# The Pinball Show: Uprooting Deeproot - Part 1 **Source:** The Pinball Network **Type:** video **Published:** 2022-04-18 **Duration:** 108m 7s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV-kboiDipQ --- ## Analysis Zach Sharpe of The Pinball Network interviews Blueberry Johnson (BJ), an independent researcher who has extensively documented Deep Root Pinball's collapse through public records, former employee interviews, and auction materials. The episode covers Deep Root's timeline from 2015 through its 2021 SEC fraud investigation, detailing Robert Mueller's mismanagement, the company's facility problems, unpaid employees, and the $58 million Ponzi scheme involving life insurance policy investments. BJ attributes the company's failure primarily to Mueller's incompetence and refusal to listen to experienced staff, compounded by a 47,000 sq ft facility unsuitable for manufacturing, excessive non-core spending (gym equipment, soccer club sponsorship, Utah studios), and chaotic operational practices. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Deep Root Pinball was funded through fraudulent life insurance policy investments totaling approximately $58 million from roughly 300 investors from at least September 2015 to February 2021 — _SEC quote read directly by Zach; official regulatory action documented_ - [MEDIUM] Robert Mueller rented a 47,000 square foot facility primarily because it was near his house, without proper assessment of manufacturing capability — _BJ citing information from former employees; architectural and practical limitations confirmed by auction materials and current facility offerings_ - [MEDIUM] Deep Root hired 40-50 full-time employees who went unpaid multiple times over the company's operational period — _BJ citing former employee reports; corroborated by Utah Department of Labor fine over $1 million in 2018 for workplace violations_ - [MEDIUM] The facility lacked sufficient electrical power to run manufacturing equipment and required a separate secondary rental property down the street — _BJ citing facility specifications and former employee accounts; current facility marketing memorandum now specifies power limitations_ - [HIGH] Deep Root settled with Zidware customers in September 2017 to help J-Pop (John Papaduc) appear legitimate, then retracted the settlement in October 2017 — _Timeline documented in 'This Week in Pinball' archives; settlement retraction confirmed_ - [MEDIUM] Robert Mueller prioritized vanity purchases (gym equipment, external lighting upgrades, soccer club sponsorship) over critical manufacturing parts and inventory systems — _BJ citing credit card receipts, expense sheets, and former employee accounts; photos from auction inspection confirm gym equipment and whiteboard notes_ - [MEDIUM] Deep Root purchased a forklift too large to fit in the secondary rental facility, necessitating the original plan to demolish walls and hire a $60k employee to smash holes for loading — _BJ citing auction materials and former employee accounts; forklift confirmed as high-ticket auction item_ - [HIGH] Mueller promised to release five new pinball titles simultaneously with different rules, layouts, and unprecedented innovation/patents, none of which materialized — _BJ and Zach citing documented promotional statements and competitive pinball community observations from 2015-2017 period_ - [MEDIUM] Mueller had roughly 13 White Woods machines claimed to be 50% complete, but auction photos reveal multiple incomplete playfield prototypes that were largely abandoned — _BJ citing Mueller's prior public claims vs. auction inspection evidence; hundreds of photos available_ - [MEDIUM] Deep Root funded a soccer club (Scorpions) in San Antonio as part of Mueller's broader diversification strategy, which later collapsed when funding was withdrawn — _BJ citing documentation and credit card receipts; Mueller's public statements about soccer ambitions referenced_ ### Notable Quotes > "I always loved like cringe comedy... hearing robert talk and like hold my hands over my eyes... that's like what it was like hearing Robert talk and say the craziest stuff and I thought it was fantastic" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Early in interview > _Establishes BJ's motivation for following Deep Root: entertainment value of absurdity combined with eventual harm_ > "This was doomed to failure because of the guy who's in charge... he's a guy who thinks he's a super genius in everything... he had all the money in the world but if the person in charge doesn't know how to use it, it's going to result in this" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Explaining Deep Root failure > _Core diagnosis: Mueller's incompetence and hubris as root cause, not lack of capital_ > "Robert came out of the gate saying I've got money and not only are we going to make a game we're going to make more games in one year than all of the pinball companies combined" > — **Zach Sharpe**, Discussing Mueller's ambitions > _Illustrates the unrealistic scope and arrogance that defined Deep Root's business plan_ > "He was just going there smashing everything up to try to retrofit this place that they never should have rented in the first place... you don't do that unless you... don't have like 40 whatever person auditorium" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing facility renovation > _Evidence Mueller genuinely intended to manufacture despite poor execution; rules out pure fraud theory_ > "He would resist buying the parts they actually needed but would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on gym equipment... his priorities were mostly interested in looking great and having a great office" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing spending priorities > _Documents Mueller's misaligned spending priorities even amid cash crisis_ > "When you're a mogul you can't just conquer selling insurance and gold mining in Africa and pinball, you also have to bring semi-pro soccer to the Texas area" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing Mueller's diversification > _Sarcastic characterization of Mueller's empire-building delusion and multi-sector overextension_ > "He would come in like a tornado and change everything... that's why you see these playfield ideas and a lot of different stuff but it just wasn't useful" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing management dysfunction > _Illustrates chaotic management style that wasted employee effort and equipment investment_ > "This is all alleged and reported... I have no direct info about Deep Root, it's all second hand from about six or seven employees" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Establishing sourcing > _Critical disclaimer about evidence quality; emphasizes secondary sourcing from former employees_ > "The Utah Department of Labor fined deeper studios over a million dollars for workplace labor violations... about not paying people" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing wage violations > _Official regulatory action corroborating employee non-payment across multiple entities_ > "They didn't have an inventory system... they managed everything through Google Sheets but like the biggest Google Sheets you would ever imagine" > — **Blueberry Johnson**, Discussing operational chaos > _Shows lack of basic manufacturing infrastructure despite $58M funding_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Robert Mueller | person | Founder and owner of Deep Root Pinball; wealthy hobbyist and investment advisor who defrauded investors of ~$58M through Ponzi scheme using life insurance policies; characterized as incompetent, arrogant, and micromanagerial despite lack of manufacturing expertise | | Blueberry Johnson | person | Independent researcher and Pinside forum contributor with background in children's television editing/production; spent years documenting Deep Root's collapse through public records (PACER court documents), former employee interviews, and auction materials; known for using Google CacheView to archive Deep Root's website history | | Zach Sharpe | person | Host of The Pinball Show on The Pinball Network; interviewer presenting Deep Root timeline and analysis | | Deep Root Pinball | company | Pinball manufacturer founded 2015 by Robert Mueller; collapsed 2021 after SEC investigation; never successfully manufactured or delivered any complete pinball machines despite hiring 40-50 employees and spending ~$58M in fraudulently-obtained capital | | John Papaduc (J-Pop) | person | Pinball designer previously involved with Zidware; brought into Deep Root in 2016-2017; known for prior disputes with Zidware customers; Deep Root settled Zidware claims in September 2017 then retracted settlement in October 2017 | | Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) | person | Artist who created art for Zidware/Magic Girl and Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land; signed off on RAZL game rights to Deep Root in late 2017 for undisclosed consideration | | Zidware | company | Previous pinball company involving J-Pop; customers were scammed and left with unfulfilled pre-orders; Deep Root and J-Pop became entangled in legal settlement disputes with these customers | | Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land (RAZL) | game | Deep Root's primary showcase title; prototype demonstrated at Houston Expo late 2019; November 2020 gameplay streamed via Fliptronic; never reached production; was to be first of five simultaneous title launches | | White Woods | game | Deep Root game claimed to have ~13 machines approximately 50% complete; auction photos reveal multiple incomplete and abandoned playfield prototypes | | The Pinball Network | organization | Podcast/media outlet hosting this episode; covers pinball industry news and analysis | | Pinside | organization | Primary online pinball community forum and marketplace; hosts Deep Root discussion thread with years of documentation by BJ and others; moderated by Robin | | SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) | organization | U.S. regulatory agency that entered Deep Root case August 20, 2021; charged Robert Mueller and Deep Root with fraud related to ~$58M in life insurance policy investments affecting ~300 people from September 2015 to February 2021 | | This Week in Pinball | organization | Pinball industry podcast/media outlet; primary source for Deep Root timeline documentation and historical records cited in this episode | | Deep Root Studios (Utah) | company | Utah-based subsidiary/facility of Deep Root Pinball; expensive rental operation focused on art/animation; Utah Department of Labor fined this entity over $1 million in 2018 for workplace labor violations | | Steve Bowden | person | Competitive pinball player and community figure; hired by Deep Root despite lack of manufacturing experience; brought credibility/legitimacy to the venture | | Barry Assler | person | Pinball designer/industry professional; contacted by Deep Root as part of their recruitment of established talent in 2016-2017 | | Dennis Nordman | person | Pinball designer/industry professional; contacted by Deep Root as part of their recruitment of established talent in 2016-2017 | | John Norris | person | Pinball designer/industry professional; contacted by Deep Root as part of their recruitment of established talent in 2016-2017 | | Ben Heck | person | Referred to as constant presence in Deep Root Pinside thread discussions alongside BJ; likely observer/analyst of Deep Root situation | | Spooky Pinball | company | Reference comparison point: successful boutique pinball manufacturer that started with one game and scaled organically, contrasted with Deep Root's unsustainable expansion strategy | | Fliptronic | organization | Platform/service that livestreamed Deep Root's RAZL gameplay demonstration in November 2020 | | Scorpions (San Antonio Soccer) | organization | Semi-pro/minor league soccer team sponsored by Deep Root; Robert Mueller invested significant funds attempting to bring major league soccer to Texas area; team collapsed when funding was withdrawn | | The Deep Six | event | September 2021 media event where six prominent pinball industry figures were flown to/drove to Deep Root facility for tour and reveal; included Kerry Hardy, Chris Chandler, Colin McAlpine, Jeff Patterson, Crystal Gymnich (Marco Specialties), and Lauren Gray (Back Box Podcast); event was 'kind of a mess' with subsequent issues | | Planetary Pinball Supply | company | Referenced in KB as partnering with American Pinball; potential connection to pinball manufacturing ecosystem | ### Topics - **Primary:** Deep Root Pinball Collapse and SEC Fraud, Robert Mueller's Mismanagement and Incompetence, Ponzi Scheme Funding via Life Insurance Policies, Employee Non-Payment and Labor Violations, Facility and Infrastructure Failures - **Secondary:** Game Development Status (RAZL, White Woods), J-Pop and Zidware Entanglement, Industry Figure Recruitment Strategy ### Sentiment **Negative** (-0.92) — Overwhelmingly negative assessment of Deep Root Pinball, Robert Mueller, and the company's operations. Hosts and guest express frustration, dark humor, and concern for defrauded investors and exploited employees. Mixed with some grudging respect for the absurdity and BJ's research effort. No positive sentiment toward Mueller, company operations, or outcomes. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Deep Root Pinball collapsed after SEC investigation revealed $58M Ponzi scheme through life insurance policy investments affecting ~300 investors from Sept 2015 to Feb 2021; company never produced a single complete machine (confidence: high) — SEC official statement read in episode; August 20, 2021 date confirmed - **[regulatory_signal]** SEC entered case August 20, 2021 against Robert Mueller and Deep Root Pinball for investment fraud; charges involve fraudulent use of life insurance policy investments to fund pinball company operations (confidence: high) — Direct SEC quote provided by host - **[regulatory_signal]** Utah Department of Labor fined Deep Root Studios (Utah subsidiary) over $1 million in 2018 for workplace labor violations, including non-payment of employees (confidence: high) — BJ citing regulatory records; corroborated by former employee accounts - **[product_concern]** Deep Root Pinball never successfully manufactured or delivered any complete pinball machines despite $58M funding, 40-50 employees, multi-year operation (2015-2021), and extensive equipment purchases (confidence: high) — No games ever shipped; auction materials and employee accounts confirm prototypes only; RAZL never reached production despite November 2020 gameplay demo - **[manufacturing_signal]** 47,000 sq ft facility selected primarily for proximity to Mueller's house rather than manufacturing suitability; lacked adequate electrical power, required secondary rental facility, involved extensive demolition/retrofitting that violated landlord agreements (confidence: medium) — BJ citing former employee accounts; current facility marketing memorandum now specifies power limitations and disqualifies heavy manufacturing - **[operational_signal]** Mueller prioritized vanity purchases (gym equipment, soccer club sponsorship, expensive external lighting upgrades, Utah animation studios) over critical manufacturing parts; managed inventory via oversized Google Sheets with no system; made arbitrary design changes that wasted employee effort (confidence: medium) — Credit card receipts, expense sheets, whiteboard photos from auction; former employee accounts describing Mueller as 'tornado' changing everything - **[personnel_signal]** 40-50 full-time employees went unpaid multiple times across company's operational period; Mueller cited non-existent investor funding pipeline while simultaneously making vanity purchases (confidence: medium) — Former employee accounts; corroborated by $1M+ Utah labor fine; paychecks found in envelopes at facility during auction - **[industry_signal]** Robert Mueller had zero prior manufacturing experience; refused expert guidance from hired engineers and designers; attempted to simultaneously acquire/manage unneeded equipment (e.g., forklift too large for secondary facility) (confidence: high) — BJ and Zach's analysis; former employee testimony; documented equipment purchases that failed to support operations - **[machine_intel]** Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land (RAZL) was Deep Root's flagship title; prototype shown at Houston Expo late 2019, gameplay streamed Nov 2020, but game never reached production; claimed to be first of five simultaneous launches that never occurred (confidence: high) — Timeline documented; gameplay demo confirmed; no production milestone reached - **[community_signal]** Blueberry Johnson has spent years documenting Deep Root's collapse through independent research (Google CacheView web archives, PACER court documents, former employee interviews, auction materials); operates outside traditional media with significant community credibility (confidence: high) — BJ's detailed testimony and archival methodology; hundreds of photos and documents collected; former employees proactively reaching out to BJ - **[leak_detection]** Hundreds of photos/documents recovered during Deep Root facility auction inspection reveal internal operational chaos: incomplete prototypes, whiteboards with fragments of unfinished plans, paychecks in envelopes, unsorted inventory documentation, multiple playfield variations abandoned mid-development (confidence: high) — BJ and Zach citing photos taken during auction inspection; whiteboards visible in photos mention 'bill of materials' and 'buying pinballs'; stacks of paycheck envelopes visible - **[historical_signal]** Deep Root's recruitment of J-Pop (John Papaduc) entangled the company in pre-existing Zidware customer disputes; Deep Root settled claims in Sept 2017 to legitimize J-Pop, then retracted settlement Oct 2017, leaving affected customers in legal limbo (confidence: high) — Timeline documented in 'This Week in Pinball' archives; settlement retraction confirmed --- ## Transcript warning the following episode contains adult language and screaming goats listener discretion is advised [Music] the pinball network is online launching the pinball show hey everybody it's me zach with the pinball show this week i've got something very special for many of you you guys ever heard of deep root well we're going to talk all about it get very in-depth because this week we have a special guest that was willing to come on they are i'm i don't honestly i don't know much about this individual based on the information that i've been sifting through and researching through that i've been sent they they know very much very much about deep root and they're here to talk about it alongside other information that they've received from other previous employees of the quasi company so we're going to jump into it right now you probably have heard this person if you follow deep root at all whether it's through social media through the forums on pin side and whatnot it's the one it's the only blueberry johnson bj what's going on zach hey awesome to be on the show glad to be here glad to talk deeper i am not a former employee i actually have no connection whatsoever to deep root except maybe i'm a little too interested in it's on goings and doings oh i see so you're like a uh you're like a undercover reporter yeah this is the first time uh not under the cover and your real name is blueberry johnson so all right that's cool it is my name do you care if i call you bj i i would be honored oh man so our before we jump into this are you into pinball what got you like when did this all start for you oh yeah yeah no i mean good god if i weren't into pinball what the hell would i be doing um but yes into the pinball i was on the pin side because of it and uh what got me into it was just i was following enough of what was going on with the pinball news and such to uh catch wind of deep root and instantly it was my favorite thing um because i always loved like cringe comedy i remember i would watch like ricky gervais on the office and like hold my hands over my eyes like to try to block out because it was so painful and that's like what it was like uh hearing robert talk and so i love it it was just like the most ridiculous saying the the craziest stuff and i thought it was fantastic and so i really wanted to follow that because as much as i found that interesting i don't kind of like people who talk [ __ ] about everyone else and who uh talk about how they're the greatest and and robert definitely did that and then add on when they don't deliver then that's both kind of funny and sad and then when they start actually causing harm to people then i you know had i ticked all the boxes of interest so then you get passionate about it yeah yeah yeah exactly so i like finding things on the internet maybe i have some talent for it and so i just started doing my little googling and started turning up some fun finds and uh and posting it to the to the thread or the the sewer of pin side as as robert calls it and over time i guess i started finding some good stuff and then within the past year former deeper people started reaching out and sending me more good stuff because they had a lot they wanted to share with the world but robert has uh the litigious reputation and they didn't feel comfortable sharing it themselves so i thought if i if i can get this out to kind of tell the world about what's going on then that would be a good service plus it's kind of fun yeah absolutely so you've been doing this for a couple years then we know that uh deep roots started back in what early 2015 with everything so you've been following for quite some time and i i don't know between you ben heck there's there's a lot of constants in that pin side thread you're pretty privy to a ton of information that is not publicly out there about deep root and uh those things that occurred over the last six seven years yeah i didn't catch on from 2015 um i guess if we went back to the thread we could find out when i started but it's definitely been a few years now and that's actually a great kind of transition to saying i wanted to say at the top of this podcast that i have no direct info about deeper it's all second hand from about six or seven employees so it would be great if we just pretend because otherwise it'd be really tedious to actually do this that i say allegedly or reportedly before every sentence so just that's the case this is all alleged and reported you know i think it's i think it's pretty good reporting and then public information so yeah it's been it's been three years or so but then it's really you know picked up steam over the past one when both the the cracks started to show more on the outside of deep root because initially it was just this is crazy how is he going to do it and then it started to come become more oh he he this is really crazy this is crazy and he can't do it and then of course we found out how he was funding these operations which you know is a whole other can of worms and we're going to jump into a quick timeline but before doing so uh can i ask bj what what is your history what is it what do you do for a living i need to know more about you yeah yeah i know a lot a lot of people do well i mean the the thing is that people think i'm i'm kind of like an unknown but if you google me i mean you can find out i kind of like to keep it separate but i uh you have a long history of working in children's television primarily behind the scenes editing and production but my passion for real yeah yeah well yeah no no give me a google yeah i mean but the thing is like it's kind of dissatisfying because i think i could be great in front of the camera and i've made some efforts in the past uh to get there and it hasn't happened so you know it's good that i have a good living but honestly i kind of like you know wish sometimes that i could be the star because i think i made for it so maybe even in this scene here on the microphone is kind of a little bit of being if not in front of the camera in front of the microphone but yeah i can't complain well absolutely this is the pinball show oh yeah that's a big big deal any legal background any engineering background any manufacturing any of that yeah yeah no but i gotta tell you like it seems like uh extended learning here because i guarantee i now know a fair bit about the legal system because i had to to even understand how this pacer system works it can be a nightmare and now i know about difference from like stays and motions and uh 341 hearings and all this stuff i never would have imagined just because i want to get those court documents and know what the hell to do with it and then engineering i don't know but the the kind of like volume of stuff i'm being sent about building materials and like the the stuff these people tell me like i i flag for them i i really don't know what the hell they're talking about but i now have like hundreds of photos and videos and documents that if i wanted to get a degree in that you're a hell of a researcher that's for sure yeah that's my thing jack of all trades master of none so listener we've got blueberry johnson sitting co-pilot as we go through the mess that is and was deep root only is a deeper pinball because things go back way deeper pun intended than just the pinball uh just the pinball stuff so i think we take us back very quickly for those of you maybe that don't know much about this this is essentially a company that opened up from a wealthy or assumed wealthy hobbyist wanted to create his own manufacturing company for pinball machines back in early 2015 deep root tech started a pinball division deeper tech was a prior company they contacted several pinball designers and manufacturers a lot of this is coming from this timeline is coming from this week in pinball dating back this far summer 2015 deep root team decides to shelve the pinball project into a later date october 2016 deeper begins implementing their internal plan of action to start down the road to become a pinball manufacturer then late 2016 into 2017 they began reaching out to several pinball designers that was a big thing uh as hobbyists we were observing holy [ __ ] like there's going to be a new pinball company and this pinball company has the likes of so many different people that we've come accustomed to we know these names they're if you're nerds and pinball nerds like us they're household names one uh the biggest one that people you know kind of turned their head to was they decided that pinball designer john papaduc also knows j-pop was coming coming aboard this company and everybody was like what the hell he's already screwed people out of money in the in the past with his company zidware uh we had the likes of like uh barry assler and uh dennis nordman we had uh was it Jon Norris yep there's a lot of them so that was kind of a shock and awe it got everybody's attention 2017 later on you know summer they began to move forward with their plan on j-pop zidware customers they there was lawsuits and deep root actually agreed in september 2017 agreed to terms on the settlement to help these didwear customers out my my guess is that he was trying to have a better look for j-pop being part of his company so they were reportedly going to take care of these individuals that bought pre-purchased zitware games that didn't get them so j-pop resurfaces and everybody was like well Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) who we know zombie yeti he was doing all the art for the retro atomic zombie adventure land that zidware was working on or the magic girl so what what is gonna what's going down there to be continued this weekend pinball speaks with robert mueller in 2017 as well talking about the plans that deeproot has they didn't plan to take any pre-order money or deposits for machines everything was sounding good it sounded like it it's a pie in the sky i thought but it sounded good as long as you're not taking our money we don't get too mad but we will soon find out that that wasn't the case money was being taken uh they wanted to make a public announcement and then in october october 13 2017 deeproot retracts the settlement offered to the plaintiffs for reasons that are going to be disclosed at a later point in time later on that month Jeremy Packer (Zombie Yeti) finally signs off on the rights to the game in exchange for some undisclosed consideration and then they try to make this full-fledged pinball company a lot happened uh between 2017 and 2019 but late in 2019 we finally get at the houston expo a demo of retro atomic zombie adventure lane everybody gets to finally see what it is the prototype version we'll talk more about that in depth with bj here but then in september 2020 there are plans to launch september 21st 2020 that was gonna be the day the five days of deep root or whatever the hell it was i think it was supposed to be earlier that year but then they changed it numerous times i'm a little blurry because the [ __ ] has changed so many times but plans to launch but it was canceled the very next day september i believe 22nd 2020 i could be wrong that was the deep six event that many of us have heard about the deep six event was media from pinball being flown in or drove in expenses paid to come here to do a tour of the facility and it served as like a media opener reveal for this company included in the deep six were the likes of kerry hardy a pinball personality chris chandler Colin MacAlpine a competitive pinball player jeff patterson owner operator this week in pinball crystal gimnich with marco specialties lauren gray with the backbox pinball podcast and that was those were the six individuals that came after the deep six we'll talk about that that was kind of a mess and things changed but in november 2020 there was a live streaming an airing of gameplay for retro atomic zombie adventureland also known as raza done by fliptronic fast forward excuse after excuse as to why these games are not being built there was pre-orders that then were taken money was then exchanged okay does the game come out still doesn't coming out what happens there's delays there's excuses and then boom on august 20th 2021 the sec enters the picture september 2015 this is from the sec quote from at least september 2015 to at least february 2021 robert j mueller and deep root both investment advisors defrauded two investment funds they advise and nearly 300 people who invested roughly 58 million dollars in the funds so once the sec enters all [ __ ] hits the fan of course people are out of money not only in pinball but we find out that uh many retirement plans senior citizens are out sums upwards of if not more than 58 million dollars and everything is over everything is done or was it all right bj what do you think about that timeline not too bad right no i mean it's it's good just hearing you go through and this is just top level how much ridiculous this has happened for a company that never made a single game is impressive in itself yeah absolutely and uh one one thing people might not know is that you know because we talked about now the connection of how where that the money allegedly came from uh all of robert's actual like investment companies uh for the life insurance policies in 2015 he he issued a stock for people to try to invest in deeper pinball and nobody nobody bit and so then it was later after that that all the other investments for the life insurance policies came from and then according to the sec that's what paid for deep root pinball so it's kind of it's kind of funny when uh people think about like oh like did these people know that their money was being used other ways when he straight up said i want to get money to build a pinball company nobody was interested so it seems that you know he was fortunate to find another way to fund it i'm going to ask you a very well we'll start with this why didn't deep root pinball work all right if you had to just answer in one word yeah if you're if you're throwing things on a wall what are some of the big reasons in your opinion after some research and talking to previous employees why didn't it work yeah well you could answer with one word and say robert okay that wouldn't be an exaggeration i mean it wouldn't give you the whole picture but yeah this this was doomed to failure because of the guy who's in charge this is a guy who thinks that he's a super genius in everything um he's gonna you know he's never done any manufacturing he liked to play pinball a bit and he bought some machines so he's gonna create the world's greatest company and he's got the money to do it um i guess it's a good lesson that you can have all the money in the world but if the person in charge at the top doesn't know how to use it it's going to result in this and so just by virtue of being him he knew everything that was right and so even when you would have the people who did know they hired a lot of people right who had experience and come to him and say this stuff's impossible you need to stop uh you know every time you you swing by the office and play the game like telling us how to change everything you need to stop giving us deadlines that are ridiculous you need to uh give us the money to buy the the parts that we actually need rather than hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy like machinery we don't that you have somebody who doesn't know anything about machinery purchase uh it's just all about this guy so i think that's it robert mueller wanted to go he wanted to go big oh yeah you know most pinball companies start out as a little mom and pop or a little boutique where you know look at spooky pinball they had one game and can we can we make 10 games can we make 50 games robert came out of the gate saying i've got money and not only are we going to make a game we're going to make more games in one year than all of the pinball companies combined we're going to release at one time up to like five pinball new pinball titles all different rules all different layouts and not only are we going to do that we're going to have more innovations and patents than anybody in the entire industry or the history and we've got the big guns to do it here are the names of individuals they even brought in Steven Bowden who at that point in time was a competitive pinball player well loved within the within the community so it got got behind a lot of people that uh that the hobbyist respected that wasn't taking money but had these outlandish ideas as to how it was going to happen octo manufacturing all kinds of catch rages that we've used over the last couple years to describe how in the hell is all of this going to work and ultimately it did not work but you're saying robert mueller based on who you've spoke with in the past it was a big robert mueller didn't he was in over his head didn't know what the hell he was doing now here's a question i do have some people do think very strongly that this was all a ploy 58 million dollars this was just this is nothing but you know smoking mirrors in order to get money uh for other endeavors and your opinion based on what you've heard bj is was robert mueller did he really think this could work or was this all [ __ ] and was this just a big con oh okay well i was gonna say it was all [ __ ] but he also legitimately thought it could work no like he wanted to make pinball machines um some of the stuff we've seen from the auction and then a lot of the stuff that um maybe tpn will publish that i can send send your way videos and photos and we've got a lot of documentation and stuff there were a lot of people working a lot of years really hard on making pinball stuff they they had the equipment they didn't have the right equipment or they didn't have the equipment they needed but they had ridiculous amount of equipment robert uh rented a giant uh facility and i was just told that the reason they picked the facility was because it was near his house um 47 000 square feet without checking like could it support manufacturing and uh spoiler alert it couldn't and so he was uh bringing in uh demolitionist electricians he hired a full-time electrician just to try to rig the place to be able to they had guys coming in with sledgehammers knocking out walls like this poor landlord who i don't know like if he like got some compensation to let robert come in and probably turn his like lovely like normal office building into a giant like hole in the middle plus also the like 40 whatever person auditorium but he was just going there smashing everything up to try to retrofit this place that they never should have rented in the first place and was so expensive but you don't do that unless you if you're if you're trying to do smoke and mirrors right you don't you don't spend millions of dollars potentially on equipment equipment that you know didn't work that well but equipment if you're just like i'm trying to get money and make it look like i'm trying you don't have staff of you know 40 50 people being paid before they stop being paid full time to do this and so it was really unfortunate because there are a lot of talented people working there that would try to do what robert wanted and you know even had a good level of success though it wouldn't be like the right things to do and then he'd just come in and just you know almost like a tornado like change everything and now put him on something else and that's why you see you know robert used to tout but i don't know it was like three or four years ago that they had like 13 white woods more than like 50 percent done or gained 45 yeah now you can see from the auction there are a lot of different like playfield ideas and there were a lot of people working on a lot of stuff but it just uh wasn't useful so yeah absolutely he he wanted to make pinball machines he just had no [ __ ] idea what he was doing and he didn't want anyone to to tell him how to do it because he's him and so he knows best and as i'm going over this information same goes for as blueberry was saying for myself as well i'm not well versed into this i don't know as much as i should know none of this is fact-based this is only uh based on information it's given to me it is all alleged it is all uh just reportedly on my end as well i'm just reporting uh to you guys what you know the conjecture and stuff that that i've been given as well my own opinions you guys have heard already so i'm just presenting information to you as an entertainment piece here okay the quick and easy was just saying the issue why this didn't work was robert mueller um it sounds like the facility itself wasn't equipped i don't know why they needed gym equipment or a huge ass auditorium they had an animation studio that was going on he was trying to create another disney empire it sounded like to me what else besides robert mueller why else did this whole endeavor fall so flat oh yeah uh some employees uh thought he fancied himself as elon musk and you know whatever you think of elon musk he's actually i think producers and stuff he's a visionary oh yeah this robert so um yeah the facility just a few more things on that so yeah it didn't support manufacturing it didn't have the even the power to be able to run the machines they purchased and that's why it's funny that now that the facility is back on the market for sale they have new things in the offering memorandum that weren't in it when uh when robert had it which are stating like the the power levels that it can support and saying like what it can be used for and it's not heavy manufacturing so something a lot of people don't realize is you know this is a forty seven thousand square foot facility which i understand is much much bigger than any you know little pinball company needs or even mid-size they uh they rented another building right down the street uh from the headquarters i didn't know that yeah and that was just to be able to fit the machinery that couldn't fit or couldn't be run in the place in the main facility and at least dating a year back they started renting and paying uh paying rent on this place or they at least didn't start paying rent but even this they couldn't do right because robert wanted a forklift to move the things and the and they bought this forklift would actually sold in the auction i think it was one of the higher ticket items and uh and people were yeah we're saying that it it's too big to even turn around in the other facility they rented so it was kind of a comedy of errors that they would constantly you know the original purpose of the forklift was they're gonna hire someone and pay him sixty thousand dollars to like smash a new hole through the wall because they only had one loading dock which as i understand it if you want to manufacture you should have more than one of those so that was the the original plan but i think finally the landlord was like you have to stop destroying my building so that didn't happen so that was the uh the move to the second facility and then you mentioned deepwood studios just that they were renting very expensive property in utah apparently the utah connection was that you know robert is a mormon and uh so he was interested in having business in utah beyond also that i guess there was a lot of talent already there and uh and sort of the the folks in the deeper tech or headquarters side were you know completely befuddled of how and why are we spending you know all these millions of dollars on utah it eventually shut down actually something people don't realize is that and these could have been red flags if if we had been looking earlier in 2018 the utah department of labor fined uh deeper studios over a million dollars for like workplace labor violations i assume about not paying people back then because we know i don't even know do you have to say allegedly if enough people have said that getting paid was a problem at uh deep root uh regularly and the excuses would be that the the investors were trying to work on getting more funds in the pipeline but of course we know the only investments were these insurance policies so okay so hold up as i want you there yeah yeah as you've been sending information people have been sending information to me but one of the things that just continues to pop up and slap me in the face was the fact that he had so many employees working for deep root and they were not being paid over time over time again and then they would be given an excuse hey we're not getting paid because i'm we're looking for these investors we're looking for these investments they're dried up right now you know hashtag kovid and then they would hire people during these times nobody was getting paid so that was a big thing so you're telling me now that what a lot of people don't know is they were fined a million dollars in utah so this was going on not only at deep root pinball is going on elsewhere that people potentially may not have been getting paid to shut it down 100 and i mean even more to that point was i think it speaks to how robert kind of like prioritized or made purchasing decisions so so hearing from some of the people who actually do like what was needed to try to build these machines that he would like front on like approving like a 15 purchase price for like some part that was needed but then uh one of his right hand man would be like let's go buy this uh 350 000 machine that doesn't even work properly i mean that's not how he pitched it i assume but he would say we need to go get this thing and they would down to the last week before the doors shut robert had like i think signed a contract if not who's planning to to like redo all the inter external lighting to the cost of like tens of thousands of dollars because they were so concerned with security so they wanted to be able to like like improve the lights outside and this is when like people have been furloughed people keep not getting paid and he's still spending money on these things but then you when you have the engineers or you know whoever like the the supply chain people coming and saying oh hey you know like we actually need to go buy and volume these parts because everything in in the current building materials was based on like years ago prototypes and they're not available or they're too expensive then he would resist that but he would buy that you know who knows hundreds of thousands of dollars of gym equipment just seems like his his priorities i don't know i think he was mostly interested in like looking looking great and having a great office and not necessarily you know listening to anyone telling him what he actually needed to succeed we'll get to the casting couch soon enough what was up with the i was sent information uh bj you sent me documentation oh my gosh just the the documentation i've been overwhelmed with this so sorry if it's a little scattered but we'll get all the info out here you sent me a lot of information some of which was bill of materials stuff some of which was i'm going to say it like receipts credit card receipts and stuff yeah there what the hell was up with all of the money being funded into some soccer club oh yeah yeah there was a there's a lot of money going to that soccer club because i was like what the hell is this oh see you looked at something more that's the thing like i've gotten so much stuff recently that i haven't even been able to sort through it so okay lots of money on the soccer club oh yeah that was like robert you know when you're a mogul you can't just uh conquer uh selling insurance and you can't just conquer gold mining in africa and you can't just conquer pinball you also have to you know bring semi-pro or like minor league soccer to the the texas area so yeah he they had the deep roots deep root funds with sponsoring the uh the scorpions or something their cup oh yeah no i mean unfortunately then like they pulled their funding at some point and the team collapsed but you know for a while there like robert was very excited to like make quotes and and stories about how he's going to bring like major league soccer i think to uh to the area san antonio yeah he he had his his finger in a in a bunch of pies i mean i'm looking at documentation showing how many times he like to go into the country club here this is expense sheet i'll say that okay and a lot of this information as you've said bj is coming from previous employees right previous employees a lot of the photos were from the the auction day inspection all right so this was actually a great source of new content so yeah so we have a few hundred photos there of white boards schematics yeah like you said like credit card receipts you you could see in the photos uh once they get put online just giant stacks of paychecks envelopes which was the payroll system yes all of the pages oh yeah yeah it's still there actually some other folks told me they went and once they started seeing what was going on they asked the auctioneer hey can you please like lock this room or something because this stuff's just sitting around so there was just a lot of great stuff sitting around there and what i want to do with some of it is um especially like the the whiteboard still had information on it you know one one thing that's on the whiteboards is something like about buying pinballs which i have a little story about later and then also one of them is is something like figure out bill of materials question mark so we have some good artifacts there but i would just love to really dig through this stuff with people who who understand just like the level of technical knowledge you need to enjoy how terrible it all was because they didn't have an inventory system they managed everything through google sheets but like the biggest google sheets you would ever imagine like the same ones that maybe you'd use at like your regular office where somebody like deletes something you got to try to figure out what was going where they're talking about like the hundreds of thousands of dollars they owe contractors like where things haven't been updated in years and like when it comes time to actually try to make a machine you realize that like the parts that you thought you were gonna purchase like don't exist anymore you have to buy for like you know five times the price or they're just not available it's absurd what i want a lot of listeners to understand is the reason the information is coming out now remember robert mueller uh was a lawyer is a lawyer the litigious everybody was scared that they were going to get sued so now that he's got his own fish to fry and he's looking at all types of cases from the sec to all kinds of stuff that he's dealing with these previous employees are more you know they're more open now and not they're still probably afraid but a lot of them are open to send stuff we've got some information i was sent uh from you uh some documentation here from a previous employee i'm going to read what this employee was talking about when we're talking about how much expenses and how much money was being spent that was with nobody knew where it was coming from so talking about the equipment the employee said quote i was pretty impressed how messy the whole place was even after failing to pay their employees the first go around april 1st 2018 and many times after that they continued to purchase two thousand dollars standing sitting desks 50 000 plus dollars worth of cnc routers 300 000 plus sanding paint booth automated equipment one hundreds of thousands of dollars on cpus psus roms uh pinball parts i wonder if all of that came from the ppp loans it's again as i remind you this is from a previous employee i'm just reading this verbatim from what i received it says uh continuing this quote i know a lot of people blame robert for everything but i'm starting to suspect robert got help someone had to advise him where to find the most expensive equipment there are some things to be said about the ppp loans i know that they were not spent properly but with robert's lack of bookkeeping paper trail it may be nearly impossible to prove for this is coming from an alleged previous employee it just shows you at the tip of the iceberg of how much money was being blown robert believed that on a lot of these things he didn't want to source them out so he was trying to create he had all this machinery millions of dollars worth of machinery to create their own circuit boards to create their own light boards to create their own every damn thing possible they were trying to create themselves to save a buck but they had so much expenditures in the in the equipment that they weren't even making payroll consistently for a long long time yeah 100 um and in terms of the money too the thing is they attracted a lot of the folks by offering apparently really good salary so for a while it's like a tale of like two eras like they were getting paid a lot and not producing probably not mostly because of their fault right like when the boss says you have to do some ridiculous thing i guess you have to do it but for a long time that's where so much money was being burned then you get to oh the money's drying up and now yeah we're we're missing payroll like i posted um to pinside just uh kind of like a compendium of like robert's internal slack messages all about explanations for why payroll wasn't being made you know that might be something of interest to one of these court cases because a lot of the explanations it turns out you know allegedly aren't accurate but yeah it was even up to the end spending money on ridiculous stuff and not you know paying people and even some of that equipment you talked about like that's where the detail level of it like the sander apparently was like the wrong kind of sander and i could look up the details about it but like that you would use it to like i don't know like finish a table or something and then but like it was incompletely uh unsuited for doing these playfields that they would have like the cnc thing which i guess is for for cutting stuff it was off by like some like eighth of an inch which is like fatal to it and so it was like raggedy and all over the place it's just oh another funny thing is they would get all these parts from pinball life but because robert had this big thing one of his things was either i've heard it called a 90 pound soccer mom or a hundred pound soccer mom but the idea was we need to make stuff so that that type of person can service our machine with no technically able man to help her these again are not my words and so the idea was no soldering we have to just use you know like uh like molex connectors so pinball life uh products would come in and they'd have to like rip off the part that didn't apply in the entire like all these people working to then just put on the the molex end or something just speaks to like the absurdity of like these we have to do everything ourselves and yeah just like they had stuff that apparently stern doesn't even have oh i bet i don't doubt it i i remember reading the information you sent me some of this equipment they were creating and it had like too much moisture in it so these led light boards would never work anyway and i'm like oh my gosh like just the the amount of incompetency uh that came behind all this there's no wonder none of this worked it didn't seem like a lot of people knew what they were doing there when it came to the actual manufacturing of any products yeah so when you talk about like why did it fail so kind of robert apparently you know the the core group from the beginning the people that you know was told to me that like the people there from the beginning and almost only these people there might have one or other or two others were robert j pop and uh chris turner which is uh turner logic which is another interesting thing but yeah tell us a little bit about chris yeah tell us a little bit about turner logic okay so turner logic because this is a name that maybe not a lot of people know yeah yeah no it's a good point so in interviews back you know 2018 or earlier i don't know um on pin side i inventoried every this week in pinball link of coverage for deep root which is you know useful if you want to go through because there's probably like 40. but robert you know announced that when they asked who's going to do the programming they're like oh turner logic they did our financial systems and they did his like websites like before the the pinball days they're going to program all the games they don't have any experience in programming games at all but you know let alone pinball but the but robert wasn't that concerned they can kind of handle it um so apparently you know hearing recently that yeah turner was there at the beginning with j-pop and robert and that's you know from there they hired you know a million people but what's really interesting about him recently is that right now kind of like the most recent thing is that these insurance policies that robert had these life insurance policies which was the basis of where the actual money came from right that was the deep root funds deeper capital management uh there are like five other llc's Ryan Policky services inc on and on but they they were in the business of buying these uh insurance pilot life insurance policies from people who were looking to like be able to get a return like while they were still alive rather than just you know for the folks after they check out but like he wasn't even paying the premiums on all these so a bunch of like million dollar policies lapsed but not all of them did and so when the bankruptcy has come up and and by the way another misconception is people think that the auction was like all the deep root assets have been liquidated not at all it was just the auction was anything that was in that building because the landlord was like i need this [ __ ] out of my building so i can like rent it or actually sell it to someone else so he had to get a court order he or she actually i don't know um to be able to be able to access that stuff since like the sec said don't touch anything so so the landlord did but just just to be clear we still don't know where lots of the assets are we don't know where the ip is though some people have some ideas i can share but it was only the stuff that was in that building but now the one other thing that has been addressed are these life insurance policies because so some of them are still due and about a month ago a group called tuyo llc petitioned uh the trustee who's managing the bankruptcy stuff to say hey we want to buy these policies here's a whole proposal of how you can do a sale it's called like a stalking horse agreement it was i had to learn about all this stuff i won't go into the boring details of it but basically here's a proposal for fast tracking selling uh this to us and but like still having like a tiny window of time that other groups could bid on them the problem is like who would bid on these things because you're depending on robert's accounting which um was basically non-existent these books they didn't have an accountant they would occasionally contract the the sec and and and the bankruptcy lawyers aren't even able to like get much information yet they're trying so how's the public going to so it was set up and in the span of like less than a month basically they they put forward this proposal and now most recently like a week ago had a whole hearing where there are some objectors who are like uh this seems shiesty and those objectors did not prosper so tujo was able to buy all of the in force meaning like not lapsed policies and all the other lapsed ones for like 25 cents on a dollar and the the two tu in uh intuio is for turner chris turner who was their this third party contractor who did all their tech stuff and all of a sudden became interested in buying uh you know life insurance policies and uh and one and the yo was like the lawyer he hired to do it so that's it so people wonder oh did this guy because he his team designed the deep root funds investment portal and he was you know worked with robert for years and actually he like sublet space in multiple different robert offices that he ran his business out of it so they use the same like address and by the way none of these things were disclosed in in the two years initial application but came out when the creditors objected it then it came out during during the the hearing but even still the judge was basically like we need to get some money for these creditors because like the trustee who's running the whole thing is the one who wants the money because there's like nothing in the bank and so it went forward so so chris turner who might be uh clean as a whistle i have no idea is now going to soon be the owner of uh four million dollars worth of insurance policies plus however much they can get for the lapsed ones so now i guess i don't know maybe he'll still keep doing tech stuff but he's also like basically become a robert's business uh because that's what robert was doing that's a big one there so on the on the ppp fund that that person mentioned i think it's a really interesting one because i kind of you know this is stuff that is it firsthand if you find it you know reported on the internet from like the the government i guess i don't know but basically um so paycheck protection program loans during covet was like hey all if you have employees and you don't want to lose them and you want to keep paying them then you can apply for you know what might be free uh money from the government and so robert was like yeah i want to do that i mean lots of businesses did right and uh so he got six ppp loans three each for Ryan Policky services inc which was sort of the catch-all like financial stuff when we talked about the life insurance one for deeper tech which was the headquarters and then one for deep root studios and he got one each of them in in 2020 and then also won each of them in 2021 and uh the good news for robert is like almost all of them have already been forgiven meaning like you don't have to pay back the government's just like it's cool because these were loans but he got it so totaling about 2.5 million dollars of government money which by the way is significantly more than stern got than jjp probably than all the other pinball manufacturers combined because i went there you know found every record i could but that money has like very specific ways you need to use it it's for payroll and it's kind of odd that this is happening you know when we hear all these accounts of like people being furloughed or people missing payments and then of course you know all alleged you know the sec alleges that robert wasn't using investment money in the proper way so maybe one might imagine that he might not use ppp money in the right way and in fact an employee has said that robert knowingly used ppp money not in the correct way i don't know but the thing i would say is that the small business administration is very interested in anyone who has information on ppp funds not using being used correctly and and you can just search that out and submit online either anonymously or not if you you know have any knowledge of companies that you know took this money that was used to try to keep things going during this horrible pandemic and uh didn't use it the the proper way so yeah just throwing that out there and if we're jumping back to the turner thing turner logic interests me because they were basically paying turner logic to to do the code of their games this information you gave me from this previous alleged previous employee said the following said quote we were finding that the code for the games had huge issues there were so many things that worked mechanically electrically but didn't function correctly because of code and it was starting to get scary they would push an update and fix one problem only to create five more over and over again turner and robert got into some kind of argument about this and we started seeing large amounts of time without anybody in the building to write a repair code their relationship seemed to be strained but larger than the typical contractor customer relationship this alleged previous employee went on to say i've been curious about the code as well the only two computers in the auction that when they auction everything off have now been removed those are were assets of the company so they should have been included in the sale i spoke to the auctioneer about this and he told me that he was instructed not to put computers in the sale at the last moment he'd plan on just wiping the hard drives and to continue talking about that relationship between robert and chris this alleged employee says in this document quote i also know that chris and robert butted heads very often it would be times when they weren't being paid so chris told us guys to stop doing pinball work and it would basically stop us in our tracks so we'd have to wait for chris and robert to work things out before we could continue making progress and there were rumors of robert having pre-paid turner for the entirety of the code for the game i'm assuming talking about raza and that the amount paid was really really large that transaction predates me but it can't be completely true during one of the unpaid times turner removed all of his crew from the building that went on for a while until the pa pay resumed and the other interesting thing uh for there's all this documentation research that i'm doing that you gave me was that the code was on a server it wasn't anything physical like you had to get it from a server from i guess turner and they had they just turn it off if they want to not let any of the employees access any of this working code so they were they were kind of strapped here and i don't know i don't know how that would have ever worked yeah i mean i'm not sure 100 of the details you can have a local server it might just be that you don't have like direct access and and again i would assume it would probably would be turner or something but you know i don't want to say like for sure something was that situation but yeah turner operated out of the ever since they you know turner was at robert's previous building before uh moving to this one like when robert moved uh he sorry not just he but his his team moved um because he you know he would host uh local web dev meetups back in 2018 at deep root headquarters like if you go uh to the archives of turner logic sites their their addresses is the deep root address so you know they had this this long history um but uh but their stuff definitely got cleared out before the auction happened which you know makes sense if it's their own property but i was talking to one employee um when you mentioned there like the two machines that were there there were at least like 20 computers at you know when deep root was still if you call it humming along and obviously those got cleared out uh beforehand so again when i when i say that only what was in the building was liquidated there's still a lot to liquidate the the question is finding it one of the things people often wonder is that there were like the the raza's that were in the auction weren't like the nicest version like uh and people wonder where to go and so enough people have told me that i think it's probably the case is that you know the ul certification story was something uh in in uh the end days or i guess leading up to them where robert would do his uh monthly updates about why you know he was missing all their deadlines and it was we need this ul certification and there's some funny stories about that too but uh the short of it is that he owed the ul certification uh company money maybe like 10 000 bucks and so people think that's where the machine still is at their office it's called like internet i think so that's fair so that's very interesting um looking at some documentation here from again an alleged employee whether you know how many they were you said like uh you've spoke with with several here this individual was saying it's worth noting that quote turner and his guys were awful at writing websites and created some really large issues for deeproot when robert opened up orders for raza it literally took three and a half months for us to get the data on options upgrades that people purchased the website was written so poorly that the data was considered lost for at least eight weeks of that time they go on to say turner logic would have the source code to the machines it's the consensus that you know hopefully there are other places that have the code too but basically it would be shocking if turner doesn't have the code which makes sense if they were like responsible for it but you know obviously it brings a whole new meaning to where's the code yeah and i just want to say for the turner logic stuff you know these are different comments assembled from you know up to six or seven different people and uh you know not here to mine the quality of turner's code i i can't know so you're just kind of reading off what people have shared so you know that the website just these alleged people's opinions of them that's true yeah exactly you know they're you know this all could be a [ __ ] yeah well i don't think it's [ __ ] but i think it's that you know there can be like what happened and there can be the opinions right so you could say there are all sorts of problems right and it could be because turner code sucked but it also you know given how robert managed there could be other explanations so i just want to throw that out that like i kind of like account for what happened and then look employees who are there have opinions on that but like mostly i'm interested in i think of robert as the public figure and and to a lesser degree others so yeah those are what people shared but you know people have opinions there's even diverse opinions about j-pop for example getting a pretty clear picture as to not just one issue not just two issues but the possibility for just a cavalcade of different issues and competencies that work together to i don't know what management was thinking and why this would work one of the previous employees was talking in some of this documentation about you know it it may have actually worked if they built one machine one title but this grandiosity of thinking that you were going to create not only multiple machines but animations and and different offshoots of of branding like there's just no way yeah abs absolutely i mean that's one you know people just to give some of the motivations for why folks want to share information and and why they share it through me i think you already did a good job of that because of the litigiousness uh with robert but you know why okay so that's why they have to pass it along through me but why do they want to and there's some key areas that people would say time again and maybe the number one one was like there were a lot of talented people doing really hard work there doing like as good a job as they could based on what they were told to do and it's a shame and they developed some stuff that could have been cool and you know we can show some of those videos and stuff of things that look pretty neat um and but they just it never is going to come out because the company crashed and burned right and it's a shame that all that work can't be shown and that like you know people from the outside can be like you know what the [ __ ] were all these folks doing just you know [ __ ] around for four years and like creating all these white woods and all this kind of stuff and it's because like they their boss set the tone the boss made all the calls the boss would say change this or that the boss would come in after you're working on something forever and say we gotta scrap it and so i think that's a major motivation that like some of these folks just you know it hurt if you're working this hard now some people said other were just collecting a paycheck right but there was a lot of talent there was a lot of effort and it was all for naught and so they want to share that another motivation is just the nightmare of like what was going on both like you know the the hilarity the you know the the tragedy and like as much as we are interested from the outside like imagine if you were living it and you couldn't say it and so many employees have said they've they they've read the thread and they were like kind of impressed by how much uh you know the pinside sewer was able to figure out of what was going on early but it's just like the hugest soap opera hopefully it'll be a documentary someday um because it's just got it all and it's just like you know people use the word unbelievable but like it kind of works for this because if you just had a guy who you know let's pretend the money came from a legitimate source and just said hey pinball people here's the money like make some games then they would have like put out some games but because he had to decide everything that's why no games and listen we're going to move on to some more very interesting things such as the launch the roll out the deep six we've got all kinds of stuff to cover here but to piggyback off what we were talking about ul certification i just want to talk more about what these alleged previous employees how they were describing some of the incompetencies in manufacturing we talked about ul certification they said quote the game had massive emi issues side note i think that's electromagnetic interference issues they went on to say near the end there were some really crazy ideas hatched in desperation to fix the emi leaks by using dod sourced emi blocking blankets inside the cabinets they were talking about all of the ul certification issues they were even talking about the the cnc machines and the equipment being used you were alluding to that earlier like the 1 8 inch and stuff like that they were talking about the smt line uh says one day robert went to electrical engineers and asked if we wanted a pick and place game fast forward a year later we started populating led boards in-house because we couldn't afford to have a smt house do it we started to reject more than 50 percent of the boards due to defects from leds not turning on to one of the four leds in the package weren't working turns out that as soon as you open the package of a thousand leds they should be kept desert dry being san antonio we had more humid days than a desert the little leds would absorb moisture and when heated the moisture would explode out of the package off and killing the led after explaining to management that we needed to build the led 1000 at a time to increase yield the smt talk came back the only difference was that the electrical engineers were ignored and they bought a used assembly line from g-force upon installing the machines we received training on how to operate the equipment we probably used the machine machines to make a couple hundred boards and then they kept failing turns out there was too much water in the lines from the air compressor and damaging the machines the company came out to service them they're working again but then the water issue damaged the machines again there was a bunch of mess there robert mueller insisted that these engineers and and production individuals get rid of all mechanical switches you were talking about the ease of operation even in places they said where they make sense such as a ball holder uh or where the ball sits the trough area so they they they couldn't figure out the manufacturing issue yeah and i mean just broadly i get the impression that there's kind of like two eras of attempting to manufacture at deep root because people would come and go and so there was kind of just the engineer group who was given these like you were just mentioning that like we have to get rid of all connectors or just you know whatever absurd things that you want and they would keep working and working and working on it like to make it function and maybe you know to whatever degree they get it going or they don't like they made some interesting boards and things like that but none of it was done in a way to manufacture and so then later like i have some documents from years past that are like uh build a materials for back then but then by the time that it came to be like now let's manufacture let's not just if we can get one to work or something like that well like it turns out that like the stuff that was used like isn't available anymore or is too expensive or there's like you know five different like variants in there as opposed to any consistency or it's like custom done at a prototyping shop where it'd be like ridiculously expensive to to try to purchase it and if you if they were even available like you think about supply chain issues that like stern has and they're like a legit company that like knows what they're doing imagine then if you're a company that doesn't even establish lines of credit um with businesses uh like buy stuff on credit card and things like that or maybe just informal like agreements because if they do a background check allegedly um on the credit then nobody's gonna give you their business plus you've never made purchases before plus you're like asking for like we need in two weeks all this kind of stuff right like where you should order it like even without covid like months in advance it's not gonna work and so when they were trying to sort through okay we have the stuff that was like it was described raza as like the uh like the world's most expensive home brew because uh surprisingly enough even though it was started like 11 years ago um that they were just even trying to like get it figured out weeks before the deep six because it was like like stuck together with like bubble gum and you know things like that just like it had to just like function but it wasn't made for manufacturing so it was like basically starting from scratch when it was time to actually get the stuff going to sell and then the the the bomb you know documents from years back were useless and trying to then figure out like okay so how are we going to build it look let's look what's in it and like the different pieces that were used are just completely impractical or they've changed over time or the solidworks drawings or like designs the cad stuff doesn't match what's actually done because people were like updating it locally rather than on the server so that like nobody knew of changes and so there's just a lot of when you try to piece it together oh it doesn't work and we have a boss that says you have to get this ready in like four weeks or whatever yeah i mean even down to the cnc stuff like they were talking about cnc machines it took them months of trial and error just to figure out how to use the damn thing it wasn't going to work because of the wrong sizing and stuff and it said even though it had four heads i think we only ever used two at a time like it just seemed like nobody knew they didn't have the right type of people they had the right equipment even though they have the money to buy it people weren't getting paid and it was a mess their product that they tried to launch was retro atomic zombie adventure land originally designed by John Popadiuk a failed failed on several attempts through several companies but that was their launch game they delayed that launch i don't know how many damn times but when it comes to rouse let's talk a little bit about their i guess we're going to call it their premier product that is the rasa pinball machine we know that when it was announced they had a couple different types that you could buy an arcade edition or an extreme edition xe or whatever that uh the case may be uh when it comes to that well and when they announced it you know those you said the premiere and it's like which one right because there there's houston there was showing up at this uh brewery one time and then yeah it was finally going on sale but even when they announced that it would be going on sale there were three editions and by the time it went for sale there were two which people tell me just speaks to how often robert would just like change something that you know is fairly important um and that's not like the most extreme example but it was it was just that looking from the outside you go how in the world can any of this happen if you have a guy that you know is often absentee swoops in for a bit looks at stuff gives something a few flips says oh you need to change this or that i mean that's how you get version 12 of the layout of fire and brimstone but what was the estimated bill of material because they didn't really have a clear bill of materials based on the the spreadsheets and stuff that i have here correct they can they had it on a whiteboard yeah yeah and was trying to guess how much everything would cost yeah which generally probably don't you know we know how recent that was that it didn't get wiped by uh the time the auction happened and i think the quote is something like figure out bom question mark um but that was like a legitimate like thing that you'd have to work on at deeproot apparently because the there was never a fully figured out bom but even the one that was figured out um to like didn't include electronics i think didn't include no metal like it was still like just so much that you would take a huge loss on selling any of it and then when i asked for again because there never was a final like could you ballpark uh what the actual cost to make each of the two editions was without telling that person you know reminding them of what it went on sale for it was each was slightly more than the sale price just of the of the the materials i'm looking at a white board that was in the offices of deep root here and this white board looks like that's what they're trying to configure it says big ticket items for a thousand games that was the thing that this documentation listener i'm i'm reading here robert instead of just building little batches here and there he was aiming for the whole damn getting caboodle like a whole thousand games so they have lcd screens 750 of them 294 thousand dollars pcb boards uh cpus cabinets oh wiring harness wiring harnesses 450 000 power supplies 213 000 for 750 of them amps 27 500 gear motors metal package 784 000 plus dollars coin doors 101 000 plus for coin doors and then some of these check boxes weren't even filled like how many games total they had that check box filled on the white board 125 oh boy so they overshot it there yeah in terms of the the amount so that was like a thousand games right which you know some might consider ambitious i think you know when robert earlier in the deeper saga probably would have been disappointed that they were only planning to sell a thousand i think we recall that when they actually did go on sale it was more like a hundred something but a bunch of those were people using their zipwear credits so did they even sell 100 new i don't know so i could tell you a bit about the launch that happened i i do want to call your attention to that whiteboard to the in in orange we have look and the o's are like little eyeballs and then there's arrows and then there's stars around it and then there is in a different thing it says someone needs to order and then quote pinball's quote end quote get with john equals j-pop so apparently like months and months earlier that was like the thing because i've heard been told that john kind of was like not around much during the the the lead up to like trying to get the the raza ready for the the deep six folks j-pop kind of uh a wall there okay well i mean you know that's what people say um you know maybe that's good that he's a good manager who doesn't want to like micromanage at the end or something but anyway you you know maybe maybe when it's all hands on deck and you're working some people say like up to 40 hour days which i guess is more than a day to try to get this nightmare together you'd want to have him around but something that was done before we went to you know figuring out the final bomb was like months earlier like asked uh j-pop which which pinballs to buy because when you ship a game you should have pinballs and there were pinballs in the building because they had a couple games there you know then they would have like up to 66 balls and i guess and they had some tests but yeah no one had um they hadn't ordered like uh pinballs for like all the machines that they were going to ship and that you know if they had shipped then maybe that would have been like a bummer to not ship the game with any balls but they're spending half a million dollars on wiring hard they're oh my god all right so here's what we're going to do bj we're going to talk about the launch and the reception and all of that but first there were some media members that came into that building for a very formal look behind the scenes and to report back what was going on known now as the deep six what do you know about the deep six and that visit oh my well you know this is uh some of the information has come out uh from the the members of the deep six but you know what not all of it that's been shared with me and then the stuff they couldn't know like what was going on before they arrived and what happened after it and um it might not surprise you to learn that it was a [ __ ] show but kind of like next level an employee has kind of given a whole account of what happened i'm gonna do my best to read a previous employee's uh remarks regarding the deep six visit but this is what you sent me i'm gonna read it verbatim here it says quote robert likes to use the auditorium as a place to hold company meetings in one of these meetings robert announced that there would be an unveiling coming up in about four weeks that we had to make four machines ready for quote prime time at the time there were only two machines in existence and only one of those was in the building the one that was in the building was consistently called the quote houston game as it had gone to the trade show in houston the year prior there was a sincere feeling of dread inside the room and robert announced his plans but nobody argued to the point immediately following the meeting the majority of the engineers in a few techs held an impromptu meeting in the hallway rather than compose a plan which i'd expect they all started talking about how crazy this is and how it couldn't be done efforts were made to explain the impossible situation to robert but he said they were just quote crying wolf here's how bad things were none of the mechs had been fully tested the glass mechanism didn't exist in anything close to its final form the solidworks model wasn't complete and the final straw was that there wasn't anything even remotely resembling a bomb for the games there's no reasonable way to meet the goal in this timeline there was almost nothing in-house for final sheet metal little to no plastics the cabinets hadn't even been tested with the newer versions of hardware the backbox had never been tested and there weren't any graphics to put onto the cabinets the list goes on and on and the raza project was basically started in ernst about four weeks prior to the event this information was brought to robert and he reacted intensely insisting that this goal would indeed be met at any cost as he'd already announced it he wouldn't be made a fool of went on to say we know that the raza project had been started many years prior but it was at this point a high-end homebrew project maybe at best it's understood that homebrew projects are that they at least generally work this game was not ready for serious testing let alone a public release it was a downright deception to tell people that this game was production ready every part of it had been manually changed or modified at the last second to make it to the houston expo and none of these changes were recorded wow inside none of these changes were recorded that's that's unbelievable if true again all allegations continuing on to this alleged previous employees quote quote even better some of the key players who made those changes left the company the last time that paycheck stopped coming in so for the next four weeks there were daily meetings in an attempt to keep the team on track to complete this massive goal but everyone just kept saying it couldn't be done and kind of left it at that with one week to go they started pulling along days trying to manually build at least two games there were far too few parts to finish four games without a bomb they found out that they didn't have proper hardware at every turn they found out that the leds didn't work as planned they found out that the plastics didn't fit with the max they found out that there was a lot of things that have been given to a game designer and he'd not done anything with them for years they found out that the backbox was drawn so poorly that it couldn't even be built as drawn they found out that the cnc machine they bought was off by over an eighth inch over 60 inches of travel which meant that nothing fit together properly the cobbled together glass mech didn't work correctly and the service mech was downright dangerous the wires were a rat's nest and were almost impossible to work around every part that went onto these games required copious amounts of manual rework with inferior machinery and equipment it was madness people worked 12 to 14 hours a day the weekend prior to the launch through the thursday before and when they'd come to work on friday they didn't even leave the office until late in the day saturday a lot of people worked 36 straight hours in an attempt to make the launch happen and save their jobs robert wasn't there for it one of his managers was sleeping in his office for most of it the other just paced around the entire time but none of them helped in the last moments with the deep root six in the building they cobbled together a machine in an attempt to save face exhausted and utterly defeated the game was plugged in and it didn't work then it actually caught fire for a moment after all of that work it turns out that the electrical system had never been tested in its current form hours and hours more time was spent and finally a reversed power negative lead in the pin bar was discovered and the game was able to function albeit very poorly the individual that stayed to make the fix put in over 40 straight hours to get it done this failure should have opened some eyes inside that building but it didn't it's worth mentioning that robert wasn't around for the majority of the day-to-day goings on his office was in a part of the building that only a few people had access to employees had security fobs and each was programmed differently so that they could control where we went in the building he would come down and make last second changes as if we were feverishly trying to put the cabinets together why is the artwork trimmed that way or why is this raw plywood it should be painted he was kicking the tires of the proverbial car while it was completely engulfed in flames the backlash of the deep six event was pretty harsh they were called into a meeting and told how much they'd embarrassed robert they'll never forget him looking at them and asking why didn't anyone tell me we weren't ready he played the victim very consistently employees were half-heartedly thanked for making such an effort threats of termination were made and that was it the remainder of the monday after the event was spent with the teams trying to create a strategy for riding the ship there was oddly a sense of enthusiasm within the ranks too although technically a failure they'd made a game playable and by the end of the day monday or tuesday it was mechanically decent they quickly found that the game's code was at fault for a lot of the issues they were finding that is a whole other story but this problem persisted until the day everyone was sent home last july also worth mentioning that a certain infamous pinball game designer was not present for any of the long hours leading up to that release event neither was a team's senior engineer or any of the code writing team this was the start of a very big rift between the people who were simply collecting paychecks and those that were trying to get a failing startup on the right track oh and the week following the failed event is when they stopped getting paid it lasted through the new year employees were told at the time that they've exhausted their savings in preparation for the deep six event the auditorium was ridiculously expensive and had planned on paying us using pre-order funds then they were told that the guys in quilt funds were working tirelessly to get more investors so employees could be paid employees were consistently told that deeproot was funded by investors and that the pipeline was full but there had been a hiccup in the process of getting the money yeah okay that was a hell of a story allegedly it was a hell of an alleged story there what do you make of that uh i mean it's like you expect it to be bad but the the the details and the color just makes it worse it's not surprising but yeah just just hearing how it goes uh it sucks and it's funny and it's tragic and i feel for the people busting their ass in an impossible situation and like to me the greatest is that you know after this is all caused more or less by robert then uh he'll he'll ream them out for disappointing him and and if only they had let him know and of course i think he had been let know many times this was a bad idea but he uh he wasn't interested in in taking on new data um because he he knew best because he was robert then they launched this game and we talked about a little bit not selling probably as many as they thought they would they had a lot of parts probably coming in but not all the parts they needed they had a lot of machinery but not the right machinery this was doomed yeah this was all doomed well and parts were coming in like that's why some of the lots in the auction kind of looked like untouched because stuff was being delivered like right up until the doors were closed so again it wasn't they weren't trying to to make it uh make machines they just and i say they you know because i guess you know robert wasn't making all the decisions but like they they just had no idea how to do it um but yeah up until the end stuff was getting ordered because everything was rushed last minute everything was you got to figure this out i need this or that you know originally thinking like sell a thousand i was looking at the the the whiteboard for that they sold whatever a hundred but then even funny at the end like after it has been explained over and over that like you know everyone you sell is gonna cost you more money because the the literal build of materials might be more if you ever built them then then you're selling the machine for which of course then doesn't account for you know overhead labor every profit those kind of like you know business things that then he was kind of relieved and kind of like like half joke about like glad it wasn't more in the end you'd think there well maybe you wouldn't think there'd be any reflection but you know he was disappointed with the sales but he was mostly i guess disappointed for everyone who failed him because it was uh it was their failure that like you know kept millions and millions of dollars of being made if only they could have executed you know under his his genius leadership then then they would have been a success but they uh you know they dropped the ball and uh and that that was i think robert's takeaway from the whole raza uh sale they didn't have the ball to drop well they didn't have many pinballs at least in the building it sounds like but yeah yeah and and the funny other part where there's a tiny intersection with me personally uh that that i got to hear about which was fun was so like on my greatest hits of like why i guess i'm on this show for finding stuff was one of them was when they they did that they took the the raza just to that brewery and it was streamed once and and yeah didn't it didn't stream very well and and that's not about the quality of the streaming it just you know wasn't ready for prime time but it was funny because one of the the photos i saw of it had on the pin bar which if you didn't know is the most innovative uh uh development in pinball history um it had like a url there and it was something like like pin api.turnerlogic.com or something or and maybe there's a qr code that i i scanned and got it and i was like what's that you know and so because like because i'm a googler right i did my googling and i went to that and there wasn't anything there but i'm like oh let me do like a site search and see what else and lo and behold there was this entire uh what's called like a staging website for because at this point the the you know deeprootpinball.com had launched but they were working on a big uh you know updated launch when the game was actually available for order and um and a staging site was where like all that stuff was and it was it was on the internet you wouldn't find it you know if you googled searched it but if you had that one url you could and so that's where i found like all this information about like how much was it going to sell for like what were all the the customizable components the the whole thing about the plans for uh root access which was going to be the 50 a month dlc program and so yeah so i published all that and uh and i was always curious like oh like you know did you do folks inside see that and apparently they did because robert when he like had a meeting with folks he said that i had hacked them and that and and this actually like made people worry because like oh this this guy hacked into our system and as as i mentioned um they kept every little bit of like attempted information on like the building materials or like the 42-step process to assemble it or like all the parts orders and stuff in like google sheets and so that was like the company and look that's not the ideal way to keep it but like if that's how you keep it then you have a lot in there and they were like oh crap you know is this guy going to get access to all of our everything about the company and and it wasn't because i didn't hack it because unless hacking is you know going to a publicly available website even if you know like you you wouldn't find it except that they did this little uh streaming so i thought that was funny and then and then the the bonus little cherry on that was apparently that some of the changes of like how the pricing was or like some of the stuff about the dlc or the components was done just to prove that it hadn't the the correct information hadn't been exposed so out of out of pride that they wanted uh robert didn't want it allegedly to be that uh the secret had been revealed then that's why like some of the information was different when it came time to publish which you know some of it might have changed because they they thought better of it but i you know i wouldn't be surprised if if robert didn't want to look the fool so to speak um additional documentation you sent me from an alleged previous employee said internally i think most of us didn't like playing rasa at least with the few uh individuals that they were talking to that lacked flow some of these documents talked about conflicts with designers that robert had they remembered a time that um one of the one of the main namesake designers they got into some type of heated argument another designer insisted on having their own engineers they came and you know designed their playfields added on the modular electronics flipping within within days however i'm reading now however that was all that came from it based on the playfields in the auction never quite sure why robert was more interested in getting the pin pod in the cabinet made than just selling games they said as far as robert and this designer went similar to the other designers they came down to deep root headquarters couple times check on their progress they'd ask robert and why nothing was being worked on usually most of the employees there were busy working on making a lego-like pinball system and didn't get much work done on those specific games the logic was based on this alleged employee that they designed the boards once they can be reused on all the machines but the same wasn't true for the max they wanted their own engineering teams and they could have this person said they probably could have made some great pins but they got sidetracked with all of robert's different projects and all of these big grand big picture ideas but if you don't get stuff out you don't get money coming in and it was it was a mess all right now bj i want to for the listener i'm just going to ask you some questions kind of gets your feedback based on the experience and the research you've done okay sure when do you think that employees realize the goals of manufacturing machines just wasn't going to work out good god i think it varies because people would be there for a while and then they would leave so if you were a newbie coming in and some some newbies coming in were like i realized they made a mistake five minutes into the process or some might be like oh this seems pretty wild i wonder how it's all gonna work out but obviously you know there must be a plan and then realize not so i think it's tough because i've heard different accounts of when people were like that's when i knew had i had to get out and so people got out of different times so i don't know because you know there were some people who never either realized it or never communicated that which is interesting and i don't you know i think it's a positive thing like when i hear from people about some of their co-workers and you know only talk about like the names that people would know um one i wanna i wanna lay this out is like barry was the most beloved person there apparently um i've never met the guy but everything i read is is awesome it you know it's tragic what happened it's tragic if you he was like the hero there right he was he was the hero because he was he was uniformly positive he tried his damnedest and uh and he never could blame and he and apparently he was just a true believer that it was gonna work now because i know he hadn't you know hadn't done a game since what junkyard he had all these like fits and starts and it's like a bummer and sure and then here's another time that you you think it's gonna happen and then maybe with american it was going to and unfortunately he passed and of course i don't know if you know it's been noted that like you know he had he had cancer he had cancer treatments he lost his insurance because of deep root and um there was kind of like a lapse period where he wasn't receiving treatment so obviously that probably wouldn't help but yeah barry um barry was somebody who i don't know if he ever thought it wasn't gonna work from what i hear because he was always operating as if it would um you know there's this uh on the pin side thread there was this this sign which was funny in the parking lot which was like uh a special parking sign that was like for like famous pinball designer right yeah and so everyone thought that was j-pop because of what people think of j-pop and j-pop's ego sure and uh it wasn't it was made for barry and even more is like there was a gotcha moment you know and i'm not blaming anyone in the sewer because we operate without the info but they're like and notice that it's in the the uh the handicapped parking spot right so that would be even more ridiculous that j-pop was there but no because i guess probably barry had you know was like certified like uh you know handicapped parking permit so that's where it was so he was beloved some of his personal items were still in the building actually one of the lots in the auction lot 50 i was told was like barry's own toolbox and so um oh no yeah so one thing i wanted to flag on the show was that if someone bought that lot it would be really great that's that's barry's stuff that's personal items you you wouldn't know from the lot because the auction you know house didn't know any of this history they were just putting up the stuff that was there but that was barry's stuff now i'm so if you bought it and you could get in touch with his family or if you don't know like how to do that zach i'm sure it would be good to do it maybe reach out i do notice that now after the fact that lot is no longer listed on the auction and there were a few other like i would say like up to 12 or 13 items that were like originally listed and then pulled and my hope is it was pulled because it was recognized as a personal item and so it wasn't sold like if it was if you if if you won lot 50 that's that's barry's toolbox so if you get back to his family that would be great then if you guys need help with that you can email me at the pinball network at gmail.com yeah but some of the like kind of like nice photos i have from the inside would be like you know like a fun little photo of like barry like our hero or like they would put barry's face on a lot of the white woods you know even you know if it wasn't his game or i don't know whose game like the who or like you know food truck was and um and they and there was even a shot of like his like homemade dandelion wine uh that was seen as that ox and so yeah it makes me feel you know you know without knowing the guy whatsoever you know i feel warmth uh to him and and i understand that he was somebody who who maybe never realized it wasn't gonna work um because he was so positive and i i class from what i've heard from other people quinn johnson i don't know i guess you wouldn't know what he thought because every single person says quinn's like the greatest guy so this was the the the one who was like hired to be like the storyteller like writer yeah he was a storyteller i want to know where these people went yeah well i could give you a bit on that right because because because he we had never heard that name before pinball and right like and this was his first like bit of being in pinball and and now he's probably out of it and like who could blame him but yeah quinn apparently just everybody loved queen he was just such a great guy and um so you know it sucks that you know he was there for years i mean think about if your job is just to write like the stories for pinball games and you never make a pinball game and you're there for like almost four years like that that's rough but apparently what i've been told uh maybe it's a little dated for he's putting out a book of his own like comic art and uh so if if we get info on that you know or when it comes out you know people might be interested my thought is that uh because he's a storyteller and a comic artist and we have you know more deeper content than we'd ever be able to talk about today but also that like we talked about how it should be a documentary i'm sure there's more to come and he was there inside i think quinn johnson should do a series of graphic novels that tell the story of deep root and i i would buy that if that happened at least write the screenplay to the to the made for television yeah video of this 100 what about Steven Bowden yeah and so we know that he's at american pinball now right and i was gonna i was gonna say as if reading my mind or maybe reading my notes i put steve in that same category too from what i've heard is that everyone always said you know before he was even you know working the industry he's the nicest guys he's so positive and so he was there for a while and you know some people get on him for not speaking up or something so i don't know the degree to which like he could have seen the writing on the wall or not but like you know benefit of the doubt if this is a guy who's just all about positivity then maybe even when it feels like what you know other people might look at is like an impossible situation you just kind of go okay well you know like what's the point of focusing on the ten thousand challenges let's try to do our best and so that that's my own well dennis nordman said the hell with him yeah no exactly so then yeah and then there's a different category of folks who said i'm i'm gonna nope out of there and and dennis nordman was definitely one of those david diehl too okay david thiel too Jon Norris Jon Norris uh i think he had challenges with it but he didn't leave um but john actually you know anybody listening to this as i understand it is is looking for opportunities and he's shared to facebook you know he started to to publish some of like his own like concepts for things and so i think that's a person who yeah is definitely still looking to you know has a lot to to give uh to the industry and is is looking for places to apply it and Jon Norris uh john if you're listening to this i'd love you to reach out to myself and see if we can't get you on the show as well and talk about your experience in the past as well as your experience moving forward in pinball i haven't heard from you you know audience hasn't heard from me in quite some time we'd love to hear from you because a lot of people really love some Jon Norris stuff and what he was working on i mean we were talking about barry there for a little bit uh bj and i will say that you know again information you've sent me i'm looking at it right here talking about food truck the goal of the blazing hot dumpster fire um and they go on they go on to say i'm going to be fair they go on to say that it wasn't so much the game but the engineer that was tied to uh this particular game they showcased again a senior engineer some incompetence there continuing incompetence to the point that allegedly they had to bring in a junior engineer to help out to try to get it going but altogether mechanically when it came to the engineering behind it this alleged previous employee said the designs were awful uh unnecessary complex and they said that barry was great during the process it wasn't his fault that he had been handled that his game had been handled by an incompetent engineer they went on to say one thing should be noted that he was willing to make changes when his design ideas didn't work this wasn't the case though with john papaduk whose reputation for being difficult to work with is truly understated in the end after the playfield was put together in the biggest hack session ever it didn't even fit into the cabinet classic deep root well so it's a food truck is interesting because you know it became i don't know if it's how these things happen right but everyone you know ironically unironically ironically became so jazzed about food truck right because if you're just thinking of a thing you don't go oh my god i want a food truck right but no and after you hear the theme food truck you say oh you guys are wanting to make money in pinball okay right okay so yes so that's that's that's the starting point right and so you go that's you know someone might say stupid but and by the way uh something i still need to find i would say where these themes come from which which i can follow up with my folks to know like how much was j-pop how much was mueller i better yeah we gotta find out because some of this is oh i can find it questionable um but here's the thing then somehow the narrative shifted over time again just externally that like oh food trucks actually kind of cool and like oh food truck you know you know consider it a lame theme but it's got some some cool mechs and i had heard from folks that said like one that was the one that was furthest along other than raza which is 100 true and two like it had some cool stuff so i think that could be true from the perspective of like maybe from like barry's design right but the interesting thing and then and then somebody even gave robert credit imagine that who was like the plan after raza was to like have a hundred food trucks ready to like move into ordering and not this like let's figure out how to make the game like after we started selling it to have them ready to go but and that's a good idea you know you know tip to other pinball companies that's probably a good way to go it couldn't it couldn't happen um because what somebody said was like if raza didn't bankrupt the company then food truck would because it was world as as as bad as uh raza was in terms of being ready for prime time from like uh you know a home brew project apparently deeper was further away and a lot of this again different people's accounts but with something about like the engineer who was like charged with it like hadn't like been updating their work in years like kept it like on their private computer when they finally like saw it it was just like so far away from like where things currently would which is kind of a thing we've heard in the past and that like the bill of materials was impossible nobody do a thing and so um it's not that if only raza you know if only they had gotten past raza then then food truck sorry it sounds ridiculous would have saved the company apparently like if they'd gotten past uh raza then then food truck would have sunk the company which again sucks um because you know it sounds like it you know like whatever it's like quirky fun and and barry had good ideas and stuff but i mean if there's well there's probably 500 lessons from this but like one of them is like having like need ideas and design concepts doesn't matter if it's all just like you know pieced together like with chewing gum or you know whatever like random little bits that you grab out of like the alley and then when you go to try to like make more than one you realize you have no idea where to begin i know what would have saved them it was that damn goonies license tell me this bj did did they have the goonies license okay robert said he did listen with robert's stuff especially with the uh like the keeping close to the best and here's another thing i should throw out a lot of people go how could anyone not have known this was all a big you know alleged uh fraud situation he kept the the financials really close to the best so i would assume that he also kept you know the licensing because that stuff's way too important to let you know somebody else deal with these important companies again my own commentary so allegedly had the license actually i don't know if this makes you feel better or worse because i know your heart you know beats faster when you say the word goonies but like that was going to be the next title after food truck and then the fourth was either going to be uh machine age or uh the lucha game which we had never actually even heard about until we saw the auction and that was a uh was gonna be a licensed one the the minor funny thing i heard about that was that yeah it was like with actual like lucha people and um that like j-pop like went and like hung out with the lucha folks which god i would pay money to watch this and like people had some people at the office were really into these like wrestlers and like you know thought it was so cool that j-pop got to to go and like hang with these folks so that's what i've heard is the the first four titles with that like tbd we heard barry ousler say on pinball profile that he was designing goonies in the who oh yeah yeah and i mean look we have shot we have playfield shots of both of them some of them have been posted already i have a bunch more you know different levels of complete i would love again you know just kind of like putting my pitch out here on the i would love people who know this stuff better to look through this because a lot of it's greek to me uh you know but yeah they they worked on this stuff but most of it only the only ones that were like in a okay let's actually try to like next step is to like manufacture and again they were many steps away were raza and then and food truck and we didn't well i was gonna say we did get the food truck i don't know if we got to razza but they definitely didn't get to any of the others they didn't get to any of the others if we're talking about uh some of the the games that we're going to be made i'm looking at a video right now of a of them flipping around on i don't i don't know what game this is but in my opinion this is a really poorly designed game i know the employees here were ranting and raving about it being fun but it looks really bad um there there's not much going on they have this big old feature in the middle that you hit bowls captive balls back and forth to another like a fishtails kind of ramp looking it looks bad and the ferris wheel just like 20 other barry also games with i mean what is going on here i guess j-pop yeah i mean what's going on i'm still trying to get confirmation on what which game that was because that's footage you know hopefully you know if tpm puts it out maybe get some more eyeballs on it it's like one of the other few games that we've seen flipping uh but i'm not sure so one person said they yeah you said like they're raving of it somebody said they thought it might be machine age but the interesting thing is like some of the folks were so kind of like siloed that they were like just focused on like we gotta get you know especially when your boss is saying like in two weeks make browser or whatever focused on that the engineering people you know they mentioned the lego thing we're just like constantly about like try to make these boards try to like everything that you get in like you know make it simpler or better and so that like there is sort of a gap of like maybe intellectual you know knowledge about even some of the most basic things of like what which game is this so if we put it out maybe somebody you know can reach out and identify for sure which it is but you know i thought it was still interesting that we can see some other mech we hadn't seen some other play field that's flipping the other interesting video that you sent me was oh this is this is made for the internet 28 seconds of robert mueller with an early prototype of this play field that pulls out all the way so you can service it turns around like a rotisserie and then goes back in kind of thing that i almost want to play like the benny hill theme behind it because oh this poor group they were showing off this prototype and robert was checking it out and he was pulling it out it looked janky as all get out and then he was smiling because it was supposed to be like a video to show it off realized how shitty it was and then couldn't get it back in the cabinet it was jenkin everywhere and then he just looks at the camera and just like cut this like did we can't use this oh yeah and i mean a bonus thing that an uh you know somebody who sees more obvious things than me with engineering is uh you'll notice sorry i'm watching the video it's so funny actually somebody's raising their hands in victory in the background now and then the zoom in on his face you got to put this out so people know what the hell we're talking about but um oh but there's nothing connected it says bad stop there's nothing connected to the board so you're rotating it but you know machines have like lots of things connected so you can't rotate it unless you disconnect all this stuff and then you've kind of gotten rid of the like benefits think about the weight though yeah the weight that was going to be placed on that with all these mechs and everything on it this thing barely looks like it's standing up now well yo the weight is another thing is that you know these are the minor details of like why this building wasn't made for manufacturing it had like this epoxy like a coating on it where like if you dropped i don't remember like a pinball somebody said it would like maybe get like absorbed into the ground almost and then they're talking about bringing in this like super heavy equipment and stuff like that it's just like every little tidbit there's just it's all it's a mosaic of ridiculousness that adds up to the picture of when you say why did deeper fail and um it all starts at the top at the beginning of the show i asked you that we're clearly seeing why there's so much more information that we haven't even expanded or touched on one of which needs to be answered before we leave a couple of things really first off do you know what went down on those casting couches that were in the auction because those didn't look sanitary yeah no i don't know well i think the thing that's interesting about the casting couch is it was actually sold so maybe whoever bought it could get out like a blue light or you know do some csi to figure out what's going on but like some of the items that were posted were pulled and i my theory like the jesus painting everyone wants to know about the jesus painting go yes okay i bid on that damn it oh well i i was the high bidder for i was a high bidder whenever they pulled it how how high were you willing to go i would have i would have paid a couple hundred for that jesus painting okay so my theory and it's backed up not just by conjecture is that the items that got pulled were pulled because they were personal items like this wasn't paid for with company money like i know different people and we already talked about barry stuff who's like had left you know because like you go to work and maybe you have some stuff there that's your property and then you don't expect like not to be able to get back into the building because the sec like you know has the judge filing like a thing that says you can't right so robert it was funny one of the first hearings uh i like you know again robert's in a heap of trouble he's got the sec that we keep hearing in the sec about the you know pending criminal cases and tr and and like uh charges coming you know he had that have you heard anything about that no um i mean that's the thing we keep hearing here's the thing how the how it's being played out is they're doing this dance with the sec which is like a simple thing just to be clear so when people say how long is robert going to go to jail for this zero days for that you can't go to jail for that but you know if they're a criminal but you know the robert's lawyer keeps using the argument that we know there's a criminal case coming and that's why robert has to plead the fifth you know 250 times in a hearing right so i don't know what's going on with that but i think they're trying to like navigate how far they can get with the sec with robert kind of like cooperating before maybe dropping you know like the the next part and then that could impact like how the charging is again i'm not a lawyer but again i've learned a lot about things i never thought i would because of this so maybe that's what's going on with all this stuff going on pre-hearing the lawyers are like we gotta really figure out how robert can get in there and get his personal items like that was the concern right and the judge was like uh i forget you know what i said it was like that's not what we're focused on but that's what i think he did because i know people who saw robert at the auction inspection day and apparently he had to downgrade uh his car um i forget what it was like a lexus to an infiniti or something i don't know anything about cars and they said and not my opinion you know that just with someone else that it looked like he missed the exercise uh equipment at the facility because he wouldn't have had access there like robert loves um uh buzzwords so he would talk about having like lean and agile development octo yeah well and lean in agile is probably because he wanted like development that's like very much like him so i think that he went and got the jesus painting got some of the other paintings because they were personal like robert i want that jesus painting i know well that's the thing well you know if he's really hurt up for money maybe he'd be willing to real quick idea i'd throw out that i even before maybe the sec stuff when like deeper it wasn't happening i don't need robert to run a pinball company to be entertaining like i in fact think he shouldn't because then you know like the stuff about allegedly like harming people and stealing people's investments i just love the content of him going out at pinball expo and making these like speeches and like doing these interviews like i love it and i think he should do a patreon just play play a ceo of a pinball company don't have a pinball company just do interviews do ted talks you know give me the power points i and i'm i'm not bullshitting i would pay a fair amount of money if i could subscribe to robert keep doing his thing just without any of the actual like you know like ruining people's live stuff you edgy little blueberry you hmm this has been a lot of fun we didn't uncover some of the things like where jesus went uh we uncovered a lot of stuff there's so much more uh we're just scraping the surface here but what i would like to do would you be open to getting some feedback from this interviewing episode it's gonna raise some more questions that people have and maybe come back and we do a part two to this oh 100 i am i am here for it people are sending me an absurd amount of stuff that it like getting it the day before that's where i'm like how do we even talk about this by the way yeah if anyone wants to reach me i now have a gmail account oh let's let's give it right now as we're closing out yeah yeah it's uh it's uh dr blueberry johnson uh not doctor spelled out but dr and only now do i realize people might think that's deeper it's not it's because blueberryjohnson gmail.com was already taken and just like with twitch when i have to modify the username i i put the doctor in front because it's stupid okay so yeah so anybody reach it out if you had any questions about this if you're other you know if i said anything wrong for sure i don't want to do that i'm just basing it off of what i hear if you're also someone who's been aggrieved by the process or um if they're you know there's a lot of vendors who got screwed over i want to give a quick shout out um if people are interested because i know there are folks out there like basically who bought up all the stuff at the auction and are trying to like build their own raza's one person uh that was mentioned to me there were a lot of people who got stuck holding the bag vendors from deep root a lot of folks that weren't paid you know pinball life was was able to actually buy back some of the stuff it sold deep root at auction and then sell it forward uh to the community which is great but there's others who weren't so lucky so ron at elite manufacturing was a guy who in the very end days had a big order of like metal stuff uh for raza and he's probably still got it and so apparently he's a good guy he was taking a risk on this you could reach out if you're trying to do that there's gonna probably be a company that has a bunch of like raza toys that were made um because apparently what i was told was that the toys for the first five games of raza uh cost ten thousand dollars and uh and they were gorgeous they were like works of art because only the best right and so but you know that's kind of like more expensive than you want they but when they were getting ready to make the raza's they got them down to not that expensive but apparent and not that nice but apparently still really nice and still expensive and there's somebody out there uh a company that made them that probably has a bunch and i can i can find the name of it but that's yet another one where there are folks out there who got stuck with like thousands of like speakers that were custom designed for raza which is a whole another story we could get into um so basically trying to find the way that you know we can't write all the wrongs but there are a lot of people who were taken by this whole enterprise not even just the investors and not even just the people that work there so if you're an enthusiast or a deep root enthusiast or you're trying to make your your your dreams wear games maybe we'll we'll be able to identify folks who could help you out with that and then help cut into their losses a little absolutely and if you listeners would like to hear part two of blueberry johnson and the deep root debacle email us at the pinball network at gmail.com give us some feedback there you can also give us some feedback on the pin side thread i'm sure that deep root thread is going to be buzzing now uh thank you so much bj that wasn't too bad it was pretty fun right oh my god it's so fun i mean that's the problem you know we could talk for 10 hours about this stuff but you gave me so much information it's i'm i'm i'm drowning i haven't even gone fit that's what i was saying to you i was like it feels like part of it it feels like i took a whole semester you know in deep root education right which was like everything before you reached out to me the stuff i knew yeah and then in the past month when i decided to start collecting and not just publishing to the thread for like a big deal i've gotten like twice as much and it's and it's too much to go through so yeah there's we haven't talked about the magnetic chamber we haven't talked about the rotating play field we haven't talked there's so much that we can go over in these prototypes and how awesome you con yeti actually looked shout out to dennis nordman uh and gladiator there's so there's so much here so give us some feedback if we want to hear bj again and and myself talk about this kind of stuff he'd be happy to do it i'd be happy to jump back in and if you have any inside information uh reach out to blueberry johnson as he gave you it is dr blueberryjohnson.gmail.com correct doctor again but dr is an abbreviation you can also hear other episodes of the pinball show by going to tpn following subscribing watching straight down the middle recent videos coming out of that i'm cut short for time uh but it's been fun bj we'll talk to you soon yes sir hey it was my pleasure thanks a lot that's what we're about here speaking some truth and getting some information to the people that we love and that is fellow pinball enthusiasts thanks for listening everybody should i do that kind of like throaty voice i don't want to come off as nasal yeah no you've been fine so far oh no just when you heard when you come back and you're like all right i'm back and i was like oh [ __ ] oh yeah maybe i should sound like that hello by the way did you watch the video of this that robert one of the dumbest concepts ever thought of oh [ __ ] it's so good yeah and his shitty grin on his face but also how much he's struggling with it and like he was so mad at the end like [ __ ] cut it yeah _(Acquisition: youtube_auto_sub, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 071f7c72-66b1-4b36-9f1f-05fcb64bad39*