Ep 77: Earning Wings with Tim Sexton and Raymond Davidson

Transcript

Speaker: Thanks for tuning in to the loser kid pinball podcast.

Speaker: We are on episode 77.

Speaker: I am Josh Roop and with me, my cohost is always Scott Larson and Scott.

Speaker: Why don't you, uh, why don't we talk about our sponsor really quick and then I want you to introduce the guest.

Speaker: Sounds good.

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Speaker: It just took me up.

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Speaker: All right.

Speaker: Why don't you go ahead and introduce our guests today, Scott?

Speaker: All right.

Speaker: So I'm super excited about this because we are talking about Rush.

Speaker: Yeah, I'm a slight fan of Rush.

Speaker: May have been following him basically my entire life.

Speaker: But today we have the lead designer, Tim Sexton, and also the co-designer, I don't know, the co-captain, the Robin to your Batman.

Speaker: I'm not sure exactly how this works, but world number one player in the world, Raymond Davidson.

Speaker: So welcome to the show, guys.

Speaker: Thanks for having us here, Scott.

Speaker: And Josh.

Speaker: Scott introduced us.

Speaker: That's why I addressed him.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, it's no biggie.

Speaker: So I guess that begs the first question.

Speaker: Are you going to go as Batman, Tim, to the end?

Speaker: I assume you and Ray are going to end this.

Speaker: So you go as Batman.

Speaker: He's going to be there as Robin.

Speaker: When we go to pinball tournaments, we have to switch it up because Raymond's better than me at competitive pinball.

Speaker: But he couldn't have Robin win the tournament.

Speaker: We'll both be there and, you know, cheering each other on teams.

Speaker: Go team Stern between us two and Keith.

Speaker: I think I like our odds.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: That's pretty low.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Oh man.

Speaker: Zach's coming to imagine a final four of four of us for the strong final four.

Speaker: We'll try to make it happen.

Speaker: I did find out today I was playing around with the Stern Insider and the Stern employees are actually on a tab.

Speaker: So if you want to follow any of those guys, I definitely followed all the people I know.

Speaker: Yeah, I think most of us have profiles too.

Speaker: Yeah, if you just search Stern, it'll pretty much pop up the whole company.

Speaker: Yeah, try both all caps and capital S because I think some of them are cased differently.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, no, it's if you click under connections, that's how I found most people.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I have all my activities set to public on there as well.

Speaker: So people can stalk me and find exactly where I'm playing.

Speaker: I don't think it shows that, does it?

Speaker: I haven't.

Speaker: I think it just says what games you've been playing.

Speaker: It doesn't say where.

Speaker: I know it says on mine, like location, like loser kids, awesome arcade or whatever.

Speaker: And your activity.

Speaker: Uh, but I think when you look at someone else, it just says like how many achievements their XP.

Speaker: Oh, gotcha.

Speaker: Oh, gotcha.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, there you go.

Speaker: So another plug for the start and insert.

Speaker: Oh, that's also another thing I got for my Deadpool was I got my insider.

Speaker: And so I'm going to be upgrading that here soon too.

Speaker: So,

Speaker: Anyway, all right, guys.

Speaker: Rush.

Speaker: So we watched the reveal as everybody else did, and it looks really fun.

Speaker: It looks like obviously a lot of similar themes to X-Men.

Speaker: I had an X-Men for a while.

Speaker: but it seems like it's even X-Men on steroids in that it seems to flow very well.

Speaker: You guys didn't seem to be breaking anything.

Speaker: I know you guys are elite level players, but at least that shows me that the geometry and everything looked really good.

Speaker: So I'm really excited to get my hands on mine.

Speaker: I have my LE coming whenever those get produced, probably in a month or so.

Speaker: And to start off with, okay, tell me how long you've been working on this project.

Speaker: So Raymond and I have been working on this since probably around when, or even before 1.0 of Led Zeppelin.

Speaker: So we didn't have a break in between.

Speaker: It actually is a lot of work to do 13 months or whatever it was between two games.

Speaker: You know, it's a pretty tight schedule, but we were...

Speaker: iterating on designs of Rush before Led Zeppelin was announced.

Speaker: And, you know, I was talking to John, you know, infrequently as he was drawing the play field, working with Elliot on the parts and stuff.

Speaker: When we get to the point where we have Whitewoods and we have, you know, lamps and stuff and devices on the game, which is months and months ago at this point, then...

Speaker: Raymond and I are spending some split time or more of our time on rush development.

Speaker: It was to the point where I think it was the earliest Raymond had ever entered a cycle of game development because often a lot of people join towards the end of the project before we ship because that's when...

Speaker: all the arts coming in and all the focus on the companies on the next game hitting the line.

Speaker: But so Raymond joined his official title in the game is Wingman.

Speaker: So we call the second command software.

Speaker: Do I need to get the owl costume?

Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: when we get the first game and it doesn't light up and nothing moves, Raymond joined at that point, and we both had Whitewoods.

Speaker: Yeah, and Tim was like, all right, make all the devices do stuff.

Speaker: And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what?

Speaker: Yeah, let me know if you have any questions.

Speaker: Good luck.

Speaker: So coming from, you're both very top tier competitive people.

Speaker: You obviously were competing before you worked at Stern.

Speaker: Um, how has that background helped progress the way that you want to code over the last couple of games, both for, I don't know if Ray days got to do much cause this is the early cycle, but, um, how, how has it helped progress you guys through the code sets and also, um,

Speaker: has it helped knowing those little nuances too?

Speaker: Because like some of the deeper codes have just wonderful little nuances that you get that just make it that much more savory.

Speaker: And so I want to know how bringing your competitive background has helped you make these codes.

Speaker: So for me, I think I'm going to go into just an explanation of what the competitive pinball scene requires to set this up.

Speaker: So when you play competitive pinball,

Speaker: you have to be prepared for a lot of games.

Speaker: You could be playing Tales from the Crypt and then immediately playing Guardians of the Galaxy and Modern Stern and then going back and playing a game like Countdown from Gottlieb that doesn't even have a multiball.

Speaker: So you have to get good at learning what the differences between every single game are.

Speaker: And what this gives you is a really good language for talking about

Speaker: pinball's features over the years, referring to a rule set, referring to some geometry things.

Speaker: That means when you get to Stern and you're looking at the code of the game, which is written in C++, it's pretty easy to think, oh, I've seen this in a game, right?

Speaker: I've seen the way the kickback code works on

Speaker: you know, Star Trek where there's a virtual kickback on one and then there's a physical kickback on the other game.

Speaker: Let's see how that was implemented, right?

Speaker: So something like that, if you have that familiarity from playing competitive pinball, that just makes working here and, you know, diving into the code a lot easier just from the get-go.

Speaker: So that to me is what the advantages of the competitive pinball

Speaker: Yeah, I was going to add basically build on top of that where oftentimes I'll need to come up with rules for for multi balls or jackpot progressions or cool risk reward sort of things.

Speaker: And because I've played so many different games throughout tournaments, I've

Speaker: i i have like an encyclopedia of like oh i could do the acdc similar rule or the family guy inspired rule and you know i always mix and match add my own spin to it but like if i ever i'm low on inspiration i have a whole back catalog to pull you know stuff that was fun and then i can bring those fun elements into into the game so you're telling me bugs bunny's probably not going to make the cut

Speaker: I've yet to see the Bugs Bunny in a tournament yet, but since you're forced to play all those games, you have to just be ready.

Speaker: So I think when it comes to what you want as a competitive player in the games, really you just want something that people are going to like because you're caring more about the game doing well, selling well, being popular.

Speaker: Yeah, there's been a couple times where I'll come up with some cool, intricate rule, and then I'll implement it, and then I'll just realize, like, wait, that wasn't as much fun as I thought it would be.

Speaker: And then I actually, you know, make it simpler, and it's like, oh, this is actually more fun.

Speaker: So, yeah, you really got to, you know, play it out and see if the theory works in practice as well.

Speaker: And you have to put your ego behind yourself, because if I'm really good at

Speaker: recovery and nudging the game and Raymond's really good at shot making and you know he thinks he could win if he just has some rule where you loop the ramp 20 times and I think you can win if you just have to shoot a bash toy all day you have to come up with a compromise between you know what is achievable for all players what's going to be fun at the location and the competition stuff is secondary to it the competition stuff to me is just

Speaker: What don't you want to see in a competition because it's going to be embarrassing?

Speaker: Like what's going to show up and say, oh, players are ignoring all the features in this game and just doing this one thing, right?

Speaker: Like that could be a problem or even if just one feature is totally neglected in the game, you know, you haven't done a good job at making that

Speaker: important to hit or valuable.

Speaker: Yeah, and what's nice is with all the software adjustments and you can make competition installs.

Speaker: So, you know, for instance, on Led Zeppelin, if you install the competition, it doesn't light your locks at the beginning of the game or, you know, it'll do something different or it changes how the Icarus multiplier works because like the Icarus multiplier, that was a really fun rule.

Speaker: But if, you know, it's in tournaments and people find the ways to abuse it, you know, we can have a setting that's only on

Speaker: in those really, really tough competition situations.

Speaker: And that can help alleviate it without spoiling it for normal play.

Speaker: I'm assuming that with the new connectivity, that will really help you out too.

Speaker: I would guess you would get some sort of feedback to find out how often this feature is used or how difficult this thing is or how many things.

Speaker: And so you can

Speaker: Before, you would just have to use your own experience or location to try to rebalance things.

Speaker: But it seems like you're getting... This is probably one of the first games where you are going to start getting a lot of feedback very quickly onto how it's functioning in the real world.

Speaker: Is that a correct assumption?

Speaker: It's definitely an avenue that could help us gather more feedback.

Speaker: We plan to continue to develop Insider Connected and to just deliver...

Speaker: more features that people want.

Speaker: We have a lot of ways we already collect feedback.

Speaker: One of the biggest ones is we just go in person and we watch people play.

Speaker: If we can't do that, we watch streams of people playing.

Speaker: People stream at home, people stream in tournaments.

Speaker: And we do have people who, before Insider Connected, would voluntarily give us audits because we gave audits to operators in the first place.

Speaker: And, you know, potentially we could gather more information about the games.

Speaker: But I think what you miss out if you just are getting information from a computer sometimes is is someone having fun and.

Speaker: Going in person and watching people play the games is the best way to see if they're enjoying something.

Speaker: Are they aiming for something?

Speaker: Are they ignoring it?

Speaker: Do they understand what's happening?

Speaker: And, you know, with COVID, it's been harder, but... It might be a certain feature isn't getting activated because people don't know about it rather than it's too difficult or the other way around.

Speaker: Maybe people are going for it, but it's very difficult, so it doesn't happen very often.

Speaker: And depending on the scenario, one of those might be acceptable, one of them might not be.

Speaker: But if you're just looking at a spreadsheet, you won't know the nuance between the two.

Speaker: But yeah, it definitely is cool, the potential there to gather the information.

Speaker: But we are constantly talking while we develop about like, is this fun?

Speaker: Am I enjoying this?

Speaker: What's annoying?

Speaker: We don't hesitate to say, oh, I don't like this or something like that.

Speaker: And then we fix it.

Speaker: We work with other testers in the company, you know,

Speaker: put the code out when we do releases, we work with beta testers.

Speaker: There's so many ways we try to gather information, and we're just trying to move as fast as we can to make the game as fun as it can be.

Speaker: Sorry, when you were speaking of ego earlier, I had this visual in my mind of you guys sitting around the table.

Speaker: And Raymond's like, well, let me show you something on the computer.

Speaker: It's like number one in IFPA.

Speaker: And Tim busts out a trophy.

Speaker: Well, let me show you this trophy.

Speaker: And Keith's like, have you ever heard of an event called Pinberg and puts his trophy on the table?

Speaker: Yeah, I'm pretty sure Keith just has like boxes of trophies in an attic somewhere like overflowing.

Speaker: He has like a landfill of just trophies he has in his backyard.

Speaker: It seems like Sauron, he has one trophy to rule them all.

Speaker: So, okay, Tim, this is your third game.

Speaker: And so coming, you're no longer a rookie.

Speaker: You have two established games behind you, and this is your third one.

Speaker: How has that process been?

Speaker: And what has surprised you from going from a hobbyist to writing the rule set?

Speaker: Were there things that you expected or what surprised you about that process?

Speaker: Yeah, this is my third game as lead developer, but it's actually the eighth game I've contributed to at Stern.

Speaker: So it's been a lot of games really fast.

Speaker: What's better now is I've just learned so much more than I had when I first started.

Speaker: I learned just instinctively, you know, what's going to work in our code base, what problems have been solved already, where do I need to look?

Speaker: We have people here like Dwight Sullivan and Lonnie Ropp who have just worked for over a decade in the pinball industry.

Speaker: Lonnie's worked here since 1987.

Speaker: So since literally the first line of code was written at Stern, he's been here until now.

Speaker: So he's a tremendous resource.

Speaker: And I think now what's different is I have...

Speaker: I have a lot of good relationships with the people I work with.

Speaker: I enjoy the teams I have to work with.

Speaker: And I'm more confident in what I could do in what could be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time, because I have to go to management and convince them that this game needs three wizard modes, right?

Speaker: And that is a valuable use of our time.

Speaker: And so having gone through the process, I think the confidence in

Speaker: what we can accomplish with the rule set, what I can accomplish, what my teammates can accomplish, and what our art team can accomplish.

Speaker: That's been a big thing to understand exactly what those guys could do in the computer graphics team where they're putting all the stuff on the LCD display.

Speaker: That allows me to get a better understanding of what a game can be at Stern Pinball right now with the team we have.

Speaker: And we have a great team of people here.

Speaker: How has Ben Ryan rule sets for both of you?

Speaker: I know that, Raymond, this is your first co-lead, but... Second.

Speaker: Your second?

Speaker: I mean, I was pretty much tag teaming with Tim on Led Zeppelin mostly.

Speaker: Like, I didn't start from as early on Rush, but from a rules... Like, when I started Led Zeppelin, there was maybe one song mode done.

Speaker: So, like, the framework was all there, and I was able to jump in really fast, as opposed to Rush, where I had to also do the framework.

Speaker: But, yeah, I'd say it's my second game being a wingman.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So, what...

Speaker: what kind of went to expectations when you guys were writing these rule sets versus what, uh, kind of surprised you when you were trying to, to, uh, put this all together.

Speaker: Um, oftentimes I would, I'd think too hard and long and like complicated and then realizing, oh, it doesn't need to be this complicated.

Speaker: Um, because like, you know, it's, oh, I get to do whatever I want.

Speaker: And so I come up with this cool thing and then I'm like, oh, but I need to kind of relay that.

Speaker: How am I going to relay that to the player?

Speaker: So I'll put a bunch of stuff on screen and then I actually play it.

Speaker: I'm like, there's no way I can read five lines of text in two seconds.

Speaker: Like this is not helpful.

Speaker: And even if I could read it, I'm playing pinball.

Speaker: Like, how am I going to actually, you know, like set up a thing the way I want it to?

Speaker: And so then I'll just start kind of removing layers until I get to something that is a nice compromise of it's intuitive to grasp, but there's still something that's like maybe one extra step of like, oh, this or that will double your super.

Speaker: And that's it.

Speaker: As opposed to like,

Speaker: Five extra layers of rules.

Speaker: I start there and then I realize, okay, I need to scale back and just simplify it.

Speaker: And it ends up working pretty well that way.

Speaker: So that was the one thing I realized is that more complicated doesn't necessarily mean more fun.

Speaker: I think that was a big, big thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: I actually was working on Avengers with Keith and Thor multiball is like the simplest multiball in the game.

Speaker: It's like you hit X number of jackpots and you hit the captive ball.

Speaker: Then you hit X plus one jackpots and you hit the captive ball.

Speaker: And like Keith's like, that mode's super fun.

Speaker: I'm like, yeah, it is.

Speaker: It's so simple though.

Speaker: Like, like just realizing that, you know, more complicated doesn't equal more fun.

Speaker: But I also like to add my own spin where I can and leave little nuggets for people that really want to geek out, you know, if they want to.

Speaker: So how familiar were either of you with Rush?

Speaker: I mean, you're younger than me, and I'm certainly solidly in the dad rock generation.

Speaker: And so I've followed Rush my entire life, but I know that I'm not in the majority.

Speaker: And so how was that, just getting used to a deep catalog like Rush has?

Speaker: So my dad is in the dad rock generation.

Speaker: All right, son.

Speaker: Showing the age difference here.

Speaker: But, you know, growing up, he drove the car, so he had control of the radio, which meant he had it locked in on the classic rock station, which means over the hours and hours I spent in the car growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia,

Speaker: I've listened to plenty of Rush songs and I got familiar with who the bands were, you know, what their music sounded like.

Speaker: My generation had Guitar Hero, right?

Speaker: Which was kind of a revival for some of the rock music because it was really just rock focused.

Speaker: And I remember, you know, playing YYZ and Guitar Hero 3 was one of the hardest songs in that game.

Speaker: So that was probably the deepest I ever went on a Rush song before then.

Speaker: I have like a little anecdote where when I went to the IFPA championships in Canada, Raymond, do you remember what year that was?

Speaker: I think it was 2017.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Around then, my friend Levy rented a car.

Speaker: And as we drove up from the airport to the tournament, he was explaining to me that Canada has a rule where over 30% of the music you play has to be from Canadian artists.

Speaker: Is that an actual rule?

Speaker: Is that rule?

Speaker: Is that serious or is that like a joke?

Speaker: Yeah, that's true.

Speaker: France has that for French artists.

Speaker: It is actually pretty common.

Speaker: We don't think about it as Americans because so much entertainment is produced in America that it would be silly to even impose a rule like that.

Speaker: It's almost like you'd want a 30% of non-American rule.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: So as we flip through the radio stations there, back to the car again, you know, you get Justin Bieber on station one and then you'd go to a rock station, you get like a band that kind of sounded like, you know, Led Zeppelin, but wasn't Led Zeppelin and it wasn't anything.

Speaker: It's like they're trying and then you would like finally get a rush song.

Speaker: You'd be like, oh, wow, this is this is music now.

Speaker: This isn't just some cheap imitation.

Speaker: This is like a real band with their own sound.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And, you know, every time a Rush song came on, like Tom Sawyer, we'd come and we'd just pump our fists like, yeah, it's Rush.

Speaker: It's not some Canadian band we've never heard of before that kind of sounds like Motorhead, but kind of doesn't.

Speaker: So I would say it was a good casual fan of Rush before working on this project.

Speaker: Diving into it, I was a little bit intimidated because of the fandom and the passion from the Rush fans being incredible.

Speaker: I mean, Rush fans, you know, there's stereotypes about it.

Speaker: That's how well noted it is.

Speaker: Like, they only listen to Rush, right?

Speaker: And, you know, you'll ask them, like, how do I get into Rush?

Speaker: And they'll be like, listen to this, all their music and every live recording and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker: So I was actually working with Ed Robertson,

Speaker: on the project, who's a big pinball enthusiast and another Canadian musician, he probably benefits from that 30% rule on Canadian radio.

Speaker: He was like, here's where you want to go.

Speaker: You want to watch the documentary on Netflix, Rush Beyond the Lighted Stage, because that actually gets you an insight into them, into Alex, Gideon, Neil, and what they want to be known as and what they are as people that

Speaker: And you don't have to listen to every single version of every concert they've done in all 85 hours of live DVD they have.

Speaker: Just, you know, start with start here.

Speaker: That's what he said.

Speaker: So starting there, obviously listening to every song they had.

Speaker: And then for me, it was every song we had in the game.

Speaker: I was looking at every time they performed that song live in concert.

Speaker: So going through all the DVDs and all the Blu-ray releases they had and just watching the different concerts and then seeing what they had actually performed, you know, instead of just listening to the audio, you get a little bit more that way.

Speaker: So, you know, just things like every time they do Tom Sawyer in a concert, they do something silly and special with it.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: One of the funniest things they've ever done is they had South Park playing Tom Sawyer as the intro to Tom Sawyer when they played it in their concert.

Speaker: So just a fun thing like that really would... It's a better way to get into it than just trying to listen to all 19 albums front to back and then listening to live.

Speaker: There's just too many hours of stuff to get into it.

Speaker: But it's great for the fans.

Speaker: I mean, they have all the...

Speaker: Rushley could want it more, I think.

Speaker: Well, that was actually a follow-up question I have.

Speaker: You were able to get a lot of songs for this game.

Speaker: That was an embarrassment of riches, but I'm sure as a Rush fan, I would say, yeah, go ahead and put 150 songs in there.

Speaker: But we know that that's not reasonable.

Speaker: You can do about 114 instead.

Speaker: So you were able to get 16.

Speaker: However, you have a lot of live footage, which is great.

Speaker: You're not handicapped by doing the way you had to do for Aerosmith, where you had a caricature of them playing the songs.

Speaker: You have the real footage doing it.

Speaker: For each song, is it the same footage every time or were you able to mix that up from different live sessions or how was that?

Speaker: And so you can keep it fresh and stay in a collection.

Speaker: So in this game, we have the audio of the game is the studio album track.

Speaker: And we created a video for each of the songs that covers that entire track.

Speaker: And it's assembled from live footage, which means it's not one to one.

Speaker: But thanks to Jodi, director of licensing, we were able to get just the footage we needed to cover what we have in the game.

Speaker: So sometimes we were looking for footage for 2112, right?

Speaker: It's a long song.

Speaker: Most performances of 2112 have been just the overture, maybe just the overture in the finale.

Speaker: But there were two times where they did on footage that I could find the entire song.

Speaker: Well, on the different stages tour, they did the whole thing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So, yeah.

Speaker: And so we cut together the 2112 video from both of those.

Speaker: But it is just...

Speaker: So every time you do play the song, you're seeing one long video, but it's a unique video of the entire song.

Speaker: There's nothing that repeats as long as the audio is playing.

Speaker: So I want to know, because this is another music pin, do you have to approach music pins differently than you do another theme like superheroes or Elvira by chance, since it's mostly music ingrained?

Speaker: I think you do, but I think you have to approach every license, every theme with what the theme is about.

Speaker: Obviously, you have to.

Speaker: You can't just do whatever you want.

Speaker: You have to work with the licensor to get approvals.

Speaker: They want to represent the product a certain way.

Speaker: you want to make the game fun.

Speaker: You meet and you make the best game you can.

Speaker: And we can't, for instance, just start adding music we don't have to this game, right?

Speaker: So we're stuck with the songs we do have.

Speaker: And if we'd start telling a story that's too far outside of that, we're just not going to have enough content in the game that relates to what we're trying to talk about.

Speaker: Like if we didn't have...

Speaker: 2112 and we started doing a game about 2112 Rush, it wouldn't make a lot of sense because we wouldn't have any sound effects from it.

Speaker: We wouldn't have any thing there.

Speaker: I don't know if that example makes any sense, but you kind of get what I'm saying.

Speaker: And with the music games and in the LCD era, you want to create an audio and visual and pinball experience that

Speaker: makes sense with what you have because the music is like that main ingredient of the game where you are not you're stuck with it it's like what you are putting into the game that's your first layer if you do let's say a superhero game you might be getting music composed by someone else so you can you're in you're inverted you're now saying this is a battle i need energetic fight music and then this is a

Speaker: you know, exploring the city, I need kind of, you know, enchanted, like nightlife music, whatever you need, you know, you can kind of ask for it.

Speaker: This is the other way around.

Speaker: You're just, this is the mood set by the track and what the music's about.

Speaker: So how do you bring that to life in pinball?

Speaker: Yeah, I think in John Borg developing Rush Heat from the get-go, he figured Bastille Day, you're going to start it and it's going to start pumping you up and you're going to have all these targets lit and you're going to want to pump the ramp over and over again and then cash in on the targets.

Speaker: There's big explosions going on.

Speaker: You can really tell that song set the feel for that mode.

Speaker: And I heard that as the song progresses from the, I guess, the verses to the chorus to different parts of the song, there are different things that are illuminated.

Speaker: Is that correct?

Speaker: No, that is the rules of Led Zeppelin.

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: Okay, I have that too.

Speaker: And this was repeated on another podcast, I think, and it was not true.

Speaker: Not exactly sure where it came from, but that was the Led Zeppelin rule set.

Speaker: This is...

Speaker: More of your traditional, when you start a feature, the rules are based on shot making and timers.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: You heard it here first.

Speaker: We're setting the truth right.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Get that on the record.

Speaker: We got it on record.

Speaker: So you talked about Borg kind of giving you some direction on some of the stuff.

Speaker: How much input does he have on the code?

Speaker: Does he help drive a lot of the direction?

Speaker: Or does he kind of give you guys free reign of what you want to do?

Speaker: John likes to...

Speaker: give us control of it.

Speaker: He likes to give his programmer control of some stuff.

Speaker: John and all designers that I've ever worked with here at Stern, you know, George, Steve, John, Keith, they all insist on some stuff, right?

Speaker: Like if they're giving you a lock device, they want you to be able to start multiball there.

Speaker: If they put an insert on the play field that says light lock,

Speaker: They probably want, and they'll tell you.

Speaker: I want this to light the lock for the multivale, right?

Speaker: And so, like, on this game, John wanted the targets next to the ramp to light the lock, and he wanted the locks at the scoops in the middle.

Speaker: Now...

Speaker: It came later that we decided that Far Cry would be the multiball on that scoop, and that one little victory would be what happens when you beat Far Cry multiball and got to victory laps.

Speaker: But the lower level, before you're making those decisions, you're just deciding where the feature is going to happen before you decide what it is, what the jackpot rules are.

Speaker: It's just built-in layers.

Speaker: So every designer does say,

Speaker: this is what I want people to shoot.

Speaker: This is what I want people to see.

Speaker: If I'm giving you this device, if my budget is going to be spending this much money on this sculpt, I want it to be a main feature of this game, right?

Speaker: So they all have insistence on it.

Speaker: But when it comes to something like, let's say the skillshot,

Speaker: we might be able to put something in and John will say, here's my feedback on it.

Speaker: And then we'll say, here's our feedback on it.

Speaker: We'll reach a compromise, but yeah, originally funny story on the skill shot.

Speaker: I only had the, like the side ramp lit for a skill shot.

Speaker: And if you shot the inner loop and then combo it into the side ramp, you'd get the super skill shot.

Speaker: John would always shoot the side loop.

Speaker: because it would be lit.

Speaker: But then he'd miss the ramp and he'd be like, Raymond, I didn't get a skill shot.

Speaker: I shot the inner loop.

Speaker: It was blinking.

Speaker: And I'm like, oh, that's only for the super skill shot.

Speaker: He's like, oh, okay.

Speaker: Then he comes back to me later.

Speaker: Yeah, I know it's a super skill shot, but I really feel like I should get something for getting half of it.

Speaker: He wants half credit.

Speaker: He wants a three-second ball save.

Speaker: That would actually be a perfect rush joke in there.

Speaker: It's kind of a minor skill shot.

Speaker: It's a semi-skill shot.

Speaker: You should put a semi-skill shot in there.

Speaker: Sometimes it's hard to talk about even how these decisions are made because they're made through ongoing, evolving discussions.

Speaker: you know, throughout the entire project, right?

Speaker: Like at some point we do say, this is what we're going to do, but we don't have just one person run off and decree something.

Speaker: It's, it's all, are you okay with this?

Speaker: What do you think?

Speaker: Want to try it this way?

Speaker: And as long as everyone's on the same page, we'll go in that direction.

Speaker: And if someone says, Hey, this isn't working for me, is there something I'm missing?

Speaker: You know, it's discussions are happening with a,

Speaker: other input constantly there, right?

Speaker: And I go to John and I say, hey, you know, what if we

Speaker: did this, or I want somehow the ball to kind of move this way throughout the playfield.

Speaker: And he goes, oh, I'll think about that, right?

Speaker: And then he'll come back to me and say, what about this?

Speaker: So there's just ongoing discussions throughout the game that's really hard to pin down when something was decided or when it came to be.

Speaker: I can't put down like, okay, June 28th, we put a time machine on the playfield.

Speaker: It just doesn't happen that way.

Speaker: I do love that you continued with the expression lighting.

Speaker: That is a huge plus on music pins.

Speaker: And that's the first thing that people notice when they go up to Led Zeppelin is the interactivity of the light show, which makes it feel a lot more like a concert.

Speaker: So I'm really glad that you kept it.

Speaker: And where I'm sure there's budgetary constraints that you can't put in every model, you still made that available if people wanted to purchase it after market and put it in.

Speaker: And so I really applaud that design option because it does take music pins to an X level.

Speaker: Yeah, I really liked it.

Speaker: I worked on that on Led Zeppelin initially with Steve, and I've talked about that before, that that took some evolutions and it took some research with Tanya, Kleiss, and myself in looking at how we could create those light shows.

Speaker: And then Mike

Speaker: Vinacor, who you may know, he works at Stern.

Speaker: He's the head of our testing department, but he's also become really, really good at creating the light shows in the software tool and bringing them into the game for the music pins.

Speaker: He also has a skill shot named after him in pretty much every game.

Speaker: This is true.

Speaker: I appreciate him for the work he's done putting all these light shows in Led Zeppelin and

Speaker: rush.

Speaker: And I think because when they are music driven, like they are with the expressive lighting, the fact that I could just give him a song, right?

Speaker: Sort of in tandem with what Raymond and I are doing on rules or display effects or play field light shows.

Speaker: I can give him the music and he could take the time he needs to balance with all his other tasks at work to work on that stuff.

Speaker: And that frees us up to, you know, do what we need to do on the play field.

Speaker: So yeah,

Speaker: The story I keep repeating, I guess, is everything is done kind of this coordinated dance of software development and art development and light shows and everything.

Speaker: It's all kind of moving toward the day when we put the game in a box and start packing it.

Speaker: I could see Vinicor being like, so now that we've done Rush and Iron Maiden, let's go with like a Ramones for The Clash, right?

Speaker: Like, I'll compromise.

Speaker: We don't have to do Sick Puppies, but we can do the Ramones.

Speaker: How about that?

Speaker: We already decided that Creed was the next music pin, so.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: I thought you said Nickelback.

Speaker: You're pushing for another Canadian band.

Speaker: Nickelback would work, too.

Speaker: It's Canadian, so I think they're Canadian, so.

Speaker: Yes, they're Canadian.

Speaker: OK, so the one thing that Dwight started with Ghostbusters, which a lot of these games have been implemented, is kind of a jump mode.

Speaker: And so you can jump to a wizard mode or a challenge mode.

Speaker: And I think that has been such a great way of allowing people to see more of the game because there are so few people that actually get to the end of the game that if you have the ability to, OK, I want to play that mode.

Speaker: It does two things.

Speaker: One, it shows off more of the game, and it also gives you incentive to actually put some time into coding this really awesome mode because more people are going to see it.

Speaker: That's my subtle take to say, hey, are there any plans like that for Rush, including a 1-3 mode or a 1-2 or 2-2 or anything like that?

Speaker: Yeah, I'm ready to reveal a secret.

Speaker: On the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast, this game will have three

Speaker: Challenge modes.

Speaker: It will have a 2112 challenge mode, a Cygnus X1 challenge mode, and a Cygnus X1 Book 2 challenge modes.

Speaker: The Cygnus X1 will be split up into two parts, like the planets are split up on the playfield.

Speaker: Yeah, and so you have two epic modes based on black holes.

Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Just in case anybody who really didn't know about Cygnus X1 and Cygnus X2, it's a black hole circling a star, which is what the song was about, which was huge in the 70s, I guess.

Speaker: They did take a lot.

Speaker: Rush definitely took a lot of pop science influence for their themes.

Speaker: You know, that's sort of as I'm unpacking what the song's about.

Speaker: And I learned that Cygnus X1 was the first discovered

Speaker: black hole you know and of course growing up at the time i did where i was taught pluto was a planet then it wasn't right hey pluto's still a planet i roll with pluto it's fine thanks cancel culture yeah you know maybe that would have been the topic of of a song if they had been 30 years later in their music career like goodbye pluto i'm surprised they didn't have a hubble hubble telescope uh song so yeah

Speaker: No, that's a hey, I'm super excited about that because those for those who are unfamiliar with Russia's catalog, one, go listen to the Stern Insider interview with Ed Robertson because he talks about the song selection and I don't want to rehash it and steal their thunder.

Speaker: But the bottom line is 15 of the songs were all selected by

Speaker: Ed Robertson is the lead singer of Barenaked Ladies and Alex Lifeson, who's the lead guitarist of Rush and Geddy Lee, who's the lead bass and also the lead vocals.

Speaker: And so they got together and selected these songs.

Speaker: Now, three of these songs are close to 20 minutes because they're basically half an album.

Speaker: And so all of those epic challenge modes that Tim just talked about, those are all those three epic songs.

Speaker: And so if you can last 18 minutes, 18 to 20 minutes on one ball,

Speaker: you are in, in rate a territory right there.

Speaker: I think people have liked those challenge modes.

Speaker: They do pretty well when there's like a victory condition and a condition where you, you don't win.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And because it gives you a chance to play a game and pinball where you're actually trying to beat the clock.

Speaker: And we've done those timed leaderboards and those untimed leaderboards.

Speaker: I think when,

Speaker: For me, I worked on Jurassic Park a little bit as... I was working on some T-Rex animation, motor animation, when Rick was putting in that escape Nublar wizard mode, where you have three chances, and it really got to be this big project of itself.

Speaker: And when we put it as a game, because I can't remember the timing of that in Ghostbusters, because Ghostbusters, we did that software update, and...

Speaker: I don't remember where that fell in.

Speaker: But with the LCD screen with Nublar, they could lay out the three high scores, the speed and the points challenge.

Speaker: It was just a lot of fun.

Speaker: We were just playing it in the office, and it was awesome.

Speaker: Working here, you've obviously rubbed shoulders with celebrities and stuff like that.

Speaker: Has it been easy to keep your composure?

Speaker: Is there anyone you've met so far and you're like, uh, uh, hi, uh, have you ever heard of that?

Speaker: My most embarrassing story is when

Speaker: I texted Brendan Small because I saw Home Movies, his show was trending on Twitter, and he kind of just was like, yeah, whatever.

Speaker: That was, I mean, Home Movies is one of my favorite animated shows.

Speaker: It didn't run for very long.

Speaker: I didn't see it when it came out, but he was beyond that.

Speaker: So I try not, I just try to approach them like they're

Speaker: regular people that I'm conducting a business relationship with and not, not get too crazy with stuff they did in the past.

Speaker: We can't have Raymond on the project anymore.

Speaker: He tried to hug us too much.

Speaker: Well, he was supposed to go hug Ron because Ron loves hugs.

Speaker: Anytime you see Ron at a show, go up and give him a big hug.

Speaker: I don't know about that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay, so... Actually, not... Even in the before times, I don't think he would like that.

Speaker: Yeah, no, he... That's a joke.

Speaker: Ron is not a hugger, so you can wave at him.

Speaker: His dad's pretty cool to hang out with, though.

Speaker: As far as being, like, starstruck, I still get nervous even just slack messaging Keith about anything.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So when you're developing code, so now this has been for the last 10 years, you have had to deal with not one play field, but basically two layouts.

Speaker: So you have the premium LE layout and you also have the pro layout.

Speaker: So when you're designing a code for that,

Speaker: do you start with the vision for the premium LE and then start to pull back as you go to the pro?

Speaker: Or do you get the basic layout on the pro because you have similar, similar layout, similar roles, and then try to expand as the, as the flow dictates with a new, with a premium and LE, I guess.

Speaker: It is tough to answer because it really depends on the,

Speaker: what's happening as we're developing the games and they're drawing what's going to change from them.

Speaker: I mean, the designers have different approaches to how they're going to split up the pro and the premium.

Speaker: And sometimes the designer will say that, you know, I just want this to be a premium only rule that goes along with this premium only device.

Speaker: Sometimes they'll leave it up to me or whoever's working on the project.

Speaker: I think with

Speaker: Like, let's go back to Led Zeppelin on the Electric Magic device.

Speaker: And that just wasn't in the Pro, right?

Speaker: It just didn't feel like something you'd want to simulate because it's really hard to simulate a spinner, an opto spinner, right?

Speaker: It's really hard to simulate a ball locking device when it's just not like it doesn't even go into something.

Speaker: Right, so that just felt, I mean, just intuitively, it just feels like if you're going to try to do something that's the same for both of these games, it's not going to work.

Speaker: When you're doing something like so with Rush, there are a lot of differences kind of scattered throughout.

Speaker: So the gameplay is slightly different just based on those differences.

Speaker: And I think that just matches the design like free will multiball on the premium has a ball lock device.

Speaker: So when you have a ball lock device, you want to lock the ball and you know, you could bash on it when it's locked.

Speaker: So it just feels like you should have some add a ball opportunity there.

Speaker: And with the pro since you can't hold the ball there, it just doesn't,

Speaker: feel like yeah or you can kind of do like on on metallica where you'll still get double scoring you might still get out of ball but it won't physically keep it out of the way for you which if you're a tournament player and you know you know it's a lot easier to control one ball than than two so you might prefer the way the premium plays because you can kind of stuff it over there and then hit the the jackpots with the other ball

Speaker: Whereas on the Pro, you hit it, it's coming right back.

Speaker: You've still got two balls, which can also be fun in its own way.

Speaker: It's just different.

Speaker: So it's just a different style for the different games based on what features are there.

Speaker: And then also, I think with the time machine ramp that goes up to down on the Pro and the Premium, you want to just create the differentiation there in the effects as well and create a rule set that makes it sense.

Speaker: for the ramp to go up and down, right?

Speaker: So with the Pro, you just lose the effect of the actual bashing of the time machine because you're always kind of shooting through it, where you got to just make that fun on the premium.

Speaker: OK, so I'm looking at the time machine and with the ramp that goes up and down.

Speaker: And what are you hitting when the ramp is down?

Speaker: It looks like a metal plate.

Speaker: Is that a target or what is it that you're hitting?

Speaker: Uh, you'd have to ask Elliot for exactly what it is, but you're right.

Speaker: You're hitting middle.

Speaker: There's an opto sensor.

Speaker: And then based on the position of the ramp, you are getting progress for the lowered shots versus the raised shots.

Speaker: So it is basically a target of some, of some sort.

Speaker: That was what was confusing to me because I didn't see the typical standup, uh,

Speaker: Well, it doesn't register.

Speaker: It doesn't register, yeah.

Speaker: It registers it on the ramp, like at the very end of the ramp.

Speaker: So whether it's up or down, it registers a shot.

Speaker: It just knows, oh, I'm down.

Speaker: So award what you would award for bashing, which in Rush is progress towards your time machine multiball.

Speaker: So the premium, it's very easy to differentiate.

Speaker: Oh, the ramp's down?

Speaker: That means I'm building towards my next time machine multiball.

Speaker: Oh, the ramp's up?

Speaker: That means there's some award it's going to show me if I shoot it up there because the magnet holds the ball.

Speaker: And then in multiball, if it's up and nothing's there, it'll just kind of like shoot through.

Speaker: So there's like different states you can do with the up, down, the magnet, working towards different rules.

Speaker: Yeah, Raymond brings up a good point.

Speaker: It's so much more intuitive on the premium what you're going to get on the time machine, not only because of the ramp going up and down, but because the lights have a language telling you what feature is lit on the time machine.

Speaker: So you know when it's down, you could just...

Speaker: Bang, bang, bang on that thing to get to a multiball.

Speaker: And if you're in a situation in the game, so sensitive to the game where you really need a multiball, you don't know which one's the closest, you know just a few shots away you'll be able to raise the ramp and start a multiball at the time machine.

Speaker: There also seems to be a lot more, I guess, state changes that you have in this.

Speaker: You have the premium LE anyway.

Speaker: You have the diverger, you also have the time machine, and you also have the ball lock beyond the instrument drop targets.

Speaker: Um, so I do like that.

Speaker: It seems that there are multiple ways the ball can move, even if it's, uh, I guess it mixes it up a lot more.

Speaker: Uh, it feels a little bit like Lord of the Rings where different shots do different things.

Speaker: One thing I did notice, and you were talking about this on the stream, where if you collect albums before you start a mode, I'm assuming that is like, it's like in Deadpool, collecting all your teammates before you go into a battle.

Speaker: And so it's probably a score multiplier that it's a more valuable mode if you collect the albums before you start a mode.

Speaker: Well, there's a whole other system for that.

Speaker: Those are the records.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Yeah, I'll try to keep the geeking out short.

Speaker: But to answer the question about the albums, those give you perks on the button, the action button called the weapon.

Speaker: So in order to charge up your weapon through the power of music, you got that album and they're playing your song on that album.

Speaker: Now you can use your weapon.

Speaker: It'll spot all the shots on the play field for you.

Speaker: So if you collect the Hemispheres album and then you start La Via Strongiato,

Speaker: you know you can hit that button and uh depending on you know if you're if you want to go really next level you can actually choose which direction it spots the shot based on the diverter so it can go left to right or right to left you can you know use go as big brain as you want um but basically the idea is you get an album you get a perk with the button in multi-ball that perk is an add-a-ball so that's the one i think people are going to really pay attention to they're going to learn

Speaker: which combos go to which albums, go to which songs, go to which multiballs so they can get their addaballs.

Speaker: And then the other thing that you mentioned about raising your values, that's all records based.

Speaker: So if you can, you shoot the record shots that are scattered around the play field, there's six of them and they're actually all color coded.

Speaker: So when you're collecting colors of a record, that'll determine which mode starts.

Speaker: So if you have three blue records and it'll start spirit of the radio or whatnot,

Speaker: And you can keep collecting records once you light the mode, and that'll give you a 10%, 20%, you know, more and more boost.

Speaker: But you can also, there's even another thing where the song shot, the record shots that are the same color, those are 2x.

Speaker: So if you really want to, you know, get the biggest mode possible, you'd get all six records, the same color, you'd start your mode.

Speaker: And now every shot in that mode is amplified by its percentage and it's double, you know, all that stuff.

Speaker: So,

Speaker: But you can also just ignore that and just shoot around because all the shots feel so good.

Speaker: And basically the more stuff you're hitting, you know, the more points you're going to be getting.

Speaker: Everything Raymond just said made a complete sense to me.

Speaker: And Scott, when you get your LE and have a month on it, everything he said will make complete sense to you as well.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: It actually reminds me of Led Zeppelin.

Speaker: When you have the Zoso, the little symbols down at the bottom, I actually, that was one thing I had a question about.

Speaker: And I, I, I even mentioned, um,

Speaker: That was one thing I had a question on Led Zeppelin because it seems very similar in that if you're trying to level up all the icons together, then it works symbiotically.

Speaker: And so it seems like you're implementing a similar vibe here, which I think is really, really good.

Speaker: I mean, with a rock and roll pin, you want to be ripping shots and rewarding combos.

Speaker: And yeah, the more shots you're hitting, the more things are going to be set up for you.

Speaker: So I have to know, now that pinball is your official job title of where you're working, how has it changed from being a hobby to being a profession?

Speaker: I'll let Raymond start with this one.

Speaker: I stream, you know, I'm more busy, so I can't stream as much.

Speaker: And I have to ask for, like...

Speaker: time off, but it's a little easier to ask for time off if it's pinball related because it's pinball so I can go to this pinball tournament.

Speaker: But then also, you know, I'm kind of still learning to balance the, you know, everybody...

Speaker: who are talking to me about pinball and then where to draw the line when they ask like a work question that I can't answer.

Speaker: So that's been probably the biggest shift for me is like, I want to tell people everything about everything.

Speaker: Like even as I'm developing the rules for rush, as you can just tell, I just kind of like spewed out what I've been holding in for the past two months, you know, like I want to, I just want to talk.

Speaker: I just want to like tell people about everything, but you know, sometimes you can't.

Speaker: So that's, that's probably the biggest, the biggest thing.

Speaker: So don't buy drinks to Rayday while he's at a tournament.

Speaker: Well, it actually reminds me of it.

Speaker: So Tim, you actually went on Slam Tilt before you were hired at Stern.

Speaker: And so you had free reign to talk about whatever you wanted.

Speaker: But now it seems different than that you have to be very careful about what you're allowed to talk about and what you're not.

Speaker: And for Josh and I, we can do a podcast because we can just wildly speculate.

Speaker: There's nothing that we can't talk about.

Speaker: But with you guys, it seems to probably walk in that fine line of,

Speaker: being social and being involved in the, in the hobby, but still you are, that is your job now.

Speaker: And so there are things that you need to be more guarded about.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: The shift is pinball is now what pays my bills and my rent and everything.

Speaker: And I, you know, want to continue to do this because it's fun.

Speaker: I don't want to lose the opportunity to do what I do because I run my mouth or,

Speaker: I get someone upset with me, right?

Speaker: So I just want to be respectful, even though I have a lot of passion for pinball and I have a lot of opinions, it does me no good to just go and tell everyone what I think when I have the opportunity to actually demonstrate what I believe and what I've learned through my work.

Speaker: So, you know, within the building of Stern, within our communication on Slack and Zoom at work,

Speaker: I say whatever I want to a much smaller group of people, right?

Speaker: It's not on a podcast.

Speaker: It's not on my Facebook feed anymore.

Speaker: It's just, you know, we're all on the same team, though, at Stern, where we want our games to be as good as they can be, everyone at our company to be supported, to be able to grow at the company.

Speaker: So it's, you know, this is how people at Stern, like, if we...

Speaker: aren't making great products and people lose their jobs.

Speaker: Like that's something we're partially responsible for in product development.

Speaker: So it makes it, you know, serious in a way where, you know, we're all looking to do this and have fun and make great games, but you know, people are making a living because this is their job.

Speaker: And we want that to continue for two reasons.

Speaker: One, because people ought to have

Speaker: jobs and be able to make a living and put food on their table.

Speaker: But two, because we want pinball to stick around and we want pinball to continue to grow and thrive and go to this next generation and this current generation of people who are discovering it and continue the growth it's having because that means it'll last that much longer for the next generations.

Speaker: And we find it fun.

Speaker: So we want to pass that along.

Speaker: So do you feel like people have been more respectful to both of you knowing that you work at Stern now?

Speaker: Or are you getting people that are dillweeds that are like, you know, you really should tell me what's coming up next?

Speaker: Or why don't you just do this with your code because that makes more sense and they harp on you for that?

Speaker: People are excited because they love pinball.

Speaker: That's the main thing.

Speaker: They want to know what's next because they just can't get enough of pinball.

Speaker: They want to know what's coming.

Speaker: They want to...

Speaker: think about how great things are going to be in the future.

Speaker: It's just for everyone.

Speaker: I think it's always hard to live in the moment of enjoying what's going on right now.

Speaker: And, you know, we are trying every day, like our moment is creating the next moment for people.

Speaker: And it's just, you know, I understand where it comes from and I just try

Speaker: When people do come up to me at a show or something and they try to tease out what the next title is going to be, I've heard it now at this point.

Speaker: I know kind of how to smile and say, is that what you think is coming?

Speaker: That's good for you, man.

Speaker: I hope you're having fun at the show.

Speaker: I hope you enjoy Stern Games.

Speaker: Just kind of take the focus to what's going on right now.

Speaker: And at Stern, if we go to a show or something, let's say we go to Pinball Expo,

Speaker: Raymond and I know Rush is next.

Speaker: Raymond and I know what we have to do with Rush to get it to the stream and, you know, all the changes that are being made.

Speaker: And, you know, we can't talk about that.

Speaker: Some other people might know that there's a game called Rush coming, but they're not going to be able to know where it's going.

Speaker: You know, we have to, we're close enough to that.

Speaker: So we just focus on, hey, you know, we've got a new 40th anniversary Elvira and we've got Godzilla here and Insider Connected.

Speaker: Like,

Speaker: Those are things we've seen everyone work really hard on for months and years at Stern.

Speaker: I think Insider Connected, like watching the effort of software and marketing and legal and just the outside groups we're working with, like everyone involved in this.

Speaker: It was such a big project that we all wanted to succeed so bad that it wasn't hard to just focus on

Speaker: this is what we have at expo.

Speaker: This is insider connected.

Speaker: It's awesome.

Speaker: You get achievements.

Speaker: Now when you play the games, your name pops up automatically.

Speaker: Would you like log in?

Speaker: Pitbull has never been connected to the internet.

Speaker: Isn't this cool?

Speaker: And there's a special, special badge.

Speaker: You can only get an expo.

Speaker: So make sure you, you get it or you won't have a chance.

Speaker: Got to get that shiny badge.

Speaker: We did get the badge.

Speaker: Josh and I got the badge.

Speaker: We did.

Speaker: Yep.

Speaker: Well, what makes, makes me laugh.

Speaker: I I'm assuming you guys, I know Raymond comes from a video game background.

Speaker: Cause obviously the banjo Kazooie.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: there's always that one video game you play and it's like the second you start, you get an achievement.

Speaker: It says like, so it starts or something like that.

Speaker: You guys need to do that.

Speaker: Like as soon as you push the start button, you pretty close to the flipper achievements on each game.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, I've got, well, and flipper, I've got Jurassic park and I've got Avengers both connected now.

Speaker: And, um,

Speaker: the first game on Jurassic Park, I wasn't even attempting for much.

Speaker: And I got like 26 achievements.

Speaker: I was like, dang.

Speaker: And same with Avengers.

Speaker: I think I got 20 in the first.

Speaker: It might have been more because it seems like once you start a gem and once you complete a gem, you get an achievement.

Speaker: And so, I mean, there's 10 achievements just there alone plus six Avengers.

Speaker: So there's, you know, there's 16 achievements right there.

Speaker: But anyway, it,

Speaker: I've been nervous about converting my Jurassic Park LE and my Avengers LE because I like the way it looks right now.

Speaker: So maybe I'll have to figure out some other way of doing it.

Speaker: But yeah, I'm really excited to get all my games connected.

Speaker: And most of my games are newer games.

Speaker: I've been able to sell off most of the older ones.

Speaker: So it's been really fun to see the evolution.

Speaker: I think they look a lot less invasive on a premium LE than they do on a pro.

Speaker: But I don't know what your guys' game plan is.

Speaker: The thing about the Insider Connected kits is it's

Speaker: They've kind of got like an expiration date on them, right?

Speaker: Because like you can only put them in so many games because you already put them in the new games and there's only so many in the back catalog.

Speaker: So it kind of defeats the purpose of like customizing each apron and what stuff.

Speaker: The back catalog is a lot of games.

Speaker: I mean, you're talking like 17 Spike 2 games or something.

Speaker: That is a lot of games out there.

Speaker: And think about the SKUs, Pro Premium LE.

Speaker: I mean, it is a lot.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah, I guess that's true as well.

Speaker: But I didn't know if there, I don't know.

Speaker: I've got on JP and I'm like, I wish I kind of had the stickers to put on the apron so it more incorporates.

Speaker: But it's kind of nice with a premium because you just pop that little window out and put the reader in.

Speaker: You still have all the Avenger stuff on the apron.

Speaker: I think you can transfer your decals from your other apron.

Speaker: Why am I have to do that?

Speaker: There you go.

Speaker: One thing that Rush is known for is they are known for Neil Peart, who passed away, God rest his soul, two years ago from brain cancer.

Speaker: But this is this was a band that when the drum solo came on, that people actually came in to see the drum solo.

Speaker: They didn't leave.

Speaker: That's usually when you decide it's time to go hit the restroom or get a refill on the drink is when the the drummer is playing.

Speaker: But Rush, it was it was an event to see.

Speaker: Neil play.

Speaker: Is there anything like that?

Speaker: I don't even know if that would work well in pinballs to have a drum solo mode.

Speaker: But I saw that there was something about a drum solo, but there's no specific Neil solo mode in this, is there?

Speaker: I guess there's not a Neil solo.

Speaker: Solo mode.

Speaker: I mean, we are trying to be.

Speaker: You see the giant drum, like drums invading the whole LCD screen.

Speaker: You know, it gives you that feeling of like all these drums, like Neil's crazy drum sets when the drum solo starts.

Speaker: OK.

Speaker: We are trying to be respectful to Neil, obviously, as.

Speaker: contributions to Rush, the music world, it can't be understated.

Speaker: And I thought it was cool that Stern did support the Neil Peart Research Award with this game.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And talk a little bit about that.

Speaker: I heard you talk about it on the stream, so I wanted to give some air time to that.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: So we actually streamed at the two-year...

Speaker: anniversary of the day when Neil passed on and I was actually just watching the Indus 2020 footage and the news broke, you know, there.

Speaker: And I remember Jeff Teolas, another podcaster, you know, brought it up, did a moment of silence, but you know, he, his impact was incredible for a lot of people and his time came, you know, too early.

Speaker: But one thing he was able to do in his life was set up a,

Speaker: research award that goes to cancer research.

Speaker: And so Stern has.

Speaker: It's part of the rush launch plan, like selling rush, the the details and the orders and everything that we do for that, we are making contributions for all the games that we sell to the Neil Peart Research Award.

Speaker: People are going to talk about how I pronounce his last name.

Speaker: I'm sorry.

Speaker: It's a tough one.

Speaker: Yeah, it's kind of a Peart.

Speaker: But yeah, I think everybody just calls him Neil Peart.

Speaker: So it's fine.

Speaker: What is it?

Speaker: Is there one Rush song that you're like, if I had to choose one Rush song and jam to it, what would it be?

Speaker: Whenever you ask a question about a Rush song and you phrase it slightly differently, it gives me pause.

Speaker: I'm like, oh, to jam to it?

Speaker: Oh, okay.

Speaker: Favorite Rush song?

Speaker: To jam to it for me would be subdivisions, though.

Speaker: Because I could play keyboard a little bit.

Speaker: I could match the rhythm there.

Speaker: I can't play guitar, bass, or drums.

Speaker: So that's my jam song.

Speaker: All right, Ray, do you got one?

Speaker: I think my favorite song is probably working man.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Just has catchy everything.

Speaker: And like the lyrics are funny and it's like, yeah, I can relate, you know, working man.

Speaker: It's a good song.

Speaker: I heard, I was actually watching a football game and I think it was somewhere around, it was either Cleveland or some, or buff.

Speaker: No, it was Buffalo where I heard that.

Speaker: And they were playing working man as like the outro before they went to a commercial.

Speaker: So my favorite one is actually not in the game, but it's the song right after Subdivisions.

Speaker: It's Analog Kid.

Speaker: And so that's a really great one, too.

Speaker: Signal's album may be the...

Speaker: I know it's a lot of people's favorite.

Speaker: I'm not going to say what's the best because it's my opinion.

Speaker: But it connects to you.

Speaker: That's the good thing about Rush is that it really has four eras.

Speaker: And the reason why I call it four eras is because they kind of...

Speaker: they kind of put a bookmark on the end of that era.

Speaker: So with 2112, that's when they did their first live album, which was all the world's a stage.

Speaker: And then after, after moving pictures, that's when they did exit stage left.

Speaker: And then after hold your fire, they did a show of hands and different, you know, then after,

Speaker: They did tests for Echo at different states.

Speaker: So each of their benchmarks was that.

Speaker: And so the nice thing is I actually grew up more in the synth era of Rush.

Speaker: And so that would be signals, grace under pressure, power windows, and hold your fire.

Speaker: And so that speaks to me more than the other stuff.

Speaker: But my brother, who is five years older, he tends to like the earlier generation.

Speaker: of Rush a little more.

Speaker: And I think that's one of the best parts about Rush is that most bands don't have that.

Speaker: Most bands, they have that one album that they're like, that's the album.

Speaker: If you don't like that album, you don't like the band.

Speaker: But there's a lot of variability in Rush, which makes it accessible and complex.

Speaker: So I'm impressed by what you guys were able to assemble on such a complex project like Rush.

Speaker: Josh, I have a question for you.

Speaker: What was your familiarity with rush before the game was announced?

Speaker: Tim, I am very much like you.

Speaker: I grew up with guitar hero.

Speaker: My dad loved the dad rock, uh, you know, Metallica, AC, DC, great white blue oyster cult.

Speaker: That was all in our house.

Speaker: So I had familiarity with rush.

Speaker: Um, I did enjoy, enjoy playing their songs on guitar hero.

Speaker: I'm kind of one of those people too.

Speaker: Like I enjoy them.

Speaker: I respect them for the musicians they are.

Speaker: Um,

Speaker: I'm probably just vanilla.

Speaker: I like Tom Sawyer.

Speaker: But yeah, they're good.

Speaker: I can't knock them.

Speaker: I can't knock them for a... There's some bands that make it that are just terrible because they're not great musicians.

Speaker: But for some odd reason, they have some presence about them.

Speaker: And that's vice versa with Rush.

Speaker: It's like, if you hate Rush, it's not because they're bad musicians because they are top of their class.

Speaker: So that's my feelings about Rush.

Speaker: Yeah, I've noticed when Rush fans, I did not expect, I mean, just the overlap, I think, between the Rush fans and the pinball fans has been really significant, I think.

Speaker: Scott, you're clearly a Rush fan.

Speaker: When I talk about Rush, I almost feel embarrassed.

Speaker: I don't gush about them the way you do.

Speaker: I don't start listing off every single studio album and live album that followed it in chronological order.

Speaker: And I think it's because, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to grow up with them, right?

Speaker: Because I'm a young guy.

Speaker: Raven's a young guy.

Speaker: We were born in the 90s.

Speaker: We didn't have...

Speaker: we didn't get the chance to see their albums come out in the seventies and the eighties, right?

Speaker: It just didn't happen when we were around to watch it.

Speaker: So that stuff, it gets lost, but,

Speaker: Coming into it, I think, with the fresh perspective and working with someone like Ed, who has tracked the career of Rush their whole time, and then through Ed, working directly with the band, and then just representing just a fun career, an awesome career, a really impactful career that Rush has had, has been just the joy of a project to work on for me.

Speaker: How often are you guys working on multiple projects at the same time?

Speaker: And do you ever run into the problem when you're like, you start working on one project, you're like, oh crap, this isn't the right game.

Speaker: You accidentally put the wrong code in the wrong game, and so you have to backstep and fix that.

Speaker: It doesn't happen too much.

Speaker: I mean, there's clearly...

Speaker: a schedule like, and there's a very clear priority of what's important in our heads.

Speaker: And we have a really great team at Stern led by George Gomez and Mark Wehna.

Speaker: Mark Wehna is our executive producer.

Speaker: And because we make a lot of games at Stern, we have the ability to have multiple teams, which is great for me because if I'm working on rush,

Speaker: I don't have to worry about what they're doing on Mandalorian.

Speaker: I don't have to worry about what they're doing on Godzilla because I get time to focus.

Speaker: And that focus time is really important to develop the game all the way out.

Speaker: So the overlap that might happen, let's say we do something like Insider Connected and our systems team reaches out and says, hey, can you review this achievement spreadsheet for Led Zeppelin?

Speaker: Do you think you'd be able to integrate them at any point?

Speaker: Do we need to get someone else to do it?

Speaker: We always work together and we just work with the bandwidth we have.

Speaker: But if we launched...

Speaker: insider connected achievements on Led Zeppelin the week before Rush was scheduled to hit the line, I would just say, no, I can't do it.

Speaker: I need some help.

Speaker: And someone would be able to mark Wayne and George would find someone who could help me and we would get the job done.

Speaker: So it's great to do all those games and it's great that we have a team that supports us to give us the space and time and resources we need to get the projects done.

Speaker: So, Ray, how about for you coming on the project and looking at Rush with fresh eyes?

Speaker: Just like what was the experience of like, oh, we're doing a Rush game?

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: I mean, it's you're a you're a younger guy.

Speaker: You didn't grow up with and you're the peak of Russia's popularity was moving pictures.

Speaker: And that was probably 10 to 15 years before you were in existence.

Speaker: And so, you know, I had heard a couple other hits and and and then when I saw the song list, I realized I actually recognized more than I had first thought.

Speaker: I just maybe didn't know the name of some of the songs, but I'm like, oh, I've heard I have heard the song before.

Speaker: And so as I'm working through, you know, implementing the song modes and I'm I'm hearing the songs, I'm like, oh, yeah, I've heard that one before.

Speaker: And and I was like, oh, this is really cool.

Speaker: They have a lot of different songs.

Speaker: I have different themes like, you know, the working man mode is all about getting through the day.

Speaker: And I really liked working on that one because basically, you know, Tim and John come up with this skeleton design doc of like what the mode should kind of be.

Speaker: And it'll have things like, you know...

Speaker: working day, get through the day with random events thrown in such as this or that.

Speaker: And then it's my task to actually go and do it.

Speaker: And I'll just put in what I think is funny, like fire drill might happen or like, you know, pretending to look busy or fight with the printer.

Speaker: And I was kind of like joking when I put those in at first.

Speaker: But then like when it came time, the art team

Speaker: It's like, oh, we're doing awards for Working Man.

Speaker: What do you need?

Speaker: And I just kind of joked.

Speaker: I'm like, well, here's the 12 that I came up with.

Speaker: They're like, okay.

Speaker: And then they made all of that.

Speaker: So if you're playing Working Man, look out for all the fun little different events that can happen.

Speaker: That's great.

Speaker: I actually can't wait to play that.

Speaker: That sounds hilarious.

Speaker: And if you've seen any of the small videos that Rush put on their show, it is 100% in keeping with the humor that they have.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: No, it's, it's really cool.

Speaker: I was really, really kind of just pulled in all the way where I was like, Oh, I can really, you know, I feel all these different, you know, La Via Strongiato is like the song with 12 movements.

Speaker: And so it's like a 12 way combo and I got to come up with, well, how do I, how do I plan a 12 way combo?

Speaker: Like, and so it was just a really fun project from beginning to now.

Speaker: I'm not going to say beginning to end cause you know, we're still working on it and it's, it's just, I'm really glad to be on the, the rush team here.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Well, it sounds like you'd be really good at like a weird owl pinball machine or something.

Speaker: Goofy things.

Speaker: I don't know.

Speaker: And, you know, that would cross a lot of genres.

Speaker: You know, he did rap and pop and rock.

Speaker: I mean, you might want to you might want to kick that out there to your team.

Speaker: You have to build up some reserve of tickets at the arcade, and one day you can cash them all in and be like, I'm working on weirdo pinballs.

Speaker: That would be hilarious.

Speaker: Well, from my perspective, I am super excited what you guys are doing.

Speaker: It feels like it is a project that has some soul to it, in that the people who are involved in it, it doesn't feel like a...

Speaker: like a quick greatest hits album where they just kind of throw things together.

Speaker: There seems to be a reason why the songs are selected.

Speaker: There's a method to the art package and the way things are flowing.

Speaker: And as a Rush fan, I can't ask for a more sincere representation of what I would view a Rush pinball machine to be.

Speaker: So I'm really excited to get my hands on mine, hopefully in the next month.

Speaker: I have a final thought to share.

Speaker: So you're talking to myself and Raymond.

Speaker: We're on the software team.

Speaker: We developed the rules.

Speaker: And we are at the point where we have to make the pinball machine the best pinball experience it could be.

Speaker: And I feel like that is perfect for Rush because Rush, the performance was so sacred to them.

Speaker: They were...

Speaker: so insistent on just delivering these amazing concerts and recording this, you know, really rich, complex music just with three members.

Speaker: And so our contribution to the rush out of it was we're going to make the coolest pinball machine we can make with our team here that just works the best with the team we have.

Speaker: And that,

Speaker: is the justice we could do for a theme like Rush is just to make it make it look like you know 15 people worked on it and it was just it was just two or three yeah okay that's perfect that is absolutely perfect with Rush every time the best compliment people always paid Rush was wait there's only three guys and if you listen to it it sounds like there's about 15 guys

Speaker: Yeah, I have to say Mike Kizovat did join about two months ago to work on some stuff.

Speaker: So it wasn't just the two of us.

Speaker: Yeah, no, it's been us three mostly these last.

Speaker: Yeah, Mike is a really valuable asset.

Speaker: And his brother did some of the art to Tom Kizovat.

Speaker: So lots of people on the team, not just not just us two.

Speaker: Well, I think that's probably the best place to leave off.

Speaker: Do you have anything else, Scott, or should we wrap this bad boy up?

Speaker: No, I just want to, we're in the process of getting new hats made because they discontinued our version of the hat.

Speaker: So we'll definitely make sure you guys get some Loser Kid swag.

Speaker: Awesome.

Speaker: Thank you.

Speaker: Thanks again for coming on.

Speaker: We really appreciate you guys.

Speaker: One for being professional about what you do, but also being ambassadors for the sport too, because I, we have, we have interacted with both of you guys and can attest that you guys are genuinely nice guys and good to work with.

Speaker: If you want people to get ahold of you, how should you, how should they get ahold of you, Tim and Ray?

Speaker: Best way is to email me, Tim.

Speaker: Sexton at stern pinball.com.

Speaker: If you find a bug in the game and you email bug.report at sternpinball.com, those all get sent to me no matter what, if it's my game.

Speaker: So that is another way to get in contact with me.

Speaker: Hopefully not the way.

Speaker: If you just want to send me anything, tim.sexton at sternpinball.com is the best way to get in touch with me.

Speaker: Yeah, you can, I guess you can shoot me a message on Facebook Messenger or my Stern email is just Raymond.Davidson at SternPinball.com.

Speaker: Okay, Ray, but also talk about your side project too and your streaming and what you do.

Speaker: Yeah, I have a Twitch stream.

Speaker: It's just RayDayPinball, so twitch.tv slash RayDayPinball.

Speaker: Streaming usually Stern games.

Speaker: I got a Beatles here and a Deadpool that I jump between.

Speaker: And it's just a lot of fun.

Speaker: Interact with people.

Speaker: And then sometimes I'll film little tutorials, and you can catch those on YouTube, just youtube.com slash RayDayPinball.

Speaker: If you want to see, like, Led Zeppelin and Avengers are the two that I've done that I've done.

Speaker: people find helpful and I'm really happy that people, people get something out of those.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And if they, if they want some of your rate, a swag, where do they go?

Speaker: silverballswag.com um and then just uh i'm in the the giant list of people just go to the r section if you'd like to get a hold of us we are loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com we're also on the socials facebook twitter instagram all at loser kid pinball uh we're also on twitch whenever i think the last time i recorded was like october so it's been a minute i need to get back on that um

Speaker: Yeah, if you also want to get a hold of us, honestly, the best way is probably our personal pages at Scott Larson or at Josh Roof.

Speaker: And yeah, I think that pretty much does it for us this evening.

Speaker: We want to thank Tim and Ray Day for coming on and taking break out of their busy, busy schedule.

Speaker: We know that it is night and day over there at Stern Pinball.

Speaker: And at learning at Expo, it seems like there's some hiccups come up every once in a while.

Speaker: It always seems to be a couple days before release.

Speaker: And so you guys are working around the clock to make sure there's a great product still put on the market.

Speaker: We appreciate that.

Speaker: Yeah, thanks for having us guys.

Speaker: Really, it was a lot of fun to talk about.

Speaker: Talk to you guys.

Speaker: A lot of fun to talk to you guys.

Speaker: A lot of fun to talk about Rush.

Speaker: A lot of fun to see these games arriving in people's homes.

Speaker: I think that's been the most exciting thing for me right now.

Speaker: So I'm just looking forward to more people to get the plants in.

Speaker: Yeah, it's super exciting, and thanks for having us on.

Speaker: Definitely.

Speaker: Send us off.

Speaker: Send us off, Scott.

Speaker: Absolutely.

Speaker: You guys have a great weekend, and we'll see you in one to two weeks.

Speaker: We actually have a few more guests lined up to talk more Rush pinball, so we'll catch you soon.

Speaker: Shut up and sit down.