# Pinball Down Under Part 1: Haggis Pinball

**Source:** Silverball Chronicles  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2024-09-14  
**Duration:** 110m 52s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** http://thepinballnetwork555350716.wordpress.com/?p=1745

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## Analysis

Cameron Silver Ball Chronicles episode exploring Haggis Pinball, an Australian boutique pinball manufacturer that collapsed after initial promise. The episode traces founder Damien Harton's journey from IT professional to pinball entrepreneur in 2018, his innovative hybrid acrylic/plywood playfield technology designed to eliminate dimpling and pooling issues, and the challenges of manufacturing in Australia without established supply chains or economies of scale. Hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett discuss the company's cautionary tale within the context of the Australian pinball scene and broader industry dynamics.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Haggis Pinball founder Damien Harton joined the pinball hobby in 2018 by purchasing a PinBot machine — _Direct quote from episode: 'Haggis Pinball Harton joined the hobby in 2018 when he bought his first pinball machine, a PinBot.'_
- [HIGH] Harton came from an IT/property development background (Hearts Co.), not pinball manufacturing — _Episode states: 'He was an IT professional, and his company, Hearts Co., actually worked in property development and home automation.'_
- [HIGH] Haggis Pinball developed an innovative hybrid acrylic/plywood playfield substrate to eliminate dimpling and pooling — _Direct quote: 'we've come up with a new hybrid substrate for our playfields. It's a combined plywood and acrylic top.' Testing showed 200,000+ ball passes without marks._
- [HIGH] Manufacturing plastic playfield overlays/protectors in Australia costs significantly more than importing from US — _Wayne Gillyard quote about pinball leg manufacturing: tooling cost $40,000 AUD for 10,000-unit minimum run at $10 each, versus $6.50 imported from US already plated._
- [HIGH] Haggis Pinball's online presence largely disappeared after company collapse — _Episode notes: 'a lot of Haggis Pinball's online presence has all but disappeared... the YouTube page, the websites—the whole thing it's all gone.'_
- [MEDIUM] One-time manufacturing solution (playfield overlays) changes ball physics and gameplay characteristics — _George Gomez mentioned as stating overlays 'change the behavior of the ball...coefficient, the rubbing-ness against the wood.' Hosts discuss Electra example._

### Notable Quotes

> "Manufacturing is hard. Pinball is hard. And when you're starting on the other side of the world from all the suppliers and skilled labor, it's that much harder."
> — **David Dennis**, early in episode
> _Sets up the fundamental challenge facing Haggis Pinball as an Australian manufacturer_

> "at the start, it was just simply a case of me understanding what the big picture was. We got to build a pinball machine. And because I was having to learn everything, I was just biting off each shot as I went."
> — **Damien Harton (Haggis Pinball)**, mid-episode
> _Illustrates Harton's self-taught engineering mindset and willingness to learn manufacturing sequentially_

> "It's cheaper in the long run to order parts from overseas where they're made in the U.S. Otherwise, you've got to tool up for them in Australia and spend money on tooling plus the cost of manufacturing, which is too high here."
> — **Wayne Gillyard**, mid-episode
> _Key advice from experienced Australian pinball figure about manufacturing economics that Harton apparently did not follow_

> "I wanted to resolve that, and I saw that as a big thing. I wanted to come up with a way to have that as a non-issue moving forward."
> — **Damien Harton (Haggis Pinball)**, mid-episode
> _Shows Harton's ambition to solve industry-wide playfield durability problem through innovation_

> "You're hired. That's it."
> — **Damien Harton (Haggis Pinball)**, near end
> _Anecdote illustrating casual hiring decisions and the passionate, informal nature of pinball industry networking_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Damien Harton | person | Founder of Haggis Pinball; IT professional/property developer who entered pinball hobby in 2018 with PinBot purchase; attempted to build Australian boutique pinball manufacturer with innovative playfield technology before company collapsed |
| Haggis Pinball | company | Australian boutique pinball manufacturer founded by Damien Harton; collapsed after initial promise; known for hybrid acrylic/plywood playfield innovation designed to eliminate dimpling/pooling; company completely removed online presence upon closure |
| David Dennis | person | Co-host of Cameron Silver Ball Chronicles podcast; joined pinball hobby in 2018; conducting research into Australian pinball manufacturers for 'Pinball Down Under' series |
| Ron (Ron Hallett) | person | Co-host of Cameron Silver Ball Chronicles podcast; also co-hosts Slam Tilt podcast with Bruce Nightingale; joined hobby in 2004; provides commentary and context on pinball industry dynamics |
| Wayne Gillyard | person | Australian pinball figure; purchased Harry Williams intellectual property rights (2005); advised against Australian-based manufacturing due to tooling costs; operates Mr. Pinball Australia distributor; known as strong personality with direct communication style |
| Steven Martin Robbins | person | Australian pinball community figure; provided advice and feedback to Haggis Pinball during early development; helped network founder within Australian pinball scene |
| Ryan C. | person | Australian pinball community figure; formerly of Head to Head Pinball Podcast; provided feedback on Haggis Pinball whitewood before Texas Pinball Festival 2019; helped shape early machine design |
| Dr. John | person | Australian pinball community member; hosts Aussie Pinball Podcast; former Pinball Network streamer |
| Greg Seelby | person | Programmer for Haggis Pinball's first game (Celts); casual hire through tournament conversation with Harton; example of informal hiring in pinball industry |
| George Gomez | person | Legendary Stern designer referenced multiple times regarding playfield overlay technology and how plastic covers change ball physics/gameplay characteristics |
| Bruce Nightingale | person | Co-host of Slam Tilt podcast with Ron Hallett; joined pinball hobby in 1980s; plays KISS as first machine |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Mentioned as having experienced clear coat issues; reference point for comparison with Haggis Pinball's innovative approach to playfield protection |
| Stern Pinball | company | Referenced as industry leader; compared regarding clear coat issues, playfield quality research, and manufacturing approaches |
| Spooky Pinball | company | Mentioned as having experienced clear coat issues with TNA machines; example of widespread industry quality challenges |
| Dylan | person | David Dennis's friend; opened Flippins Pinball and Arcade bar in Fredericton for opening night; has Iron Maiden, Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Hot Doggin' machines |
| Texas Pinball Festival | event | Major industry event in 2019 where Haggis Pinball attempted to debut first machine; represents critical showcase venue for new manufacturers |
| Pinball Expo | event | Major annual pinball trade show where David Dennis obtained Dialed In comic; general reference point for industry gatherings |
| Flippins Pinball and Arcade | organization | New pinball bar in Fredericton opened by Dylan; located downtown; features modern and classic machines; mentioned as positive community development |
| Cameron Silver Ball Chronicles | organization | Pinball history podcast with hosts David Dennis and Ron Hallett; part of Pinball Network; focuses on factual historical information; launching 'Pinball Down Under' series about Australian manufacturers |
| Head to Head Pinball Podcast | organization | Australian pinball podcast formerly hosted by Ryan C.; credited with introducing David Dennis to pinball hobby |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Australian pinball manufacturing challenges, Haggis Pinball playfield innovation (acrylic/plywood hybrid substrate), Manufacturing economics and tooling costs, Outsider perspective/delusions of grandeur in manufacturing startups
- **Secondary:** Playfield durability and clear coat issues across industry, Ball physics and playfield surface characteristics, Australian pinball community and regional organization
- **Mentioned:** Pinball operator/location scene in Canada

### Sentiment

**Mixed** (-0.25) — Hosts express respect for Harton's engineering ambition and innovative playfield solution, but frame Haggis Pinball as a 'cautionary tale' and 'disease' of overconfidence by outsiders entering manufacturing. Tone is sympathetic but critical of ignoring experienced advice (Wayne Gillyard). No personal animosity; structural/business model critique dominates.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Haggis Pinball completely removed online presence (YouTube, websites) upon company collapse, limiting available documentation and post-mortem analysis (confidence: high) — David Dennis notes: 'a lot of Haggis Pinball's online presence has all but disappeared... Everything—the YouTube page, the websites—the whole thing it's all gone'; relying on third-party podcast/YouTube archives
- **[business_signal]** Outsider entering pinball manufacturing without prior industry experience or manufacturing background; classic pattern of entrepreneurs underestimating complexity (confidence: high) — David Dennis explicitly labels this 'the Deep Root Pinball method' and 'a disease in every industry'; Harton came from IT/property development with no manufacturing history; purchased first pinball machine in 2018, started company shortly after
- **[community_signal]** Australian pinball community is regionally organized with significant travel and events between provinces; experienced figures available for mentorship (confidence: medium) — Hosts describe Australian scene structure similar to Canadian with provincial tournament scenes and established figures like Steven Martin Robbins, Ryan C., Dr. John; Haggis Pinball was able to network and get feedback
- **[community_signal]** Experienced Australian pinball figures (Wayne Gillyard, Steven Martin Robbins, Ryan C.) attempted to provide guidance to Harton, but advice on manufacturing economics apparently not heeded (confidence: medium) — Wayne Gillyard warned against Australian manufacturing after his own experience; Haggis Pinball proceeded anyway; hosts note disconnect between available advice and Harton's execution
- **[market_signal]** Manufacturing in Australia creates prohibitive cost disadvantage versus importing pre-made components from US suppliers (confidence: high) — Wayne Gillyard example: $40,000 AUD tooling cost for 10,000-unit minimum to produce legs at $10 AUD each versus $6.50 imported and plated from US; economies of scale completely unfavorable
- **[community_signal]** Greg Seelby hired as Haggis Pinball programmer through informal tournament conversation; illustrates casual hiring practices in pinball startup culture (confidence: medium) — Anecdote: 'we're sitting in a tournament having a bit of a chat... I mistakenly said, is there anything I can do to help? You're hired. That's it.'
- **[product_concern]** Playfield durability (dimpling, pooling, chipping) remains unresolved industry-wide problem despite decades of manufacturing; no consensus solution implemented (confidence: high) — Episode extensively discusses clear coat issues affecting Stern, Jersey Jack, Spooky; George Gomez mentioned researching alternatives; quality degradation from 1990s Williams standards noted; hosts describe as 'endless endless conversation'
- **[technology_signal]** Playfield protective overlays/acrylic covers solve durability but compromise gameplay by changing ball physics and coefficient of friction (confidence: medium) — George Gomez stated overlays 'change the behavior of the ball'; Electra example shows no upper playfield wear but ball characteristics alter; hosts discuss coefficient/rubbing characteristics impact on game behavior
- **[technology_signal]** Haggis Pinball developed innovative hybrid acrylic/plywood playfield substrate to address industry-wide dimpling/pooling problem (confidence: high) — Hybrid substrate design completed winter 2019-2020; testing showed 200,000+ ball passes without marks; represents novel approach to fundamental playfield durability challenge affecting all manufacturers

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## Transcript

 Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. The rush of racing? Nothing beats it. But Chumba Casino comes close. Chumba's got fast spins, fun games, daily bonuses, and all the action you can handle. Now that's a ride. Ready to hit the throttle? Get in the driver's seat and head to chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 21 plus. Terms and conditions apply. The Pinball Network is online. Launching Silver Ball Chronicles. Remember, no opinions here. This is all about the facts. We don't want to get anyone too mad. Hello everyone, I'm David Dennis and this is Silver Ball Chronicles and with me this month like every month is Ron the Uncanny Hallet. How you doing? The Uncanny Howlin'. Is that... So I'm like the X-Men. I'm uncanny. No, it is no tie-in whatsoever to Stern's latest release. I just pulled that out of my hat. I totally date this episode, but yes. A theme which I am super happy about. Love me the uncanny X-Men. I've got a bunch of old comic books and some old Spider-Man and Iron Man. Not as much X-Men as I'd like because those comics are pricey. You don't have any comics? You're not a comic artist? I have a Beavis and Buddy comic. Oh, that's cool. And I have a Dialed In comic. Do they just give those away? At Expo on the reveal. Yeah. Nice, nice. So that's the exciting stuff that's happening in the hobby right now. A few new releases. We're moving into the fall release schedule. Apparently Avatar is on the horizon from JJP. So we've got some pretty exciting stuff when it comes to current events, but nobody tunes into this show for current events. Except this episode. Except this episode. This episode is a bit topical. This topic came up sort of quickly, and it's been a wonderful summer. I hope you've had a wonderful summer too, Ron. We've had sort of a nice relaxing kind of month and a half off. Well, you know, you can join us over on Patreon, where you can hear about all of the musings of Ron and I about the latest episodes. You can pop in for a month or two and leave. just to say thank you. That would be pretty awesome. We have free memberships where you can join in. But of course, if you want to get some of the extras, you got to jump on for $3 a month. If you want to become a premium crony at $6 a month, you get a free sticker. After a three-month stay, you get access to our private Discord chat room. You can always get your comments read on the episodes. We want to welcome Mike, Carl, Dan, and Erica, along with Mr. Jake 22, didn't leave his real name or their real name. We wanted to say thank you for joining us. Who's your favorite of those people, Ron? Mr. Jake. The rest of them, they don't matter. Too normal, but Mr. Jake, you know. If you don't want to join us on Patreon, you don't want to do any of that stuff, you can also just look us up on Facebook with Facebook.com. slash Silverball Chronicles. And as always, we will remind you, please leave us a five-star review wherever you found us on your podcatching app or any of those places. That way, more people can find us. It helps us out with the algorithm. Even if there's four stars at the highest, just leave us five. Exactly, exactly. You might have to write in to your podcatcher and be like, I need another star because this podcast is so good. And you can continue to make us the number one monthly rated podcast in... Huh? I mean, I can't really prove it. We are. We are. Corrections and comments from the previous episode. We did a multi-morphic episode last episode. It was kind of fun. It was a bit different, a little more modern. So we've had, over the last little while, we've had feedback into the mailbag over at silverballchronicles at gmail.com. A lot of people were like, oh, I wish you'd do this niche part of the hobby, or I wish you would do this one, or where's the bingo, or let's do a Wedgehead episode, or whatever. And that's where I think the latest series that's coming up is going to fit as well. It's a very niche set of episodes coming up here in the next sort of sprint into the winter. I think I'm excited because we get some neat little feedback about these niche episodes, as opposed to the ones that everybody loves, the Bally Williams, the Steve Richies. Let's do something a bit different. And we get a little more engagement with some of these because people are very passionate about their niches within the hobby. Isn't that right? I like the sprint into winter line. That was nice. I like that. That's very Canadian. Yeah, we sprint into winter and right on to the snowmobile. So what about Mike? Mike left us some feedback on the last couple of episodes. He says, loyal listener here of the podcast, I listen to every episode. Does that include bingo? No comment. Oh. For some reason, I simply can't get on board with multi-morphic games. I also played The Weird Al when visiting Arcadia in Portland, and I hated it. Okay. The play field felt incredibly empty to me because of the screen, and I don't really understand the concept of swapping out games or who would really want that unless the previous game was terrible. The mixing of technologies is interesting, but I don't feel like it's been done very well. I feel like the Pinball 2000 got a little bit closer and even made me uncomfortable. Oh, even that made me uncomfortable. I say either go fully virtual or stay mechanical. Okay. Thanks a bunch for the feedback there, Mike. I think Weird Al is like the one that I generally like the most. I didn't get to play Scott Danesi's game. What is that one called again? Come on. Final Resistance. You can get it. Yes, Final Resistance. That's my favorite. Yeah, but I haven't got to play that one yet. But I really liked Weird Al. I thought that one was really cool, although I understand the critique. I get it. Mike, try Final Resistance. It's more pinball-y. If you can find one. I don't know if they make very many of them, which I find disappointing. Well, let's get into this month's topic. Are you excited and ready? I'm excited and ready. I see your Canadian spelling of labor in the notes here. Yes. With the extra view for some reason. I don't know why that's there. labor labor yeah exactly we don't pronounce it that way it doesn't make any sense see in america we remove those extra letters not made it yeah we just we take those letters out we replace it with a gun no we we shoot it out with a gun see yeah oh i forgot to mention before we get into the topic this month a pinball bar has opened in my hometown oh my good friend dylan has opened flippin's Pinball and Arcade, and it is in an awesome location, downtown in Fredericton. I was there last night for opening night, which is why I sound a little bit raspy. A few ciders, and I enjoyed my time there. It was hopping. What was it called? It's called Flippin's. Spell that. F-L-I-P-P-I-N-S. Is it like apostrophe S or just? I think it's just S. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Now, like, I don't want to get into the spellings. Well, no, it's just Flippin. I was just trying to figure out how that was spelled. Is it called Flippin's Egg? Flippin's Egg? Yeah, there you go. Yeah, come on in here and sit down and have a good time and have yourself a pint, eh? Yay. Your hoser? It's great. So I'm super happy about that. Iron Maiden Star Wars are the latest machines that he's got there. Cool. In the back, he's got a Jurassic Park. that he's got a couple of tweaks on, but we got some modern. I mean, those are not the latest releases by any means. I have all those games. I like it already. Yeah, he'll eventually gear up, I think, with newer releases. But at the moment, guess what game they have, and I think it's probably one of the only, like, maybe two or three on location, like, in North America. Oh, Puny Factory. Oh, God. What? I don't even want to talk about that. Oh, I'm sorry. I figured I'd use a Canadian company. No. That's terrible. A terrible game. Okay. Hot Doggin'. Oh, Hot Doggin'. Okay. Bally's Hot Doggin'. I mean, probably the best outback skiing theme. Better than Wipeout? Better than Wipeout because it's got cowboy hats. And it's got matching 70s-style winter coat mustaches. Don't forget mustaches. Oh, it's so good. So if you've got a hankering for that, you've got to come to my hometown. I know it's a pain in the butt for anybody to fly into from outside of, you know, basically a two-hour radius of driving. But, man, this bar is pretty great. I'm very jealous that I did not open a bar. I'll tell you that. Manufacturing is hard. Pinball is hard. And when you're starting on the other side of the world from all the suppliers and skilled labor, it's that much harder. COVID-19 did not help Haggis Pinball either. Haggis Pinball is the latest cautionary tale of a pinball startup who promised big and initially delivered, but ultimately succumbed to the pressures of the industry and the struggles of management. Ooh, this month we're getting into it, Ron. You said it, the body is not even cold. Yeah. So, haggis pinball is the topic this month. And when haggis collapsed, I thought, ooh, there's a great topic, because I had already been working on a series of pinball episodes based on Australia. This is part one of Pinball Down Under, Haggis Pinball. the research for this episode has been a little bit more difficult than it had been for previous episodes and that's because a lot of haggis's online presence has all but disappeared yeah they pulled everything when they went under everything the youtube page the websites the whole thing it's all gone so to be able to find a lot of the content i'm relying on a couple of podcast episodes and YouTube episodes done by Damien, who is the owner, or was the owner, of Haggis Pinball. All of the links are in the show notes or on the website, silverballchronicles.com. We're talking about Cary Hardy's YouTube series, his interview with Haggis, Unboxing the Truth, which we'll get into towards the end of the episode, Nap Arcade's article and some work from the Kineticist, Pinball News, and as mentioned before, Pinball Profile. But I want to point out that some of these sources are glorified or trumped up or made to be exciting and entertaining and less to do with the actual sort of background of the company. So we're spending a lot of time as a caution for this episode that some of the third-party sources that we've used to collect some of this information have done a phenomenal job. Some of them an okay job, and some of them have some blank spots. Does that make sense? Perfect sense, sir. I didn't ramble too much on that one, I hope. You rambled, but not too much. Perfect, perfect. Damian Hartin joined a hobby in 2018 when he bought his first pinball machine, a PinBot. Ron, this is the same year that I joined the hobby. Wow. I joined the hobby in the fall of 2018. I'm one of these... Noobs. One of these five years now, right? So I'm over the five-year hump. Still a noob to me. Still a noob to you? What about these other folk that have joined, like, during the pandemic? What about those people? Super noobs. Okay, and you joined in, like, was it 2006? 2004. 2004. Good Lord. 20 years. That's wild to be in that. And Bruce Nightingale from your other podcast. That's the Slamtail podcast. He started in, like, the 80s. When it was still cool. He got his first game, yeah, when he was a kid. A Kiss. That's a pretty good one. I mean, not a great game, but it's a good one. I don't mind Kiss. It's all right. It's all right. Now, that seems kind of new to the hobby to begin, you know, your own company, doesn't it? That is pretty new. That's pretty new. I mean, if he had a long history of, well, actually, yeah, scratch that, Ron. He literally got in in 2018. He didn't come from a manufacturing background. He didn't come from the hobby in the background. He didn't come from gaming. the gaming sort of coin-op world. He was an IT professional, and his company, Hearts Co., actually worked in property development and home automation. So he had sort of his own businesses elsewhere. He was a business person, spent all that time building this business and working on a few things, and then all of a sudden, one day, he bought a pinbot, which is a pretty darn good first game to get into, isn't it? They sold a ton of them. It's got to be good. Yeah. I mean, yours was Black Knight. Your first game was Black Knight. Yep. Also, very good first entry game. Also made a ton of them. Also made a ton of them. My first game was Tag Team from Godly. Ooh. They didn't make very many of them at all. I like Tag Team. Tag Team's great. Pinbot's like an A-level entry title, besides your Bally Williams kind of Attack from Mars style, but like early sort of alphanumeric kind of area. It's from Williams, the awesome company of the industry. And it's not alphanumeric, it's actually – oh, no, it is alphanumeric. It's the early alphanumeric with the alphanumeric displays and then just number displays that they had at the beginning. So he got the bug early and hard. He jumped in quick. Because when most people get into the hobby, they go, I'm an adult. I've got disposable income. I'm going to buy a pinball machine. And then they look at a pinbot, and it's $3,000. And they go, wait, well, no, just a second. That's not going to happen. That's what I would say at this point. But what did Damien say? Damien says, at the start, it's simply a chi- No, I can't do that. No, I can't do that. We can't. We can't do that. All right. Yeah. Damien says, at the start, it was just simply a case of me understanding what the big picture was. We got to build a pinball machine. And because I was having to learn everything, I was just biting off each chunk as I went. Well, I need to know how to do X. So I sat down and figured out how to do X. And then I moved on to Y. And then I moved on to Z. Zed. Zed. Oh, God. He's Australian. So that's what they would say? Yeah. They say Zed? Yeah, like everybody else in the world. I have never heard that ever until Canada. I didn't. Okay. it all seemed fairly logical in the order that I needed to go in because I couldn't flip a play field until I cut a play field and then I couldn't put code in until I had control systems so he goes from buying his first machine to I want to build a machine yep it's pretty wild to think that somebody who just joins the hobby immediately goes from buying a couple of machines to I'm going to build a machine it takes a different kind of person to jump right into homebrew doesn't it oh yeah like it's like that engineering kind of mindset that uh you know it professional nerd thing there tends yeah tends to go right that is true there are a lot of us it professional nerds who are homebrewers that is true yeah like me who's more of the the sort of the collector i love to have people over to entertain and have fun and barbecue and things like that I'm not building my own machine for my friends, right? I'm bringing them over and playing them. I'm the non-IT person. I like to have barbecue and fun and have friends and stuff, you know, unlike the IT people. That's not what I mean. That's totally what you meant. All right. Well, everybody send your hate mail to silverballchronicles at gmail.com. But I hope you know what I mean, that there's different people in the hobby that have different personalities They gravitate towards different things. And I'm sure there's plenty of IT professionals that love to have barbecue and friends. You got me on that one. Damien would then start to become plugged into the Australian pinball scene. And Australia, I guess probably a little bit like Canada, fairly vast, very different climates and spots around the country. And, you know, we have an eclectic mix of groups. There's sort of the group here in Atlantic Canada. We all kind of know each other. We're all very friendly with those from the Northeast. There's the Ontario crowd, the Quebec crowd for the tournament scenes. They tend to mix a whole lot. You get into sort of Western or Central Canada, into BC. So we all have those areas, but we all generally know each other and have heard our names and things like that. We all get along fairly well. It's the same thing in Australia. There's a lot of traveling between provinces. There's a lot of events between provinces. but some of the more popular names are those of Martin Robbins and Ryan C., formerly of Head to Head Pinball Podcast, the pinball podcast that got me into this hobby, and Dr. John from the Aussie Pinball Podcast and former streamer for the Pinball Network. Damien, while going to some tournaments and events, started to network, and he was trying to get some help to build out this company that he envisioned, Haggis, because he's gone from thinking of building homebrew to actually manufacturing pinball machines, because it must be pretty easy. Now, this is Damien from February of 2020, one month before a certain thing happened. Damien says, Martin, meaning Robbins, has been invaluable. Ryan C. as well. Ryan came over and had a flip of the whitewood before it even got to Texas Pinball Festival, made a suggestion, and we implemented that change. Yeah, so he's getting some feedback. He's bumping into a few people. Now, Texas Pinball Festival 2019 was only a few months away, and Damian was trying to gather together all of these bits and pieces to make a pinball machine and start a company and to get it to TPF. So when he's being interviewed a year later in 2022, he's talking about bumping into, I'm sorry, 2020, he's able to then sort of talk about, oh, well, I bumped into these people and asked them for some advice. This is what I call the outsider's perspective. And this is like a disease in every industry for some reason. People kind of come into an industry, car manufacturing, pinball, you know, financial services, IT, whatever you want to do. And like they think they have like a couple of good ideas. And if they can implement those good ideas, they'll be the next Tesla or they'll be the next Facebook or they'll revolutionize the industry somehow. And it's like these delusions of grandeur. I know that that sounds a bit mean, but that's that's kind of what happens is in any industry. Somebody's like, why doesn't the industry just do this? And it would just revolutionize everything. That's called the deep root method. Damien says that he's coming from a position of no real recent history in pinball. I guess I have no preconceptions about what you did or didn't do with a pinball machine. Now, a lot of people see that as the outsider's perspective, right? Like, I don't have the bias of previous pinball companies, right? Stern does everything the way Stern does because they're stuck in their ways and they're a moving large ship and they can't change. often people coming in with no major history. But then that also has a problem, right? That sometimes you don't know what you don't know. You mentioned Deep Root. Yeah, they tried to change everything. And it turns out that's expensive and probably not a good idea. Well, then you probably want to reach out for advice, right? As you'll find out in the Pinball Down Under series that we're just starting today, there are many people in Australia that have, I would say, just a vast amount of advice and knowledge. Being that you have it in front of me, I would say Wayne. And who's Wayne? See, I never know how to say his last name. It's either Wayne Gillyard or Gillyard. But I remember him from when I got into the hobby because he purchased, he bought the Williams rights. Didn't those Williams rights, weren't those purchased by Gene Cunningham? Well, that's the thing. I don't think people realize Williams still owns the stuff they let you have the rights to do stuff with them but they still retain ownership so you can have rights to multiple people so Gene had rights he had exclusive rights for 5 years and then non-exclusive rights thereafter and then Wayne came into the picture and he bought in in 2005 and I think to this day he actually, one of his screen names like Bally Pinball or something like that because he still retains some of the stuff like, for example, I bought a brand new whodunit translate from Australia because he still sells that stuff. We'll get into more about Wayne Gileard in our next episode but he advised Damien that this was a bad idea because Wayne tried to build games. He did. He tried. He had the rights and he was going to make things in Australia and ship them back over. He was going to make medieval madnesses. And he discovered that was expensive. Wayne says, It's cheaper in the long run to order parts from overseas where they're made in the U.S. Otherwise, you've got to tool up for them in Australia and spend money on tooling plus the cost of manufacturing, which is too high here. I'll give you one example. I looked at getting pinball legs made in Australia. You needed a 200-ton press to make the legs out of cold roll steel. The tool is about 40,000 Australian. If you wanted to run the legs, you had to run a minimum of 10,000 of them, and they're going to be about $10 each. Then they were going to cost about $10 Australian each to plate them. You're up for a heap of money. I could buy the legs from America from the original manufacturer for $6.50 already plated, meaning $6.50. So there he is. He's saying if you want to manufacture, you have to tool up. So tooling up is a manufacturing thing, and I'm not a manufacturer. I don't know anything about manufacturing. But what I've learned through this podcast and talking to, you know, fellows, you know, like some tool makers, like one of our cronies, Derek, is that you have to tool up. You have to be able to make the thing, and to make the thing, you have to have the tools to make the thing. And in this case, it's a 200-ton press. so it smashes the steel together makes a leg then you take the leg you get it like powder coated or plated so it doesn't rust and stuff like that and then you're done but it's going to cost you at least $20 Australian to make 10,000 legs when you could just buy them for $6.50 the economies of scale and cost is through the roof so why wouldn't you listen to somebody like Wayne Gileard. Well, Wayne is a strong personality, is he not? Oh, yes. Yes, he is. If you go to Pinside right now and you can see he's still quite the strong personality. Yes, that's right. And any interviews that he's done on podcast, he's very much, I'm sure he's a fantastic person and I would love to chat with him sometime if I ever see him at a convention, which I probably never will. I believe he's still one of the biggest distributors. Yeah, Mr. Pinball is huge. Mr. pinball Australia. But he's like, he'll tell you right where it is. He doesn't powder coat anything. He doesn't sugar coat anything. He doesn't powder coat anything. That's funny. He doesn't sugar coat anything. He tells you like it is. And he could be right. He could be wrong. But he's very confident in what he says and what he does. You remember the clear coat wars of the 2010s, right? Oh, they're still going on. You could have a whole, yeah, you could have a whole tech conversation on that, which would probably bore people. But, you know, each manufacturer, like Jersey Jack had a period where they were having clear coat issues and people were upset and Stern had clear coat issues. And I had a run of, even Spooky had a run of TNAs that had issues, which, of course, was one of the ones I had. It's like the shiny coat that goes on top of the wood and art to keep it from getting damaged and lets the ball roll around. And the other issues with that is less and less people are actually still screening the playfields anymore. They're just doing direct printing. So you start losing the clear coat, and it's taking the art off with the clear coat in ways that you've never seen before. But, I mean, playfield issues have always kind of been a problem in the entire industry forever, right? Like, you look at all those old Bally games. Those playfields are roached. They are just destroyed, a lot of them. Yeah. But the main thing is, in the 90s, Williams had the diamond plate, and everything seemed to be great. And fast forward to now, and things don't seem to be as good as they were in the 90s, and people are wondering, why is that? Yeah, I mean, that probably has something to do with chemical processing. And, you know, nowadays, you can't just smoke a cigarette and spray a bunch of, you know, this stuff on in the middle of a factory with nobody wearing masks. One of the only places that still does silkscreen for the playfields, I think, is in Germany. The ones who do it for Pedretti. So the Pinball Brother games are actually silkscreened I think for Dutch they also do it for Dutch Cool Completely unnecessary info But it was an endless endless conversation Endless. It still goes on to this day. People made content and videos and over and over on podcasts. Some podcasters made an entire career about blaming Clearcoat. Well, Damien came up with a brilliant idea. He came up with an idea. I mean, if you could stop this from happening, have an indestructible play field. So Damien says, I probably followed the same path as all the manufacturers do with typical play field construction, and we suffered the same problems that everyone's talking about at the moment, which is dimpling and pooling. We're not chipping yet, but chipping usually comes after pooling in a period of time. I wanted to resolve that, and I saw that as a big thing. I wanted to come up with a way to have that as a non-issue moving forward. I sat down and looked with some very clever people, and we've come up with a new hybrid substrate for our playfields. It's a combined plywood and acrylic top. Wow. Okay. So he comes up with this idea. You got your playfield with all the stuff on it, and then you put a thin layer of plastic on it, which has the art adhered to it. But that's going to scratch, though, right? You think it's going to get all scratchy and gross? Well, through the winter of 2019 and 2020, Haggis made a test fixture, which would roll a ball around over and over and over again, and they would bring up like some 200,000 passes on a single piece of this acrylic substrate. Without a single mark. Not a single scratch or mark over that. George Gomez has mentioned, and I don't have the source for this, but I remember distinctly making a note in my head and being like, oh. George Gomez has mentioned multiple times about hard tops or plastic playfields or some people get those, what are those called? Those playfield protectors. Overlays. Yeah, the overlays, playfield protectors that they get from Germany made of this like fancy plastic. Now he says that those are terrible, not because they don't protect the game, but because they change the behavior of the ball. that the ball's characteristics, its coefficient, the rubbing-ness against the wood of the playfield, changes. And that changes the way the game works. Do you agree with that? It does change the way the ball rolls. It's not a new thing. I mean, companies have done overlays. Gottlieb did experiments. Remember, what's the Vitagraph, Vitagraph, whatever it's called, playfields. Electra. You ever play Electra? Yes. like the entire main play field has a sheet over it. I just can't remember what it is, like plastic, whatever. It's clear. So you notice on any Electra, there's never any wear on that particular play field. But there'll be like wear in the upper play field and the lower play field. And the ball gets kind of crappier or rustier or whatever, which is what happened a lot in the 90s when everything shut down and everybody just sort of sold off their machines and they ended up in basements and nobody could buy a pinball anymore. or they just use the terrible scratched up ball. I think you can buy a pinball. I think they just didn't know. You shouldn't be playing with rusty balls. But you'd think Stern, the industry leader, would spend research dollars trying to find a better quality play field, right? The thing is, it costs money to get. I think the supply just isn't there. You can't get the wood at the durometer like the hardness of like Williams did in the 90s seemingly anymore. Or if you can, it must be so absurdly expensive. It's just not worth it. Yeah, so it's a cost-benefit thing. But then there's also like, well, why doesn't Stern just put an acrylic, you know, cover on all of their pinball machines? Well, they've done the research. They know. It's not just, you know, Gomez or Gary Stern sitting in an office being like, that extra $3 is too expensive per machine. They're going like, no, it changes the characteristics of the game. It's not pinball. Or they've done the research to try to find a better shooter. It's pinball, but it shoots different. They've got a good idea. So he's got a staff up. They do the research. They're bringing in a few people. And one of those persons is a Greg Seelby, and he was the Kelts programmer. Kelts? What's Kelts? Kelts would be their first game. But to be able to release their first game, they've got to have the staff to do it. Well, Greg said, so we're sitting in a tournament having a bit of a chat and how things were going, and he says it's going to be a tight schedule. And I mistakenly said, is there anything I can do to help? You're hired. That's it. The funny thing about pinball is that we're all very passionate. We all are very caring individuals. Even the people who are mean generally are very caring people. We want to help other people. We want to do things. And you know what? It's kind of fun. So why wouldn't I help out? And the thing to bring up about Kels, Kels does not have that new play field stuff yet. That's right. Just to not get confused about the order we went over that. So Kels was, and get this, this is written on the Internet Pinball Database. It is a world people's theme. World people's theme. World people's theme. Usually I make up silly themes for some of these games. That one is one that I did not make up. It's designed by Damian Harton, mechanics by Damian Harton. Art by Sam Greenwood, sound by Casey Dean, and the software, as mentioned, by Greg Seelby. So what's a Celt? I had no idea what that was. Yeah, so a Celt is an Irish or British person, but technically a Celt primarily refers to a person speaking a Celtic language rather than an actual ethnic group. Damien says that he is of Scottish heritage, and the game is built around a Scottish games theme. However, I don't entirely think that they're actually considered Celts, right? I have no idea. Anyway, but I get it. That's fun. It's a cool theme, I think, right? We didn't even go into what haggis means. So what is a haggis? I'm looking at it right here. It's a food. Haggis is a savory pudding containing sheep's pluck minced with chopped onion, oatmeal, something I can't pronounce, spices, and salt mixed with stock and cooked while traditionally encased in the animal's stomach. Yes. Whoa. Yeah. So, I mean, well, think about it. It's like a really thick, dense kind of sausage kind of thing. And it's a Scottish thing according to this. It is, yeah. So the name of the company and their first game was heavily going towards that Damien's Scottish heritage. It's actually haggis. You've got to say it like that. You can't just say haggis. You've got to say haggis. We're going to eat some haggis. Freedom. Oh, no, wait. That's freedom to eat things in the stomach of an animal. But there was also another couple of really neat innovations here. One of them was that it didn't have a back glass or a trans light. It actually had an 8-millimeter piece of acrylic that was affixed to magnets on the backbox. Why do you think none of the big manufacturers use a backbox with magnets and acrylic? That might be an issue. Well, to be fair, Jersey Jack actually has magnets in their backbox. They prevent the screen from coming out. Not falling out, but like when you want to pull it out on its arm. Okay. It's easier than just making a clip. Because they used to have a clip. I get way too much into that stuff. But this is the episode. This is what makes us unique from all of those other episodes. Well, Kelts, if we look at a few things here. Now, Ron, I know you and quite a few listeners who write in quite often will be disappointed. There is no flyer. For Haggis. I did play this one. However, there is a advertising card. And the advertising card basically has the art of Kelps, let the games begin on one side, and then on the other side has the actual purchasing prices in USD. Yep, and it has some unique things that I see that are on here. I remember, like you could pay extra and get yourself in the game. For an extra $1,000, you could have your clan's name added to the back glass, so your clan being your last name, Dennis or Hallet or whatever. And then it would also be a custom callout with your name in it. And if you happen to be of Scottish heritage, you could add in the game's art and in its custom code your tartan's colors. So that's a thing in Scotland and in some ways Ireland where you had a kilt and it would have a different pattern based on your family. Very, very cool. Now, for an extra $500, you could get side rails and a lockdown bar and some trim that was changed into a different color. And for an extra $250, you could have three extra 3D molded toys. I played the prototype and I played the production. because I remember they brought the prototype to, it was probably TPF, I'm guessing, and I remember playing it that the flipper buttons were in a weird spot, meaning if you put your hands in a normal position, you would put them in, and you'd reach for the flipper buttons, at least for me because I got small hands. I had trouble, like, reaching them. So I brought that up with Damien because he was there, and he said, oh, yeah, you're not the first person to mention that. So then when I played the production one, guess what? The buttons were moved in the normal position. Australians, and we'll get into this in the Pinball Down Under series, they have a difficult time with flipper buttons for some reason. That seems to be an ongoing issue for them. This is a single-level pinball machine. It's got two pop bumpers. It's got a series of drop targets. It's got three flippers. And it has a, like, iPad-looking screen in the middle of the play field. Now, why don't, you know, the major manufacturers put a screen in the play field? You're spending most of your time looking down there as opposed to up in the back. They've done that. They've totally done that. Yeah, but they've ended up, it's ended up chipping and stuff around the edges, right? Like, it's difficult to level that stuff. It depends how they do it. Okay. When I mentioned Electra before, their solution was to put the sheet of, I think it was Plexi or whatever, over the entire play field because they had the window. So they never had issues with chipping. Okay. Now, this game, it had a lot of comparisons to Bally's Silver Ball Mania. You're right. It looks just like Silver Ball Mania. And what does Damien say about that? Damien says, I've never seen Silver Ball Mania. The two initial design criteria I had when I was trying to come up with the play field, just making up as I went along, was I needed, wanted a smooth orbit. And I wanted a horseshoe because I like space invaders. Hey, Pinheads. When I'm not doing this podcast, I'm Dave, the financial advice guy. In a recent survey, we found that 70% of those polled were concerned about their retirement strategy. Canadians have a number of concerns when looking out over the next 15 years. Professional financial advice is key to helping you through a variety of challenges, ranging from inflation, market volatility, and determining how to maximize your retirement income in the safest, most effective, and tax-efficient way. Today's economy requires an experienced hand and a personalized plan. Don't take my word for it. Just listen to Nordman. I am the Nordman, and I approve of Dennis Financial's investment and insurance advice. Their opinions on vacuum point grants are great, too. If you're looking for a more human dimension to your financial advice, Dennis Financial Inc. has you covered with advisors licensed in most Canadian provinces. Contact me via email at david at dennisfinancial.net for a free rate quote and a copy of our value of advice e-book. Or check out dennisfinancial.ca. Insurance solutions provided by Dennis Financial Inc., Canadian residents only. This guy running a pinball company, startup, ready to go, has never played Bally's Silver. He had no idea what Silver Ball Mania was. That's not a bad thing, though. You think so? Yeah. I wouldn't want to play Silver Ball Mania either. It's got great art, though. Yeah, it has great art. That's about all it has. Now, I think things like the customization was smart. You're going to see, I think, more and more of that in consumer goods in general, of customization or being able to customize things. Well, how much was this game? Well, it was a steal. What was the price? It was so great. You could buy that base game. If you didn't want any of this custom stuff. for $5,250 or three easy payments of $1,750. That's pretty decent. Plus, I guess, your state tax or whatever, what they call GST in Australia or HST here in Canada. But, I mean, in general, huh? Now, at the time it was made, it was probably fairly close to Stern Pro pricing. I think at that time, Stern Pro pricing was, I want to say $6,000, right? Probably somewhere around there. It wasn't much less than a Stern Pro. It was less, slightly less, but the idea was that it was, you know, you're supporting a startup, and it was pretty great. How much work do you think it actually was to get a game from, like, nothing, entering the hobby 2018 to getting a game ready in production or ready for prototype in a year and then actually building that machine? It's got to be a lot of work. Damien says, I think even I might have slightly underestimated exactly how much work there was. It's been almost 18 months solid slog. It's predominantly seven days a week, ten hours a day, and it's been really hard most of the time. If I get my hands or my hooks into something, it's usually all or nothing. It's sort of go hard or go home type scenario, and this has been no different. I never did this to come second. That's a lot of hyperbole. So he's taken down Stern. No, he never said that. But you know what this game runs on? He said, I never did this to come second. Well, I don't – there's no way he was going to – this just runs on P3, the P-Rock. That's right. Tie-in from the previous episode. Good job. Right? So that's why when people pop in and they're like, oh, I can help out. Because, you know, that multimorphic P3 Rock platform was so helpful to lower that barrier of entry to code and get a machine running. It seems pretty wild. Well, manufacturing would start at the end of 2019 in the original factory in Cranbourne West, which is a suburb of Melbourne. Ah. In 2020, they actually began plans to move to Keysboro just slightly after they started production. Damien had realized that as he started to scale up to sell these 250 machines, building one machine was really easy. Building two was pretty good. Building 50 is insane, and you need to scale up to do that, which is what most manufacturers struggle to do. But one of the unique things with Damien was his passion and excitement that was infectious. And I have to say, I really like Damien and his, I really like the way he was, his excitement, his boyish charm. Well, he even started a YouTube channel where he would chronicle, sometimes multiple times a week, what was going on in the Haggis factory. The channel is now gone. All of the videos have disappeared. However, you can see some of the B-roll in Carrie Hardy's videos, and again, we'll mention a little bit of that later. Damien would say that it's just honest and straightforward, and people understand what the intent is and how they go about it. It's all about bringing them in. We had mentioned, and you had mentioned, that something was coming up in the spring of 2020, and that was COVID. It began to rock the world as some areas came out of the winter and into the spring, and it shut down most of the world travel and canceled all large-scale gatherings, including the NBA, baseball games, the NHL, and, not that it's on the same level as the NHL, the Texas Pinball Festival, or TPF. And Damien says, We were all massively geared up to get to TPF in 2020, which would have been sort of a back end of an 18-month to 20-month solid hard push from starting from the point of zero knowledge to get to the point where we actually had a game that we were ready to sell. And when COVID hit, it just took the wind out of everything. Basically, it just dissolved overnight. I'm joining the hobby and buying a pin bot, too. I'm building a machine and taking people's money. you gotta put it to them i think they were out of the gate doing pretty good i think i think they were getting there and then all of a sudden just a huge punch to the gut and i don't have to tell you know many people but i'm sure people will be listening to this in a hundred years and being like we're learning about pinball from these ancient people ron and david and we're learning about what it was like to live during covid but i'll tell you what it sucked and I could only imagine what it was like to be moving into a factory and doing all of those things when that situation unfolded. Damien didn't just pull up stakes, did he? He didn't just say, oh, well, we'll just sort of slow down. He continued to barrel forward, but that caused delays in production, and Haggis was greatly delayed in its shipping. Damien was well aware that he had to communicate to all of those people who had put money down for Haggis' Celts. Yes, Damien said, I don't feel like that is particularly fair to people who have supported us, bought a game. Pinball people are just the most amazing, understanding, patient people I've ever come across. And it's fantastic. And I love it. And I'm so grateful for it. I have some pretty high personal standards of my own. and part of that is wanting to deliver on these promises. I'll make you a quality game, and I'll stand behind it, and I will get it to you in a timely manner. I need to grow to do that. Otherwise, it will continue to be a slow process, and it's just difficult. So he wants to deliver, and I commend him for that, right? People have put down their deposits for these games. He wants to get them out. But by this time, Haggis was scaling up to move into a new, larger facility. So, again, part of the problem was that they're trying to build these machines, and they don't have enough staff or materials, and they have to pick away at these things. And then that means they are slow. So they were slow to begin with, which is totally normal. I mean, we haven't done a spooky episode, a spooky pinball episode just yet, but they weren't particularly fast when they started their first games either, were they? No, they didn't make many of them. Took it small and slow. And a lot of people were making the comparison that Haggis was just like Spooky. They were starting to scale up slowly, and they were doing all these things, and they had all these great ideas. But what did Damien, when did he sort of realize that stuff had to change within Haggis? Well, Damien said, I need to figure out how I make 50 of these in a month. All of a sudden you need to look into what's probably more the real nuts and bolts of manufacturing. Supply chain, cash flow, and managing all the various aspects that have all got to come together at the same time so that you can put these thousands and thousands of parts into a pinball machine and put it in a box. So, yeah, outstandingly difficult. I've got to cut cabinets. I've got to glue them together. I've got to clamp them up. I've got to get them out the door so they can get their paint. I've got to start screwing together playfields. time is really starting to become extremely precious and it's dissolving in front of me. And again, that's part of the need to expand. This is where things are kind of becoming a problem, I think. They went from one factory to another, or let's call it factory. It's a place where you're putting stuff together to a larger space where you're putting stuff together. Let's not call it a factory per se. But they increased the size by 400%. That was approximately 150 square meter facility to a 700 square meter facility. That included new equipment, CNC machines, clamps, all those things, an additional larger workforce, and they had to ensure good quality control. I don't know how big that is because it's meters. So shipping and production of Kelts kind of really began in April of 2021. which is now 12 months out from the beginning of the pandemic. This is when Damien did another interview with Pinball Profile and Jeff Teolis. So most of the comments from now on kind of come from there. I think this is where things start to kind of go wrong for Haggis, right? They want to do right by the people that they have paid, that have paid for machines, so they have to get bigger. So then they get bigger, and I think that inevitably is the downfall of the company. What are your thoughts? Well, they did get all the Celts out, as far as I know. They actually got those titles out. So that's where they delivered. Okay, they're making it. And then the big announcement. The second title was then announced, so they hadn't quite finished Celts. They had sort of more or less began shipping them. They're getting them out the door, and they're already announcing the second title. And that is licensing out a class of 1981. An epic title that everybody loves, right, Ron? Not a fan. Not a fan. And what was that game? That was the gorgeous Fathom. Fathom is probably the best if you just purchase the back glass, put it on your wall, or a play field. it's a good game. It's not great. Well, they had to get the license. So how did they get the license? Well, the current license holder of the Williams Valley stuff is Rick from Planetary Pinball, which used to be Rick at Bay Area Amusements, and then he opened up the Planetary Pinball as, like, the subsidiary that does all the licensing stuff, and then I think eventually just morphed them into one. So it's just Planetary Pinball now. Yeah. And Rick purchased these rights. A long time ago. Licensed, if you will. And he purchased those from Wayne Gileard. Well, Damien says, Rick from Planetary Pinball is the license holder for Bally Games. It was really just a process of talking with him and going through the machinations that you need to in order to make it official and get everything that you need to do. These games were made 50 years ago. Yep. they were designed on paper. And most of that paper, all those materials, were generally just thrown into a dumpster when the machine was off the line. So it's got to be really, really, really hard to actually re-engineer that game. Because you just can't buy the CAD files like you would maybe today. Well, Damien says, for a game that was released in 1981, One, there were no 3D or 2D CAD models of files and components or playfields. We literally had to sit down with an existing original play field, measure out where all the bits were, translate that over into Fusion 360. That must be some kind of software. Remodel it, redesign it, then work out where all our mechs were. We had to redesign or recreate all of the mechs for the game. Now, the other issue with this was that the play field is thicker than the original valley playfields, right? Now they have the new, they're going to be making the new playfields with the hard top on them, which they show. I remember the videos. They have videos where they're slamming it with a hammer, and it's, like, flawless. It was pretty neat. But it's adding complexity, right? Complexity is going to add cost. Because now the play field is thicker. So your normal off-the-shelf mechs that you could easily get from Pinball Life or somewhere, they're not going to fit. Well, we have to add more staff, too. We scaled up. We're making a new machine. We have to draw this stuff. We've got to make new rules because, quite frankly, nobody is playing Fathom for the rules. And this is where Martin Robbins, who we had mentioned before, one of the podcasters on Final Round Pinball Podcast as well as Head to Head Pinball Podcast. He would work with Haggis to help out with a few rules and some playfield suggestions. And eventually his simple ideas would actually turn into an offer from Damien for a full-time job. Now Martin was originally from a background in marketing. So he could also help Haggis out with its marketing and all of that stuff. So we're starting to add some, I would say, really great individuals. They would also add a fellow named Lachlan Dowd, who would go by the name Lucky, and he would work on the mechanical engineering. This brings us to Fathom Revisited. This was a big moment in pinball because finally, somebody was going to take one of those prestigious, massively loved games, and they would make it. For a new generation. No more dealing with broken guide wires and stupid, like, lamp sockets that were flaky or rusted. We're talking awesome stuff here. This is a licensed remake. It's designed by Damian Hartin, Ward Pemberton, who is the original designer of Fathom, and Martin Robbins. Mechanic by Damian Hartin and Lachlan Dowd. Art by Greg Freris and Kevin O because it the original art from Fathom Sound and music by Casey Dean and Martin Robbins And Software by Greg Seelby and Martin Robbins who designed the rule set This was super exciting because it had the Fathom 2.0 code. Huh? Yep, which we got to get into this because this goes into some of the stuff they did. Originally, this was released with the Mermaid Edition and the Classic Edition. So you could purchase two different kinds, like an LE and a standard, right? So if you got the Mermaid, only the people who got Mermaid editions would get the new 2.0 code. And they had to spend almost $9,000 U.S. Yes, so the Mermaid was, yes, like $9,000, $8,900. And the Classic was $7,360. That's still, you know, it's more than a Stern Pro now. Oh, yeah. And it's about a little bit more than a Stern. At this time, it was about the same as a Stern LE. But you got some cool things that you didn't get in a Stern LE. The different rule package you mentioned, you know, more call-outs in music because of that enhanced code. Fancier LED lighting. Everything, every light was an RGB LED, so it could color change to anything. It had beautiful mirrored trim. the seven-segment displays on the back, so it had the regular back glass with regular number displays, but it also had two smaller LCD screens in the apron, which I thought was a really brilliant way to manage new technology and old technology. Now, you've seen underneath one of these fathoms, have you not? Briefly. Everything under there is super shiny and mega fancy, isn't it? Yes. It looks awesome. It has light under the game, so it looks like you're in water. It's pretty cool. So expensive to make your mechs shiny and make under your play field look stunningly gorgeous. Why would you do that? Well, the other interesting thing is, as part of their deal with Rick at Planetary Pinball, they have to present him with a prototype to get his final approval. You've got to sign off on it as part of the deal. I believe they started taking money in something like April, but they didn't actually provide the game to Rick until December. Huh, that's interesting. Now, this is, if I note my sources, this was from the pinball news, and supposedly this was a former Haggis employee that said this. So when they were showing the game at various parts, it was never really playable. Okay. It was a box of lights until December before they got it working. But it's interesting, if that is the case, that you would be taking money when you don't have a working game yet. And one of the other things about this game is no longer running the P-Rock board, because also part of the licensing deal with Rick, Rick insists on fast boards. So who is Fast? Fast Pinball was founded in 2014 by Aaron Davis and Dave Beecher. Okay, so there are these Seattle fellows along with Eli Kurtz on software and Brian Madden on the documentation. This is a new company or a newer company that has sort of grown into pinball and is selling board sets and kits to startup manufacturers, but also they've got two platforms, like a modern platform for new machines and startups and homebrews, and then they've also got their retro platform that they're working on, System 11, WPC, and WPC95, right? Fast has a bit of a working relationship with Planetary Pinball or RIC in one way or another, and to make sure that we're not constantly having new machines with different boards all the time and you'll be able to continue to work on them. A third-party company, that being Fast, is designing the boards. And still are to this day. I think the new, was it Funhaus? Yeah, from Pedretti, the new Funhaus, that is running on Fast boards. So, okay, that's a good idea, right? What is Bruce Nightingale, your other co-host on the Slamtail podcast, what does he think of Fast? I can't remember. Does he hate them? He hates most things. Which basically makes me think they're probably a pretty good company. I haven't heard anything about their board sets having issues. No, I'm kind of excited. I haven't seen the board sets, but I am excited that it's fairly open source-y. It's very modern in the way it does things, so I'm very excited to see it. Very much interested. it. Now, the Fathom 2.0 code on these boards, it is the daughter of the original diver from the 1981 Valley game who's eaten by those sirens or whatever, the mermins or the merladies. And she goes back to the lagoon to look for her father, why he went missing. There's like a whole story. There's like a comic. It's pretty cool. Pretty cool concept. All right. So you had mentioned people putting money in to buy these games. So, originally, if you had purchased a Haggis clan membership, which was, if you were part of the Haggis clan, you had purchased the first game, Celts, you were given sort of this special membership where you could get ahead of the line to purchase any other subsequent haggis pinball game this is very similar to what spooky pinball did that if you bought you know america's most haunted you could get to the front of the line to buy a rob zombie and if you bought a rob zombie you could get ahead of the line to buy yeah what the heck was the next one oh uh alice cooper's maybe yeah they did away with that eventually, I believe. Right. So the problem that Spooky had discovered that as people started buying these games, it was more difficult to manage who's at the front of the line, right? And who continues to be. And if somebody, you know, can't pay for their game, you know, this month, and maybe they got to wait an extra month, are they off the list? Are they on the list? Became a whole thing. So Spooky created the Bloodsuckers Club. Which I'm a member. You are a member. So It's like a fan club thing. Every year you get some crap in the mail, right? You get first dibs. So it's just easier that everybody is now on the same play field, right? It doesn't matter who, well, everybody who purchases the Bloodsuckers membership or Bloodsuckers club. Haggis also realized that, ooh, it's going to be difficult to manage these Haggis clan members, but they can go first so that they can put down their deposits first. But then we're also going to create what is called a series people. Yeah, they were supposed to do five of these Bally games. I think it was five. So they had sort of penned a deal to do five of these original Bally remakes. So some of those games are like 8-Ball Deluxe, Centaur. Right? Yeah, those were, everyone figured it's going to be, they're going to do Centaur and Eightball Deluxe. But everyone was like, what are the other two going to be? I always wondered that, if they knew which ones they were going to do, if anyone knows that. So you had to commit a deposit for all four or five of these titles up front. You had to put a deposit down for all of these titles to then secure your spot as a Bally series member. And I know someone who did that, and they had one of the first, like, ten fathoms. He's also doing a lot of these videos still, right? A ton of videos. But he had taken a break for, oh, you know, like a four- or five-month period. So once they started kind of into full-swing production, like, Damien just didn't hire a bunch of people. Like, he was working in the factory. Martin Robbins was coming in, and he was working in the factory. Martin Robbins, who's, like, doing rules and some marketing, Like, he was, like, screwing stuff together, like, in manufacturing, which is not really what he was hired for. But you're helping, you know, your buddy out, and you're passionate about pinball. Well, production was scheduled to begin in 2021, in July of 2021. And then the next pin in the series was to be scheduled for release in early 2022. What about the videos? What does Damien say? Well, I'll tell you what Damien said. He said, I will be getting back in front of the camera. It sort of dropped off for a while, and I haven't been able to make any videos or do any updates. I will get back to that. It's just been a very crazy period through COVID and off the back end of COVID. It's been crazy. Okay, so he's busy. He's a busy guy, right? So the transparency that was celebrated, the excitement, his passion when he was building like 50 machines is sort of waning because he's just so frigging busy. I watched most of his videos. I mean, he had videos of the new factory and all the issues they had. His CNC machine would break the tip off of the thing. Someone, what, someone ran into our gate outside or something. There was like every conceivable bad thing that seemingly would happen. So the deposit model, that is something that happens in pinball a lot. Yes, it does. And you have to have a lot of money to build stuff in pinball. He's not ignorant to the fact that he needs this money to continue to run his business. Spooky does it to this day. Spooky still does it. Well, Damien says, $1,500 Australian deposit. It's a non-refundable deposit. In a similar way that Spooky works. Oh, he brought up Spooky. We are still a small company. We rely on that deposit money to start making your game for you. You need to treat that as a commitment to us. The same way we commit to making sure we get you a game that meets all of your expectations. If you want to be a series ticket holder, you need to put down $1,500 deposit for each of those subsequent four titles. And that money gets put into escrow. So if for some reason, you know, whatever happens, then you get all that deposit money back. That didn't happen. He did not. None of that money was put into escrow, as it turns out. He's putting, you know, $1,500 deposit. You know, you give me $1,500, you know, I'm buying some maps and things. That's because he says $1,500 Australian. What's that in America? It's probably like $1,000. I have to get a converter here. One Australian dollar equals points. Yeah, 68 cents. I mean, the idea is you give me this $7,000, and I put it in escrow. And escrow is a middle person where you put your money in. So if something happens, that money gets returned to you. And that happens a lot in like buying classic cars online or buying watches. I know Dennis from the Eclectic Gamer's podcast has mentioned, you know, buying watches online, and then when the watch arrives, then the money gets released to the person who sold you the watch. Those things. You make sure things are legit. That's a pretty good strategy. That makes you feel pretty darn good, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. COVID-19 was, quote, unquote, over in 2020. Oh, no, not really. Right. Most people figured things would eventually relax and go back to normal in 2021. It did not. That was the thing. So 2021, you're still dealing with supply chain issues in 2021. We sort of figured a few months, 2020, we'd be fine. Things would go back to normal. Well, inflation, the cost of goods, food, materials, manufacturing, went up in cost. And it started to kind of be what we called transient inflation, which basically meant is eventually it would work its way out of the system and things would be normal. Well, in the spring of 2022, when the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine, inflation really took off because that sent the cost of oil, the cost of wheat, of soy through the roof. and then that meant the cost of food went up, the cost of manufacturing went up, the cost of gasoline, all of that went through the roof and inflation hit a 40-year high. And in fact, today in 2024, supply chain issues are still messed up from 2020. it's still really difficult to buy cars in North America because lots still tend to be empty. Do you want an example of how some of those costs went up, Ron? Sure. Let's do an example. So the cost of shipping containers, this was in the financial industry of which I worked, was a huge topic through 2021 and 2022. Now, you have to ship stuff from Australia to North America, and there is no bridge. Am I correct? Yeah, there's no bridge, no. You can fly, but that seems kind of expensive for a pinball machine, right? So you buy a shipping container, you fill it with a bunch of pins, and you ship it to North America. Well, the cost of shipping containers went through the roof, And it was super difficult to even get those containers moving once they were on a ship. In fact, the Chinese electric car manufacturers, BYD, made their own ships to move their own materials around the world because it was cheaper than actually buying and using shipping containers. Well, remember Wayne? Wayne, Mr. Pinball Australian? Yeah. He says, sitting on the dock or a holding yard. U.S. Customs has been picking containers at random for unpacking inspections on export, which I've never come across before. They use third-party companies, and they charge whatever it is they want to charge, sometimes 5,000 Australian. So we're running into some serious problems here trying to get materials around the world. And Haggis, they're trying to manufacture. Well, I remember one time Marty on an episode of the Final Round Pinball podcast, which I can't recall what episode it was. He was talking to Jeff and he just sort of offhandedly mentioned that they were having issues even in 2022 about getting cardboard for shipping boxes. That they couldn't find cardboard for shipping boxes. That's how screwed up supply chains were and in some cases still is. but during the COVID period, governments stepped up around the world to support companies. And the Australian government provided a great deal of subsidies to business to help keep them running from COVID and the post-COVID era to avoid shutdowns and to keep pushing through the turmoil. But what about manufacturing material costs? Well, for that, we'll go back to Wayne. Wayne says, pinball legs, for example, used to cost them 60 cents a pound for the raw materials. A pinball leg uses 3.2 pounds of material, including the scrap. And now it's like $1.80 a pound. So it's three times the price. That's just the raw material cost. On top of that, the company that plates them has gone up. And the trucking companies that take them to the player have gone up. The cost of building these games now has gone up about 30%. To get people their Kelts games, we've scaled up our factory. We've added more. We've all we've been you know, we're struggling through covid. We're yes, we're getting some government supports which are helping us in the cost of our factories. But now the cost of everything have gone up as well because of the inflation through 2022. too. Then we start running into quality control issues for a lot of these fathoms that are finally being shipped. Missing parts like leg levelers or power cables, right? Mixed match parts like some of the bolts for the head unit or the bolts for the legs or different sizes or metric or not metric, and then the terrible playfield delamination. Which is a more recent thing that that's come up. Yes. So the playfield delamination, so we created an indestructible, non-scratching, perfect playfield. So the playfields that have this wood, and then they've got the plastic top or the acrylic top that's non-scratchable and easily, you know, manufactured and stuck on, the glue is letting go and is separating from the wood. Now, a lot of that is coming from the fact that these pinball machines sat in a container for months to get to North America. In 100 degree heat. In a non-temperature controlled 20 foot shipping container. And then it sat on a dock forever. And then it made its way into, let's say, somebody's home. and then the temperature changed again, well, gee whiz, maybe George Gomez was on to something. Maybe the industry expert around manufacturing pinball machines understands something about manufacturing pinball machines. The interesting thing is the person I know that they paid a deposit on all five and they got one of the first fathoms, he also had it flown over instead of waiting. Yeah, so he had it super early. So there you go. So he would probably avoid some sort of situation like that. Now, there's videos of this online. Cary Hardy touches this on his thing, but I've also seen the postings on his thing. He touches this? He touches on it. You might want to read to that. So we're starting production. Things are getting out there. But now we're announcing the third title. This is a story I've heard before. What, trying to get deposit money for the next title when you haven't finished the first title? So, yeah, you've basically, you're on the tail end of finishing Kelts. You've just started and are shipping out your fathoms, and you're already on taking deposit money for the third game. There's been a lot of these situations in pinball, and it's quite frustrating as somebody who's only been around for five years that people keep stepping on these rakes. We covered this constantly announcing new titles to get more money, back when we talked about John Papadiuk and the whole situation that he had, right? But they did pick the best title to announce for the third title, right? Yes. Yes, I agree. And that would be Centaur. Centaur, the Beast Edition and the Oblivion Edition. Aha. One thing we didn't talk about, the other thing they did with Fathom is, Remember before we said how the Classic Edition, you didn't get the new 2.0 code. Ah, okay, yes. Well, I think it was in 2022? Yeah, they were at TPF, and so many people liked the 2.0 code, but then they were told, well, you can't get them because they were already sold out of the Mermaid Editions. Yeah, the fancy LE. So they made the decision to sell kits to let you make your classic be able to run the 2.0 code. And that pissed some people off who, you know, who had the Mermaid Edition and thought there was this exclusive 2.0 code that I paid extra for. And now these classic people, the people who got the classic, they can get a kit and get the 2.0 code also. But isn't this like the same thing where Stern like releases a topper with like a code? Oh, it totally is. It totally is. And then eventually they just released the code to everybody anyway. Totally is. But in this case, they obviously were doing it to try to get more money because they needed money. As I mentioned before, I think the problem started when they scaled up. And then things just compound quickly. And exactly the same story during the Papaduke thing, right, is that it just starts escalating and snowballing. And you want to do the right thing. You want to get people their games. and if only you had another $10,000 you could get through another month and then a dozen more people would get their games and you would have more money again to keep going. But then it compounds and compounds and compounds. Well, how much would these new versions cost of Centaur? You remember what the other ones costed? It was like $7,000 and then $9,000 or whatever it was for the Fathoms. so the Beast Edition is now priced at $15,000 Australian and limited to 250 units. And the Oblivion Edition, that was listed at, I hope you're sitting down, $25,000 Australian, which is about 20 grand U.S., and that's limited to 50 units. This is Gene Simmons from KISS. I would like you to join the Patreon of Silver Ball Chronicles. Becoming a pro crony is the perfect way to say thanks, and it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Want to be as cool as Kiss? Interested in having your comments and questions take priority in our episodes? Jump up to a $6 a month premium crony. And then go to Kiss Online. Stop that. We're not going to Kiss Online. Just finish up the damn list. Want all the other perks and a shirt after three months? Join us at $20 a month as an Ellie Lutis Crony. Maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballswag.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Then afterwards, you can swing on over to gistonline.com. Now, from my perspective, that was the big red flag that popped up for me. You're like, huh, what's going on there? The fact that they were still doing fathoms that they weren't done with. Or even a quarter of the way through. They announced this, and the price is so much more than the first one. Now, do you think they maybe just priced everything too low because of the cost? That is a possibility, but when it's this much higher? Like double? Yeah, all kinds of things go off. Like, do you guys know how to price your own stuff, or are you hurting so bad that you need this money? And obviously the fact that you've come out with this when you still haven't finished the previous one. So this was announced in 2023, and it was supposed to originally be launched in 2022. So we're already behind by a year and a little bit more, and we've escalated the cost. Now, granted, inflation is a thing, right? Stern machines are more expensive now than they were. Actually, Stern prices have not changed in two years. The crazy thing about the oblivion position. Oh, yeah, you've got more than just the game. It was limited to only 50. You got a crazy huge topper with like an acrylic thing and a bunch of lights about what thing you're getting. You've got, and I would say probably the most controversial thing about this pinball machine, is that the play field went from being black and white, which is the allure of Centaur, to being a colored edition play field. If you wanted. If you wanted. That was a choice. I remember when everyone was so up in arms about that, when it was literally a choice. You could pick either one. But how about this? So you get the $25,000 Centaur Revisited. The beast is reborn. You get custom call-outs. You get an additional multiball, inner cabinet art blades, etched mirror side rails, black pinballs, black orb 1-2-3 targets. Okay, that seems kind of, you know, that seems cool, right? That's pretty standard, but get this, Ron. You get a physical vinyl of the new soundtrack, which I believe was done by Martin Robbins. You get airbrushed motorcycle helmet and leather jacket. And a signed and numbered revisited comic poster. Airbrushed motorcycle helmet, that's weird. Well, he is a motorcycle. He's half man, half motorcycle. All right, he's not wearing a jacket. But, okay, that's weird. Now, the Beast Edition, it was still very expensive, and it had, you know, the mirrored back glass and all that stuff. But, man, I'm all into airbrushed motorcycle. Do you think anybody got an airbrushed motorcycle? I do not think so. That would be really cool, wouldn't it, if somebody had one of those leather jackets? Now, these only have unreleased prototypes, right? I don't think anybody's actually got an actual this game. It was at this year's Texas Pinball Festival, I think in Cointaker's booth. Yes. I think they had one. I saw it. I didn't actually get to play it. Okay. Okay. And I know that also I think Kerry Hardy did an unboxing as well, I think, at one point. That might have been at TPF, actually. Yeah, I think it was that one. Yeah. There's also another one that's in Canada at Nitro Pinball. Nitro Pinball has one of these. Ah. and it was promotional kind of thing as well, and it was ready to go. And since the whole thing, and we'll get into that in a minute, apparently he was given one as payment for the fact that he ran into some costs for his clients and customers. But we're getting into an issue here through the end of 2023. So we make this announcement, we take this deposit money, and then all of a sudden there's a lot of missing communication with Damien between dealers and clients or customers, if you will. There's little to no communication. He's not replying to emails. No more videos. There's issues. So some of these people are running into these issues of their playfields, right? And they're getting some communication from Damien. He's understanding. He's mentioning that to be able to send a play field, You just can't send a playfield and swap the mechs out. They have to send a populated playfield. And they have to engineer a box to send it over to North America in which seems like a bit silly I pretty sure I could engineer a box to ship a playfield in in probably 30 or 40 minutes and two or six Mulsons You know what I mean? Like, come on. Because you're Canadian. I get it. You don't hear anything, really, through the end of 23, the beginning of 24. And then in February, we get the infamous recapitalization statement. This was literally the final communication ever sent out by Haggis. I'll read this. Are you ready? This is very lengthy. Warning, warning. I hope this message finds you well. I'm reaching out to share some important updates about Haggis Pinball and the status of your game order. Well, that's pretty good. I'm happy to hear that. As I'm sure you have heard once or twice before, manufacturing pinball machines is hard. Yes. It is a multi-disciplined, multi-faceted endeavor, incorporating a wide and varied number of components and skills. Starting this endeavor from my garage in Australia at the onset of a global pandemic has proved to be extremely difficult. Yeah. While we have been incredibly proud of the quality of the games we have produced and the innovation and creation of an industry that did not exist in this country, our throughput and ability to manufacture games in a timely manner has been our shortcoming. Yeah, that I think is an understatement. Over the last two and a half years, we have produced three different titles and developed an immense capability, setting us up for ongoing future success. Our manufacturing methodology is based on a just-in-time and lean principles, which I believe is the optimum strategy. So what does that mean, Dave? So just-in-time means that, like, materials come in the door just in time to manufacture the thing and get it out. And lean principles are like you don't have a lot of stock of stuff, right? Okay. Damien continues. However, this model has been a very tight coupling and dependency on supply chain continuity and efficiencies. Any interruptions to the supply chain, of which we have faced many, have a flow-on effect that decreases our throughput and introduces online delays and backlogs. I could have told you that. Could have told you that. Can you say that in more of a, make that more English? Like, what did that mean? We're having a hard time building things because our supply chains are screwed, and we're not building enough machines fast enough. Okay. He continues. As we wind down the end of Fathom Revisited production and swing into Centaur Revisited, we have made the decision to adjust our manufacturing methodology to move away from such a tight dependency on the supply chain to support our forecasted throughput better. To support this change, we will need to further slow down production activities, recapitalize, and refocus our procurement strategies and partner offerings. That's a sense. What does that mean? That's the thing. It sounds like we have to build games slower and we need more money. And recapitalize. That sounds like they need money. That's the one word that really concerned me when this came out. Recapitalize. That's not just like we need more money. That sounds like a thing. That was the moment, this statement and that word was the moment I kind of thought they were screwed. So this is when people started frigging jumping ship. People started really freaking out that had money in this. Well, before you jump ship, let's listen to the rest of my statement. In the short term, what this will mean for those of you currently waiting on a game from us is that there will be further delays. Of this, I am incredibly sorry. Your patience and support, and the broader community's patience and support, has been tremendous and incredibly important to me and Haggis Pinball as a whole. We would not be able to do what we do without it. So it makes it even harder for me to deliver this news of further delays. However, I believe that for the ongoing continuous success of the company, it is something we need to address now, rather than repeat the experiences we had over the production lifecycle of Fathom Revisited. Now, remember, at the time this came out, Fathers was not even done. He says winding down production. It's not even done. People are still waiting for Fathers. We don't know how many of all of these games they actually ended up producing. I would love to know. Well, just to clarify, we are still manufacturing, boxing, and shipping games. That has not changed. So, yes, once again, I will ask for your patience and support while we pivot and refocus. I hate that word, pivot. Everyone uses that. That is the most marketing thing, too. It's the new synergy word. Right, yes. While we pivot and refocus to improve our ability to build the highest quality games in the world, thank you for being a part of our journey. We value your trust and support immensely. Kind regards, Damien. Yikes. And that is the last statement that Haggis would ever make. In fact, after this, sort of the pinball media or the hobbyist media in pinball, which I would probably include ourselves in, basically started like warning, danger, danger. Starks are circling here, right? Like that is not good. We're going full alien. Game over, man. Game over. If they're not going to do just in time and they're going to start to stock materials to build games, they need money to buy stuff. So that's what I assume they need to recapitalize for. But if your company has been so struggling for all these years, because in my opinion, you probably scaled up too quickly, you know, it's pretty rough. Now, another parallel that people often talk about, besides spooky, was Dutch Pinball. So what kind of happened with Dutch Pinball? Just sum it up. They had more stuff going on. The company that actually manufactured their games was separate from them, and they had issues, and then they just dropped. They bowed out of making their games. Then they lied a lot. But they ended up making everybody whole, right? It's like this weird. By doing the whole deal where we'll sell, for every three or four, whatever it was, new games we sell, we'll make one for one of the original people who ordered a game. And people waited like eight years. No, no, no. Ten years. It was almost a full decade. So because of this one silly fluke of a company, Dutch Pinball, everybody kind of assumes that everybody will be made whole if you just have hope. And I find that kind of sad. Especially with Deep Root. Deep Root is in the middle. They're in between all this. And same exact thing happened. We'll get a Deep Root episode. Don't worry, folks. We'll get there. I keep thinking we already did one. Well, mid-July 2024, the company finally folds, and the media, the social media goes offline. Everything went offline. Everything is gone. It has disappeared. It is the Houdini of pinball manufacturing. This started a feeding frenzy in the hobbyist media. and I would say it is an absolute s*** storm after this because everybody wants to get out there and make some content to make some of that internet money off of the back of a collapsed company and the people that were inevitably screwed. And that includes us. Right? Like, we're not doing the Gottlieb episodes that I've got ready and I delayed releasing this episode by almost three weeks because I wanted to make an episode about Haggis Pinball. Yes. For those at home, David Dennis picks what we talk about. So he's the one who's doing this on the backs of the poor people who lost all the money with Haggis. Exactly. Cary Hardy has released an Unboxing the Truth YouTube series. Have you seen that? I have not seen that. It's actually quite entertaining. Hats off to Cary Hardy. He's great for the hobby. But I'll tell you, there's some factual errors in that YouTube series. Well, we'll get into that in a minute. It's good. But he had to get that content out because he needed to get some of that YouTube ad revenue money. Some of the other media started posting articles about timelines, right, when the company started, when the trouble started. You know, when did it start circling the toilet bowl, like all of that stuff. And then going back and looking at it through the lens of, you know, 2020 vision and roasting poor Martin Robbins, who I think has just taken a terrible, terrible hit to his own mental health. I've never talked, I haven't talked about this with Martin. He would not give me any comments. He would not talk to me about it. So I just want to be very transparent about that. But I can tell you that because of the harassment that he's received for clearly just being an employee, which Damien hired, he is like gone from pinball, I would say. Which I find pretty sad that somebody who has been so integral to the hobby has now been blacklisted simply because he worked for somebody that screwed people. I'm a bit upset. The other thing is, people who gave their money to a company, some have taken responsibility for their own stupid decisions. Other people have not, and I find that pretty upsetting as well. It was your decision to Google a company in Australia and give them $7,000, and they've never actually manufactured any games. What's wrong with Stern? What's wrong with JJP? You know what I mean? Take some personal responsibility. Am I crazy? Oh, you're definitely crazy. Am I taking sides? Am I being a shill? What's going on here? I would not buy – how can I say this? I don't buy from outside the U.S. Like ever? I just – I don't – that's why I love Alien. I could not buy an Alien from Pinball Bros. I just can't do it. It's because you hate Italian people. I am Italian, you fool. But like Australia, I just think from – see, for me, I'm thinking from a tech standpoint. This thing breaks. How do I get it fixed? Where am I getting parts from? Do they have custom parts? How is this going to work? How hard is it going to get to get support? If I get it from a... If at least I get a company in the U.S., I have a little better chance of that occurring. If you have a fathom now with the special parts, all the custom stuff in that game, the fast port is probably the most standardized thing in the game. Thank goodness. But as far as all the other parts, if it starts breaking, the play field starts delaminating, you're screwed. Yeah. And that stuff scares me. And you just can't screw in a CPR fathom play field. I like to wait until the company's around a little bit and proves they can make something. Or you can go to a distributor and just get a machine in a box. Right? Like there's something to be said. Just let other people take the hit. I'm going to sit back here and wait. It's like, okay, Jersey Jack, you made Wizard of Oz. You made, okay, okay, you're making games. Okay, I'll get dialed in. I trust that I will actually get this game. You know, Spooky, you've made some games now. You're actually making games. Okay, I'll get TNA. See, that's kind of my Ryan Policky. I'm not like, this brand-new company has this. They're like, ugh. Even something like a company that really seems to have it together, other than the crazy name, Barrels of Fun. I mean, they had stuff in the box. So, like, you pay your money, here's your game. Like, right now, boom, here it is. Like, wow. Wow, what a concept. But still, I'm going to wait. Totally. I totally, totally agree. Unless their first game is Beavis and Butthead, in which case all that goes out the window and I'd have to do it. But that's the only exception. The other thing was the media sort of accusations and misunderstandings about how businesses work as well. I find like all of us are experts in our own sort of field. Some of us are manufacturers. Some of us are IT professionals. Some of us are accountants. Some of us are business professionals. Some of us are mechanics or hands-on people or construction people. Like, pinball is such an awesome mixture of this mosaic of all of these different people from different walks of life. But if you're trying to get content out there really quickly, sometimes that means that you have some gaps in knowledge of which you may not have. One of the problems is there's a company called Hearts Co. And we had touched on that a moment ago when the episode began. And Hart's Co. is a company that is owned by Damien. Word on the street is that a bunch of trucks showed up or a truck showed up that was part of Hart's Co. or was in a roundabout way is a Hart's Co. truck or was rented by Hart's Co. or is Damien's pickup truck. There are pictures. There are pictures. So they unloaded a bunch of the stuff out of the factory just before the liquidation or what you call in North America bankruptcy of the company. Because he was leasing the building. He did not own the building. Right. So here's the thing. People are up in arms assuming that Damien and his company have stolen stuff out of this building and hidden it somewhere, which I find a bit ridiculous. That's a possibility. But here's the thing. Businesses are structured in a way to take advantage of tax code and accounting practices. So some of the commentaries that people have had, Wayne included, have, I think, have a misunderstanding of how businesses work. So in Canada, I don't know how it works in Australia or in the U.S., but we have things called operating companies, which are like Dave's Pinball Company, and a holding company, which might be Dave's Co. And that's to avoid things like legal liability, company manufacturing, take advantages of tax codes. There's nothing wrong. There's nothing illegal of any of that stuff. In the U.S., you have these things called LLCs, right? That's kind of the same thing. So Hertz Co. is kind of like an LLC, I guess. The understanding is that Hertz Co., that company, was leasing materials to Haggis Pinball. So now that Haggis Pinball is going bankrupt, Hertz Co. is now repossessing the materials and the machinery that it had been leasing to Haggis. Now, they're both owned by Damien. So that seems pretty sketchy, does it not? A lot of people do this, though. So if Dave Pinball needs a CNC machine, maybe I can get a government loan or a bank loan to help me buy the CNC machine. Or maybe the company that I have, my own private company, Daveco, maybe it's got a bunch of money. And I can buy that machine and then I can lease it to Dave Pinball. So there's like, there's nothing sketchy about that whatsoever. ever. The other comment that people have been making is that Damien didn't put any of his own money into Haggis Pinball, which is categorically incorrect. In fact, there is a creditor list that was listed in NAP Arcade. Have you seen this thing? Yes, I've seen it. That does not clear Damien, and it does not clear Haggis Pinball for taking deposit money to fund someone else's machine being built. That is categorically wrong. Damien will get his comeuppance, okay? Don't you worry. Either that's karma or lost sleep or a heart attack or something. He'll get his comeuppance. And he's basically running a Ponzi scheme, right? So I need Ron's money so I can build Dave's pinball machine. That is literally what he was doing, trying to tie in other companies and and stealing materials out of a building and all that stuff. That is just weird conspiracy series stuff that I don't think has anything to do with it. He was just over his head. He was over his head, and he really wanted to make the games, and he just got, what is it, robbing Peter to pay Paul? I never remember that. Exactly. That's right. And it just kept getting worse and worse, and when he should have just cut it off early and just tried to finish up, get people their money back maybe, but he kept trying to go and go. Oh, well, I can't build enough machines. I need to build a bigger facility in the middle of a frigging pandemic. He goes all out. I mean, when he's into something, he's in it, and I'm sure he thought he could get through this, but he could not. So if we're looking at the creditors list here, these are in, I think it's USD, but it's listed as Australian dollars. one of the people listed here is Hart's Co so that holding company or whatever they call that in Australia that company is owed $388,000 Damian Hartin is listed for $621,000 Damien's out like a million dollars apparently he deserves no sympathy, trust me no sympathy, the guy doesn't deserve any sympathy for his poor business practices However, to say that he is not owed and he didn't put any of his own money in there is categorically wrong. The one that blows my mind here, Ron, are the next two on the list. Okay? Distributors and individuals. Yeah, distributors, three in total, which I believe was, who was it? It was Flip N Out Pinball, Nitro, and the one in Europe. I'm sorry, the one in Europe. We didn't have your name, but I know Flip N Out Pinball said it was around, for them, it was around $61,000 they had to refund. $61,000 U.S., which is a lot of money, Ron. It's painful, but, man, it's good marketing for his distributorship. I would totally just plug the hell out of that forever. I would say I am friends with Zach. I'm good friends with Zach. I'm shocked that he did that. Even after what he said about our bingo episode? Here's the one that scares the crap out of me. There are 86 individuals who I believe dealt directly with Haggis, and they are owed $846,000. So those are your actual people who bought games, I would assume, who paid probably in full. Paid deposits. That breaks my heart. 86 more games they had to make. So when you look at it, you're like, 86 games is not that many. For them, I mean, for Stern, it's probably a couple of weeks. A week? I mean, it's probably pretty quick. But it's crushing, right? If you can't get pinball legs, you can't ship them out. He owes his employees $37,000. Excluding game. I like planetary pinball, $56,000. Which would be the licensing fee. Licensing fee per game that maybe they actually sold. But here's the thing. He owes his employees $37,000. I don't know for sure. It's quite possible that employees either gave him money or are owed wages. one of those people is poor Martin Robbins who has been crucified for being an employee. It's terrible. In his case, it's interesting just because with Deep Root, there are certain people in the exact same boat that have not been crucified at all. Who've actually been welcomed in. And they're now working for other pinball companies. You know what I mean? It is interesting. I think they almost treat it like they were best buddies or something. Yeah. It's very interesting. And, again, it's all speculation on my point. I've not talked to Martin. Yeah, we don't know. We don't know if he was a partner or whatever. No clue. But it's just interesting. People are treated very differently. Now, there's a couple other things on the list here. A business loan for business fuel. That's likely like a local community helping small companies. the Commonwealth Bank of Australia is owed $100,000. How about the credit card? Wow, running up a big credit card bill. $57,000. So that's an American Express, right? So an American Express is supposed to be paid off in full every month, or the cost of that is through the roof. He owed $153,000 in back taxes. That would probably be like payroll taxes or I would say some sort of like income tax. what do they call that in the U.S.? Like Social Security? He didn't even pay his landscaper. He owed him $55. $55 for his landscaper. For a damn lawn. There's a lot of people out of a lot of money here. Businesses go bankrupt all the time, mostly from poor corporate management, and that's exactly what has happened here. A terrible situation, but please, this is the second cautionary tale of startup pinball machine companies. It's a third or fourth. Are you kidding? You have. But it's the one that we've covered here. You have, I mean, you have Haggis. You have Deep Root, which we'll probably cover eventually. You have, like. Dutch. Skit B. What was the Papaduke one? Zidware. There's so many. So, please, just listen to us here. Did I go off too hard at the end there? Well, I'm sure our listeners will tell you if they think you did. But let's hear from Damien again. This was from the April of 2021. When I brought that pin bot home, I said, I can make one of these. I was a hobby woodworker. I can make a cabinet. You sort of start down that path. And then I need some electronics. I can buy a control system, but I still got to wire it up. I love wiring, and I can solder. Every little leaf you turn over, it's a whole new world of challenges. It just goes on and on and on, and it just never stops. The next time you hear somebody make a comment like that when they're starting a pinball company, that's a red flag. Well, in an interview in July 2023, it's probably one of the last interviews, I would assume, with Damien. Yeah, this is with a Kerry Hardy on YouTube. He says, so already we know there's issues with the company. I wasn't even really cognizant of the fact that there had been this litany of failed pinball companies prior to me. Yikes. I would say a good rule of thumb with these comments, being that he was a newbie getting into this, if you're going to have a start a pinball company, you've got to at least have some veterans in it, some people who have done this. Yeah, and somebody with a boatload of money. That always helps. Somebody with manufacturing experience, a billionaire. It's a lot of fun. You have multiple people from Spooky who made games, including the one owner. I think he worked in the film industry so like licensing he's getting killer licenses I think the other guy I think he's got a good amount of money I think they're doing good with the money they got the money, they got the experience they have people already made multiple games there so that's kind of if you have a startup that's what I would think you're looking for but then you could argue what about Spooky they were just from the ground up they never made games before so I like a modern spooky I probably would never buy any of this stuff unless they made a couple games first to prove they could do it which spooky did now they like every time they announce a new game which should be soon like they don't necessarily spell out depending on the theme but they're doing good for themselves so it is possible but just uh tread lightly and be cautious Just tread lightly. Take your time. It's like for every successful one, there's like three failed ones. You go with that. As always, you can send your comments, questions, corrections, and concerns to sustainablecriticals at gmail.com. We look forward to all your messages, and we read every one. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcatcher. Turn on automatic downloads so you don't miss a single episode. Remember to leave us a five-star review. That way more people can find us. Join us on Patreon to support the show. Did you know being a pro-crony is the perfect way to say thanks? And it starts at $3 a month. Want to get early access to episodes before everyone else? Have a strange love for stickers? Do you know what Discord is? jump on for as little as $6 a month and become a premium crony. But do you want all the other perks and a t-shirt after three months? Then join us at $20 a month and be an elitist crony for three months. Or you get that shirt. Or maybe you just want a shirt. I understand. Swing on over to silverballsway.com and pick up a Silver Ball Chronicles t-shirt. Especially the ones that have Ron's name first. They're my favorite. Yeah, man. You're like the only Canadian I know. So Damien Harten He joined the pinball hobby in 2008 When he bought his first pinball machine Oh, 2018 And you spelled his name wrong Harten? No, Damien, it's with an A Oh, is it Damien? Yeah At least when I looked it up Because I wasn't sure either But then in other parts of the earth You have it correct Oh, okay, weird if you want to be a serious ticket holder oh siri yes serious the series okay well all right oh you want you want stewie again you should do it as the crocodile no i'm not doing it as the crocodile hunter that's right now you call that a knife now that's enough toleratic here from 2311 racing game night's fun until someone spends five minutes lining up one shot. Chalk, breathe, re-chalk, still aiming. While they figure it out, I fire up Chumba Casino. I can spin anywhere, anytime, and there's always a new social casino game every week. Spins happen way faster than that shot. Spend now at chumbacasino.com. Let's Chumba. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Voidware prohibited by law. 21 plus. Terms and conditions apply.

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 4b56b8f4-6675-41ba-ae46-d76a903bf7a0*