Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Ep 44: deeproot Discussion with Dennis and Zach
39 Plays5 years ago
Seriously this whole episode is all about deeproot! Scott goes off the rails. Zach, Dennis, and Josh do their best to bring him back.
Recommended
Transcript
Episode Introduction and Sponsors
00:00:06
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Loser Kid Pinball Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
We are on episode 44.
00:00:11
Speaker
My awesome co-captain, as always.
00:00:13
Speaker
Scott Larson.
00:00:15
Speaker
And today on your Twippy-nominated podcast, we're going to hurry and give you our friends of the podcast, which are, Scott?
00:00:21
Speaker
First is This Week in Pinball.
00:00:23
Speaker
Check out This Week in Pinball and find out all the happenings in pinball.
00:00:27
Speaker
We have a slight thing to talk about today.
00:00:30
Speaker
Also, Lit Frames.
00:00:31
Speaker
Hit up Lit Frames if you want that podcast.
00:00:33
Speaker
A nice way of illuminating your trans light that you picked up.
00:00:36
Speaker
Also, Flyland Design.
00:00:38
Speaker
If you want to pick up some alternative art for your Bally Williams, it has one for Monster Bash, has one for Medieval Madness that I have in my machine, and also one for Monster Bash.
00:00:50
Speaker
Also, check out my good friend, Timothy Purcell, at thepinballloft.com.
00:00:54
Speaker
It's a blog, and it's just great stuff to check out.
00:00:59
Speaker
Also, check out...
Tip of the Week: Kindle Deal
00:01:02
Speaker
Also, just FYI, we have the Infinity Gauntlet.
00:01:05
Speaker
If you want to buy it on Kindle, you can actually buy it for $3.99 on Amazon right now.
00:01:10
Speaker
So if you want to catch up on the entire Infinity Gauntlet, that's just a tip of the week.
00:01:15
Speaker
Also, last and certainly not least, we have Flippin' Out Pinball.
00:01:20
Speaker
If you're looking for a place to pick up a pinball machine or any sort of swag for your pinball needs, please contact Zach and Nicole at Flippin' Out Pinball.
Guest Introduction: Dennis and Zach as Batman and Robin
00:01:31
Speaker
And ironically, who do we have with us today, Josh?
00:01:35
Speaker
They have become the dynamic duo now.
00:01:39
Speaker
We've got, in my opinion, Batman, which is Dennis Creasel, and his young boy Ward, Robin, a.k.a.
00:01:48
Speaker
Zach Many.
00:01:49
Speaker
How you doing, guys?
00:01:50
Speaker
What's going on, Scott, Josh?
00:01:53
Speaker
Roop, there it is.
00:01:55
Speaker
Thanks for having us on.
00:01:58
Speaker
I was looking forward to doing an episode without Zach, but apparently that does not get to happen.
00:02:02
Speaker
Apparently you're a package deal.
00:02:03
Speaker
That's what we were, that's what you're telling us.
00:02:05
Speaker
So even Dennis would say he's the Robin to my Batman, right?
00:02:10
Speaker
I don't usually like to do the Batman Robin comparison, but yeah, classifying Zack as a sidekick is a little odd when you're talking about the pinball show.
00:02:20
Speaker
It is true, but if you look at Batman, he's kind of the more stern, the brooding, and then you see the young war that's always in flamboyant colors, always...
00:02:32
Speaker
you know, Bravado and all that jazz.
00:02:34
Speaker
And so I think it fits very well.
00:02:36
Speaker
I mean, I see where you're coming from, like in terms of personality.
00:02:39
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:02:40
Speaker
Okay.
00:02:41
Speaker
Well, it's certainly better than the alternative, which I thought he was going to go with, uh, Ace and Gary from Saturday Night Live.
00:02:47
Speaker
I just want to hear Dennis Creasel saying a gruffly voice, I'm Batman.
Deep Root Pinball's Failed Launch
00:02:52
Speaker
So guys, anything interesting happened today in pinball?
00:02:57
Speaker
Like maybe a major announcement or like something that's been building up for about four years and finally we get to see what they have?
00:03:05
Speaker
Oh, you sound excited.
00:03:06
Speaker
Wow.
00:03:07
Speaker
This must be a big day for you.
00:03:08
Speaker
It was huge.
00:03:10
Speaker
I was so built up for this day.
00:03:13
Speaker
And I mean, this is I am Charlie Brown with Lucy.
00:03:17
Speaker
There is I fell for the football one more time.
00:03:20
Speaker
And yet again, Lucy pulled the pinball or excuse me, the pinball, the the football away from my foot.
00:03:27
Speaker
Like, seriously, Deep Root has tried to launch this mega thing.
00:03:33
Speaker
And at this point, it is just sad.
00:03:35
Speaker
It's sad that it's just it's pathetic.
00:03:38
Speaker
It's hard to even make fun of them because it is it's beyond ridiculous at this point.
00:03:45
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, what can I say?
00:03:48
Speaker
That was the buildup that we were expecting, especially given that Jersey Jack has indicated that the reveal is now in October.
00:03:56
Speaker
So post Avengers from Stern, this is the Deep Root pinball launch was what everyone was anticipating.
00:04:04
Speaker
I covered what I was thinking was going to happen with the reveal and what surely wouldn't happen with the reveal.
00:04:10
Speaker
Yesterday on Eclectic Gamers podcast, and then Zach and I on today's podcast had talked about, again, recorded before the reveal time was set to be hit, what we thought would be, what you would see, what you wouldn't see, what needed to be seen.
00:04:26
Speaker
And I was really, really, really wrong.
00:04:30
Speaker
I was insistent.
00:04:31
Speaker
There was absolutely no way, given they brought in a half dozen members of the pinball media, however you wish to define it, that they had to show something.
00:04:43
Speaker
They had to reveal something.
00:04:44
Speaker
The people are there.
00:04:45
Speaker
You already have the people.
00:04:46
Speaker
They revealed a statement.
00:04:48
Speaker
Yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
What is the can someone read the statement?
00:04:52
Speaker
Yeah, I've got it right here.
00:04:53
Speaker
Let me whip this out for you.
00:04:56
Speaker
Excellent.
00:04:57
Speaker
Just as you would say on Blazing Saddles, right?
00:04:59
Speaker
Yeah, excuse me while I whip this out.
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:02
Speaker
All right, September 21st, 2020.
00:05:06
Speaker
I don't know how Robert Mueller sounds, so I'm not going to try to do his voice.
00:05:10
Speaker
So this is all me.
00:05:11
Speaker
Deep Root Pinball has spent years redesigning the pinball machine from the ground up with countless novel approaches.
00:05:18
Speaker
On this past Saturday, we had hoped to host a launch event with six well-known pinball personalities.
00:05:24
Speaker
Due to technical issues and lots of feedback from our guests, it ended up being more of a beta event.
00:05:30
Speaker
We are grateful and thankful to Lauren, Carrie, Colin, Jeff, Chris, and Crystal for their invaluable feedback and involvement in refining our platform to the best it can be.
00:05:40
Speaker
The results is the realization that we are not as ready for launch as we had hoped.
00:05:44
Speaker
We are already working hard to fix the technical issues and implement our guests' feedback.
00:05:50
Speaker
So the only right decision today is to postpone the public release of our platform and our very first game, Raza.
00:05:56
Speaker
We hope that you agree that this releasing a well-engineered and fun-to-play Raza is in everyone's best interest.
00:06:03
Speaker
We hope to update you during the process.
00:06:07
Speaker
We remain deeply committed to delivering the highest quality of gameplay and innovation to our players.
00:06:12
Speaker
We thank you for your continued trust and patience.
00:06:15
Speaker
The team at DeepRoot.
00:06:18
Speaker
Now, one of those six was the Pinball Network's correspondent for Deep Root.
00:06:24
Speaker
Zach, I don't know if you've heard from him yet, and I'm not sure you can because I bet there were some NDAs involved.
00:06:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:06:31
Speaker
Chandler reached out.
00:06:32
Speaker
Chris Chandler, uh, TPN correspondent reached out.
00:06:35
Speaker
He covers deep root for us and he simply said that he's not allowed to say anything because of the ongoing NDA.
00:06:42
Speaker
I don't know what the specifications were details regarding that NDA were or are.
00:06:47
Speaker
Uh, so I don't know the time constraints that it imposes, but yeah, he can't say anything.
00:06:52
Speaker
I also reached out to friend of the show and, uh, TPN, uh,
00:06:58
Speaker
podcaster crystal crystal yeah she said that um she can't say anything either uh but they are confident uh in what they are producing and once it is ready she said that people will be really happy about it so that's basically nothing we got nothing
00:07:19
Speaker
Okay.
00:07:20
Speaker
Well, allow me, I suppose, to retort from that perspective as much as one can, since there wasn't a lot of detail, obviously, in it, and say, this looks like an unmitigated disaster.
00:07:33
Speaker
This is a disaster.
00:07:34
Speaker
This is exactly the worst case scenario that, in my mind, I outlined less than 24 hours ago, which was to not reveal anything.
00:07:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:45
Speaker
Guys, they picked this date.
00:07:48
Speaker
They picked it.
00:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, no one forced them to do it.
00:07:51
Speaker
Right.
00:07:51
Speaker
This is the third time.
00:07:53
Speaker
They were supposed to reveal... Remember, Five Days of Deep was supposed to culminate originally at TPF, which was in 2019.
00:07:58
Speaker
That's March 2019.
00:08:01
Speaker
And then they were supposed to reveal the finalized Raza as of TPF this year, March 2020.
00:08:08
Speaker
That's pushed off because of COVID.
00:08:10
Speaker
So in theory, the game should have been ready, right?
00:08:12
Speaker
But here we are now, September 21st, 2020.
00:08:17
Speaker
And we still aren't allowed to officially see anything about... And...
00:08:22
Speaker
Based off of everything I've heard, including in this statement, it was still only going to be Raza.
00:08:28
Speaker
They talk about their first game, Raza, and the platform as a whole, not any other game reveals, which was not worst case to only do Raza, but I definitely think that you weren't going to get a lot of hype with just Raza anyway, but to have to pull the plug, not even pull the plug before you brought in the media folk, but to pull the plug after you brought them in.
00:08:48
Speaker
That's the point, though.
00:08:50
Speaker
Do you think, Dennis, Scott, Josh, do you guys think...
00:08:55
Speaker
that they knew about this prior to the media.
00:08:57
Speaker
It sounded in that state as if the media, the well-known media, six members were the ones that told them you guys are not ready.
00:09:07
Speaker
Is this a passing the buck thing?
00:09:10
Speaker
What?
00:09:10
Speaker
That's what confused me.
00:09:12
Speaker
That's the thing though.
00:09:13
Speaker
Looking at the statement, just like you said, Oh, we, we thank our guests for coming and for pointing these things out.
00:09:18
Speaker
I just, I'm so confused on if we were ready in March, um,
00:09:24
Speaker
Six months later, it should be games are on production line.
00:09:27
Speaker
That's just me personally.
00:09:28
Speaker
If you were ready in March, you're beyond ready now.
00:09:32
Speaker
regardless of what COVID did to you.
00:09:33
Speaker
And then the fact to say that six personalities came out and looked at your machines and made suggestions on improvements on how to make everything better.
00:09:43
Speaker
Maybe, I just don't know.
00:09:45
Speaker
You've got industry veterans there.
00:09:47
Speaker
You've got, well, Dennis Norman's no longer with them, but you've got Barry Ausler.
00:09:50
Speaker
You've got John Papaduke.
00:09:51
Speaker
You've got people who've made pinball machines for 20, 30 years.
00:09:56
Speaker
And we've seen the pictures.
00:09:57
Speaker
The pictures are all over the interwebs now.
00:10:00
Speaker
Which if that was NDA'd, that got out pretty quickly.
00:10:04
Speaker
And so I just, I don't fully understand how your guests picked up on something so detrimental to your pinball machine that you had to postpone for an indefinite amount of time.
00:10:18
Speaker
Well, can we not agree that's logically, that's just not the case.
00:10:23
Speaker
There's no chance.
00:10:24
Speaker
There's zero chance.
00:10:26
Speaker
He knew it wasn't ready.
00:10:27
Speaker
This is him actually just being a client.
00:10:29
Speaker
Like I'm going to go full Nick Lane on this.
00:10:31
Speaker
This guy is a clown.
00:10:32
Speaker
There's zero chance that he can do this.
00:10:35
Speaker
He is never going to make a pinball machine.
00:10:37
Speaker
My words.
00:10:37
Speaker
He is never making a pinball machine.
00:10:40
Speaker
Like this guy is it's Zidware 2.0.
00:10:44
Speaker
This is crazy.
00:10:45
Speaker
This guy is such a narcissistic, delusional member of society that all he has is empty promises to back up.
00:10:54
Speaker
He has a box of lights and a game that doesn't shoot very well, even though it was a soft release to say, oh, we're not here to talk about the machine.
00:11:02
Speaker
But all he's done is he's had so many amazing promises.
00:11:07
Speaker
And every single time, there's some reason why he can't fulfill on any of those things.
00:11:13
Speaker
This is ridiculous.
00:11:14
Speaker
Even Cosmic Carnival was able to make a game.
00:11:17
Speaker
Ouch.
00:11:19
Speaker
I feel like Mark went in on Magic Girl here.
00:11:22
Speaker
No, seriously.
00:11:23
Speaker
Like if I, if I went on magic girl, I would be praying that I took the buyout as opposed to a Zidwar game because now I'm going to get screwed over twice.
00:11:33
Speaker
There's zero chance.
00:11:34
Speaker
I'm seeing anything from this guy.
00:11:35
Speaker
They're still waiting for their game.
00:11:37
Speaker
I think the end of September, is that what the, they're supposed to get their Razabai?
00:11:41
Speaker
Yeah, there's a new deadline.
00:11:43
Speaker
I'm not sure what it exactly is, but yeah.
00:11:46
Speaker
I guess in response to your question, though, Zach, yeah, I agree with you and Josh.
00:11:51
Speaker
I won't go as far as Scott, though.
00:11:55
Speaker
I like the passion.
00:11:57
Speaker
I mean, based off of the statement that came out, I feel that, yes, the citation of the feedback very clearly indicates that they're suggesting that this half dozen team of pinball media pointed out things.
00:12:12
Speaker
But
00:12:14
Speaker
My concern is, let's assume that that is indeed true.
00:12:18
Speaker
What sort of situation do you have going on at your company that six, just six outsiders who do know pinball but are outsiders come in after you've been working on this for years and all of a sudden get you at the 11th hour to pull back from the reveal?
00:12:34
Speaker
Like, what's wrong with your machine if that's the case?
00:12:38
Speaker
And why did your own team either not have the capability to identify it or it's too intimidated to speak the truth?
00:12:47
Speaker
Because those are the only two scenarios that would make sense to me if that statement is true.
00:12:51
Speaker
Either you're saying that veterans from the pinball industry like Dennis Nordman while he was there, Barry Osler, John Norris, John Papaduke, they all worked for manufacturers.
00:13:00
Speaker
You're telling me none of them caught what this issue was or a regular high-level competitive player like Steve Bowden didn't catch what this issue was?
00:13:08
Speaker
It's really, it's really hard to believe what would be less hard to believe would be if there was an internal culture that someone's making these decisions and doesn't listen to feedback.
Critique of Deep Root's Strategy
00:13:19
Speaker
But why have the media go down there?
00:13:22
Speaker
If you know, it's like,
00:13:24
Speaker
Would it not have been better fellows to have to delay the media even coming down there?
00:13:30
Speaker
Yes, it would have.
00:13:30
Speaker
I mean, and just in my view, I, as I was thinking about this today, it's like, to me, everything that could have gone wrong has gone wrong.
00:13:39
Speaker
And I had, I had a half dozen things that I think went just like one for every media member.
00:13:45
Speaker
Half dozen things.
00:13:45
Speaker
So, I mean, and I'll run through them real quick because I listed them out.
00:13:49
Speaker
So the first is now after they did the announcement, the Raza images leaked.
00:13:53
Speaker
So they're losing narrative control over some of the innovations because now we're looking and analyzing these photos.
00:13:59
Speaker
And that wasn't the case before this.
00:14:01
Speaker
Second, they brought in the pinball media.
00:14:03
Speaker
And then only after that did they announce there is no reveal.
00:14:06
Speaker
So that seems like a waste of time on those members.
00:14:09
Speaker
And a waste of money for Deep Root.
00:14:11
Speaker
My third one would be that they present the reveal now as a beta event, like a beta test from video games.
00:14:19
Speaker
But they phrase things in such a way that the six people in pinball have exposed the flaws that the entire company couldn't detect.
00:14:26
Speaker
The fourth thing is they haven't even provided a vague timeline on a new reveal date.
00:14:30
Speaker
So it feels listless to me at this point.
00:14:33
Speaker
The fifth is they didn't share any information at all.
00:14:37
Speaker
All they did is announce the delay.
00:14:38
Speaker
So there's no hype maintained by what they put out there.
00:14:42
Speaker
Only disappointment.
00:14:43
Speaker
And six, as the last part of their statement says, they hope to provide updates in the future.
00:14:48
Speaker
Hope like that to me sounds like they're not even sure they're going to be in business in six months.
00:14:54
Speaker
That actually kind of makes sense.
00:14:56
Speaker
Well, didn't you watch Rogue One?
00:14:58
Speaker
Like, rebellions are built on hope.
00:15:01
Speaker
Wow, that's good.
00:15:02
Speaker
Da-da-da-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.
00:15:05
Speaker
It says the man that just tore Robert Mueller.
00:15:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:15:08
Speaker
There's zero chance.
00:15:09
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:15:09
Speaker
There's no chance.
00:15:11
Speaker
I am hopeless on this guy.
00:15:13
Speaker
The two face destroyer.
00:15:15
Speaker
This guy is so hopeless.
00:15:17
Speaker
It's unbelievable.
00:15:18
Speaker
Like the bottom line is he's so inept that he doesn't even recognize how much trouble he is actually in.
00:15:27
Speaker
Like, that's the problem.
00:15:28
Speaker
He has this high standards and it's not even a remote ability to look at it and say, wow, we got a problem here and here.
00:15:37
Speaker
If he brought people down, he was truly feeling like, all right, this is my time, boys.
00:15:43
Speaker
Like, doesn't this feel like Homer Simpson when he is spinning on that bubble car where the guy said, do everything, like whatever you want, Homer.
00:15:52
Speaker
And so he's saying, well, I want this, I want this.
00:15:54
Speaker
And then at the very end, it completely tanks the company.
00:15:57
Speaker
This is that moment.
00:15:58
Speaker
This is the moment where Homer's in the bubble car and spinning around and the company is over.
00:16:04
Speaker
The whole, if you look at the logo of the company, it is a comet blasting into the earth and destroying everything.
00:16:14
Speaker
which is a slight tick up from the vague S&M version it had before, but now it's completely destroyed.
00:16:22
Speaker
I don't even understand why.
00:16:24
Speaker
This guy should hang up.
00:16:26
Speaker
He should sell to Pinball Brothers right now.
00:16:29
Speaker
He should just run out and never play pinball again.
00:16:34
Speaker
It's crazy.
00:16:36
Speaker
Now, Scott, I know they didn't leak a topper yet, but it'll be all right.
00:16:42
Speaker
Man.
00:16:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:44
Speaker
Now, if you bring up a topper, I may be in on this.
00:16:47
Speaker
So, Scott, it sounds like you were really, really looking forward to this.
00:16:52
Speaker
Okay.
00:16:52
Speaker
Well, I was hoping, I was hoping for something.
00:16:55
Speaker
He wants his Raza.
00:16:58
Speaker
This is the worst.
00:16:59
Speaker
Like, seriously, I bet Teolis is rolling over in his Canadian grave right now.
00:17:05
Speaker
Oh,
00:17:06
Speaker
Oh, poor John Candy.
00:17:08
Speaker
If you show up to Wally world with your family.
00:17:10
Speaker
Whoa.
00:17:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:17:12
Speaker
That's it.
00:17:12
Speaker
You know what?
00:17:13
Speaker
You're going to go buy a BB gun and you're going to shoot John Candy and make him take you on the ride.
00:17:18
Speaker
Now, now Scott, I want to, I want to explore this a little bit more.
00:17:22
Speaker
And you mentioned, you mentioned narcissism specifically, but, but so, but here's the thing says, I think in pinball, we have seen people that exhibit true narcissistic personality disorder and that
00:17:35
Speaker
The inability for them to ever admit they are wrong is one of the most paramount things.
00:17:39
Speaker
They always have to shift blame.
00:17:41
Speaker
So, but here in this case with Deep Root, they have pulled back from the reveal.
00:17:46
Speaker
So, like, did something sink in?
00:17:49
Speaker
I mean...
00:17:50
Speaker
if that was the motivating factor, somehow it looks at least to me that someone, this, this half dozen of pinball personalities, pinball media came in and gave feedback and it sunk in in some capacity, right?
00:18:03
Speaker
Or else wouldn't it be, I don't care.
00:18:05
Speaker
The spinny bubble car of Homer Simpson is going to be produced period.
00:18:09
Speaker
No, he just wanted media people to see what he's been working on when these designers and these content or
00:18:16
Speaker
When these designers, these creators are making pinball, believe me, I know firsthand that these people want others to share their excitement, their enjoyment, their work.
00:18:26
Speaker
So that's why we get all the leaks that we do in this industry in the first place.
00:18:30
Speaker
So I think, yeah, the team probably might not have just been Robert, but they wanted everybody down there to give some feedback and share in the excitement and what they're creating.
00:18:40
Speaker
It's just unfortunate now because I think the media providers are put in a really bad spot.
00:18:45
Speaker
Each and every one of us are podcasters.
00:18:47
Speaker
Put yourselves empathetically in their spot.
00:18:50
Speaker
Today was probably hell for them.
00:18:52
Speaker
They're getting flooded with messages.
00:18:54
Speaker
They can't share anything, but they are content providers.
00:18:57
Speaker
I think they were put in a pretty poor situation.
00:19:01
Speaker
If I'm picturing it for myself.
00:19:04
Speaker
Yeah, this would be horrible if you actually went down and saw this disaster and unable to talk about it.
00:19:10
Speaker
It kind of reminds me again, this is a lot of Simpsons references.
00:19:14
Speaker
Do you remember when when Mr. Burns went bankrupt and was able to actually rebuild his empire and he goes to show Lisa how he's done it and what he's done?
00:19:24
Speaker
He's hooked up all of these.
00:19:26
Speaker
You remember the the six pack sodas where they have those those rings all together.
00:19:31
Speaker
He connected them all together and created a drift net that was cleaning everything out of the sea, including whales and dolphins.
00:19:39
Speaker
And Lisa's just horrified because she gave him the idea of what was going on.
00:19:43
Speaker
Like, I have a feeling that the like the media personalities that went down and looked at it, they were probably apoplectic at absolutely how horrible like the actual process is behind the scenes.
00:20:00
Speaker
I mean, it could be.
00:20:01
Speaker
I don't disagree that that's conceivable.
00:20:04
Speaker
But when you're invited and you know you're going to sign an NDA, I mean, it's not that I'm not sympathetic.
00:20:11
Speaker
It's just, I mean, that's kind of when you decide to agree that you're going to do a corporate official event style thing.
00:20:19
Speaker
that's almost part and parcel.
00:20:21
Speaker
I say almost because I don't think anyone who went down there actually thought that the reveal would not be public at this point, that the NDA was only going to be for a few days while they, you know, so that there would be a coordinated release of articles and audio and video, you know, sort of like kind of what JJP did with Wonka, you know, it was all really structured.
00:20:42
Speaker
But, you know, it was only about a week's worth of time between when people were exposed who did the NDAs and when they got to go public.
00:20:49
Speaker
So I'm going to I'm going to put this out there.
00:20:55
Speaker
If you look at Facebook, you look at Pinside, you look at the deep root threads there, you do have the Scots on one side of the spectrum.
00:21:03
Speaker
I feel like I'm on the side of the spectrum of.
00:21:08
Speaker
Honestly, I feel like deep roots kind of made up at this point.
00:21:12
Speaker
And so everything that's just being said is just being said.
00:21:14
Speaker
I was actually kind of shocked them not revealing anything today.
00:21:18
Speaker
But then part of me is like, well, what does it really matter?
00:21:19
Speaker
Because I don't feel like they're a legitimate company yet.
00:21:23
Speaker
Like, if this was something else, if this was... I wasn't in the hobby during the JJP Hobbit fiasco of people waiting two, two and a half years to get their games...
00:21:34
Speaker
But I know people that were, and I can understand that being a really frustrating time.
00:21:38
Speaker
But we're looking at a company that hasn't taken any money from anyone, that hasn't really revealed a game that holds weight with anyone besides the fact that it's a J-pop game.
00:21:49
Speaker
I don't see where the passion is coming from.
00:21:53
Speaker
And maybe it's because I don't understand the deep root...
00:21:58
Speaker
I, it's just, it's just because of all the talk, like let's, let's be honest.
00:22:02
Speaker
Like the first thing I remember from deep root was Martin and Ryan on head to head, making fun of the deep root logo.
00:22:09
Speaker
That's really the only connection I have is, is we've been making fun of these people for three plus years, hoping they'll, they'll prove us wrong and they just haven't yet.
00:22:17
Speaker
So I don't understand where the passion's coming from.
00:22:20
Speaker
Well, it's, you know, I would say it's probably, depending on the person, there are a few different variants of flavors for it.
00:22:28
Speaker
I mean, like I personally, while I had wanted to see news about Deep Root, this in and of itself is I got my, you know, from a podcaster perspective, I got my news.
00:22:37
Speaker
I have news no matter what in terms of a reveal or a non-reveal.
00:22:41
Speaker
I'm not mad at Deep Root because as you pointed out, I don't have any money in.
00:22:45
Speaker
Their success or failure has really no direct impact on me.
00:22:49
Speaker
But in terms of where people and their passion come from, I think most of it falls into one of primarily two realms.
00:22:57
Speaker
There is the you hired J-pop and we lost a ton of money on Zidware, or I know friends who lost money on Zidware and we're mad at you for giving someone that we don't feel deserved another chance in this hobby another chance.
00:23:11
Speaker
And so there's a bias against Deep Root for bringing John Papaduke on board.
00:23:16
Speaker
That's one, I think, major category of anger.
00:23:20
Speaker
And then the other is that there were a lot of – well, I shouldn't say a lot, but there were a number of public both audio and written interviews –
00:23:29
Speaker
about involving Deep Root, where there were a lot of statements that could probably be fairly succinctly described as either arrogant or at least boisterous, and including talking about outproducing Stern, saying that multimorphic isn't innovative.
00:23:48
Speaker
I mean, just kind of talking a little bit, throwing some shade, talking a little trash about
00:23:53
Speaker
on a number of manufacturers.
00:23:56
Speaker
And yet, as you've pointed out, Josh, they haven't produced anything.
00:23:59
Speaker
So there is almost a schoidenfraud about that, that here's this company that's come out, guns a-blazing, talking smack, hiring people that are seen as toxic, and hey, look, they continue to fail before our very eyes.
00:24:15
Speaker
It seems like this is like when they're talking to LeVar Ball,
00:24:21
Speaker
You know, the guy, he talks so much trash and he played, he was a backup guy during the Jordan era.
00:24:27
Speaker
But if you talk to him, he truly believes that he won 10 championships.
00:24:32
Speaker
Like he is that self-assured that he is so much better than his product is.
00:24:39
Speaker
Do you remember, oh, Bill Parcells.
00:24:43
Speaker
You remember when they asked him about it?
00:24:44
Speaker
He's like, you are what your record says you are.
00:24:48
Speaker
And they are what their record says they are.
00:24:50
Speaker
I don't care what Robert's saying anymore.
00:24:52
Speaker
I'm not really angry at the – because I haven't lost a dime on this.
00:24:59
Speaker
But at some point, this guy's a clown.
00:25:01
Speaker
There's nothing that he's actually doing to make other than standing up and making these big statements that he has never made good on.
00:25:11
Speaker
Right, right.
00:25:12
Speaker
And it's a good point, Scott.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I think that it depends on the person.
00:25:18
Speaker
So doing the boisterous sort of arrogant statements to generate hype, I get that as a strategy.
00:25:25
Speaker
We've seen where people who behave in obnoxious ways in pinball get a lot of attention.
00:25:30
Speaker
So it's definitely a strategy that can work at least for a certain segment of the population.
00:25:35
Speaker
that they like that.
00:25:36
Speaker
They want to see the, you know, they want it to be wrestling.
00:25:38
Speaker
They want to see this WWE.
00:25:40
Speaker
They want to see someone come up behind Stern and smack the company with a metal folding chair behind their back.
00:25:46
Speaker
Again, yeah, it's all just sort of part and parcel of the hobby.
00:25:49
Speaker
Uh,
00:25:50
Speaker
The thing that here about, you know, talking about, okay, well, nothing's really happened yet, so why does any of this sort of matter?
00:25:58
Speaker
The problem is when you keep setting dates and you keep missing the dates and you don't put anything out there, I think that it really jeopardizes the credibility.
00:26:07
Speaker
Because when I look at the announcement that DeepRoot made today,
00:26:12
Speaker
And I see that they officially, because bear in mind, as we've noted, these photos, they're leaked.
00:26:17
Speaker
We don't, these did not come out direct from Deep Root on their page.
00:26:20
Speaker
So Deep Root scheduled this event for months after their last scheduled event where they were supposed to do a reveal.
00:26:27
Speaker
And then they give us not a single thing.
00:26:30
Speaker
And it's like, almost like they think they can bottle the hype up and then just keep, but you can't do that and keep moving the dates.
00:26:38
Speaker
And while I think many, actually, I'd probably say all pinball companies in my experience have at some stage on some of their games failed in some capacity to properly do their reveals and their launches.
00:26:50
Speaker
In this particular case, I think that
00:26:53
Speaker
Deep Root should have given a little bit of something, talked about some innovation because of this concern that it's vaporware, that it's not, they're never going to build.
00:27:03
Speaker
They're never really going to finish something.
00:27:05
Speaker
So at least there's got to be something about this game that is ready for primetime.
00:27:11
Speaker
The display or something, the legs, I don't, I mean, something should be ready.
00:27:16
Speaker
They, and we've seen this with other companies where when they know things were like Hobbit was an example brought up earlier, when things were falling behind, there was still a drip feed to let you remember that this game is actually being built.
00:27:27
Speaker
Oh, here's what the new play field art looks like.
00:27:30
Speaker
And okay, here's, you know, here's a, here's what we're doing with the third flipper.
00:27:33
Speaker
And it's just, they're not giving us anything.
00:27:38
Speaker
And yeah,
00:27:38
Speaker
I would be okay with that if they kept it all under wraps and then just did the reveal, but not if you keep moving when your reveal is.
00:27:47
Speaker
Because you're toying with people.
00:27:49
Speaker
You've missed your date now by a year and a half.
00:27:52
Speaker
Because the date, as far as I'm concerned, was March 2019.
00:27:56
Speaker
So my question to you guys is now that DeepRoot has effectively not met their own deadlines three times in a row now, do you think it goes against when they finally do decide, hey, the machine's ready, you're able to purchase, do you think they've taken away trust from the community to actually back their product?
00:28:19
Speaker
Because...
00:28:20
Speaker
If they're having this much difficulty getting out of the gate, how much difficulty are they going to have backing their product once it is out of the gate?
00:28:28
Speaker
I have zero confidence.
00:28:30
Speaker
Like none.
00:28:31
Speaker
I'm serious.
00:28:32
Speaker
This is ridiculous.
00:28:33
Speaker
I was pulling up to this weekend pinball when it actually had the prototype of Raza out there.
00:28:40
Speaker
Any idea what date that was?
00:28:43
Speaker
Oh, when we talked to Jeff Teolas back in November, November 14th, 2019.
00:28:48
Speaker
And so that, that is the date of the first look of the deep root pinballs retro zombie, zombie adventure land.
00:28:56
Speaker
And you look at that and.
00:28:59
Speaker
You compare that with the leaked photos and OK, well, the back box looks a little different.
00:29:05
Speaker
And yeah, there looks like there's some sort of screen down there on the bottom.
00:29:08
Speaker
But I don't know of anybody who went to that and said, wow, this is a great shooter.
00:29:14
Speaker
I love this.
00:29:15
Speaker
Like it wasn't even ready for primetime then.
00:29:18
Speaker
Stern has put out how many games since then?
00:29:22
Speaker
And I know they're a machine and they know how to do it.
00:29:25
Speaker
But you would think that at a year you're taking you can't even get this prototype all the way to a manufacturing thing.
00:29:35
Speaker
And who knows if your eyes were too big, maybe you need to scale your goals because you need to actually have something.
00:29:43
Speaker
Nobody cares anymore.
00:29:44
Speaker
No one's ever going to buy this game.
00:29:47
Speaker
In terms of Josh's question, I do think that confidence has fallen.
00:29:53
Speaker
And for a startup, confidence in being able to support the product is already low.
00:29:58
Speaker
So I knew an operator in the area who, well, he was actually, he enjoyed Houdini when he played it for American Pinball.
00:30:07
Speaker
more than he enjoyed dialed in from Jersey Jack, but he would not buy an American pinball game.
00:30:12
Speaker
It was their first game.
00:30:13
Speaker
And he was like, if they, I'm not sure they're going to be around to support it.
00:30:16
Speaker
It was, I heard similar regarding spooky when they first started.
00:30:19
Speaker
I don't know if they're going to be able to last.
00:30:20
Speaker
I don't know if I can trust that they can support this game.
00:30:24
Speaker
And so DeepRate was going to have that no matter what, because they're a startup.
00:30:28
Speaker
But I think the fact that they keep missing deadlines does diminish confidence in the product.
00:30:33
Speaker
Regarding Scott's discussion of the prototype, and I don't know if you've got the two leaked images up, but if you look at the side one where you can see the legs, you might recall one of the big complaints about the prototype was the makeability of the right ramp shot, which was seen as very, very steep.
00:30:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:50
Speaker
When I look at this photo and what I see is I see front legs with their leg levelers extended out and the one back leg I see does not appear to be extended out, which makes me think this game is pitched six degrees or even shallower.
00:31:05
Speaker
Makes me suspect that it wasn't solved.
00:31:08
Speaker
I agree.
00:31:08
Speaker
I never noticed that.
00:31:09
Speaker
I do see that in the picture now that you say that.
00:31:12
Speaker
And that – so it's stuff like that that concerns me because that ramp was – they had two different prototypes at the show.
00:31:21
Speaker
I heard one did play slightly better than the other in terms of makeability, but that – the ramp was notoriously frustrating to get all the way around.
00:31:28
Speaker
We know Steve Bowden had rules to address when you only partially got up the ramp, but –
00:31:34
Speaker
The inability to at least somewhat consistently make the ramp was a concern.
00:31:38
Speaker
And I remember an interview with Robert Mueller saying that they had made some adjustments to make the ramp easier to shoot.
00:31:44
Speaker
I hope that the recommendation wasn't, well, the game needs to be five and a half degrees.
00:31:50
Speaker
So my other question, or I want to point this out too, because this is the first thing I noticed when I saw these pictures was the actual lockdown bar and not the fact that there's a screen in it, but look at those corners.
00:32:02
Speaker
Do you dare play this game?
00:32:06
Speaker
I have heard some people call it the stellar wars lockdown bar.
00:32:10
Speaker
Get ready for bruising.
00:32:12
Speaker
Good.
00:32:12
Speaker
Cry me like me.
00:32:13
Speaker
That's why the guests were like, how do you guys play this thing?
00:32:15
Speaker
Because it's stabbing me in the hand.
00:32:18
Speaker
And I've wondered if that – not that there's a screen.
00:32:22
Speaker
I'm assuming it's a touchscreen, but not that there's some sort of screen at the lockdown bar.
00:32:26
Speaker
But I've wondered if some of the feedback was where the bottom of the playfield starts.
00:32:32
Speaker
If there's – like did they maybe say it's difficult to see the flippers or this feels really awkward to look at?
00:32:39
Speaker
I wouldn't be surprised if – like the back box to me, while it looks fairly different in a quasi-Aftor sort of way if you've ever seen Aftor.
00:32:50
Speaker
I don't think that's problematic, at least in my mind, it wasn't really problematic.
00:32:55
Speaker
But the lockdown bar area is where I'm going to guess there were some concerns.
00:33:00
Speaker
And then the other question I had too, because this is also the other first thing that popped out to my eyes.
00:33:05
Speaker
Why are there speakers at your crotch?
00:33:07
Speaker
I mean, that's where they're placed.
00:33:09
Speaker
Right, right.
00:33:10
Speaker
I'm guessing because I'm assuming the little display in the back with the little dashes are also more speakers.
00:33:16
Speaker
So they might be trying to do a more distanced actual surround sound style thing.
00:33:21
Speaker
Which could be cool.
00:33:22
Speaker
Someone had mentioned maybe it's the subwoofer.
00:33:24
Speaker
I just, that's the first thing that caught my eye or my eyes was I'm like, well, I do, I saw the speakers there.
00:33:29
Speaker
So then I looked up at the display notes.
00:33:31
Speaker
There's probably speakers.
00:33:32
Speaker
I mean, they are angled strangely, but one could say that angling your subwoofer directly into the floor isn't the best placement either.
00:33:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:33:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:33:41
Speaker
But those are like four inch subwoofers.
00:33:43
Speaker
Boom, boom, boom.
00:33:46
Speaker
It's to hear the Aquabats in all their glory.
00:33:48
Speaker
You know it.
00:33:49
Speaker
You know, if they retrofitted this for the Aquabats, I would be a first, I would be an LE purchaser and I would give it to Root.
00:33:57
Speaker
Really?
00:33:58
Speaker
You would be the only one.
00:33:59
Speaker
Deep Root, please.
00:34:01
Speaker
Please make an Aquabats pinball machine.
00:34:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:06
Speaker
Actually, don't do that because it's never going to happen.
00:34:08
Speaker
You're going to tie up the licensing and then I'm never going to see a game.
00:34:10
Speaker
The license will just be locked up for years.
00:34:14
Speaker
You'll never get that five bucks back.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:19
Speaker
Oh, gee, you know, it's it's just sad.
00:34:23
Speaker
Like, I don't I don't know how else to describe it.
00:34:25
Speaker
Like, there's obviously this is a cratering like the the logo is a is a career event for them.
00:34:33
Speaker
It just explains exactly what they did to the company that never existed.
00:34:38
Speaker
Like they're going to be jumping like all you're going to start seeing everybody beef up their LinkedIn profiles and saying, hey, I hear there's more jobs in Chicago.
00:34:49
Speaker
Maybe I should move there.
00:34:51
Speaker
Yeah, my biggest, actually, as I noted, I wasn't, you know, emotionally, I don't really care whether, you know, what happens with any of the pinball companies.
00:35:00
Speaker
Pinball will endure no matter what, even if we're only talking used games.
00:35:04
Speaker
I know that is a shock to many of you, especially some of the distributors amongst us, but...
00:35:09
Speaker
But the thing that actually, I guess, of anything about this that disappointed me that I got from the statement when they announced there would be no reveal was that I thought it was really unfortunate that it looked like if they had gone ahead with a reveal, it still was just going to be Raza after all this time.
00:35:29
Speaker
And in a way, I get it.
00:35:32
Speaker
And normally I would say, yeah, you reveal one pinball machine at a time.
00:35:35
Speaker
But given all the statements that have happened and the fact that we did because they put the prototype out, we did already have an understanding of the Raza layout.
00:35:44
Speaker
I really at least was hoping that they would announce the themes of another couple of games or something.
00:35:51
Speaker
Ultimately, nothing happened.
00:35:52
Speaker
So, I mean, it's moot.
00:35:53
Speaker
But still, that did disappoint me some.
00:35:56
Speaker
Because I just thought, I'm trying to find things like, what can Deep Root do that will let them stand out from the pack?
00:36:03
Speaker
And it's like, trying to fulfill on some of those past statements would be what I would think you need to do.
00:36:10
Speaker
But, I mean, at this point, I guess it's just, you need to show something.
00:36:13
Speaker
And it shouldn't just be leaked images of strange front leg leveler lengths and
00:36:20
Speaker
And, you know, have some official something out so that we know, because what people are going to ask right now is, okay, well, it's been six months since when you were supposed to reveal at TPF, what have you accomplished?
00:36:33
Speaker
And it's fair enough to say, well, you know, that's private.
00:36:36
Speaker
But on the flip side, if you're trying to make people still have interest, they need to feel like that it's not vaporware, that you're not the 3D realms of pinball.
Concerns About Deep Root's Design and Credibility
00:36:46
Speaker
Well, do you think also that part of the issues that they've been having with this, because we did see the prototype back in November talking about Jeff Teals and them.
00:36:55
Speaker
We got to talk to them.
00:36:58
Speaker
And back then it was just pretty much... Oh, what's the word I'm looking for?
00:37:04
Speaker
So it was pretty much just a normal cabinet from a play field from Marco and all that jazz.
00:37:11
Speaker
And now we have...
00:37:13
Speaker
whatever cabinet you want to call this, do you feel like maybe they've had some issues with, with trying to transition to their cabinet?
00:37:18
Speaker
And that might be some of where the problem is coming from.
00:37:21
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:22
Speaker
But you can make one cabinet, like you can make your prototype as weird as you want.
00:37:27
Speaker
I mean, it's, it's one thing.
00:37:29
Speaker
I mean, give me a week and I don't know anything about making a cabinet and I could at least put together four boards and a piece of glass and
00:37:37
Speaker
And come on, this is this is so epic of a fail.
00:37:41
Speaker
I don't even know what to say.
00:37:43
Speaker
Like you had you had one job.
00:37:46
Speaker
You had one job to make one game, let alone ten games.
00:37:50
Speaker
And it's the same boring game that you had before.
00:37:55
Speaker
Like, like, what have you been doing for an entire year?
00:37:59
Speaker
It seems like you've come to the final in a turn and you turn in the term paper that you had said you wanted to write all semester.
00:38:09
Speaker
And your professor's looking at it's like, this is all the crap that you gave me like in week one.
00:38:14
Speaker
What have you been doing all semester?
00:38:16
Speaker
Well...
00:38:17
Speaker
I've had a lot of health issues or, well, I've had a lot.
00:38:22
Speaker
It's like the excuses never end as opposed to, well, I did this.
00:38:26
Speaker
Like they've accomplished zero right now.
00:38:30
Speaker
Well, I mean, to be fair, they also haven't given any excuses.
00:38:34
Speaker
They just say they missed their deadlines and then that they need more time.
00:38:37
Speaker
Yeah, we don't ever know why.
00:38:39
Speaker
I think they're just not ready for it.
00:38:41
Speaker
That's the bottom line.
00:38:43
Speaker
So do you think that they knew that they were going to have to delay when they brought the media out?
00:38:49
Speaker
At this point, okay, I would bet that Robert didn't know, but I guarantee all the people who have pinball manufacturing experience already knew.
00:39:02
Speaker
Hmm.
00:39:03
Speaker
Okay.
00:39:04
Speaker
I mean, I could see that.
00:39:05
Speaker
I could see that.
00:39:06
Speaker
So I think Robert was going like guns a blazing forward and everybody was thinking this isn't going to work.
00:39:13
Speaker
And so they brought people outside people who are not on their payroll who said this isn't going to work.
00:39:21
Speaker
Like, how could that be a surprise to anybody?
00:39:23
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was wondering if maybe there's one of the innovations perhaps that has been finicky or hasn't been working right.
00:39:31
Speaker
And they kept thinking that they're so close to solving it.
00:39:34
Speaker
But it becomes hard to imagine that you can't, you don't know until it's in a way too late that you can't solve it.
00:39:43
Speaker
But the nearest example I can think of is with Jersey Jack, actually, when Pirates of the Caribbean was in prototype mode.
00:39:50
Speaker
And, you know, the game didn't come out as quickly as everyone had been expecting.
00:39:55
Speaker
And again, I guess we're not too surprised because at that point, Jersey Jack was always late on its final releases versus its prototypes.
00:40:02
Speaker
But
00:40:03
Speaker
And on retrospect, it seemed, at least to me, fairly obvious that they had spent that big prototype period desperately trying to get the triple spinning disc and chess to work consistently.
00:40:13
Speaker
And ultimately, they had to pull the plug on it, which in their case was, I think, pretty devastating because the fallout from the drama to do that decision resulted in very low sales of that game.
00:40:26
Speaker
I think that is one of the most directly responsible things for why that game did not sell.
00:40:30
Speaker
And by the time people got to try the finalized version and know, hey, this is still a this is a really good game.
00:40:36
Speaker
It's already off the line and they've got to move forward with Wonka.
00:40:40
Speaker
Yeah, I guess with well, with Pirates of the Caribbean, I will say that he tried multiple innovations.
00:40:47
Speaker
It wasn't like the one thing that he did.
00:40:50
Speaker
He had like five things that really haven't been done.
00:40:53
Speaker
I mean, even even his approach to the bottom.
00:40:57
Speaker
of making a wide body feel a little more like a standard body.
00:41:01
Speaker
And his approach was revolutionary and including the, you know, the ship and the rocking ship and the disc.
00:41:08
Speaker
Yes.
00:41:09
Speaker
I actually think that they probably could have made the triple thing work.
00:41:13
Speaker
with a little more time.
00:41:15
Speaker
But that was what they led with.
00:41:17
Speaker
And you are exactly right.
00:41:18
Speaker
They led and said, this is the innovation.
00:41:20
Speaker
And then Eric had to go and say, yeah, okay.
00:41:23
Speaker
So we swapped it out.
00:41:24
Speaker
The walk back.
00:41:25
Speaker
And I could see where maybe Deep Root's like, okay, what if, what if there's some innovation?
00:41:30
Speaker
I mean, because what innovations have they come public with?
00:41:33
Speaker
The hammer test.
00:41:35
Speaker
It's about the only one.
00:41:36
Speaker
And maybe that's to hedge to be sure that, okay, well, this, if it's a touchscreen on the lock bar and the touchscreen can't be done, we can pull that and we're not going to look real bad because I could see how one could say, look at what happened to JJP.
00:41:50
Speaker
You're right.
00:41:50
Speaker
The triple spinning disc was not the most impressive feature mechanically.
00:41:55
Speaker
It was featured.
00:41:56
Speaker
It was in the matrix.
00:41:57
Speaker
It was heavily promoted.
00:41:59
Speaker
And I thought this was very unfortunate.
00:42:02
Speaker
Actually, I won't say unfortunate.
00:42:03
Speaker
I thought this was a mistake.
00:42:04
Speaker
is after they announced that the triple spinning disc would not be done, those triple spinning prototypes were still the ones taken to shows.
00:42:12
Speaker
Yes.
00:42:13
Speaker
Do you think, I know this is probably far-fetched and too far out in left field, this is actually part of the marketing, and tomorrow or the next day we actually get, surprise, we were joking, and here's all this information from everyone.
00:42:28
Speaker
Okay, Josh, that's like not showing up for your wedding day when you have everything set up and then say, surprise, we're all open to Vegas.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:40
Speaker
Like there's zero chance your bride's going to be there.
00:42:42
Speaker
I'm sorry.
00:42:43
Speaker
It's not going to happen.
00:42:44
Speaker
Scott's right.
00:42:46
Speaker
It would be an incredible prank, but I don't think it's a very good way to launch a product.
00:42:52
Speaker
So because what do you gain?
00:42:55
Speaker
Like there's no advantage.
00:42:57
Speaker
At best, you end up with, I mean, there'll be some people that'll be relieved, but you're going to have people that'll be like, you just trolled me.
00:43:03
Speaker
Thanks a lot.
00:43:05
Speaker
On your reveal day too.
00:43:07
Speaker
I am deep down desperately hoping for that because it will just show how absolutely clueless this guy is.
00:43:14
Speaker
I can't fathom.
00:43:15
Speaker
I cannot fathom.
00:43:18
Speaker
I feel like, and it's probably an illusion, but I feel like when I read that statement that the company put out that I can read the pain in that statement.
00:43:27
Speaker
It's crestfallen like the entire you could probably just feel the air going out of the company right now because the dream's over.
00:43:37
Speaker
It's not going to happen.
00:43:38
Speaker
I mean, any rational I don't and I don't know what odds I would put on, actually, but but I.
00:43:43
Speaker
As we did before going on air today, I've had numerous messenger requests or DMs coming in from people wanting to talk about this.
00:43:54
Speaker
And one of the most common things that I'm now seeing people bring up is, so what are the odds they ever produce?
00:44:00
Speaker
And I think that's what you see in that statement is they know September 21st, 2020 was their last window to actually be seen as credible.
00:44:10
Speaker
And now at this point, there's always going to be, unless and until they produce, a high level of doubt about anything they claim.
00:44:19
Speaker
The credibility is not there.
00:44:21
Speaker
And that's terrible because now that, I mean, it's going to take a lot of marketing effort to overcome anything like that.
00:44:30
Speaker
It really is.
00:44:30
Speaker
The best case scenario is this is Big Bang Bar with Gene Cunningham.
00:44:36
Speaker
That's the best scenario where it was it was never going to happen.
00:44:40
Speaker
And finally, he just like, no, I'm going to prove everybody wrong.
00:44:43
Speaker
And he did it.
00:44:44
Speaker
And it submarined him like that is the best case scenario for Deep Root is that he they finally make these Raza games that go out and the company folds after that.
00:44:57
Speaker
I don't know if that's the best case.
00:45:01
Speaker
No, because here's the thing.
00:45:03
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with – I do agree with Josh on that.
00:45:06
Speaker
And the reason is we don't actually know how much investment money is behind Deep Root and how much they might still have available to continue as they have been.
00:45:15
Speaker
That's the one thing.
00:45:18
Speaker
No, the tank's empty.
00:45:19
Speaker
There's nothing – the fuel gauge is zero.
00:45:22
Speaker
There's nothing left.
00:45:24
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:25
Speaker
I don't know.
00:45:26
Speaker
So, Zach, I posed a question to these two earlier.
00:45:28
Speaker
I'm now going to pose it to you.
00:45:30
Speaker
And with you being a distributor, it's fine if you say, hey, I want to skip on this question.
00:45:34
Speaker
But with Deep Root showing time and time again that they can't hit a deadline,
00:45:41
Speaker
Does it make you question selling their product that they will actually be able to fulfill it once they actually do start getting out the door?
00:45:48
Speaker
So say Raza finally gets out the door.
00:45:51
Speaker
You sell a few units.
00:45:52
Speaker
Are you actually confident that they're going to be able to back their product because of everything that's been going on?
00:45:58
Speaker
That's a really good question.
00:45:59
Speaker
It's tough to answer because I don't know.
00:46:03
Speaker
I took the plunge with the Cosmic Carnival people, Suncoast.
00:46:08
Speaker
And the idea when I took the plunge there was I'll get in early, I'll buy a game for myself.
00:46:16
Speaker
Um, and I did, and it did not hold up to the expectations that I have, nor to the ones that I would want to put on my customer.
00:46:25
Speaker
So I refuse to buy any more.
00:46:28
Speaker
Um,
00:46:29
Speaker
Now that was a business decision, but it was also a hobbyist decision.
00:46:33
Speaker
I tried to run my business as a hobbyist first and it has paid off very well for me so far.
00:46:39
Speaker
So I probably do the same thing for Deep Root.
00:46:43
Speaker
I would not feel comfortable going in for a number of pins before I've actually seen what my customers are going to get.
00:46:49
Speaker
And I say my wife and I, our customers are going to get it.
00:46:54
Speaker
Uh, and then if it was a game that I thought people would like, even if I didn't like it, if it was built well and it looked like it was going to hold up, um, then I would be fine pulling the trigger.
00:47:03
Speaker
But that being said, I don't, uh, I don't know if they're going the distribution model.
00:47:08
Speaker
Um, I've talked to Mr. Mueller, um, on and off for the last six months or so, maybe even a little longer.
00:47:16
Speaker
And it kind of goes back and forth still.
00:47:19
Speaker
And I'm not sure that they're even 100% sure what they are going to do day to day.
00:47:25
Speaker
So yeah, good question.
00:47:27
Speaker
I wouldn't have any problem selling deep root games if I thought they were built well enough for my customers and customers were wanting them.
00:47:35
Speaker
Hopefully that answered your question.
00:47:37
Speaker
Yeah, I think that answers my question very well.
00:47:39
Speaker
Because like I said, my biggest concern is they've just, the only thing that Deeproot has proven time and time again is their word doesn't mean very much.
00:47:48
Speaker
And the problem is, is in a hobby where a lot of people take you for your word and your integrity, they have kind of destroyed that.
00:47:56
Speaker
And so my concern is even if they do finally get out the door, they just won't be able to repair the damage that they've done themselves.
00:48:04
Speaker
I, it's a good point, but never underestimate the ability of pinball people to forgive, especially when they want stuff.
00:48:11
Speaker
If you've got a good game that's going to sell, people will forget anything negative.
00:48:15
Speaker
I mean, a case in point is the number of people that have continued to be interested, despite what happened with Zidware and American Pinball with John Papaduke.
00:48:25
Speaker
And that does, that did alienate a portion of the audience, but so did in terms of an opposite of getting people very sympathetic to Deep Root, you know, despite all the boisterous statements that there were these, you know, sort of settlement terms where Deep Root was offering to pay out or give a game to individuals that had lost out on Zidware.
00:48:47
Speaker
Yeah.
00:48:47
Speaker
And they didn't have to do that.
00:48:50
Speaker
Obviously, they wouldn't have had that discussion at all had they not hired him.
00:48:53
Speaker
But that was seen as a grace-building move.
00:48:57
Speaker
They could do something like that in the future as well that could help build goodwill.
00:49:01
Speaker
And I think it's really important to not forget...
00:49:04
Speaker
that they have not taken pre-order dollars.
00:49:07
Speaker
So they're not in the same position that we saw with Highway.
00:49:12
Speaker
There were people with Cosmic Carnival, or at least one person, who ended up not getting their game, even though they paid.
00:49:19
Speaker
I do know of a distributor that didn't get one or more games that they paid for.
00:49:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:26
Speaker
And so, and that was part of the controversy back with JJP with Woz and Hobbit and even arguably to this day with Spooky, they're still doing pre-orders.
00:49:37
Speaker
And JJP did pre-orders for a while.
00:49:38
Speaker
Look at Dutch pinball.
00:49:40
Speaker
People love the Big Lebowski.
00:49:41
Speaker
Non-refundable deposits in the way of Spooky.
00:49:43
Speaker
Let me clarify.
00:49:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:44
Speaker
It doesn't matter what Dutch pinball does.
00:49:47
Speaker
People will still be buyers for the Big Lebowski.
00:49:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:50
Speaker
And to someone like me, I'm like, I cannot believe people are dropping like, what, 12, 5, 50?
00:49:55
Speaker
Yeah.
00:49:55
Speaker
12, 5 or so.
00:49:55
Speaker
12, 5.
00:49:55
Speaker
Yep.
00:49:59
Speaker
For a company that some people have been sitting like five years waiting for their pre-order.
00:50:04
Speaker
I thought that company would be out of business two years ago, but I've been wrong.
00:50:08
Speaker
And this is a little off the topic, but it's still relevant.
00:50:12
Speaker
Whenever people ask me, how can you own a business in this industry?
00:50:17
Speaker
All it's going to take is for the market to crash and nobody's going to be buying games.
00:50:23
Speaker
I don't know if that's true.
00:50:24
Speaker
There is an addictive feature to this hobby that people will find a way to feed that need.
00:50:32
Speaker
They will buy pinball machines.
00:50:34
Speaker
And until I'm proven otherwise, I...
00:50:38
Speaker
I don't know if it, I don't know if it ever totally tanks.
00:50:41
Speaker
I think Roger Sharp was talking about that at some point.
00:50:44
Speaker
Well, it used to be with the operators because historically, even in recessions, the one thing people still had were quarters and they could go and they could play a pin.
00:50:52
Speaker
And so there was a,
00:50:53
Speaker
Yeah, but ironically, during this COVID time, then the people, they're not able to go out.
00:51:00
Speaker
So they're actually buying more games.
00:51:02
Speaker
Like the market is hotter than it ever has been just because of that fact that people are like, I still want the entertainment value.
00:51:09
Speaker
And so, yeah, I don't think that – I think there will always be a market for pinball.
00:51:15
Speaker
I just –
00:51:16
Speaker
just my confidence in Deep Road is zero.
00:51:18
Speaker
And so I, as a consumer, would not feel confident in actually buying one of their games until maybe like eight years down the line when they've established themselves.
00:51:28
Speaker
However, caveat, I am not an early adopter.
00:51:31
Speaker
Like I am...
00:51:33
Speaker
I do not.
00:51:34
Speaker
I'm not the first person who runs out and buys something.
00:51:36
Speaker
I don't care if some if a new company comes out and it's a limited edition.
00:51:40
Speaker
And so there's only 20 of them.
00:51:42
Speaker
So there's this exclusivity clause, which they try to run on a lot of these games.
00:51:47
Speaker
I'm not that guy.
00:51:48
Speaker
I'm totally fine to wait until it becomes mainstream and get a product that I consider 10 times better at about a tenth the price.
00:51:56
Speaker
But, but here's the thing you, I think that's the case for a lot of people when it comes to the theming of retro atomic zombie adventure land.
00:52:05
Speaker
If they took this pin guys and they redid it to one of my dream themes, back to the future, uh, Goonies, guess what?
00:52:12
Speaker
My hypocrite.
00:52:13
Speaker
Oh, I almost cursed, but, uh, would be buying it.
00:52:19
Speaker
I, I,
00:52:20
Speaker
I know myself well enough and it's nostalgia and it brings me back.
00:52:24
Speaker
It's important to my life and to my memories.
00:52:26
Speaker
And I would buy that game.
00:52:28
Speaker
The problem that Robert Mueller has now is that he has a theme that nobody cares about.
00:52:32
Speaker
There is no one that gives two squirts about, see what I did there.
00:52:37
Speaker
That doesn't care about this theme.
00:52:39
Speaker
We saw it played at the Houston expo.
00:52:43
Speaker
Nobody was just,
00:52:44
Speaker
singing praises of the way it's shot so what do we have now we're waiting for innovation to sell this machine we've seen now leaked pictures and from what we can visually see nobody's going to be screaming from the hilltops for that either so now it's the one thing that nobody really knows and that's code code can sell games but it doesn't do as good a job selling games as themes and other things do yeah
00:53:09
Speaker
Zach, Zach's right on the, on the theme thing.
00:53:11
Speaker
Currently, the only thing that I view that zombie that Raza has going for it is there is a segment of the pinball population, but obviously very small compared to having a good theme that is desperate for anything new from John Papaduke.
00:53:28
Speaker
I'm kind of one of them.
00:53:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:30
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:31
Speaker
I like Papa Duke too.
00:53:32
Speaker
And like my friend has a, he has a beautiful Circus Voltaire and I love playing it.
00:53:37
Speaker
However, I, I don't know.
00:53:38
Speaker
I, I just, I don't think there's anything.
00:53:41
Speaker
Okay.
00:53:42
Speaker
On dialed in, how many people bought dialed in because you can play from your smartphones?
00:53:48
Speaker
Oh, probably zero.
00:53:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:53:49
Speaker
Zero.
00:53:50
Speaker
Exactly.
00:53:50
Speaker
And so if you're trying to sell on innovation, this is where Williams lost and DataE slash Stern actually won.
00:53:59
Speaker
Like DataE slash Stern, they realized that theme is everything.
00:54:04
Speaker
Right.
00:54:04
Speaker
Like theme will elevate a, a bad game.
00:54:09
Speaker
And these are the lessons they learned.
00:54:11
Speaker
Williams was trying to get into that, but even they picked these dog themes with Johnny pneumonic.
00:54:18
Speaker
They picked the shadow.
00:54:20
Speaker
They picked all these movies that are terrible.
00:54:23
Speaker
And the only one that they actually.
00:54:25
Speaker
Yeah.
00:54:25
Speaker
But they went into R and D on those before they knew whether or not they were going to be hits.
00:54:31
Speaker
Right.
00:54:31
Speaker
Okay.
00:54:31
Speaker
They had to go in early on those.
00:54:33
Speaker
So yeah,
00:54:34
Speaker
But times are different.
00:54:36
Speaker
The 90 apples and oranges, the 90s and operating pinball machines is no longer what it is now.
00:54:41
Speaker
The need for a theme now is so prevalent, not because of a barcade, because those pins and arcades are going to be played regardless of what's there.
00:54:49
Speaker
Now it's important because people, the boomers, the up and comers, the Xers.
00:54:54
Speaker
we are buying games in our homes and we only have a certain amount of money and certain amount of space.
00:55:00
Speaker
So darn well better be a theme that we really, really relate to.
00:55:05
Speaker
Not everybody has liked that, but that is, that is very much so the decision-making on, I would say the majority of home buyers.
00:55:12
Speaker
That's why it's important now.
00:55:14
Speaker
Whereas in the nineties, I don't think it was as important because it wasn't introduced yet as an important thing.
00:55:21
Speaker
So I guess, honestly, the biggest tragedy for me from all this today is that we won't be hearing from Steve Bowden daily on Fun With Bonus.
00:55:29
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:30
Speaker
And I don't know what the reasoning is behind this.
00:55:32
Speaker
And I know Steve and stuff's still going to come out.
00:55:36
Speaker
There's a correlation there.
00:55:37
Speaker
And maybe it's not a causation, but I don't think it's a coincidence that he chose to announce this on the day that they chose to delay Raza and the reveal of DeepRut products.
00:55:49
Speaker
Yeah.
00:55:50
Speaker
Yeah, it seems I, yeah, I think it's related.
00:55:57
Speaker
When I read his, and initially I was very concerned because the way it phrased, I thought that there was an employment change.
00:56:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I thought.
00:56:05
Speaker
I thought he was because what would make someone not want to do anything in pinball at all?
00:56:09
Speaker
Well, I'll tell you what would for me.
00:56:11
Speaker
And that would be if I worked in pinball and then I didn't all of a sudden.
00:56:14
Speaker
Well, not only that, but you gave up your life and everything you knew and moved how many miles away for that hobby?
00:56:22
Speaker
But in the details of his blog post, he mentioned wanting to focus a lot more on talking about rules, not having to feel compelled to post every single day and talking about the rule development going on at DeepRoot.
00:56:34
Speaker
Now, that could ultimately, from a company standpoint, be smart if they're willing to let him actually get somewhat specific on some concepts of rules.
00:56:44
Speaker
Because right now, we don't really, other than what we saw in the prototype for Raza, we don't have any sense about...
00:56:50
Speaker
like what the rules and modes are going to be.
00:56:52
Speaker
And is it really that much of a spoiler to talk about like theories on multipliers and how maybe it would be cool to have partial ramp drops that feed that?
00:57:01
Speaker
I don't know.
00:57:01
Speaker
Without seeing the games at the same time, it's difficult for me to envision if you'd gain a whole lot from it.
00:57:07
Speaker
But my biggest problem up until this point with Deep Root is how little they communicate, period.
00:57:12
Speaker
I mean, they only set up their Facebook page like six weeks ago.
00:57:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:57:16
Speaker
Where's their marketing?
00:57:17
Speaker
Where's their marketing person?
00:57:18
Speaker
I don't mean like a marketing campaign.
00:57:20
Speaker
I mean, just like, where's their marketing person?
00:57:22
Speaker
Where's the face of the company?
00:57:24
Speaker
Well, I think what is shown is that DeepRoot lacks three things.
00:57:28
Speaker
DeepRoot doesn't have any marketing.
00:57:30
Speaker
They don't have a sales team and they don't have a marketing team.
00:57:34
Speaker
And so if you're going to be a pinball company, how can you function without all three of those things?
00:57:41
Speaker
It sounds to me like their biggest issue surpasses all three of those points in its manufacturing.
00:57:46
Speaker
I would say, well, is it that or is it, do you have someone that, I'm not saying Robert Mueller's bad for the company, but maybe they need to have someone else as a chief officer over the pinball division and Robert's the one.
00:58:01
Speaker
Like a George Gomez.
00:58:02
Speaker
Yes, exactly.
00:58:03
Speaker
Just like a George Gomez.
00:58:04
Speaker
And then Robert Mueller's there to maybe have the final say or whatever it may be, but have someone that can run the day-to-day operations.
00:58:14
Speaker
Because my understanding, Robert's still doing, he owns, what is it, a law firm business or something?
00:58:19
Speaker
That'd be a big guy.
00:58:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:22
Speaker
So you can't be making these decisions for deep root at the same time you're trying to take care of Joe Schmo and his car accident.
00:58:30
Speaker
Poor Joe Schmo.
00:58:31
Speaker
There's really a Joe Schmo out there.
00:58:32
Speaker
It's like, son of a thing.
00:58:34
Speaker
Yeah, man.
00:58:35
Speaker
My parents suck.
00:58:36
Speaker
They need me, Joe.
00:58:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:58:37
Speaker
Did you guys talk about the looks of this thing?
00:58:39
Speaker
Did I miss out on that?
00:58:41
Speaker
Oh, we, we talked a little bit about it.
00:58:42
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:43
Speaker
Okay.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, I brought up the leg levelers because, and someone else had initially pointed that out to me and thought about the troubles with hitting the right ramp.
00:58:53
Speaker
And my concern is that's part of their solution is that this game is actually not pitched at six and a half.
00:59:00
Speaker
They've pitched it shallow.
00:59:01
Speaker
It looked like the right ramp was significantly modified.
00:59:04
Speaker
And I've heard that too, but why are the front legs so steep?
00:59:09
Speaker
I don't know what that was about.
00:59:11
Speaker
I don't know.
00:59:12
Speaker
I just saw the ramp.
00:59:14
Speaker
Why is the ramp frosted?
00:59:16
Speaker
What is this?
00:59:17
Speaker
My hair tips in the 80s?
00:59:19
Speaker
Your 3D plan?
00:59:20
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:59:21
Speaker
I want a picture of that.
00:59:22
Speaker
Bye, bye, bye.
00:59:23
Speaker
Yeah.
00:59:24
Speaker
No, I think it's more of a wham.
00:59:26
Speaker
Wake me up before you go, go.
00:59:28
Speaker
Yeah, I can see that.
00:59:30
Speaker
Yeah, the ramp I saw, it was modified.
00:59:32
Speaker
I mean, it sweeps much more to the left.
00:59:36
Speaker
Even the elevation, the height of it is significantly reduced.
00:59:39
Speaker
And if you see the top diverter, that is substantially changed as well.
00:59:43
Speaker
I didn't see visually anything else on the play field that was different per se.
00:59:47
Speaker
But then again, the photo was not very detailed.
00:59:52
Speaker
Tater cam.
00:59:53
Speaker
Yeah, can't really tell what was going on.
00:59:56
Speaker
I want to know who took that picture.
00:59:58
Speaker
No, they could be killed.
01:00:00
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
01:00:00
Speaker
Can I just come over a fiber towel and wipe off that screen, please?
01:00:05
Speaker
Thank you.
01:00:08
Speaker
Maybe the frosted ramp is like when you get a new phone and it's got the frosted thing over the front of it.
01:00:15
Speaker
You have to peel it off.
01:00:16
Speaker
You do not peel that back.
01:00:17
Speaker
You keep it on forever.
01:00:19
Speaker
Oh, are you one of those people?
01:00:20
Speaker
I hate those people.
01:00:21
Speaker
No, I'm not that guy.
01:00:22
Speaker
I ripped that sucker right off.
01:00:24
Speaker
Oh, my God.
01:00:24
Speaker
I had a friend like that.
01:00:25
Speaker
He would always have stuff.
01:00:26
Speaker
I'm like, dude, pull the thing off.
01:00:28
Speaker
And he's like, no, because it makes it look nice.
01:00:30
Speaker
I'm like, for who?
01:00:31
Speaker
The next owner?
01:00:31
Speaker
Like, what?
01:00:35
Speaker
it's like grandma with the, uh, with the saran wrap all the way around the couch.
01:00:39
Speaker
So you actually can never sit on the couch because you're preserving it for your legacy.
01:00:44
Speaker
I will be buried in this couch.
01:00:45
Speaker
No, I don't know what to think about the, the visual of this thing with the wraparound, uh, uh,
01:00:51
Speaker
I don't know if it's Translight.
01:00:52
Speaker
I don't know if it's back glass and acrylic.
01:00:54
Speaker
I assume Translight.
01:00:55
Speaker
Why is it?
01:00:56
Speaker
Is it crooked or something?
01:00:57
Speaker
Why is it black in the upper left corner?
01:00:59
Speaker
That's what is killing me.
01:01:00
Speaker
So it's supposed to be askew to represent, I think, like a movie poster.
01:01:06
Speaker
But it bugs me.
01:01:07
Speaker
Every time I've seen that picture today, I thought.
01:01:09
Speaker
I had someone message and say they thought that it was Photoshopped because they couldn't understand why that was crooked.
01:01:17
Speaker
That doesn't look good.
01:01:18
Speaker
Well, if they Photoshopped it, they did a good job because it involves pictures.
01:01:20
Speaker
It's perfect.
01:01:22
Speaker
It cannot be Photoshopped because if it was Photoshopped and the person that knows how to do Photoshop that well would have actually filtered that picture to look better.
01:01:32
Speaker
No.
01:01:32
Speaker
No.
01:01:34
Speaker
I like the whole thing being illuminated.
01:01:36
Speaker
That's a good one.
01:01:37
Speaker
I've actually heard or read online the most positive comments regarding that, regarding the Translite-y thing.
01:01:46
Speaker
The biggest concern being the pegs.
01:01:48
Speaker
Some people are worried that those pegs will break if you shake the game a lot.
01:01:51
Speaker
I don't know if they're steel or what, though.
01:01:53
Speaker
Aftor from the 80s did something like that, and I assume the wiring's running through those pegs.
01:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, I don't want to be visually.
01:01:58
Speaker
I don't want to be too negative because for me, it's going to be one of two things when I see this in person because it is so dynamically different than everything else we've seen in pinball minus pin 2K thing.
01:02:10
Speaker
But either it's going to look just really, really cool and revolutionary,
01:02:17
Speaker
Or it's going to look like value city furniture, pinball edition with like an old 2000, a waterbed with the bars going up in the black.
01:02:29
Speaker
Like it looks like a fish tank.
01:02:31
Speaker
Okay.
01:02:34
Speaker
I had a, I had a waterbed in high school and this is now I can only see the waterbed.
01:02:38
Speaker
You can see it like a waterbed.
01:02:40
Speaker
I'm like that, that this pinball machine looks as if,
01:02:45
Speaker
Back in the 80s, they were guessing what a pinball machine would look like in 2021.
01:02:49
Speaker
It's a steampunk pinball machine?
01:02:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm waiting for Jaws to come out of the marquee that looks like crap.
01:02:54
Speaker
And now that it is in 2020, we're like, oh man, they really got that wrong.
01:03:00
Speaker
That's what it looks like.
01:03:01
Speaker
It does.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah.
01:03:02
Speaker
I mean, I can kind of see.
01:03:03
Speaker
I heard someone else say they thought it looked overly Art Deco.
01:03:07
Speaker
I remember reading someone else say that their big issue was actually the space between the display and the trans light and being able to see through the back to the wall.
01:03:17
Speaker
Overall, I'm not.
01:03:19
Speaker
I actually am OK with the back box design, but I have quite a number of arguably odd looking back boxes because of my collection is so eclectic.
01:03:31
Speaker
Was that a shudder of pleasure or was that a shudder of cringe?
01:03:35
Speaker
I don't want to know.
01:03:36
Speaker
I don't want to know.
01:03:37
Speaker
Ace-dimetry.
01:03:39
Speaker
So the question is, Dennis, what kind of topper would you put on this game?
01:03:43
Speaker
Oh, yeah.
01:03:45
Speaker
Oh, yeah, probably a flying saucer.
01:03:47
Speaker
I know it would come across completely as derivative of CGC's Attack from Mars remake, but it's the right answer.
01:03:53
Speaker
On a spring?
01:03:55
Speaker
Yeah, and probably let it glow.
01:03:57
Speaker
And ideally, the spring would be wrapped in a pink LED rope, so it looks like the beam blasting thing.
01:04:05
Speaker
Because, hey, if they can put if they can put Toidle's logo over Toidle's logo to have Toidle logo inception, then we can do a ship blasting into a ship blasting on Maraza.
01:04:15
Speaker
So if we if we perp out this game, you think it'll make it better?
01:04:20
Speaker
I generally think purple is never the solution to anything, but you know what?
01:04:24
Speaker
The theme and art calls for purple.
01:04:27
Speaker
Not going to lie.
01:04:28
Speaker
I'm just saying that, you know, nice primary colors.
01:04:31
Speaker
We want things like yellows.
01:04:33
Speaker
Those are what you want.
01:04:34
Speaker
Yellow.
01:04:35
Speaker
If this thing were rethemed to purple rain and the right ramp where Prince's motorcycle, would you buy it?
01:04:44
Speaker
I would not, but people would.
01:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, you're getting closer.
01:04:47
Speaker
There are some things visually that that work on this game.
01:04:50
Speaker
I like that they, the, the, uh, you guys are looking at the picture, the stainless steel side rails.
01:04:56
Speaker
I mean, it's a small feature, but I like how they're not just your uniform, uh, same size across the whole front to back of the pen, how they have a little bit of detail there.
01:05:06
Speaker
That is a nice look.
01:05:07
Speaker
I don't know why the stainless steels don't match, um, on the, uh, the lockdown bar to the side rails.
01:05:13
Speaker
That's odd.
01:05:14
Speaker
And it makes visually makes your eyes go right to the,
01:05:17
Speaker
that, that, uh, the thumbprint LCD screen down there.
01:05:23
Speaker
I just don't know how that's going to feel.
01:05:25
Speaker
It looks like it's location wise, physically in a place where your hands are going to be touching it.
01:05:30
Speaker
Palms should never touch anything irregular whenever you're playing a pinball machine.
01:05:34
Speaker
Cause it will, and it does throw you off.
01:05:37
Speaker
I'm trying to think what machine did that.
01:05:40
Speaker
Was it multimorphic?
01:05:41
Speaker
There was a machine that every time I felt, I'm like, ah, like there's a sharp stainless.
01:05:45
Speaker
It's not like it hurts, but it's just annoying.
01:05:47
Speaker
So I don't know how that passed R&D, not just pulling that LCD screen in a bit, but maybe it feels fine.
01:05:55
Speaker
I don't know.
01:05:57
Speaker
Now that you're pointing it out, the weird part is, too, is the LCD down at the flippers almost looks bigger than the LCD in the back box.
01:06:03
Speaker
I bet it's the same size.
01:06:04
Speaker
From a manufacturer, I would bet they just the same thing.
01:06:08
Speaker
It's not even on.
01:06:09
Speaker
Is it LCD?
01:06:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:11
Speaker
The back box thing?
01:06:11
Speaker
I know it's color, so I'm assuming it was.
01:06:16
Speaker
And if the front lockdown screen is like a touchscreen, then they may have had to go with a more standardized dimension, something more available on the market.
01:06:27
Speaker
Yeah.
01:06:28
Speaker
And maybe they need that or chose that size because they want to show like the switch tests and all that on on the apron display or have some interaction between the back screen and that.
01:06:39
Speaker
I mean, because it is fairly sizable.
01:06:42
Speaker
Obviously, I don't see a start button on this game, so that's going to be involved in some way to get the game going, I'm assuming.
01:06:49
Speaker
I think it's going to be somewhere.
01:06:51
Speaker
It's going to be a dashboard.
01:06:52
Speaker
I think it's going to be a dashboard for players to hook up to wifi to save their game.
01:06:57
Speaker
I think there's going to be a lot of user interaction right there.
01:07:01
Speaker
So yeah, starting a game makes sense right there, but there's something like the art,
01:07:06
Speaker
I don't know.
01:07:07
Speaker
The art's not.
01:07:08
Speaker
I mean, I like the art.
01:07:10
Speaker
I think the art is actually the, one of the best things about the game.
01:07:13
Speaker
I think it's kind of fun.
01:07:14
Speaker
Here's one envision a video mode where it's like a phone touchscreen game where you're going to play on that.
01:07:21
Speaker
Oh, I got it.
01:07:22
Speaker
Fruit Ninja.
01:07:23
Speaker
We got to do fruit Ninja, the pinball machine.
01:07:26
Speaker
That would have been a great, great license eight years ago.
01:07:30
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:31
Speaker
Well, yeah, that's like angry birds doing a pinball.
01:07:33
Speaker
It's like, yeah, that's what I was just thinking.
01:07:35
Speaker
It is the angry birds movie that came out like 10 years after it was relevant.
01:07:38
Speaker
Yeah.
01:07:39
Speaker
The number one thing I saw on this game from back to from Houston to now is I'll give them a lot of credit on the animation.
01:07:46
Speaker
The animation looks nice.
01:07:49
Speaker
Yeah, I remember seeing the video.
01:07:51
Speaker
Yeah, I remember.
Technical Challenges and Innovations in Pinball
01:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, the teaser was very well done.
01:07:55
Speaker
I don't have any, without having played it, and I know that's a huge caveat, I don't have any major issues with what I'm looking at.
01:08:05
Speaker
My concerns are entirely around the lack of revealing it.
01:08:09
Speaker
It's a bit funky because how are you going to take this type of cabinet aesthetics and seemingly just put it into everything that you're going to put in a pinball machine?
01:08:20
Speaker
It's a bit too, it works better for this theme than something else.
01:08:24
Speaker
But just think of all the different things, especially with the rumors of them coming up with so many different original themes.
01:08:31
Speaker
I just don't know how it fits.
01:08:34
Speaker
And they can't manufacturing wise, you have to keep the cabinet the same.
01:08:37
Speaker
It's not like you can keep switching it up.
01:08:39
Speaker
Yeah.
01:08:40
Speaker
Well, and my other thought process too is, is I don't know about you guys.
01:08:44
Speaker
I know, I know Zach, you move a lot of pinball machines, but how do you drop a head on this thing?
01:08:49
Speaker
You just pull it up out of the body.
01:08:50
Speaker
And that was kind of my first concern based on some of the rumors and some of the leaked stuff that we've seen.
01:08:55
Speaker
That's one of their revolutionary, uh, proprietary things.
01:08:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:09:00
Speaker
So I don't know.
01:09:03
Speaker
Do you think that the backboard is too small, especially with games?
01:09:08
Speaker
Everyone has a Stern in their collection or maybe a Valley Williams.
01:09:11
Speaker
I mean, heck, does this back box, will it hide behind that stuff because it's so small?
01:09:20
Speaker
If I was Deep Root and I was developing a new look for a pinball cabinet, I would sure as heck...
01:09:27
Speaker
have a Jersey Jack and a Stern machine left to right flanked on it.
01:09:31
Speaker
And I would design it around the same height and the same depth of that back box head.
01:09:36
Speaker
I'd also look at the cabinet to make sure that it's not any longer or shorter than other pins in a collection.
01:09:43
Speaker
And I would probably make sure that it height wise is about the same elevation.
01:09:49
Speaker
If you look at them from the side.
01:09:51
Speaker
It's just something so simple to do.
01:09:53
Speaker
You can still make a dynamic cabinet, but make sure that it doesn't just stick out so much.
01:10:01
Speaker
You can start over on the whole cabinet thing, but if you're going to do that, you better make sure they buy game number one.
01:10:10
Speaker
You don't come out with Riles as game number one if you want to do that.
01:10:13
Speaker
So they better play nice with others until then.
01:10:16
Speaker
Do you think that, because we never heard about this in November at Pinball Expo or Houston Expo, that screen is quite big and looking at a pinball machine that I've got in front of me,
01:10:29
Speaker
we keep talking about size.
01:10:30
Speaker
It almost looks like you'd have to extend the cabinet just to fit the screen.
01:10:35
Speaker
So does it stick out longer or do our play fields become shorter?
01:10:39
Speaker
I was just going to say, I'm not exactly sure how big the screen is vis-a-vis the traditional apron, which it seems to be replacing.
01:10:46
Speaker
Yeah.
01:10:47
Speaker
It hangs over more.
01:10:49
Speaker
So when I'm looking at the new one versus the Deep Root prototype, I actually like the prototype.
01:10:57
Speaker
And maybe it's just because I like that it looks like a grown-up pinball machine.
01:11:04
Speaker
This cabinet, it looks like this...
01:11:07
Speaker
it's like a home pin.
01:11:08
Speaker
It's like a home version.
01:11:10
Speaker
It doesn't look substantial.
01:11:12
Speaker
It doesn't look like it could go in an arcade.
01:11:14
Speaker
And with, I'm sorry, with that, with that back box that has that 3D-ish or that wraparound, I would...
01:11:25
Speaker
Yeah, I would be kind of worried that one, what happens is that going to be to stand up to anything is a fragile.
01:11:33
Speaker
At least I know the standard back box, at least the glass is pretty much protected in case someone bumps it.
01:11:38
Speaker
That seems way too exposed.
01:11:40
Speaker
And it I like the I would go back with the prototype more than I would with this one.
01:11:46
Speaker
This this seems like a design miss.
01:11:51
Speaker
So I, I don't know.
01:11:53
Speaker
I, I don't, I don't get it.
01:11:55
Speaker
It's not mine.
01:11:55
Speaker
Not, not, not my bag, baby.
01:11:57
Speaker
Said, I want to know how you open the back of the head.
01:12:01
Speaker
To do what?
01:12:04
Speaker
To work on anything?
01:12:05
Speaker
Yeah.
01:12:05
Speaker
I mean, the main... What do you think's in there?
01:12:08
Speaker
A bulb?
01:12:08
Speaker
In 2021, nothing needs to be back and there doesn't need to be ahead of anything.
01:12:14
Speaker
I'm sympathetic to Scott's point, but also, I mean, we are sort of stuck with legacy cabinet shape that by and large doesn't serve any purpose anymore other than it's just how it's always been.
01:12:27
Speaker
I mean, one of the big complaints about Sterns that I hear from people is, well, they feel so cheap.
01:12:32
Speaker
And it's like, well, there's no weight in them anymore.
01:12:33
Speaker
The boards are teeny tiny baby boards.
01:12:36
Speaker
I mean, we don't need a back box that's like eight inches thick anymore.
01:12:40
Speaker
We just don't.
01:12:42
Speaker
As far as long as the play field is the standard length and width of a play field, I'm relatively accepting that.
01:12:49
Speaker
though I do want some sort of display translate style thing to catch the eye.
01:12:53
Speaker
So they want to thin it up and, and change that around and not have the, you know, I'm boards not being in the back of the head.
01:13:02
Speaker
It's like, it's gone wrong so many times, but even at this point, most of the node boards that Stern's using are actually connected to the play field.
01:13:09
Speaker
So as long as they finally figured out how to stop screws from dropping on there and shorten things out Atari style.
01:13:15
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:15
Speaker
That's the part.
01:13:16
Speaker
Yeah.
01:13:18
Speaker
But I mean, so yeah, it looks, I think maybe they went a little like with how the trans light connects to the display that connects to the main cabinet.
01:13:28
Speaker
Maybe went like they tried a little too hard to make it look different.
01:13:32
Speaker
Like maybe it would have been better if that was all one unified piece, but if they want it to be like half the normal width or thickness, I'm like, yeah, at this point, everyone else is just doing it the old way because it's to keep the lineup standardized or something.
01:13:46
Speaker
Okay.
01:13:48
Speaker
Dennis, I want you to try something.
01:13:50
Speaker
Take a look at the, you know, whatever leaked picture you want.
01:13:54
Speaker
Cover the bottom part and then imagine that
01:14:00
Speaker
So you're only seeing the back box.
01:14:02
Speaker
Imagine that as the top of a Walmart display.
01:14:06
Speaker
Okay.
01:14:07
Speaker
Yep.
01:14:08
Speaker
Always a low price.
01:14:09
Speaker
Doesn't it look like I'm about to buy a cheap knockoff $5 DVD for my kid at Walmart?
01:14:19
Speaker
Or a guppy tank, either or.
01:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, but that's what it looks like to me.
01:14:24
Speaker
It doesn't look like, wow, I'm going to have a great time playing this machine.
01:14:28
Speaker
It looks like I'm buying something at a big box store.
01:14:34
Speaker
Yeah, I can.
01:14:34
Speaker
I mean, I can see it, but I don't look at the translate to decide if I'm going to have a good time playing a game or not.
01:14:41
Speaker
Oh, totally fair.
01:14:42
Speaker
But aesthetics, if they are changing it, they are trying to make a statement with their aesthetics.
01:14:49
Speaker
And if the statement is, I look like a Walmart display, I don't think that's what they're going for.
01:14:55
Speaker
I just, this thing still might look...
01:14:58
Speaker
pretty darn cool in real life.
01:15:01
Speaker
I'm still not convinced it doesn't look good.
01:15:05
Speaker
It may in fact look great in real life.
01:15:08
Speaker
I think what is damaging to them is canceling this reveal and then letting these pictures get out.
01:15:16
Speaker
That is super damaging because you have no narrative that you get to play with
01:15:21
Speaker
when people see your product for the first time, nothing.
01:15:25
Speaker
Hell, if I was Robert right now, I would be throwing out a promo that has some voiceover.
01:15:30
Speaker
That's got some animation.
01:15:31
Speaker
That's got some gameplay just to pull people back in.
01:15:35
Speaker
When you get, let me ask you a question though.
01:15:38
Speaker
This, so this machine appears to be on, right?
01:15:42
Speaker
Yeah.
01:15:43
Speaker
Cause we're, we're seeing the lights.
01:15:45
Speaker
Why is there nothing on either display?
01:15:50
Speaker
Cause they've unplugged them.
01:15:52
Speaker
Yeah, I don't.
01:15:52
Speaker
That's a good question.
01:15:53
Speaker
I don't know.
01:15:53
Speaker
I'm wondering why there's... Okay, this is supposed to be a reveal party, right?
01:16:01
Speaker
Well, I don't know the context of when the photos were taken.
01:16:04
Speaker
Okay, well, they should... Well, okay, but if you fire up a machine, everything should fire up, right?
01:16:11
Speaker
It doesn't have two switches.
01:16:12
Speaker
Sure, but does this have a sleep mode where it turns off the monitors and just lets the GI go?
01:16:19
Speaker
I don't know.
01:16:19
Speaker
It doesn't have an attract mode?
01:16:22
Speaker
It might have an attract mode, but I mean, like, for example, when I get all my games, one of the things I do is I disable all sound in attract mode.
01:16:31
Speaker
They might have thought, well, maybe some people don't like the flashing screens and stuff.
01:16:34
Speaker
Let's disable the screens and the touch screen goes to sleep.
01:16:38
Speaker
And then when you touch the touch screen, it goes back.
01:16:41
Speaker
It all fires up, yeah.
01:16:43
Speaker
Or maybe it has an option like GI lighting mode.
01:16:46
Speaker
But if it's your start button, you wouldn't want that screen asleep at all.
01:16:50
Speaker
Well, an operator might have the ability to turn off sleep mode.
01:16:53
Speaker
Just like when I get a laptop, I turn off sleep mode when it's plugged in because I don't see the point.
01:16:57
Speaker
Dang it, Robert.
01:16:58
Speaker
Why would you, if you're going to put this much stainless and make a point to have a speaker panel that's stainless and goofy little speaker stainless on the front of your cab, can you not just make the darn coin door stainless?
01:17:11
Speaker
That is a typical stern coin door.
01:17:15
Speaker
Come on, Bobby Pinball.
01:17:16
Speaker
The shooter housing's stainless.
01:17:18
Speaker
Just make everything stainless.
01:17:20
Speaker
Now, the announcement of the non-reveal did indicate there were technical issues.
01:17:24
Speaker
Maybe the game's screens broke.
01:17:26
Speaker
And once they turned it on and all that worked was the GI.
01:17:28
Speaker
Could be that too.
01:17:30
Speaker
Well, and last point on the whole light thing, if you look at the inserts that are lit on both angles, it's the same lights, I believe.
01:17:40
Speaker
Thus, almost in a state of, that's where it's locked in at.
01:17:44
Speaker
It's locked up.
01:17:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:46
Speaker
The I and the E are lit.
01:17:47
Speaker
Gotta reset it.
01:17:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:17:50
Speaker
Someone reached behind the right side corner of the trans... Oh, wait, maybe they put the power switch in the proper space.
01:17:57
Speaker
Okay, this feels like the first Houdini.
01:18:01
Speaker
You remember that?
01:18:02
Speaker
Where it looked pretty from a distance, but it was behind a velvet rope.
01:18:05
Speaker
It actually didn't flip.
01:18:06
Speaker
Is this a Houdini part two?
01:18:08
Speaker
Oh, the diorama Houdini.
01:18:09
Speaker
Wow, that's a throwback.
01:18:12
Speaker
No, I mean, maybe, but we know that they have a flippable version because the prototype was, as someone today described it to me, it wasn't fun, but it was playable.
01:18:22
Speaker
Okay, that should be on a bumper sticker.
01:18:25
Speaker
Yeah.
01:18:27
Speaker
Wasn't fun, but playable.
01:18:29
Speaker
That sounds like a bad date.
01:18:30
Speaker
I don't know.
01:18:31
Speaker
I hope that last, last poke I'll have, and then I'm going to be fully supportive.
01:18:35
Speaker
I hope that this pin comes with a couple of those Swiffer, Swiffer dust dust.
01:18:39
Speaker
I hope that this pin comes with some Swiffer dust, because there's going to be a lot of dust that collects under that fish tank head thing.
01:18:48
Speaker
Like you're going to, I actually saw an operator complain about that.
01:18:52
Speaker
Like, yeah, I could see it about having to vacuum that out.
01:18:55
Speaker
Oh man.
01:18:56
Speaker
Okay, what I want is an automatic fish feeder that goes into the head.
01:19:00
Speaker
And so it can feed the goldfish that are obviously going to be swimming behind the illuminated translator.
01:19:06
Speaker
I'm surprised nobody's done a curved screen yet.
01:19:10
Speaker
Well, aren't those Sega, those Sega, whatever ones were.
01:19:14
Speaker
Oh yeah.
01:19:15
Speaker
Like Starship Troopers.
01:19:16
Speaker
No, that's the show showcase head.
01:19:19
Speaker
And I'm talking about instead of like a Jersey Jack, but doing a concave screen.
01:19:24
Speaker
That's innovative.
01:19:25
Speaker
That's new.
01:19:26
Speaker
That's what a lot of people are using nowadays in home theater, right?
01:19:30
Speaker
Those curved displays.
01:19:32
Speaker
Yeah.
01:19:33
Speaker
Do something like that.
01:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, but that's a lens that goes on your projector.
01:19:37
Speaker
No, no.
01:19:37
Speaker
You know what I'm talking about?
01:19:38
Speaker
The whole screen is shaped like a banana.
01:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, you're talking about the Sony 4K HTVs or whatever they are.
01:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, why doesn't anybody utilize one of those?
01:19:47
Speaker
That would have been more effective.
01:19:49
Speaker
I've never seen a screen that curves that's this small, though.
01:19:52
Speaker
That can't be cheap.
01:19:54
Speaker
There's no way.
01:19:56
Speaker
With pinball, you're trying to get away with the cheapest possible.
01:19:59
Speaker
Yeah, Zach, why don't you give them a $10,000 bomb and then you can do that.
01:20:02
Speaker
guys, what do you think the price of this thing is going to be?
01:20:06
Speaker
Too much.
01:20:09
Speaker
Actually, it doesn't matter because I'm never going to be able to buy it because it is never going into production.
01:20:14
Speaker
I'm going to say in the neighborhood of 8,000 with what we're seeing in the leak, the touchscreen and all of that.
01:20:21
Speaker
I bet they go a three-tier system, and they do have a Pro, and I bet it's at $55.
01:20:27
Speaker
Wow.
01:20:28
Speaker
And then I say that they have a premium, and it's around...
01:20:36
Speaker
7,000.
01:20:37
Speaker
I thought Robert had indicated there was only going to be one variant of Razor.
01:20:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:20:45
Speaker
But he did mention that there was different variants of different games too.
01:20:49
Speaker
Yes, that some would have trim choices.
01:20:51
Speaker
I should have chromed it.
01:20:53
Speaker
I'm looking at it.
01:20:54
Speaker
Oh my God, no one cares about Chrome.
01:20:56
Speaker
At least it would stand out as luxurious.
01:20:59
Speaker
Okay, so all I can say is if I had $9,199, I would buy an Avengers LE like I just did, and I would not wait for this box of lights.
01:21:12
Speaker
You're a good man, Scott.
01:21:14
Speaker
If this game shot well, I'd be a buyer.
01:21:17
Speaker
Okay.
01:21:18
Speaker
Fair enough.
01:21:18
Speaker
Okay, that is totally fair.
01:21:21
Speaker
Yeah, and I do like the way John Papadou games are fun.
01:21:25
Speaker
I just don't see it with this one.
01:21:28
Speaker
I think it checks enough boxes for me that, and I'm, I'm a fan of J pop games in general.
01:21:35
Speaker
I'm a,
01:21:36
Speaker
Personally, I'm a fan of Steve Bowden.
01:21:37
Speaker
I don't know how great of a coder he is yet, but visually, it doesn't offend me.
01:21:45
Speaker
The art doesn't offend me.
01:21:47
Speaker
And by offense, meaning not that I'm truly offended, but just that it doesn't disgust me.
01:21:53
Speaker
I like the display, the ratio of the back box display.
01:21:57
Speaker
I'd hit fire if it was a good game.
01:22:01
Speaker
Very good.
01:22:02
Speaker
I'm sorry, Zach.
01:22:04
Speaker
I'm just imagining the slogan that I can run with.
01:22:09
Speaker
And it'll be the Zach Mini quote.
01:22:11
Speaker
I'd buy it if it shoots well because it doesn't disgust me.
Pinball Industry Competition Discussion
01:22:14
Speaker
It doesn't disgust me.
01:22:15
Speaker
What a standard.
01:22:17
Speaker
Wow.
01:22:17
Speaker
Exactly.
01:22:18
Speaker
The fish tank might look damn cool in person.
01:22:21
Speaker
It's not fun.
01:22:22
Speaker
It's clunky, but it gets the job done.
01:22:24
Speaker
Yeah.
01:22:24
Speaker
I'm glad you're honest, Zach.
01:22:26
Speaker
It's just whatever standard you use to make a determination on a pinball purchase, it is so outside the norm for most people in the hobby.
01:22:34
Speaker
You guys always pick on me for saying aesthetics, and I say if it shoots nice now, you guys are like, oh.
01:22:38
Speaker
No, I like that.
01:22:39
Speaker
But you're just like, yeah, because you, who's Mr. Buy All About Art, is all of a sudden like, well, I'll buy a game if it shoots well.
01:22:47
Speaker
I don't know anything about the rules, but the art doesn't disgust me.
01:22:51
Speaker
So it's a win.
01:22:54
Speaker
I like the color choices.
01:22:56
Speaker
Okay.
01:22:56
Speaker
All right.
01:22:57
Speaker
Looks really purple.
01:22:58
Speaker
Purple.
01:23:00
Speaker
All right, I'm going to give a hot take right now.
01:23:03
Speaker
Oh, okay.
01:23:04
Speaker
And this is based off of what Mueller has said in the past, is that they want to be competitive, as competitive as Stern.
01:23:13
Speaker
They want that pie of the high-volume manufacturing.
01:23:18
Speaker
My hot take is Stern is too far ahead of the game, and Keith Elwin is killing it so well that
01:23:27
Speaker
that I don't think that it is obtainable to become, from starting line, to become as productive as what Stern is doing right now.
01:23:41
Speaker
All right.
01:23:41
Speaker
What if Robert hires Keith Elwin and Eric Minier?
01:23:44
Speaker
Ooh.
01:23:46
Speaker
Possible.
01:23:47
Speaker
What a twist, right?
01:23:48
Speaker
Yeah.
01:23:48
Speaker
Well, that's why I'm here.
01:23:50
Speaker
Well, certainly.
01:23:52
Speaker
But now Eric and Keith, they do have some design experience, but really not the manufacturing experience that Stern does.
01:24:00
Speaker
And that's really where Stern is winning right now.
01:24:03
Speaker
Stern is winning on being able to manufacture materials.
01:24:07
Speaker
a competitively priced game.
01:24:10
Speaker
I guarantee that if Keith Elwin were designing with Jersey Jack or anybody else, that Avengers would have been 12,000.
01:24:18
Speaker
Yeah, but they have different pricing models entirely as well.
01:24:23
Speaker
I mean, Keith and Eric both have – like they've gone down and worked with people on the line.
01:24:30
Speaker
They actually know how their lines are set up.
01:24:32
Speaker
So while I wouldn't put them to the degree of coordination that a George Gomez would bring, though I could throw that in if you'd like and say, well, why don't we have Robert hire George too?
01:24:42
Speaker
I guess my point being with all of it though, is, is it, I don't think, I think if your game plan is to catch up to Stern and surpass them,
01:24:50
Speaker
That's like maybe three years ago before Keith started making games, before Eddie was announced on the team, before.
01:25:00
Speaker
I mean, we're just three years ago.
01:25:04
Speaker
It seemed logical.
01:25:05
Speaker
Now it just seems impossible.
01:25:06
Speaker
No, it's not impossible.
01:25:07
Speaker
Manufacturer could come in and outperform, outsell, and outservice Stern Pinball.
01:25:14
Speaker
Okay, Dennis, you are right though.
01:25:16
Speaker
You are right that the key to this would be hiring someone like George Gomez who can actually run the manufacturing side.
01:25:25
Speaker
Yeah, I just wanted to explore the idea of, I mean, there's a difference between saying it's impossible because the market share of Stern is insurmountable to overcome or it's just too difficult for a company like Deep Root to home grow their way to that.
01:25:40
Speaker
But what if they bought their way to that?
01:25:43
Speaker
But I think Zach's right.
01:25:45
Speaker
I mean, it was a generation ago, almost two at this point, and I'm sorry, bringing up the video game side of things, but in the West, the Xbox 360 was outperforming the PS3 and the tides turned and PS4, Sony's flagship console, beat the Xbox One in the current generation.
01:26:04
Speaker
And that's been the big question about this new generation is, will the Xbox Series X be able to pass Sony once more?
01:26:11
Speaker
And could they, in their case, they're sizable enough that maybe they could home grow it.
01:26:16
Speaker
But, you know, in the good news for those of us on the video game side today, Microsoft instead was like, no, we're going to buy our way to victory.
01:26:23
Speaker
And they just bought ZeniMax.
01:26:24
Speaker
So now they own the companies that make Doom and Fallout and Wolfenstein.
01:26:29
Speaker
It's like they're ours now because we have money.
01:26:32
Speaker
And, you know, buy your victory.
01:26:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's true.
01:26:35
Speaker
But the problem with your analogy is, is Xbox already had a well-established project or product in the original Xbox.
01:26:43
Speaker
And then the 360, they improved upon that.
01:26:46
Speaker
And then they've got some history there.
01:26:48
Speaker
The problem with Deep Root is, is nothing's come out the doors yet.
01:26:52
Speaker
Right.
01:26:53
Speaker
And actually, Josh, I agree with you.
01:26:54
Speaker
I think if you bought, if they hired George, Elwin and Eric, they still wouldn't catch Stern.
01:26:59
Speaker
I agree.
01:26:59
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:01
Speaker
But I thought it would be a fun what if.
01:27:03
Speaker
And I agree with that.
01:27:04
Speaker
They're the dream cast right now?
01:27:06
Speaker
Yeah.
01:27:08
Speaker
Well, I mean, they're Neo Geo.
01:27:10
Speaker
I mean, at this point, and with me knowing basically nothing about Deep Root, I haven't communicated with Robert directly in probably over a year.
01:27:19
Speaker
Here's what I would do if I were them.
Selling Pinball Machines: Tips and Strategies
01:27:21
Speaker
They need to get production going.
01:27:23
Speaker
Who needs to have their line busy?
01:27:24
Speaker
American pinball.
01:27:26
Speaker
Work something out.
01:27:28
Speaker
Well, guys, we've been doing this for an hour and a half now.
01:27:31
Speaker
Let's do some final thoughts and let's wrap this up.
01:27:34
Speaker
Now, I think Scott is part of our final thoughts.
01:27:37
Speaker
He wanted to explore some.
01:27:38
Speaker
He was having some selling issues.
01:27:40
Speaker
I worry for him.
01:27:41
Speaker
You know what?
01:27:42
Speaker
We can talk about it later, but I do want, I need advice on the best way to actually sell a pinball machine.
01:27:49
Speaker
I am a notorious hoarder with a lot of things.
01:27:52
Speaker
I actually have about 90 old NES games.
01:27:58
Speaker
And they still play because I bought a refurbished console.
01:28:01
Speaker
And so I have all these ways of holding on to those.
01:28:04
Speaker
Now I can hold on to 90 NES games, but I cannot hold on to 90 pinball machines because my wife would divorce me.
01:28:12
Speaker
So I need to figure out there's three machines that I have that I actually need to sell.
01:28:16
Speaker
And I need advice on the best way of moving them.
01:28:19
Speaker
Well, what do you hold up?
01:28:20
Speaker
This is an easy fix.
01:28:21
Speaker
What are you what are you struggling with?
01:28:25
Speaker
Calling or what?
01:28:27
Speaker
OK, so I actually need more of like a OK, if you're going to sell a game, these are the steps you take.
01:28:33
Speaker
You take pictures, you move it, all that kind of stuff.
01:28:35
Speaker
You list it this way.
01:28:36
Speaker
You list it this price range, anticipating you're going to get this.
01:28:41
Speaker
I just hate the whole haggling of it.
01:28:43
Speaker
That is my Achilles heel.
01:28:45
Speaker
Oh, that's my favorite part.
01:28:47
Speaker
I get probably... Can I ship them to you?
01:28:49
Speaker
Can I just ship three machines to you and sell them for me?
01:28:53
Speaker
Do take trade ends at flipping out pinball.
01:28:55
Speaker
No, I have usually about three people a day sending me pictures and wanting me to give them assessment on how much they should list.
01:29:05
Speaker
That doesn't get old.
01:29:05
Speaker
I'm joking, guys.
01:29:07
Speaker
I love it.
01:29:08
Speaker
Keep sending them.
01:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, you love it.
01:29:09
Speaker
Yeah.
01:29:10
Speaker
And they're like, I'm going to CoinTaker and buy a new one after I sell this game.
01:29:14
Speaker
But the one thing I tell them is, when do you want this to sell?
01:29:19
Speaker
That's the number one thing you have to ask yourself.
01:29:21
Speaker
When would you like this game to sell?
01:29:23
Speaker
It sounds like a stupid question, but if you need it to sell by this week,
01:29:28
Speaker
I'd give you a price.
01:29:29
Speaker
If you're not really in a rush to sell it, but you need to get rid of it, I'd give you a different price.
01:29:34
Speaker
Pricing is a big part of it.
01:29:37
Speaker
The other thing is exposure of where you're putting it.
01:29:39
Speaker
Putting it both on Pinside and Facebook is going to be a good idea.
01:29:42
Speaker
Other limitations of shipping, are you willing to ship it?
01:29:45
Speaker
That's going to market a lot of limitations and who's going to be looking at this game.
01:29:51
Speaker
And believe it or not, one of the most simple things that people are the worst at is just taking good pictures.
01:29:57
Speaker
You can get $30,000 to $40,000 more out of a typical average home based on the cheap iPhone pictures that you're taking.
01:30:06
Speaker
That's a fact.
01:30:07
Speaker
So take really nice, clear, take the glass off, take nice pictures,
01:30:13
Speaker
and you should be fine.
01:30:14
Speaker
Also list out every single thing that's on that pinball machine, anything additional.
01:30:19
Speaker
And here's the expert thing, for some reason people don't know, the nicer stuff that you've added to this game, put it on top, because you only get a couple seconds of somebody seeing this thing
01:30:30
Speaker
to see if they're interested or not.
01:30:31
Speaker
They're gonna look at the first big picture, they're gonna look at the price tag, and that's gonna determine whether or not they want to look further.
01:30:39
Speaker
So make sure in your main big item description, instead of just putting Metallica Pro,
01:30:45
Speaker
If it's got mods and stuff, you put Metallica Pro with extras.
01:30:50
Speaker
Boom.
01:30:51
Speaker
What are those extras?
01:30:52
Speaker
I want to see.
01:30:52
Speaker
It looks like the right price, but if he's got extras, that's even better.
01:30:55
Speaker
So you got to engage people to get in there to buy that.
01:30:58
Speaker
That and don't, like the longer a pen sits on the market, listener,
01:31:03
Speaker
The more people think there's something wrong with it, that is a guarantee.
01:31:07
Speaker
It's better to price it lower to get it quicker than it is continually reducing the price.
01:31:14
Speaker
As you continue to reduce that price, people are going to think there's something wrong with it.
01:31:18
Speaker
Now, there's probably nothing wrong with it, but it's a subconscious kind of thing.
01:31:22
Speaker
Oh, that's been sitting forever.
01:31:23
Speaker
I think I could, it's overpriced or something's wrong.
01:31:26
Speaker
Don't do that.
01:31:27
Speaker
But look at the comps on Pinside, see what they've sold for before.
01:31:30
Speaker
And if you're wanting to get rid of it,
01:31:33
Speaker
You make plenty of money.
01:31:33
Speaker
You're collecting pinball machines.
01:31:35
Speaker
Take $200 off of it and get rid of the damn thing.
01:31:39
Speaker
Agreed.
01:31:40
Speaker
That's fair.
01:31:40
Speaker
Sorry.
01:31:41
Speaker
That was any help there, but.
01:31:43
Speaker
No, no, it actually is help.
01:31:45
Speaker
I just need to get off my butt and do it.
01:31:47
Speaker
It's that, you know, that, that saying, if you, if you get up in the morning and have a frog, you eat it first thing.
01:31:53
Speaker
Cause that's like, you get that out of the way.
01:31:55
Speaker
And so you just move on.
01:31:56
Speaker
That's my frog that I just need to eat.
01:31:58
Speaker
It's, it's a weird analogy, but it's true.
01:32:00
Speaker
The other thing, I don't want to forget this and undercut it, but engage in people making comments.
01:32:06
Speaker
Because there's now a rhythm on Facebook or whatever.
01:32:08
Speaker
Every time you comment on somebody's comment, boom, it's going to kind of bump it back up to the top.
01:32:12
Speaker
Same thing with Pinside.
01:32:14
Speaker
If that sucker, you don't use the forum discussion on Pinside.
01:32:17
Speaker
You open yourself up by using it.
01:32:19
Speaker
So be careful not to overprice your pen.
01:32:21
Speaker
But if you do that forum option, then every time somebody makes a comment, boom, it jumps up to the forum.
01:32:27
Speaker
If you don't do that, it's going to get lost immediately.
01:32:29
Speaker
by somebody specifically searching for that machine.
01:32:32
Speaker
Use bold text sometimes, maybe even an asterisk or two to really draw attention to it.
01:32:37
Speaker
These are some of the free things that you can do without thrifty nickel, you know, paying extra money.
01:32:41
Speaker
Right.
01:32:41
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:42
Speaker
Put it in blue or something.
01:32:44
Speaker
Yeah.
01:32:45
Speaker
Okay.
01:32:45
Speaker
All right.
01:32:47
Speaker
Oh, you know what?
01:32:48
Speaker
I think, I think everybody needs to consider Scott Larson's games and buy, buy, buy.
01:32:53
Speaker
That's what I think.
01:32:55
Speaker
Nice.
01:32:56
Speaker
Nice.
01:32:58
Speaker
And don't panic if it doesn't sell the first day either.
01:33:00
Speaker
I mean, I don't know why I get this mentality.
01:33:02
Speaker
I freak out if it doesn't sell in the first two days.
01:33:05
Speaker
And then all of a sudden there's a horde of people that are on my doorstep that want to buy the same machine all at the same time.
01:33:11
Speaker
So...
01:33:12
Speaker
That's right.
01:33:12
Speaker
And when somebody contacts you to ask about it and they're like, oh, well, can I get it next week or can you ship it?
01:33:18
Speaker
Like use that as an advantage, as a sales advantage too.
01:33:22
Speaker
Like if somebody has contacted you and is thinking about it, say, yes, I'd be happy.
01:33:26
Speaker
I'd be happy to let you come see it.
01:33:27
Speaker
Or if you want to buy it, that's fine.
01:33:29
Speaker
But I do have, I do have somebody, you know, interested in it, looking at it.
01:33:33
Speaker
So a quicker response would
Podcast Promotions and Contact Information
01:33:35
Speaker
be better.
01:33:35
Speaker
Then psychologically they're like, oh crap, if I want this, I got to,
01:33:39
Speaker
you know poo or get off the pot here and it's it's just different sales techniques i guess yeah got it and and one advice to the buyer don't message someone a thousand dollars less than what they're asking and then turn around and tell them that you just bought that machine not even six months ago and sold it for twice what you're asking for now that's weird
01:34:01
Speaker
Yeah, I had a gentleman that said he'll buy my Flintstones for two grand, even though I was asking three.
01:34:07
Speaker
And when I told him no thank you, he then proceeded to tell me he sold one for six grand.
01:34:12
Speaker
That's right.
01:34:13
Speaker
So, uh... Oh, the Flintstones.
01:34:15
Speaker
Kind of weird.
01:34:16
Speaker
Well, where can we find you guys?
01:34:19
Speaker
Where can we find you, Dennis?
01:34:22
Speaker
Well, separate from Zach, I'm over with Eclectic Gamers Podcast, which is at eclecticgamers.com if people want to go and check out any of those episodes.
01:34:30
Speaker
We cover pinball and video games, so hence where my video game references come from.
01:34:35
Speaker
So I do that with my co-host, Tony Kerkowski.
01:34:38
Speaker
And then Zach has the details for the Pinball Network, where we both do the pinball show on Mondays.
01:34:44
Speaker
Yeah, the Pinball Network is a cavalcade of different content providers in pinball.
01:34:51
Speaker
Dennis and I specifically do a podcast called The Pinball Show.
01:34:54
Speaker
You can reach us there via email at thepinballnetworkatgmail.com.
01:34:59
Speaker
Or if you like any of the other podcasts, they might have their own email or Facebook page.
01:35:04
Speaker
But certainly, if you email the
01:35:06
Speaker
pinballnetwork at gmail.com.
01:35:07
Speaker
You can reach them.
01:35:08
Speaker
We will pass that along that way.
01:35:10
Speaker
You can also check us out on Facebook, on Instagram, on the Twitter, on the Twitch, twitch.tv slash pinballnetwork.
01:35:19
Speaker
What else did we, YouTube, I guess.
01:35:21
Speaker
There's all kinds of little things.
01:35:24
Speaker
And if you're, look, I've got to say it.
01:35:26
Speaker
If you're ready to buy a brand new pinball machine, you guys know the routine.
01:35:29
Speaker
I want to know if anybody knows my number by heart.
01:35:31
Speaker
Now let's say it all together.
01:35:33
Speaker
Listener it's eight, one, two, four, five, seven, nine, seven.
01:35:36
Speaker
I think they did say one, one.
01:35:38
Speaker
That's right.
01:35:40
Speaker
I'm not going to lie.
01:35:40
Speaker
I never call your cell phone number.
01:35:42
Speaker
It's always Facebook messenger for me.
01:35:43
Speaker
Yeah.
01:35:43
Speaker
The quickest, quickest response is a message and email a text because every time I'm chatty, Kathy, every time somebody calls me and I have time to pick up, that's like 45 minutes that's gone where I get it.
01:35:55
Speaker
This is true.
01:35:56
Speaker
Don't ever call Zach.
01:35:58
Speaker
I still do not know how you do it.
01:35:59
Speaker
I've told you this before behind the scenes, Zach.
01:36:01
Speaker
I really do not know how you do your day job.
01:36:05
Speaker
You've got flipping out.
01:36:06
Speaker
You've got the pinball network.
01:36:07
Speaker
You've got – I mean – and I know that people are helping you with this and maybe I'm giving you a little too much credit.
01:36:12
Speaker
I don't know.
01:36:13
Speaker
But you do a lot in this hobby.
01:36:16
Speaker
I appreciate it.
01:36:17
Speaker
No, it's my wife.
01:36:19
Speaker
She does a heck of a lot of it.
01:36:21
Speaker
So everybody's got these multiple roles in their lives.
01:36:24
Speaker
It's just some of my multiple roles are shared more so by my soulmate and Nicole.
01:36:31
Speaker
I still, I overdo it a lot.
01:36:33
Speaker
And the people that are the closest to me will tell you, like Dennis, that there are some negative things associated with me because I do as much as I can.
01:36:42
Speaker
So I'm late to things sometimes.
01:36:44
Speaker
I don't get back.
01:36:45
Speaker
I mean, there's things.
01:36:46
Speaker
So nothing special about me.
01:36:49
Speaker
Well, and obviously, Dennis is the sweetheart of the pinball community.
01:36:54
Speaker
Everybody loves him.
01:36:56
Speaker
Everyone does.
01:36:58
Speaker
Well, if you want to find us, we are at... Where are we?
01:37:02
Speaker
Crap.
01:37:06
Speaker
If you want to find us, we're at LoserKidPinball on Facebook and on Instagram and on Twitter.
01:37:11
Speaker
If you want to email us, it's LoserKidPinballPodcast at gmail.com.
01:37:14
Speaker
We are more than happy to hear from you.
01:37:17
Speaker
With Scott leaving a little early, I should not have left at last moment.
01:37:21
Speaker
I know, guys, you keep contacting us about the contest.
01:37:24
Speaker
We have picked a winner.
01:37:25
Speaker
We are going to get those swag bags out.
01:37:27
Speaker
But with Scott being gone, I don't want to say who has won.
01:37:31
Speaker
So we will save that for the next episode.
01:37:33
Speaker
I know everyone's on the edge of their seats.
01:37:36
Speaker
But thank you.
01:37:36
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in.
01:37:38
Speaker
Thank you, Dennis and Zach, for joining us.
01:37:40
Speaker
I feel bad.
01:37:41
Speaker
Like I said, I still feel bad.
01:37:43
Speaker
We could win another hour just disgusting this.
01:37:45
Speaker
And yeah.
01:37:47
Speaker
I don't think the listeners would appreciate that.
01:37:49
Speaker
Nope.
01:37:49
Speaker
Not the last time I'm talking about Rosa.
01:37:52
Speaker
Yeah, until Sunday.
01:37:55
Speaker
But thanks again for coming on, guys.
01:37:57
Speaker
Well, thank you for having us.
01:37:58
Speaker
Happy to do it.
01:38:36
Speaker
All right.
01:38:36
Speaker
Sorry.
01:38:37
Speaker
This has been a really wonky episode.
01:38:38
Speaker
I do apologize.
01:38:40
Speaker
I don't know if it's because it was no show notes or just Scott's voice.
01:38:45
Speaker
Yeah.
01:38:45
Speaker
Holy cow.
01:38:47
Speaker
Scott was the Batman of this episode.
01:38:50
Speaker
Yes, he definitely was.
01:38:52
Speaker
Where are the other deep roots going?
01:38:54
Speaker
Show me your pin.
01:38:56
Speaker
Where is she?
01:38:57
Speaker
I'm going to show you the difference between a pinball that works and a pinball that never gets revealed.
01:39:08
Speaker
Calm down there, Scotty 2 Hardy.
01:39:13
Speaker
Dr. Phil, you don't belong in Gotham.
01:39:17
Speaker
You need some anger management hanging with Mr. Cooper.
01:39:22
Speaker
My parents are dead.
01:39:25
Speaker
Oh my God.
01:39:31
Speaker
See, I can't do the cool voices like Dr. Phil and whatnot.
01:39:34
Speaker
So neither can I, that's what makes them fun.
01:39:36
Speaker
Oh my goodness.
01:39:37
Speaker
Oh, uh, Wazowski.
01:39:40
Speaker
Oh, not Wazowski.
01:39:40
Speaker
Sorry.
01:39:41
Speaker
Ross from monsters incorporated.
01:39:43
Speaker
Huh?
01:39:43
Speaker
Okay.
01:39:44
Speaker
Was he the big furry one?
01:39:46
Speaker
No, you ready for this?
01:39:48
Speaker
I haven't done this on air yet.
01:39:49
Speaker
So, um,
01:39:51
Speaker
Wazowski, you forgot to file your paperwork.
01:39:55
Speaker
Don't let it happen again.
01:39:57
Speaker
That's actually really, really good.
01:40:00
Speaker
Okay.
01:40:01
Speaker
I remember now.
01:40:02
Speaker
I remember the character now.
01:40:03
Speaker
That is really good.
01:40:05
Speaker
Dennis is a mean Mr. Henke.
01:40:08
Speaker
Hi to her, friends.
01:40:10
Speaker
Hey, Mr. Henke.
01:40:11
Speaker
Hey, Josh, you smell like flowers.
01:40:15
Speaker
Why, thank you, Mr. Henke.
01:40:16
Speaker
Thank you.
01:40:18
Speaker
I'm just here with the spirit of Christmas and not the spirit of Deep Root.
01:40:23
Speaker
Went off the rails when Larson lost his mind.
01:40:26
Speaker
Oh my.
01:40:27
Speaker
Yeah, we weren't coming back from that at all.
01:40:29
Speaker
I'm like, well, there goes everything.
01:40:31
Speaker
Our job here is done, buddy.
01:40:34
Speaker
I think it'll sound extra for behind the curtain with all the digital digitization we hear from him.
01:40:40
Speaker
You know, the pure report recording is probably going to sound 80% more raged.
01:40:44
Speaker
Oh, it probably is.
01:40:47
Speaker
Okay, I've got one more voice impersonation for you.
01:40:49
Speaker
Ready for this?
01:40:51
Speaker
All right.
01:40:53
Speaker
Hi.
01:40:54
Speaker
Ohama.
01:40:55
Speaker
Ohama means family.
01:40:57
Speaker
Family means no one gets left behind.
01:40:59
Speaker
Or forgotten.
01:41:01
Speaker
That's good, too.
01:41:03
Speaker
At first, I thought you were doing a golem.
01:41:06
Speaker
I thought he was doing the weirdo on the Star Wars episodes.
01:41:11
Speaker
Which one was that?
01:41:12
Speaker
Like a weird guy in the first three films.
01:41:16
Speaker
R2-D2?
01:41:16
Speaker
No, it's the guy with the nose.
01:41:18
Speaker
Hulk 2-D2.
01:41:18
Speaker
Hulk 2-D2.
01:41:25
Speaker
I don't do it.
01:41:26
Speaker
No, I got one for you.
01:41:26
Speaker
This is Zach when he's going to be older, right?
01:41:28
Speaker
For this.
01:41:29
Speaker
Want to come to my basement?
01:41:31
Speaker
You want a popsicle?
01:41:34
Speaker
Big strong boy like you like a popsicle.
01:41:38
Speaker
Only if I'm talking to Dennis.
01:41:40
Speaker
You want to get in my above ground pool?
01:41:43
Speaker
What?
01:41:46
Speaker
You should have seen side note, the guys that came over to pick up that brand new black night premium from Stern pinball.
01:41:53
Speaker
I told him I had to go.
01:41:54
Speaker
I was like, I got to go.
01:41:55
Speaker
I'm in the middle of a podcast.
01:41:56
Speaker
And they're like, you don't record.
01:41:57
Speaker
You're supposed to, you record on Sundays with Dennis.
01:42:00
Speaker
I was like, yeah, but we're with the loser kids.
01:42:03
Speaker
They're like, oh man, you're with the loser kids right now.
01:42:06
Speaker
Oh, I bet that's going to be an awesome episode.
01:42:07
Speaker
When's it going to air?
01:42:09
Speaker
I'm like, I got to go guys.
01:42:11
Speaker
because i would have i would have partied with them tonight hadn't it been uh for this episode so we've been you stole and they probably have paid so you basically robbed zach i am so sorry do you have an avengers in there i'm like yeah and they're like not that we want to come in and play because we haven't yet but man that would have been cool i'm like all right come on in come on in you gotta play it
01:42:37
Speaker
That's awesome.
01:42:39
Speaker
Well, I bet I better wrap this up.
01:42:41
Speaker
It's we've I, who knows?
01:42:43
Speaker
Well, it's going to make it into the episode.
01:42:44
Speaker
Scott's entire segment is cut.