, you know, super excited yeah to be there. The pinball community is honestly something special. It's I don't know anybody that that that does. Everybody I know that owns a pinball machine wants to share it with other people. And then when they find other people that are just as passionate or excited to play it.
01:51:59
Speaker
um That's why I love going to shows because every single person that bought a ticket to go to that show is so pumped yeah to to play whatever game's coming out and geek out about the shots, the rules, the whatever. It's pretty amazing. I'm learning that they're super passionate, which is which is really cool and and very powerful too. yeah ah To see that type of you know fan fandom you know and pim in the pinball industry, it's really cool to see.
01:52:22
Speaker
So I'm excited to learn more and you know keep on doing what we're doing. Well, you joined a great team. the The catalog that's out there of games is incredible. It's incredible. it's incredible we just We interviewed Keith, obviously, who's made some amazing games. Chuck Ernst, for him to talk about all the graphics that he's done for that entire catalog. i mean it's And Zombie Yeti, what he's brought to the table. I mean, you have an amazing team here at Stern.
01:52:44
Speaker
Thank you. They, you know, they're absolutely great, great guys and very passionate about what they do. They live and breathe this. Yeah. I think too, before we let you, I got to ask too, it's, um, getting independent. Obviously we talked about just kind of the barriers and everything, but.
01:53:00
Speaker
Did you realize that we were all going to be just this batshit crazy? just Like the people that are just so, you know what I mean? Because people are so passionate i love it about the games. I love it. I love it. It's been, like I said, limited time I've been here, it's been a phenomenal experience just meeting you guys and meeting everybody. Like the passion just just bleeds passion, which is amazing.
01:53:22
Speaker
really important i think it's really important for the business it's it's definitely the lifeblood of it it definitely is what we all enjoy about it we all have our opinions and there's some people with opinions more than others but what's hilarious about pinball is we all believe we're right sure right i think we all realize what we're doing is insane having all these machines and playing but yet we love it so much fun and we just like to play with other people we appreciate everything that you guys are doing thank you I have, i you know, i I don't have a lot of pinball machines. I have a lot of pinball machines over here.
01:53:54
Speaker
yeah But it's, you know, insane. I have four Harleys and a Ducati. yeah So it's the same kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's the same price range, yeah yeah you know, same kind of thing.
01:54:06
Speaker
but ah And I have two boats, you know, it's a... You just don't get rid of one. You just keep them yeah yeah once so you have it. So you're saying the motorcycles are the same as the pinball machines? They multiply quick? Because my wife's been wanting me to get a motorcycle for about 20 years. And I told her as soon as I get to 50, I'll consider it. so Really?
01:54:27
Speaker
She wants you to get one. I think your wife just wants you to be cool. just hasn't happened yet. could be But it's the same thing. It's the same kind of enthusiasm. what What would be a motorcycle I could get for that my wife would be happy with?
01:54:41
Speaker
she wants to it's She wants a two-seater. Not like little sidecar, but something she can ride onto. I was in ah ah at the the last week in Daytona Bike Week because we have bike things too besides pinball things. I'm very busy.
01:54:56
Speaker
And I was there with ah Ed van de Veen, you know, from yeah from formerly Texas Pinball. Now yeah now he's involved with Pinball at the Beach.
01:55:08
Speaker
And one of my friends in Vail had the game operator. He had the same thing. ed's Ed's got a Ural, which is a Russian sidecar.
01:55:19
Speaker
motorcycle, which I tried to drive and it's impossible because it doesn't steer right if you ask me. But yeah, he's got a sidecar bike, a motorcycle. So there you go. That's not what you want. Do you look cool while riding one of those? I don't know. A lot of people stopped to look at it. A lot of people had to look at We all know if you had a sidecar, Monica would be the one driving and you would be in the sidecar. We all know it. It's probably true. There you go. Get yourself in.
01:55:44
Speaker
I mean, I say get a Harley, so. All right. So I'm going to get a Harley. Okay. And next year at Pinball at the Beach, I'm going to ride with Gary. There we go. And going to pull up when the fire alarm goes off again. That's it. Yeah. That's what we're going to do. Yeah. Yeah. And we better tell Ed to bring a bike, too. Yeah. That's awesome. We can bike and play pinball. You know, it's all good.
01:56:04
Speaker
Yeah. It's all good. I'll admit, I did more drinking than pinball. Probably pinball at the beach because the whole beach was right there. Well, you know, it's –
01:56:13
Speaker
Pinball and beer go together. That's one of my marketing phrases. Just a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Well, cool. Well, hey, very much appreciate you guys sitting down. And we we didn't know it we didn't know what we're who all we're talking to over the last few hours. So this been amazing. Everybody. It's been a great time. It's been tremendous. I'm glad that you you know you asked us. And I'm glad that Matthew came in and saw that you guys want to hear what he's got to say. We actually are. we are happy that you're in the the industry. Well, I'm really excited to be here. Yes, because pinball needs growth, more of it, and just sustainability long-term. So that's that's great.
01:56:48
Speaker
That's fantastic. Awesome.
Design Philosophy and Player Experience
01:56:50
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you, guys. yeah thanks Thanks for coming. Thanks for having us. Yeah, no problem. Well, the fun continues, the fun continues. And we've got George Gomez, George Gomez in the Aussie. We're having a lot of fun with this. Now, um I'm excited to interview you.
01:57:06
Speaker
There is a piece of pizza in front of Tom though, that I know he's pretty excited about too. My blood sugar was dropping. What am I supposed to do? It's pretty good pizza don't know, we'll get to it. You know, priorities. But George, what I love about you is you're all about the hard questions. You're all about the hard questions. So we'll start easy.
01:57:22
Speaker
Yeah. Start easy. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll ramp them up a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I, I think I've told you guys lots of times. I tell most of people that interview me, uh, um, it's part of my job. Ask me the hard ones.
01:57:34
Speaker
Um, a lot of my guys, you know, i I think in order not put them on the spot yeah and not have somebody troll them, I i always tell guys, I say, you know here's you know, here's how I want you to handle this. Here's how I don't want you to handle this. yeah and um But for me, you know, you guys can come at me. It's it's it's it's like, it you know, it's it comes with the territory. Here's an easy one.
01:58:01
Speaker
What's the next three games? Yeah. So you know what they say about triple drain. We ask the hard hitting question. Yeah, that's true. We're the super serious podcast. You're on it. Yeah. Okay. So obviously we're here for Kong.
01:58:14
Speaker
Yeah. Honestly, the three of us are all loving what we're seeing in Kong. You've seen a whole lot of play field layouts in your life. So when Keith presents you that with the ridiculous ball pass that it has, I don't know, like for all your years of experience, it's probably, it's probably hard to surprise you, but like that's, that's something special. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I love the the young guys are bringing it, right? they are They recognize respect where pinball design has been.
01:58:44
Speaker
know it really especially when you're talking about guys like Keith and Jack, right? they know it really well especially you know when you're talking about guys like keith and jack they they're really great players on top of it. So they bring you know they bring that level of experience to the things that they do.
01:59:05
Speaker
yeah And you know I run the studio with the notion that we want to make games that we want to play. yeah I mean, it begins with satisfying ourselves. thats that's all Every game I've ever made my whole life, I've made for myself. So to some extent, it it's kind of...
01:59:22
Speaker
I think it's a really good way to do it because you you know you want to be happy with the thing you make. so um So yeah, those guys are bringing it. you know I mean, look, I think i think we opened some eyes with the X-Men play field.
01:59:36
Speaker
And by the way, you know we're we're we're hardly done with that game. we're still you know we're i mean, it's funny because there was a ah tree you know ah four of us were actually literally working on the next code game.
01:59:48
Speaker
ah some of the rules things for the next code today. And nobody noticed this, but the X-Men game that was in the studio there, there's like, you know, Wason, Jack, Mike Vinacor, myself, parked in front of that game for an hour and nobody noticed.
02:00:02
Speaker
Really? I said, and we were kidding amongst ourselves. We're going, if somebody took a picture of this, you know, it would it would prove to them that, hey, we are actively working on this. Yeah, which is awesome. Yeah, yeah. yeah so So, you know, we are hardly, we've hardly abandoned it.
02:00:19
Speaker
um It's a question of, like right now we're we're not exactly you know um i'm going to give you a tip we're not exactly happy with where the future is and we're working a lot on the future and we want to make the future accessible and a really cool thing for the average player we also have to design some depth into it that uh that you know it's going to be interesting for advanced players when they get into the future right because right now we're not happy with what it's doing and and so we've been going around and around with trying different things
02:00:50
Speaker
and um And we think we have something. we're Right now, we're we're prototyping. So we're you know we we build we build the rule with um just representative icons for things. And we don't worry too much about the feedback stuff. And then we start dialing in the feedback stuff. Because at the end of the day, if the feedback stuff's not there, the sound effects, the visuals, the light shows, et cetera, you're not feeling it.
02:01:15
Speaker
It doesn't matter that this rule is there. Right. People don't realize that everybody thinks it's about the rule. Yes. Yes. It's about the rule. The rule doesn't really come to life until you have all the bits and pieces connected to it. And you're actually because that's what you actually feel.
02:01:31
Speaker
Yeah. Right. you You know, you see the light flashing, you make the shot and i there's there's an associated sound effect, that some transformation on a play field. a timer running, something that's happening that's some tension creator, whether it's music, whatever it is, that's the stuff, right? And and that is like incredibly painful from the standpoint that you have to iterate and iterate and iterate till you get it right.
02:01:53
Speaker
So, um but yeah, so I mean, i think that I think the young guys are bringing it um I love the fact that they they look at each other's work, but everybody's doing their own stuff.
02:02:05
Speaker
And everybody's got – everybody's – Keith is um no one, no designer, no new designer. um And he's not new anymore. But but it and you know even Jack's new. And no new designer has a signature until they've done some stuff, right? You don't have a style.
02:02:25
Speaker
right You think you have a style. Everybody – Everyone begins influenced by some style, right? I was influenced by Steve Ritchie. um You know, I think Keith was influenced by Pat Lawler.
02:02:37
Speaker
You know, everybody's influenced by somebody and that person, you take that person's work as a starting point and then you riff, you know, and eventually you become a thing. You become, you get a style.
02:02:50
Speaker
You start doing your thing, right? And so, um you know, my early games, i was I was all about trying to emulate the flow thing and the speed thing, you know. And so, you know, look play a Johnny Mnemonics, incredibly fast, really flowing.
02:03:05
Speaker
Right. i was That's where I was trying to go. But what was my influence? My influence was Terminator 2. Right. So it's kind of like I, you know, I've got a ra i've got a crossing ramp rule in that game. Very much influenced by payback time.
02:03:17
Speaker
Right. And so it's like that's the beginnings. Right. You start, you know, that was my second game out of the shoot. Right. And um so Keith has developed a style. He now has a style.
02:03:29
Speaker
He's taken some of the things that I think that that have been, you know, like i i told years ago I told him, I said, dude, you got to put ramps on your game and the ramps in and of themselves are a toy.
02:03:41
Speaker
So play, create a toy with the ramp. And he may took it to heart, you know, right? And so um so that's a lot of what you're seeing, right? Everybody, you know, we...
02:03:53
Speaker
we We talk a lot about novice players getting a novice into the game. you know how you know how where When's the first multiball from the button? right We work from button up. right We start from the button up, which is why when you see a game like this and he tells you that, hey, the wizard modes aren't in it, the the wick wizard modes aren't in yet, the the X-Men wizard modes aren't in yet. Yeah, that's right, because we work from the button up. And so it's like...
02:04:19
Speaker
advanced advanced Advanced guys, they you got to wait a little longer. Sure. Well, it's not like they're going anywhere either. you know i haven't met a high-level pinball player yet that's been like, well, this game doesn't have a wizard mode. I'm just never playing it again.
02:04:33
Speaker
you know They eventually come back around to it either way. mean, you would know this, right, Joel? Sure, yeah. yeah I don't, you know, my high level. Yeah. I mean, I understand there are plenty of buyers though that they get antsy. It's always that you know when you guys are so good at releasing another game three to four months later. So it's when they buy one and then they feel – I also think – let's be honest. I think here's my here's my opportunity to say hard things. Go for it. yeah i think I think there's a lot of people that – they can't play at the level that they claim they're missing.
02:05:06
Speaker
I mean, come on. Let's be real. I mean, it's like, like wait, you heard you heard on some forum that this thing is missing, and now you're obsessed with this thing that's missing.
02:05:19
Speaker
The reality is it's not a you can't play at that level, or you don't get to that thing, or you don't even know. you know it's It's like when people pick up the, oh, the code's young yet.
02:05:32
Speaker
That's like a thing because you have to say a thing. you have to sound intelligent? you going to say, you know? you know It's funny you're mentioning this because we've talked about this, yeah especially Tom and I, all podcasts that oftentimes we wonder if somebody says, well, the code's not there yet. It's like, okay, you ask them, okay, what's the code?
02:05:49
Speaker
Like, what does that mean? Like to an individual, that mean the rules aren't there yet? The callouts aren't there yet? Every game release. Every game we release 100% of the time, if that, you know,.8, guys are talking about, it's going to get better. It's going to better.
02:06:02
Speaker
but You know, it's it and it's it's interesting. There's also this the notion of the design team has a vision for what they imagined the game was going to be. and the internet has a different vision for what they think the game is going to be. And those two visions, sometimes they come together and sometimes they don't.
02:06:19
Speaker
Sure. So you may have we may have scenarios where we go, no, we thought we were done with that. you know And I mean, you know, and it and it's not one of the not something real obvious, but there are situations where you go, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's like they're inventing some missing thing that we don't think is a missing thing. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's fair. And I mean, we've all just spent a little bit of time on Kong and it's incredible to see what's already in the game.
02:06:45
Speaker
yeah But it is very clear. I mean, Keith was very clear about what his plans are, too. So it's like, I'm going to, you know, the first five, ten minutes of that game is there. It's fleshed out. And that's what the vast majority of people are. Yeah, it feels super, super tight. yeah But yet, you know, you look at that Empire State Building and it's like, yeah, there's four or five levels in there. And it's like so the fact they only have one coded in right now, maybe two. I don't know. But it's like.
02:07:08
Speaker
Yeah, i'm not I'm not complaining because I'm not going to see that for quite a while. um you the other challenge we face is that complete, when we talk about you know we talk about what the what's the feedback, right? And so you got what you know what are the visuals on screen?
02:07:23
Speaker
What are the sound effects? Yep. What choreography on with the lights and and the devices and stuff like that? and and then And then the integration to what's ah what's a rule that's going to be compelling to you?
02:07:35
Speaker
What's a setup in a play event that's going to be compelling to you, it's going to keep you coming back, right? Those are the things that come with time, right? And and and they also...
02:07:48
Speaker
I think you really do want us to release at.8 knowing we're going to finish because we're going to make a lot of changes based on watching you play. Yeah. Right. He said that exact thing many times. is He's like, I want to release the game here because he wants to see somebody at my skill level and then somebody at Carl D'Angelo's skill level to see how you we play the game. It's totally real. Yeah.
02:08:10
Speaker
Right. And and we're what we're listening, we're watching, we're hearing. And we know we're taking we're bringing it back and we're evolving with it. And so that's real. and So I got to ask the question then, like, who, when you're using that strategy, yeah like what type of player are you really zeroing in on that represents the proper avatar to see the of honestly, we're watching everybody.
02:08:35
Speaker
We're watching everybody because, yeah, because it- You think it's me. George says it's everybody. well we design where We design for everybody. yeah so So we want everybody, we want to please everybody. We want you know easy to master, hard to, or I'm sorry, easy to learn, hard to master. we want, and again, we're we're talking about, remember I said,
02:08:55
Speaker
you know we We try to place our interactive toys in a place that are accessible to every player. yeah We want a player you know a player to walk up, look under the glass, see something compelling, the the curb appeal.
02:09:08
Speaker
got to play this thing. I got to see what King Kong does. I got to play this thing. I got to see what that spider does, whatever. and And we want that interaction for a novice player to be as eventful as it is for for someone that's geeking out on, I got to start that multiball while I'm in this mode in order to complete that mode, right? And and I got to stack these things or I'm going to, I'm trying to pick an optimal path.
02:09:34
Speaker
to optimize my score. And there's multiple ways to try. and so so we have to watch everybody. We have to watch you know we have to watch Gary Stern. Gary, did you get the pin did you get to the multiball?
02:09:47
Speaker
Right? Yeah. And that and it you know and and when when it doesn't happen, then we start thinking about, hey, maybe we should spot him two targets. Maybe we should, you know what do we do? we you know Maybe it's not five shots. Maybe it's three.
02:10:00
Speaker
Now, have you found like the rise in tournament play with content online like Tom does or seeing so many different YouTube videos of gameplay or Twitch? Have you found that that that that has helped along the way kind of speed up that process of recognizing those gaps that you need to fill? think people are – i think we're growing better players every day because the prevalence the hobby.
02:10:24
Speaker
I watch the the the so on my games, I've been watching what I call a billionaire's club, right? I've been watching the Bond Billionaire's Club. I've been watching the Deadpool Billionaire's Club. Nice. And I'm i'm thinking to myself,
02:10:37
Speaker
Man, we're growing a lot of players. Yeah, and you're able to use this Insider Connected to do that. Yeah, yeah, and I'm watching this. um i'm i i'm I'm looking at this and I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, the skill levels of everyone are – the more pinball we get in the world, the more people interact, the more tournament play happens, the better people get. Yeah. And that's real. That's like – and and i'm I'm seeing it because I'm like – I know what it was to get a billion. I've never done it. I know what it was to watch people get a billion points on bond when we launched.
02:11:11
Speaker
And now every third week, there's some guy going, on I got a billion. got a billion. So, um yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. No, it's, I don't know. there's There's a lot here to be excited about. um I know one of the things that I'm excited about is is Kong.
02:11:31
Speaker
I know Kong is a licensed, but it doesn't feel licensed. It feels like you gave Keith kind of the open-ended. It's really not licensed. The joke around here is Seth and I were the licensors. Nice. and so you know like the team One day, these guys were screwing around. there They said to me, they said, yeah, we got a licensing meeting this afternoon. i said, with who? and He says, with the licensor. I'm like, what meeting is that? and He says, meeting with you. Yeah.
02:11:58
Speaker
ah like I go, what are you guys going to show me what you're doing? Yeah, yeah, you're the licensor. And you've voiced, I mean, there's a lot of complaints, or a lot of times when people complain about what's in or not in a game, it usually comes back to licensor decisions. So when you have games like Deadpool, where it feels like you had free reign, or you have um like this, that's why I'm excited about Kong, because I feel like you essentially have free reign. This is total free reign, right? So this is basically, that the constraints here are...
02:12:28
Speaker
um You've got a property that's been interpreted by everybody a million times. And as a company, we want to we want a point of distinction. we want What's our point of difference?
02:12:41
Speaker
like How do we make Kong with a point of difference that is uniquely Stern pinballs? And that we can then do things with, by the way, you know, we can, you know, create toys, licensed t-shirts, whatever it is.
02:12:53
Speaker
Sure. Because it's our, i you know, it's it's essentially in our interpretation of an IP that is unprotected and free out there. And everybody's interpreted in a different way. You know, it's like...
02:13:06
Speaker
yeah Okay, those guys did Skull Island. Okay, what ah what's our island called? It's called Terror Island. And what's the look of our island? Well, theirs is like this. Well, ours is going to be Aztec ruins. And, you know, the ah it's funny because people are giving Jeremy a hard time about, you know, the Jeremy color palette. But the reality is on this one, it was it worked backwards.
02:13:26
Speaker
Jeremy was working on a different project. and And Kevin was doing composition for the game. When you have something like this, where you're trying to envision ah new version of King Kong, some of that early work is just like pre-visiting. you know It's just like if a movie company tomorrow said, we're making King Kong, but our King Kong has to be different there are all the other movie King Kongs that have been done.
02:13:51
Speaker
And so what are we creating in our world? And so they go through a previs period where they, you you know, previsualize everything, every element of the sets and, you know, how you're dressing the star and and, you know, what does Kong look like? We've seen lots of different Kongs. What does he look like?
02:14:08
Speaker
And what does New York City look like? And what time period are we in And, you know, what are the goals? I mean, you know, is, is you know, Ann Darrow, you know,
02:14:20
Speaker
femme fatale? Is she a helpless, you know ah um you know, captive of Kongs? Who is she? yeah And so you essentially take every character, you develop the backstory on every character, develop the backstory on the goals of the game. You know, what what do you you know what's this expedition doing when they go to Terror Island?
02:14:41
Speaker
And all that stuff had to be created. And one of the very first things was, how do we make Kong uniquely Stern pinballs so that people want? You know, Archong is cooler, bigger, you know. So Archong is pretty ripped, right? He's very muscular. Right. yeah he's You know, you notice that, right?
02:14:59
Speaker
He's got a unique look. But one of the very first things that happened was the lighting. The lighting, how we lit the images was key. And so that spawned the color palette.
02:15:12
Speaker
And then you know it was almost accidental that, hey, this color palette Jeremy can really pick up on. These magentas, these hot oranges. you know ah we can We can pick up you know New York City.
02:15:25
Speaker
and you haven't even seen all of it yet because it's some of it's not in there yet. But you know the the way we're going to light it is consistent with that look. And that was part of defining our own Kong. Right?
02:15:39
Speaker
ah um So it was a lot of fun. it was also a lot of work because a lot of times this stuff is handed to you. You know, here's the style guide. That's what I about to ask. Do you find working with something like Kong, what was your, I guess what was obviously the pro is you you have a lot more freedom. Right. But with that too, with that freedom, it comes if you're not operating within certain constraints that are known.
02:16:05
Speaker
It's kind of like a, yeah, it's like a whole blank canvas. And sometimes do you feel like creatively that that's hard to sometimes just get out of the gate like that? So, you know, I've always said, like, um creativity comes from being in a sandbox, right? From limitations. Limitations drive creativity. yeahp So you can't, and and there are limitations and in this, in that, you know,
02:16:28
Speaker
you know, you sit down to talk about King Kong and, you know, is it King Kong in outer space? Yeah. Is it King Kong? You know, are there aliens in this King Kong? You know, did the aliens come to the island and discover Kong? What, you know, what, so you got to contain for, you know, you got to create a sandbox and in some way. Um, and, and that sandbox spurs creativity. Right. And, and so,
02:16:53
Speaker
ah Yeah, the challenge was we have to pre-visualize everything. We have to create a backstory for everything. We have to invent, you know, what does Jack Driscoll look like?
02:17:05
Speaker
What's he wearing? How does he sound? What's his voice? What's his character? you know um And so we had to do all of that in all of the environments that we're going to show. Sure.
02:17:16
Speaker
And so we said, hey, yeah, the original in the 30s, Art Deco, you you know the original stuff in in the thirty s arc deco um you know we We went there and we said, okay, you know we got to make it our own, but we're going there. right um ah Empire State was you know potentially an issue only from ah from a time standpoint. we weren't We weren't afraid to license it, but we were like, okay, what happens if we have to iterate on Empire State?
02:17:45
Speaker
Yeah. all right let's make a new skyscraper yeah right yeah and and so um and you know the joke around here is that you know you know ah drake investments yeah um from from kong right and and nick oille yeah nale oil right and i love that too because it feels like you're taking the theme and you're pulling the theme into pinball yeah instead of taking pinball and pulling into the theme and i think that's like an important Important differentiation that I think if a lot of people can see that once they can tell that, that's really what creates a great pinball game because it feels like pinball yeah yeah as opposed to something else. So when i when I saw Kong, one of my first thoughts, and I know I wasn't the only one, is my thought was like, man, that's going to look good right next to Godzilla.
02:18:33
Speaker
yeah And it's because
Budget and Design Decisions
02:18:34
Speaker
they're – I mean, same designer, but it's the same overall concept. Huge monster. Yeah. Like when Godzilla came out, did you have any idea it was going to be as successful as it was going to be? Yes.
02:18:44
Speaker
So you knew you're like, this is going to be. and Yeah, because he again, you know, again you so so there's a thread here, right? You mentioned you mentioned Deadpool and thread is, um yes, there's a license or yes, there there are constraints, but there's tremendous amount of freedom, creative freedom within those constraints, right? To build these worlds.
02:19:07
Speaker
And Godzilla was like that, right? Godzilla was kind of like, um It's Godzilla. He's got to look like Godzilla. And you know he's got to ah exist in in the world he came from. But with it that's it.
02:19:20
Speaker
So, yeah, go ahead. Create, you know you know, render the monsters the way you want. Render the characters of the monsters. um You know, no one there was no one there to say, don't, you know, I got an idea for a collapsing building. No one no one was there to say, no, you can't have collapsing building.
02:19:39
Speaker
Right. so it So I think i think um freedom within the context of a theme. and ah what what is So what does the theme buy you? Well, the the theme buys you instant recognition from the audience. Sure. Right. Everyone knows Godzilla.
02:19:55
Speaker
they don't know our interpretation of Godzilla. Everyone knows King Kong. They don't know our interpretation of King ko That's a great way to put it. Yeah. And maybe this is something you can clarify because i there are so many people that speculate when you get a bigger license, there's a cost there.
02:20:12
Speaker
So people assume that cost is, you you have to take that somewhere. So people assume the bomb on the hardware, the bomb on the physical pinball machine is less because the cost of the license is more. Well, I mean, I'll tell you that, ah For sure, I'll tell you that the cost of a license, at least in this company, I don't know about other companies, but in this company, it impacts, um you know, I mean, it's it's it's a business deal.
02:20:35
Speaker
yeah So you have to envision that at some point in time, I have to amortize the cost of the license. And I have to amortize just like I have to figure out just like no different than amortizing tooling sure or anything else, right? So it's kind of like...
02:20:49
Speaker
When somebody pays a million dollars for something, you have to divide it by some, you do have to and anticipate that I'm going to sell this number of these things. And each that adds um whatever it is, $100, $200, whatever it is to the price of that game.
02:21:05
Speaker
um So it's not it doesn't go unnoticed. You know, I mean, it's a business decision like all the other businesses. But does that mean because Keith has been given essentially an unlicensed game or I don't know, I don't know what the cost of Kong was. so Does he have the ability to put more in game because of that?
02:21:22
Speaker
so there's a lot of misunderstanding about how we handle the bombs, right? The bombs are our target. that the teams are given yeah they're based on they're based on some speculation of the of um yes in some ways speculation i say this because it's a very it's a very analyzed and and thought through speculation um it it it all it's all built around the business plan of the company right the business plan of the company says We anticipate that we're going to make X number of games this year, and these are the titles that it's going to be split across.
02:21:57
Speaker
And therefore, and this is the overhead of the company, and this is this, and this is that. And therefore, the target for us to be profitable means that that we are going to create a ah target bill materials for each team that they're going to try to hit.
02:22:14
Speaker
right But the reality is that when you get into a process into a project, everybody thinks that Keith has a bigger budget than other designers. That's not true at all. yeah they all They're all given the same target.
02:22:26
Speaker
and and And we see what they bring to the party. like no one you know No one tells you know somebody you know ah like you know you have to um you have to add you know you have to add or remove um like if it doesn't make sense.
02:22:44
Speaker
It's got to make sense. and i'm the first I'm the first line of defense. They bring me a thing and they say, you know this is super cool and we really don't want to take it out.
02:22:55
Speaker
And then I look at it. But it's going to cost us an extra million dollars. Well, I'm going to i'm goingnna say, yeah, it's going to cost us much. and and and And we have the conversation. ah Hey, yeah what's it worth to you? Is it worth this?
02:23:07
Speaker
and so And if I think it's super cool, then I go upstairs and I go, you guys got to look at this thing. Because honestly, i can't envision this game without it Right. So Keith had two. Keith's actually given you two examples of that on his games. One is the the Helix ramp on Godzilla. You said that needs to be in the game. But then he just told us today, you didn't like the center post on Kong.
02:23:29
Speaker
He said, George said I want the center post on Kong. right, right. So center post. Let's talk about center post. So in the era that I that i came up in, a center post was a a Band-Aid. it was a It was a thing that a designer did 11th hour when his game was too drainy yeah and horrible interesting and and so like if you talk you talk to guys and and uh you talk to guys from you know there i came up and game goes on the street it's got to make money number one and uh and and that means like uh uh
02:24:08
Speaker
a lot of conscious design management of your ball times. Sure. Like really proactive, you know, how many controlled flipper feeds am I getting?
02:24:20
Speaker
You know, so all my ramps come, if everything, everything feeds back to a controlled flipper feed of the ramp, my ball times are going to go up. If my, you know, what's the design of my drain lanes? What am I designing my slingshots?
02:24:31
Speaker
yeah What, you know, ah what am i am I using back in those days? Literally, it was like, am I in white rubbers or black rubbers? Because black rubbers, you have way more control could because the they're they're, you know, harder rubber.
02:24:46
Speaker
So there's less bounce. And white rubbers, you get a lot of bounce. And and so, you know, you get more randomness, less control. and And this is, you know... This is why, i mean, it's like, you you know, i and I don't mean to, i'm I'm a firm believer that you bought a pinball machine, you do with your pinball machine whatever it is you want. Sure. And so it's kind of like, ah you know, you want to put a piece of plastic on top of the play field and ruin the kinetics. that we spent hours and hours po you know perfecting, have a good time. i don't i I won't do that to my game. but
02:25:20
Speaker
and you know And the same thing with the urethane rubbers. on you know They are pretty. They light up great. There isn't a designer in this building that's got those on his personal games. Right. Yeah. And so it's like, but but but I totally respect your right to do whatever you want with your game. yeah You want to close down my in lanes because I ship my game so that they earn money on the street. You want to close, put rubbers on my Deadpool out lanes, have at it. i feel like he's talking directly to you right now. to the I leave the game stuck. But the reason I brought up the center post is because your last three games, X-Men had a center post. D&D had a shield.
02:25:56
Speaker
yeah And now this has a center post. So the shield is different, though. yeah The shield was not really designed that way. The shield was designed as a... Sort of a, hey, isn't it cool? I can put the shield there and make the the shield. had The shield's going to help me make the shot. So it was different animal. Sure.
02:26:13
Speaker
And it was also in keeping with that theme, right? Of, you know, earn a shield. Oh, it's an awesome thing. All that kind of stuff. So Jack and I had the discussion before Keith and I had the discussion. Okay. And I said to Jack, I said, listen, that's like a Band-Aid. That's like a bad designer Band-Aid from the The center pro, wow. And and he said he said he said, dude, you got to flip it.
02:26:40
Speaker
And so we flipped it together. and and And then I said, OK, all right, you can have it. and And actually, one of the things that he did is his center post is very playable.
02:26:52
Speaker
Like I find that i find that it's ah it it's a play feature. Right. Sure, yeah. and and And how it's a play feature is I know it's there. I'm going to try to leverage it.
02:27:03
Speaker
And sometimes I drain because I tried to leverage it. yeah I tried to nudge it. I tried to use it. you know i saw it coming for the you know, for the post and I let it come for the post, yeahp right? I didn't do a slap save, I let it come for the post, because I thought I was good enough to nudge it and I was wrong. So, so so you know, so that's, a that instantly that's a play feature and that's how you convinced me, right?
02:27:29
Speaker
So when I saw it on Keith's game, I had the same sort of natural 90s designer reaction. Were you like, Keith, what broke shot do you have in here? Like, dude, what's draining me now? The gong. The gong. Oh, God. Right, right. And he proved it to me.
02:27:52
Speaker
So I said, OK, yeah, you got to do it. No, I like it. I am fine with it. And like you said, if somebody got it home and was like, I don't need this, I could take it out. You take it off. Yeah.
02:28:05
Speaker
Yeah. i I think that, look, it's my part of my job is to challenge these guys. Sure. Right? and and And to make sure that that we really have made the right choice.
02:28:16
Speaker
and And so um I ask, you know, we talk about hard questions. I ask them hard questions. Good, as you should, yeah. Right? And I think it makes the games, I think our collective internal critique, we're harder than you guys are on our stuff.
02:28:35
Speaker
Yeah. Because we think that's what makes it better. Yeah. So I don't want any i don't want anybody pulling punches about what your game whether your game's good or not. I want people in the building to tell us,
02:28:47
Speaker
The game's not. and then And then, okay, what don't you like? And let's go work it and let's figure it out, right? Yeah. And I think that that leads me to the next question that we've talked about right before the podcast started. That, you know, obviously it's gotten out there that Tim Sexton, who was the lead on John Wick, is yeah no longer with the company. yeah And there's a lot of people that have been asking about code updates for a little while now. Right. and so Like what what state is that game in now moving forward? Yeah. So um it's hardly abandoned just because Tim left. First of all, there was a plan. There was an approved plan, meaning that, you know, there was a, you know, Tim said, I want to do this, this and this and this.
02:29:29
Speaker
And a bunch of people got in room and looked it over and talked about it and said, okay, you know, let's try it. Let's try these things because we need to do these things to complete it. um and And we're executing on it with or without Tim.
02:29:43
Speaker
There's also other eyes in the building, right? So it's kind of like, and there's and there's guys that, there's there's there's young guys that are not lead capable yet. and And that would be a ah ah perfect you know a perfect scenario. I mean, and we've got young guys that have become lead capable with projects like that. yeah And i'll you know I present to you Metallica Remastered with Ray, right? who ah The next time you see Ray, he's and he's going to be in the front seat. so right But how did he get into the front seat? Well, he took Metallica Remastered and he did a great thing with it.
02:30:19
Speaker
right He really did. Yeah, so he did. So that's the road. and And there's going to be someone like that on on the WIC product probably. Do you find that WIC is just going to have some slight adjustments or is this a potential kind of like what happened with Ghostbusters and you know Game of Thrones to where there was a considerable, I don't know if I'd want to say overhaul, but there was a considerable change.
02:30:42
Speaker
I don't think anything's getting turned upside down. i think you're going to see extensions of things that are there. There's going to be a really cool factions rule. There's going to be, there's there's more, there's basically, it's it's it's an opportunity to take a step back and look at everything you everything you had planned and everything that you're that you're going to do and say, okay, how do we make this even cooler? How do we make this even better?
02:31:02
Speaker
Right? So, um yeah, I mean, you know, you talk about like, you Sometimes a game like, you know, Elliot didn't, like I didn't strip anything from Elliot. Elliot brought me a play field.
02:31:17
Speaker
He had the idea for the car, idea for all those toys, Elliot and Tim. And and i I was like, yeah, that's cool. Let's do that. I mean, if that's what you want to do, that's what we're going to do.
02:31:29
Speaker
and and so... So it's kind of like had Elliot, you know, it's it's not like the game is like that because we took something out of it. You know, it's like that's the game they wanted to make. And we thought, hey, you know, interestingly enough, I hear all these people talk about how hard that game is to shoot. And when I step up to that game, I make every shot.
02:31:47
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah. You know. It's like I don't – I'm not that great. I think the ramps are tighter, but, I mean, you can definitely combo those ramps. We just tell people just think of it like Cactus Canyon. And once you think of it like that, because the shots are in a similar spot, but Cactus Canyon – You just have to find the shots. Yeah. And once you do – like It flows. I mean, it's fast. It's like Johnny Mnemonic. It is like Johnny. it is And then i I was going to say that. i'm glad you I'm glad you saw that because I actually think that even my my Johnny ramps are easier, but the speed yes is on john on Johnny level, right? yeah so is and and that's
02:32:27
Speaker
that's another you know That's like the very first time you ever set foot on a tennis court. You thought that ball was going 90 miles an hour. Right. Absolutely. Your mind's eye has to accommodate yeah like you know that velocity. Yeah. Right? And it's like until your mind's eye gets used to it, forget about it. Sure. you know i think that um Not every one of the things I'm really happy about is that I don't have guys cloning styles.
02:32:55
Speaker
I have guys developing their own styles and I have guys building the games they want to make. and And I think success lies in let's make the games we want to make. and And chances are because you guys live, eat and dream pinball, you're going to come up with something that other people that live, eat and dream pinball And you bring up a good point because, i mean, it it seemed like some of the games were coming out and they they kind of mirrored some other games, but it seems like lately none of these games mirror anything.
02:33:30
Speaker
No, I mean, I think that, yeah, they don't. um And and that that it's all it never They say it about my stuff all the time and i and I really want to take, it's like I want to do a PowerPoint presentation where I take play field layouts and i overlay them so that you see remotely close. They're not exactly. close yeah Right. So it's kind of like it's another seven shot of Ray. It's another fan. Yeah. OK. Right. Right. Let me show you the differences in fan to fan. Let me show you the differences. ah
02:34:02
Speaker
I think, you know, it's funny because I hear this a lot about um Sea Witch and Beatles. And I want to take a sea witch and I want to show you where I started and and I want to show you where I ended. And I was purposely um you know trying to respect sea witch and say, okay, this is a well-loved game and I'm you know i'm not going to...
02:34:25
Speaker
you i i don't like As a matter of fact, they asked me to you know put my name on I was like, no, it's Mike's work. I evolved it. i don't you know it's like I'll own that I designed it. I just don't. I want to respect it.
02:34:36
Speaker
and and um And I think that i talked you know I talked to Keith. I talked to Zach. Those guys had shot that thing ah million times in tournaments. And they said to me, you know what?
02:34:48
Speaker
The most frustrating thing about this game is how hard it is. It's impossible to access the top of the game from the bottom of flippers. And it was different thinking in that era, right? And yeah when I started playing the game, i had I thought I was going to emulate the floaty flippers of the time.
02:35:06
Speaker
Oh, really? That was the initial? I had soft flippers and floaty and stuff. And Elwin played it. And you know he came in he came right in my office. He goes, dude, you got to something about those flippers.
02:35:16
Speaker
I was like, really? And he goes, yeah, yeah. He says, we've just... we There's been too much water under the bridge. We can't go back to that. well so So speaking of flippers, like it's funny how um you guys made that change with the bushing when you redid Stranger Things. And ever since then, you already had the snappiest flippers, but they got so much more snappy. Yeah, that was just about fixing the tool, really. yeah The tool was getting worn out, so there was like a little bit too much slop in the bearing. So we've you know we fixed that.
02:35:48
Speaker
But i you know the snappiness comes from some some voodoo we do with how we control them that nobody else has figured out yet. and so it's Well, and that's the biggest thing too. I mean, a pinball player will always tell you the flippers have to feel good. Yeah. yeah you yeah and And how we got it. i mean, we know we um we got it. We got there because when we were building the very first iteration of Spike,
02:36:16
Speaker
Um, and we had the very first prototypes running. Um, I had, I had Lyman come to see me and he goes, you gotta fix the flippers. And I was wait, what's wrong with them?
02:36:29
Speaker
And, and so a player at my level couldn't tell the difference. A player at his level could instantly tell the difference. So I had a bunch of guys come in and everybody was like, yeah, no, no, no, no.
02:36:43
Speaker
Okay. All right. So. and And then we started analyzing it, analyzing it, analyzing it. And literally, I call the electrical engineers and we're looking at this and and was like, no, it's impossible.
02:36:57
Speaker
And OK, no, it's it's not impossible. They're feeling it. So we went back and we screwed around and screwed around, screwed around. until we had to do the blind you know we the blind pepsi you know coke test right we were like okay guys come on in and play these games tell us which which ones are right and they go oh no they're all right now oh okay so we got it nice well see i would have thought you were just like putting them exactly the same and saying yeah we changed them just check it out see how you feel no i mean i had them it was super important because um
02:37:34
Speaker
Those guys, the, you know, I mean, you know, look, man, oh Lyman was a tough judge. if if If you, you know, I worked with him on many games, right?
02:37:47
Speaker
And, and ah you know, the man had like like super high standards for everything, right? So it's like, first of all, you know it's like if you weren't you know, if you weren't on, you know, if you weren't getting it right, he was the first guy.
02:38:08
Speaker
that was in your face about you not getting it right. And and so so you could not have sort of let something like that go, especially as critical as it is, which is why, by the way, I have a i struggle with everyone else's games.
02:38:24
Speaker
I struggle, especially, you know, I mean, I just struggle with everyone else's games because meaning games that that are built outside this building. yeah Yeah. Because I just can't do, I mean, it's like I'm just used to all day long. I play these, right? Yeah. And I just can't deal with it. Yeah. So that's going to lead me to another one, another question i know you're love, but, um,
02:38:44
Speaker
Spike 3, I know there's a lot of people that assumed Metallica was going to be a Spike 3. Then, oh, they're going release it with Keith, just like inside of Connected. Trying to get it right. Spike 3. So are you in iterative? Just trying to get it right. So you're in that testing because you're saying from Spike 4. That's exactly where we are. We're iterating.
02:39:00
Speaker
and and it's not you know And it's not stuff like flippers. will you you know it's ah The system is evolutionary. So you know you you're not it's it's a better you know it's better better display.
02:39:12
Speaker
ah Some cool features that you've been asking for that you haven't been we haven't been able to get you. um Lots of you know ah you know better sound package, better everything, um you know cool new other lighting things that you haven't seen yet.
02:39:27
Speaker
Just more power. um We're not, you know, it's interesting. I was listening to Retro Ralph and he was talking about, man, those guys, they've got to be, you know, the processor has to be like, you know, like bottomed out with Kong and stuff. It's like, we're not processor bound. We are, that the system's eight years old.
02:39:47
Speaker
we We do so much pre-rendering and we've gotten so good at manipulating that tech yeah that we can do anything with that system.
02:40:00
Speaker
What's interesting is I was i was talking to Chuck Ernst, you guys talked to Chuck, right? And I was talking to Chuck and I said, Chuck, can you think of a game where we struggled with the performance of the system?
02:40:11
Speaker
And he said, yeah. And I said, what game was that? he said, Aerosmith. And I said and said, why? He says, well, because it was the second game that we built on the system and we didn't the hell we were doing. yeah And so you know we we were figuring it out.
02:40:24
Speaker
And it what the system today has no more power than it did when we did Aerosmith. And yet, I shouldn't say that we have a bigger SD card because so much of our content is stored on the SD card. yep
Technology Integration and Manufacturing
02:40:37
Speaker
That you know at some point in time we had to go to a bigger SD card. but um But other than that, it's the same processor.
02:40:43
Speaker
And you're gonna see um not only a processor, ah more powerful stuff, but also ah part of the the thing that's taking time is that with all of this, you have to develop a new tool chain.
02:40:57
Speaker
So our ability to put content in the games, the, you know, the set of tools that we use to do that and to do all the things that we need to do and in every way, um, that's all new that's coming with the, with the cool new power, like software tools.
02:41:13
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, okay. yeah Yeah. So for example, you know how we put video content in the game, there's ah there's a tool chain that we use now. And and you know the current system is is very much flash-based and that's that's an unsupported technology and it's a proprietary...
02:41:31
Speaker
The engine that does that is proprietary anyway. We built it. So we have to we have to to redo all that stuff. you know and so we have to or Or find something else that does it and then manipulate it to do what we do. Because we're not, everybody thinks like like when I get a new programmer and he comes from the video game world, he thinks he knows what's up.
02:41:51
Speaker
Yeah. And the reality is that our world is a lot different. I mean, it's a good start. It was a good education. But now let me introduce you to real world physics. And let me introduce you to another control layer that's way more complex than the control layer that you're used to because all this stuff has to talk to each other. So my animations, my sounds, et cetera, have to be in sync with the device.
02:42:15
Speaker
I mean, you guys heard the the the most interesting sort of weird evolution of this is the fact that animations created in our and our software tools are now driving our you know Kong's mechanics.
02:42:31
Speaker
Yeah. That was one of the standout things that heard too. That's a pretty cool piece unique tech.
02:42:40
Speaker
um that comes out of things like that. right So that's part of you know when you build you build tool chains and when we built Spike, we we said, okay, you know we don't know what we don't know.
02:42:53
Speaker
So it should be modular so it can evolve with us. right I didn't know and you know whatever it was, you know, nine years ago, I didn't know I was going to need a QR reader.
02:43:04
Speaker
oh yeah. yeah I didn't know. Yeah, I didn't know guys like Harrison Drake were going to go, yeah, I need I need a thing with three servos, you know. OK. And, you know, I you know, and somebody else wants to put a display on the play field. Somebody else wants to.
02:43:19
Speaker
I don't ah you know, we need speaker lights. OK. Yeah. You know, so I didn't know any of that stuff. So so you have to build a system that allows you to add to it without turning the world upside down. Yeah. Which is essentially what Spike's done.
02:43:34
Speaker
It's what Spike 3 is going to continue to do, right? The node architecture is going to remain. There's going to be a lot of backward compatibility because that makes the manufacturing side of things a lot cleaner and easier and the transition is easier and all that stuff, right?
02:43:50
Speaker
um So we have new challenges, right? I mean, we have the tariff challenge we're facing now. We're fighting that fight. you know And and um you know I don't know if you spent any time with Seth Davis, but you know we we we're in that right now. We're trying to figure out which way's up.
02:44:05
Speaker
yeah and um we're also But we're also doing our damnedest, right? We held costs on Kong. Yeah, we appreciate that for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. But that's what we, I say we, but it's like um ah the power supply in Metallica is different.
02:44:18
Speaker
So it's like, oh, they're heading, like, we're just, this one more step closer to spike three. That's right. That's exactly right. It's exactly right. We feel like we're working there. It's like the power supply, you know, we wanted to solve the silence thing. Yeah. We wanted to, you know, we're going to need more power. So you got both of those. We're actually trying to create a, we're going to create a kit. So if you want to.
02:44:37
Speaker
If you want to ah upgrade your old Spike 2 stuff with the new power supply, you'll be able to. oh cool. And so you know we're we're hoping that you know that's a kit you buy as an accessory and and you know it's quiet your game down, give you more power, more reliability, et cetera.
02:44:53
Speaker
I think those are sort of quality of life improvements are always going on. yeah It's hard sometimes to focus on them because we've got to make games. And so if you have an engineering team, both mechanical and electrical, that's focused on the next cornerstone or the next release, sometimes it's tough to find time to fix a thing or improve a thing. yeah But we're always trying. We're always trying.
02:45:19
Speaker
I guess, well, one of the questions I want to ask about Spike 3, just real quick, Did you guys think that the way that everybody is talking about Spike 3 and speculating about it, did you think it was going to be that big of a deal to the pinball buyer base and to the pinball community to see a change like that? No. we we we I mean, we we love platform changes because they give us more power and and you know yeah it's a nice marketing bullet and stuff, but I didn't think there was going to be so much anticipation for it.
02:45:50
Speaker
um I think that because I i always think you know players are focused on the games and um and that that's a piece of technology that ah For the most part, you know when when you know it it's transparent. If it does its job right, it's working and and you know and it's transparent. right We just improved the menu system. You'll see it on Kong. yeah we saw We also did a lot of... we we we We're um starting to pay a lot of attention to the out-of-box experience, you know the unboxing experience. yeahp and And that comes from our experience with the Costco product.
02:46:24
Speaker
Right? Because yeah we have to go into, an um you know, we're going it more and more every day. People that don't know how to fix a pinball machine, they don't know anything about a pinball machine, they don't know that you to take the glass off put the balls in a pinball machine. They don't know any of that stuff.
02:46:37
Speaker
Sure. So, and that's really our Costco buyer. And so we said, hey, you know, we got to think about what the out of box experience is. How does this guy set the game up?
02:46:49
Speaker
What are the things that he's doing? um and so that And that touched so many things, right? Like in in the last iteration of Costco games, you guys don't even know this, but you can put the balls in the game without taking the glass off.
02:47:01
Speaker
You can. I didn't even know that. I saw that. Yeah. You can do it. You didn't even tell us, Tom. Yeah. You should know all these things. I have. You the menu selections, right? And we're probably going upset some operators, but the menu selections were done with the.
02:47:16
Speaker
So over time, menus had evolved to be what they were. Yeah. And so, you know you may have guys that remember that you know ah adjustment number 35 or whatever is this. Mm-hmm. And, but the reality is that adjustment number 35 might be a thing that everybody does when they get the game and they set up the game. So shouldn't that be in the first top 10? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Well, or at least clustered together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The top 10 things people at home. So we're doing a lot of that, right? So we spend a lot of time just looking and, you know, just sort of leveraging our own consumer product experiences, right?
02:47:53
Speaker
you know You buy a Sony television, you take it out of the box, and those guys have thought through every step. right Here's the thing. you yeah You point your QR code at this thing. There's not even a manual anymore. You point your QR code at this thing, and then it's going to tell you to do this and this and this and this. and so we We just thought a lot about that experience. and and we're trying it Over time, we're we're slowly migrating it into the commercial product.
02:48:17
Speaker
Because
Improving Consumer Accessibility
02:48:18
Speaker
the um yeah we did it for the Costco product. We have another, you know there's another iteration of Costco product coming this coming fall. And and and so you know we're getting, that that's even evolving. you know That product's getting better um because we learned we learned a bunch of things. you know We learned, oh, little kids are doing this in the store when they're trying to play it. and So I guess what what would be the most surprising thing that you learned from that first Costco game?
02:48:46
Speaker
um interesting interesting Interestingly enough, most of the things that we learned were things about the in-store experience. Okay, just them coming in like it's a storefront, just seeing it. The in-store experience, right? That was the first learning curve.
02:49:04
Speaker
Because it's a different environment and and you you know you've got a game set up to play and you've got some games ready to go in boxes. and and the you know But you're talking to an audience that is unfamiliar with the product. They don't even know where to start. They don't know where to start. yeah yeah so so again, notion speaking to the notion of We got to do this. and And it's a great lesson because it's a lesson that translates into if we're selling 70% of the games into the home, I got to tell you that some large some a bigger number than you'd think is first time buyers, first time anything with a pinball machine. yeah Oh, yeah. Right. So, so you know, when when I see a post on Facebook and the guy's like, I plugged my game in but nothing's happened. He doesn't understand where that that there's a switch you can turn on, you know, and I literally saw that. Right. You guys, I don't know. It's famous. It's out there. I've had to tell people you have to plug the game in.
02:50:04
Speaker
Yeah. To even get power to it. So what I'm hearing for Spike 3 is you need to make it like a folding chair where the head goes up and the legs just automatically come down. Just shoot, one go, you know. Well, one of the cool things too about the Costco game that I noticed was just the box that it came in too. Yeah. That you had a full picture of the play field right there. And that was, I assume it was intentional because of where it's going. Intentional because we knew, hey, we're going into a new environment. And this wasn't even a Costco demand. This was us.
02:50:33
Speaker
Okay, yeah. This was us saying, we're going in a new environment, and how do we communicate to people what's in this box? Sure. Because the box doesn't look like the pinball machine fits in it. Yeah, So it's like, we start there, right? And and and ah yeah I think you guys um you guys know I'm an industrial designer by trade, yeah right?
02:50:56
Speaker
um My formal education was ah was a lot about how humans relate to products. Right? What does it feel like? What does it touch? How do I convey a feeling with the product?
02:51:09
Speaker
And so, ah so um that's, I'm a big driver of that stuff sure because that that, you know, it's it's, it's, it's, that is the, that is the world I come from. So that's, you know, that, that world still lives inside of me and I, and I bring it to everything. I, by the way, I bring it my games too, but, but, but I think that, that that's the thinking. The thinking is,
02:51:32
Speaker
How do humans relate to this? And how do they, you know, what how do i make the experience better? How do I make them love these things the way you love great products that you own.
02:51:43
Speaker
you know I don't know what it is, whether it's your Android phone, your iPhone, or whatever it is, your your iPad, whatever it is that you're in love with that you think does everything really well. is like We need to bring this to a product that's going to to be touching new hands, new people.
02:51:59
Speaker
you know and we we You've heard this from us before. I'll say it again. we our You know, sometimes the hardcore community gets upset with us when they see us pursuing things like Costco.
02:52:15
Speaker
We're all about growing the world of pinball. yeah We really don't care. We hope that those people are as passionate as our core audience, ah you know, three years from now, five years from now. we we
Long-term Strategy and Industry Growth
02:52:28
Speaker
We pray that they are, right? That's the future. We're building our own future.
02:52:32
Speaker
We're trying to build our own future. We're trying to say, You know, my dad brought, you know, we want little Johnny to say, you know, when he was 12, his dad brought home a Costco pinball machine. And that thing sat the basement he played it and everything else. And then he went to college and he said, yeah, you know, I want to go to barcades and play pinball. And it becomes a natural part of his entertainment life.
02:52:58
Speaker
And someday he's going to have a house and car and kids, and he's going to want a pinball machine, and hope we hope he's a buyer. So that that's the long game. That's playing the long game. Not too many American companies do that. We do.
02:53:10
Speaker
We are playing the long game. And we want to grow pinball. Yeah. And it doesn't mean, you know, it's like everybody's, ah, you know, they sold a thousand of those things. It's a failure. No, it's not a failure, man. It's like, you know, the longest...
02:53:23
Speaker
The longest journey begins with but a single step. yeah And that's that's the deal. you know um and And so that's what we're doing. we're We're trying to grow pinball every way. We want to support.
02:53:36
Speaker
you know That's what Insider Connect is about. That's what you know that's what tournaments are about. That's what Stern Army is about. yeah um It's about growing the world. Growing the world of pinball so that you know when I'm 70 years old ah in June, when I'm 90, I don't want to hear they still make those things.
02:53:55
Speaker
you know If I did my job right, if I did my job right, i won't hear that, right? Right. And that's what's kind of cool in a way that, I mean, even this week alone, on Tuesday, there was another manufacturer that released a game. And it's just like the fact that they're – Any game that gets out there, a pinball machine, regardless of who makes it, gets in somebody's house is going to grow.
02:54:15
Speaker
yeah And now all of a sudden, there're you know we all know as pinball enthusiasts, once you get one, you're already looking for what's your next one. Or or you know you got to figure out a way when when the new cooler one comes out, you got to figure out a way to trade that one out and get the new one in, right?
02:54:29
Speaker
yeah Some people, not everybody's got... The resources, nobody not everybody's got the, you know, that's why we're concerned about the resale. but You know, we we hear you about the, you know, the resale value and stuff. And by the way, I mean, as it is, Pinball still has incredible resale value. Oh, yeah.
02:54:44
Speaker
you know there's I can't think of too many other products right that that have as much, you know um that that that retain ah their value. Yeah, my car that I used for 15 years, I cancel it for over the value I paid for it. I'm going try to get my PlayStation 5 over at to GameStop pretty soon to see how that works out. Good luck with that. Yeah. Well, we've already taken essentially an hour of your time, which is awesome. And I know Tom's Pizza is beyond cold at this point.
02:55:13
Speaker
I'll still eat it. You could have eaten that pizza while we were doing this. I'm trying to think of, I mean, ah you addressed Spike 3. So X-Men code is coming. John Wick code is coming. up X-Men accessories.
02:55:25
Speaker
On the verge of, on the verge of happening. And then D and D accessories, right? Yeah. Yeah. So we, um, one of the things that's on my plate from the company, it's a big, big problem that I have to solve uh,
02:55:40
Speaker
um I want to launch accessories when I launch games. Sure. And and so I have to get to that. And it's a certainly a challenge. um It's a resource challenge. It's a licensing challenge. It's you know sometimes a manufacturing challenge. It's going to become a manufacturing challenge now.
02:55:56
Speaker
um with some of this turf stuff. But I mean, i I have to solve that problem. That's a big, big problem. And then you'll see me focused on that this coming year. I'm going to try, you know, you may, I have like stuff that's in flight. It's hard for me to do anything about, but but stuff that I'm starting up,
02:56:14
Speaker
um I have a much better chance. you know Like Jack's next game, i have a much better chance. Borg's next game, i have a much better chance. Of it all coming out at once. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And so I'm um i'm trying really hard.
02:56:26
Speaker
Nice. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you. i appreciate everything you do. Thank you so much, obviously, for being on this. Was there anything else that you? No, I mean, I hope you guys enjoyed the time.
02:56:36
Speaker
Oh, yeah absolutely. I mean, it's like we love having you here. we yeah We love doing this. I've heard so many positive comments from people about just ah the notion of opening the doors and letting people come and play pinball all day and and hang out with us and get to know us.
02:56:51
Speaker
um we you know we want we don't want to be um you know We don't want to be the faceless. you know We want to put a human face to the stuff we do. i I remember very clearly I interviewed you when Bond had first come out. And and I remember you could tell it. You could hear it your voice. You just said, just be patient. Trust me. yeah I'm going to like.
02:57:10
Speaker
And it was so obvious. It's like, man, he really cares. And then, I mean, congrats to where Bond is today. That that game is fantastic. But it's very clear you guys care. We put our names on them. So we put our names on them. And if we're going to put our names on them, we got to get them right.
02:57:24
Speaker
yeah We don't, you know, we're not perfect. You know, we're far from perfect. We fuck stuff up all the time. yeah and But that doesn't mean we don't, you know, we we always try to fix it.
02:57:36
Speaker
You know, we always try to fix it. I think you're you definitely are more successful than you are not. So you you're yes, it's i I don't know. It's it's easy to scrutinize. But today, everything we saw today out of Kong is is incredible.
02:57:53
Speaker
And um yeah, it's a pretty, pretty amazing game. yeah We've known for some time, right? We knew we had, you know, like, um you know, games get a buzz, right? Yeah. Well, pretty soon the rest of the world's going to know. Yeah. from this weekend Yeah. the um Yeah, this weekend we're at Pimbata Zoo in Kalamazoo, and there's going to be a bunch of us out there. I'm driving out on Saturday. Gary's going out. Seth's going to be out.
02:58:17
Speaker
Zombie Yeti's going be out. Elwynn's going to be out. um So go yeah um if you're in that vicinity, if you're in Michigan or whatever, you know, please probably that take take a ride. Take a ride. um I think we have, I believe we're going have five pros and five premiums nice um out there.
02:58:34
Speaker
And um I think some of the other some of the younger guys, Michael Grant's going to be doing his usual yeah thing out there and Alex Eddy, a bunch of bunch of guys. So we will have a presence and hopefully expose people to the game and they can see what we've been seeing. But yeah, think that i think that Those guys are on a roll, you know, um, it's funny. I was, as somebody was saying, you know, ah said, you know, you had your all one moment. I said, yeah, I had, you know, I had a couple of years there when I ah could do no wrong, but you know, it's like, it's one of those things where you just, you know, you get, you get on, uh, you know, you go with it and yeah stuff happens. Well, yeah. And that's what I was just telling somebody just the other day that, you know, as, as much as people scrutinize things, at least from a design standpoint or anything like that, it's,
02:59:25
Speaker
We're going to look back 20, 30 years from now and realize there's three, four, five pinball machines being released Each year, yeah yeah you know, with high level themes, with high level call outs, high level design. And it's consistent. And the manufacturing is consistent as well. It's not like these games are being announced and nothing for 12 months, you know, just like we walk the line today.
02:59:48
Speaker
Kongs everywhere. Yeah. yeah So that's a key point. factory, I wish more people could see what you guys saw today, right? You know, we're for real. and yeah it's It's funny because I read on the internet every other day, I read that I'm going out of business. and yeah it was like you know I was like, man, I i guess I get that to sell my car. i I don't think people realize how big the stern operation truly is for flight what's going on here. It's amazing.
03:00:14
Speaker
speculate all that you know That factory, that was a white elephant. No, they're going to go out of business. Well, you know, he seemed to understand. I was like, we're doing more business because that. Yes, it's exactly. But no, it's great.
03:00:28
Speaker
Great talking to you guys. And um we love having people over and showing you what we do. and Yeah. Well, I hope you're ready to make a lot of Kongs. I hope you're ready. We are. Yeah, we are. The operations guys are gearing up.
03:00:41
Speaker
And yeah so it's, ah um yeah, I mean, like, let's let's pray that this tariff thing doesn't beat us up too bad. Yeah. um And, um you know, because, ah you know, we want to we want to we want to ah continue to make games and lots of them.
03:00:56
Speaker
Sure. Well, thanks again. Thank you so much, George. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate it. Now you're getting me hungry. i have that Sorry.