# Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 70 - Elwin is back and he is dropping truth bombs! **Source:** Triple Drain Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2025-12-09 **Duration:** 96m 23s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://zencastr.com/z/MvRDxVDr --- ## Analysis Keith Elwin appears on Triple Drain Pinball Podcast to discuss his design philosophy, specific shot designs across his games (King Kong, Jaws, Jurassic Park, Godzilla, James Bond 60th), and broader game design challenges in modern pinball including difficulty balance, licensing constraints, and the three-tier pricing model. Elwin reveals design process details, discusses abandoned features, and reflects on how licensed IP impacts game length and rule depth. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] The gong on King Kong was intentionally designed to be scary/intimidating to players — _Elwin directly states 'The gong is supposed to scare you guys it's supposed to' when discussing the intimidating feature_ - [HIGH] King Kong's punchback shot design on the top right side was the starting point for the entire layout — _Elwin: 'It was the punchback, the top right side. And then the next was the upper left flipper area'_ - [HIGH] The O shot in Jurassic Park was intentionally made difficult to keep Spelling Chaos from being too easy — _Elwin: 'The problem is because Spelling Chaos would be super easy if that was a good shot. so I wanted one hard shot'_ - [HIGH] Originally, Jaws featured a left orbit that wrapped around to the right orbit but was abandoned due to rattle issues — _Elwin: 'the left orbit went all the way around to the right side, to the right orbit...when I did that, it was just a rattle fest, and I hated it'_ - [HIGH] The magnetic Newton ball was originally intended for Avengers but couldn't work due to geometry constraints — _Elwin: 'The magnetic Newton ball, which was originally going to be on Avengers, but we couldn't get it to work because the geometry was wrong'_ - [HIGH] Elwin no longer designs accessories; Stern engineers handle that work now — _Elwin: 'I haven't actually designed an accessory since Godzilla. You know, we have engineers that do that now'_ - [HIGH] Elwin does not have a Spike 3 development cabinet yet for his next game — _Elwin: 'I don't even have a spike three development cabinet yet for my next game'_ - [HIGH] Modern pinball with licensed IP faces a conundrum: games must be long enough to justify licensing assets but not so long players lose engagement — _Elwin discusses the challenge of fitting multiple movies/assets into games while managing game length and player attention_ ### Notable Quotes > "The gong is supposed to scare you guys it's supposed to that's why uh tom bought a pro" > — **Keith Elwin**, early conversation > _Reveals intentional design philosophy behind King Kong's intimidating gong feature_ > "It's best to start with the crazy ones and then work the other ones around it" > — **Keith Elwin**, layout design discussion > _Core design philosophy for complex playfield layouts_ > "I decided that um i'm gonna take a good 30 minutes of these assets and just randomly play these as bonus clips when you're counting your bonus" > — **Keith Elwin**, Jaws design discussion > _Creative solution to include extensive licensed content without lengthening gameplay_ > "That violates the Gary rule" > — **Keith Elwin**, launch button discussion > _References Gary Stern's design philosophy requiring manual plunge capability_ > "If that button is broken, your game's down" > — **Keith Elwin**, launch button reliability discussion > _Practical reliability concern for location operators regarding launch buttons vs manual plunges_ > "I have pinball adhd now i hardly ever finish a game that i start these days because i just like i'm good for like 15 20 minutes" > — **Keith Elwin**, difficulty discussion > _Reveals personal engagement challenge with modern lengthy games_ > "My next game is even weirder, trust me" > — **Keith Elwin**, in-lane discussion > _Teases next design project with unconventional in-lane/out-lane design_ > "I hate shooter rods. These custom shooter rods don't actually work well as a shooter rod" > — **Keith Elwin**, accessory discussion > _Reveals design preference for functional custom shooter rods over purely aesthetic ones_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Keith Elwin | person | Legendary Stern Pinball designer, guest on Triple Drain podcast discussing his design philosophy and game mechanics | | Joel | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, fan of gong on King Kong | | Travis | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, works in the pinball industry from business standpoint, tournament player | | Tom | person | Co-host of Triple Drain Pinball Podcast, longtime collector, tournament player, X-Men owner | | Jared | person | Mentioned as co-host/brother, joked about making 'Elwyn's overrated' shirt | | Triple Drain Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast featuring hosts Joel, Travis, and Tom discussing games and industry topics | | King Kong | game | Stern Pinball game designed by Keith Elwin, features intimidating gong shot, debated in-lane gate feature | | Jaws | game | Stern Pinball game by Elwin, features motorized fin mech, wave ramp shot, reel shot, and extensive licensed content | | Jurassic Park | game | Stern Pinball game featuring the difficult O shot, debated by hosts for frustration level | | Godzilla | game | Stern Pinball game with magnetic Newton ball, off-center scoop shot, challenging layout | | James Bond 60th | game | Elwin-designed game with hat shot, inline drop targets, complex layout praised as innovative | | X-Men | game | Elwin-designed game owned by Tom Graft, debated for manual plunge vs launch button design | | Iron Maiden | game | Elwin-designed game with repeating loop shot requiring special rattle adjustment screw | | Avengers | game | Stern Pinball game mentioned in context of abandoned Newton ball feature | | Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer where Keith Elwin works as designer | | Freeplay Florida | event | Tournament venue where King Kong gate was removed to increase difficulty | | Kerry Hardy | person | Pinball content creator mentioned for comments about Jaws wave ramp shot difficulty | | Harry Potter | game | Licensed IP game mentioned in context of difficulty/length challenges with extensive movie assets | | Star Wars | game | Licensed IP game mentioned in context of fitting iconic scenes into challenging but playable layout | | Twilight Zone | game | Classic Williams game referenced as having deep rules and abundant extra balls relative to modern games | ### Topics - **Primary:** Playfield shot design philosophy and mechanics, King Kong in-lane gate modification and difficulty balance, Licensed IP integration and game length/depth management - **Secondary:** Pro vs Premium vs LE tier differentiation strategy, Custom shooter rods and accessory design, Manual plunge vs launch button reliability for operators, Abandoned/failed design features and pivot decisions, Modern pinball difficulty expectations vs classic era games ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.78) — Hosts and guest engage in respectful, collaborative discussion with good-natured ribbing. Elwin is reflective about design challenges and willing to discuss shortcomings. Community sentiment toward Elwin appears highly positive despite playful criticism of specific shots. Discussion tone is analytical rather than combative. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** Stern's three-tier pricing model (Pro/Premium/LE) creates challenge of making Pro visually compelling while keeping production costs reasonable; Kong addressed this by adding static Kong model to Pro (confidence: medium) — Elwin discusses trade-off where Jaws Pro has expensive hidden fin mech but looks empty, so Kong decision was to add visible element to Pro for parity with Premium - **[competitive_signal]** Hosts debate and critique specific shot difficulty across Elwin games; players actively discussing which shots are frustrating vs rewarding, shaping perception of game quality (confidence: high) — Segment where each host names least favorite Elwin shot (O shot in JP, scoop in Godzilla, hat shot in Bond 60th, reel in Jaws) - **[design_philosophy]** King Kong's gate removal at Freeplay Florida increased difficulty dramatically; Kerry Hardy noted Jaws wave ramp shot completely fails to reach target without perfect hit on some setups (confidence: high) — Hosts discuss gate removal creating dangerous drain conditions; Elwin acknowledges wave ramp requires perfectly clean hit and alignment issues persist even after adjustment - **[design_philosophy]** Wave ramp on Jaws is difficult to hit consistently and Kerry Hardy reported the game is 'completely cooked' due to shot difficulty; Elwin acknowledges imperfection but trade-off was necessary for ball height (confidence: high) — Discussion of wave ramp requiring clean shots; Elwin: 'the ball had to go up so high. So it really does have to be a clean shot' - **[design_philosophy]** Elwin intentionally designs challenging shots and difficult moments to humble players and create satisfying victories; uses difficulty as gameplay feature not bug (confidence: high) — Elwin: 'We needed something to put the ball in danger. Mission accomplished.' Discusses O shot difficulty as intentional design to balance Spelling Chaos - **[market_signal]** Licensed IP games face fundamental design tension: must include extensive assets (multiple movies) without creating excessively long, tedious gameplay that disengages modern players (confidence: high) — Elwin discusses how Jaws required 45 minutes of footage but he solved it by using clips during bonus counting; contrasts modern attention span with classic Williams games - **[personnel_signal]** Stern has moved accessory/topper design from game designers (like Elwin) to dedicated engineers, reducing designer workload on non-playfield elements (confidence: high) — Elwin: 'I haven't actually designed an accessory since Godzilla. You know, we have engineers that do that now' - **[product_strategy]** King Kong received cosmetic changes with Kong statue added to Pro model per Seth's request to improve visual parity between Pro and Premium tiers (confidence: high) — Elwin: 'Seth really wanted the Kong, even on the pro, just the static model, just to fill in space' to make Pro and Premium look more equal - **[technology_signal]** Elwin lacks Spike 3 development cabinet for next game, suggesting limited early access to newest platform capabilities (confidence: medium) — Elwin states 'I don't even have a spike three development cabinet yet for my next game' --- ## Transcript We're three guys who like to talk and ball. So we came up with the club, our name. We're Joel and Travis, Tom, who talk and ball. And we call ourselves Triple Train. Triple Train. Triple Train. We're Triple, Triple Train. All right. We are back. We're back, hopefully, with no problems. No problems. We had some technical difficulties before we started. We'll know if we got through them based on whether or not this episode gets out. So we will say this might just be an enjoyable conversation between the four of us. And, yes, there's four of us. We have a guest. We have a guest. Probably, you know, I would say easily one of my top three guests on this podcast. Tom, who do you rank above? Yeah, who do you rank above, Elwin? We were going through this earlier. Who are you? I'm not. I'm not. I'm kidding. What? Only because Jared never comes on. Oh, my brother? Well, yeah. Jared, my brother has decided, I don't know, I think he's just decided to give you grief. Keith and I'm all for it. I think it's a good time. But, yeah, I think Jared was joking about making a shirt that said, Elwyn's overrated. And if he ever does, I'll make sure I get you one, Elwyn, and you can wear it. Oh, I would, probably. Yeah, we would, probably. Keith Elwin's on. So no need to do our normal thing where we apologize at how bad we are. podcasting. We're just going to dive right into the conversation about why, um, why Travis sucks. I mean, that's, that's basically what our, that's what our Facebook group has been titled for months and months and months. And I think we should probably just get that out of the way. Yeah. You should admit that publicly. Cause everybody thinks I'm the jerk towards you all the time. So yeah, there you go. Now you guys know the real Joel. Now you know it. Monica to bail him out. So he can suck all he wants cause she's awesome. Monica is awesome And you know Keith and Tom have the ability To change the name of the Facebook group at any moment And they haven't So Everybody thinks I'm Travis They keep coming up to me and like yelling at me Yeah well We wanted to have Keith on And maybe it's just because the three of us What we enjoy about this podcast is We're just hanging out We're just talking and the three of us Mainly Tom, Travis and myself We have very different backgrounds And we have, you know, currently we're in very different places within the hobby. You know, Tom and Travis are very tournament heavy. I am not. We all stream. Travis now works within the industry, so he has a unique view from a business standpoint. Tom has bought a lot of games over a lot of years while I'm cycling through a lot of modern games, being able to borrow them and stream them and whatnot. So it's a fun dynamic, and we enjoy talking about it. But what I will say is we do have some opinions. and I'm curious, Keith, because I know you listen to this episode or this show. What's a strong take that one of us have had that you've heard that you immediately laughed at and thought, that guy's an idiot? Do you have anything that comes to mind? Just one. I usually listen to the first half and then you guys start rambling the last hour and then tune out. So we'll keep this to an hour-long episode. Perfect. Well, it just means we load all of our good shit early on. We hook everybody. That's all that means. Yeah, we've got to listen to Travis talk about his house falls and everything else. Well, I mean, I'm happy to let you steer the bus, Keith, but maybe I'll give you a layup here. Can you defend the gong on King Kong? Because I like the gong, and it's been very clear that Travis and Tom are scared of the gong. So as the designer of the gong, I would love to hear your thoughts on it. Do you like that you have it in the game? Do you think they're wusses? what are your thoughts on the king kong gong the gong is supposed to scare you guys it's supposed to that's why uh tom bought a pro so that's true yeah so see joel we're we're experiencing it as it should be it sounds like you're the problem joel no tom and i you got scared and ran away and bought the pro did you see what happened to me at the stern factory um keith was just laughing at me. I couldn't handle the ricochets coming back. It wasn't like it was draining down the middle. I just kept flubbing it. We needed something to put the ball in danger. Mission accomplished. Mission accomplished, exactly. You need to hit it. At Freeplay Florida, they knew ZMAC was coming, so they took the gate out. They made everything harder to do. That game was a nightmare to play. Oh, the inline gate? Yeah. Yeah, what's the opinion of that change? Because Kerry Wing did that for us, too, at one of our big tournaments here. It didn't seem as bad at Slap C, but I think it was because you had the mode start easier, I believe. Yeah, one shot easier. So I don't know. It just seemed way more difficult at Freeplay Florida for whatever reason. Yeah, taking a gate out would be dangerous. You're talking about the gate on kind of the in-lane area? Yeah. So the gate is supposed to keep the ball from going backwards, like up the inline and then out? Yeah. Okay, so one wrong shats or an attempt of a shats, you just drain the ball? Yeah, I mean, if you try to drop catch it, you're done. Yeah, or there was even a chance that if you hit the center ramp just perfect, if it had any type of rattle at all at there, it would just go out the out lane. That was a lot of fun. But it didn't happen all the time. It was like one out. I can't. Get off that podcast. Well, let's talk about that for a little bit. You know, so Kong has a very interesting, you know, in-lane, out-lane situation. You threw a gate in there. Jaws, the game before that, you threw a gate down there below. Are you just bored of normal in-lanes, or what's the idea of, you know, kind of adding some unique – yeah, you're just bored. Perfect. Yeah, my next game is even weirder, trust me. Oh, okay, okay. Well, what's – I don't know. What could possibly be weirder than that? Than Kong? I'm trying to think. Kong and the Outland, yes. No, Kong, no. King Kong. I mean, there was a lot of people we had heard before King Kong was released. Some people on the inside were like, honestly, this is probably Owen's greatest layout. When it showed up, this was once again one of those situations where I saw pictures and I'm like, I do not understand some of these ball paths. And it's not because you have mechs hiding them, you know, it's just how does this work? And how do you do that, Keith? How do you design a game with the same parameters of every other designer right now, you know, with the size limitations of a play field? But yet, I mean, do you start with basic ball pass and then you decide, let me squeeze this crazy one? Like, I don't know. No, it's best to start with the crazy ones and then work the other ones around it. Okay, so on King Kong, where did you start? Which path? It was the punchback, the top right side. And then the next was the upper left flipper area. I envisioned having a ramp way back there that you can shoot. And then, of course, the two other ramps, the biped ramp and the center ramp, also I designed all that. And then Harrison looked at me and said, you're crazy. you've got three ramps all jammed together there. And so we managed to make it work. But since that whole, the whole punchback shot pretty much eliminated having a ramp on the entire right side. So all the ramps had to get jammed to that one side. So I had to get a little creative with the ball paths. And most of it, I got correct the first try, you know, just minor tweaks here or there. So, and then the biplane ramp. I mean, that you have that's that's a crazy ramp with the with the way the wire form feeds back. But the but the shot under the biplane ramp, that's the shot that I just don't. I just feel like so many other designers just would have maybe put a stand up target there, you know, and just called it a day. But I just don't know how you one had confidence you could even do that shot and then also found a way to work because you design this in solid works. Right. So this is a virtual environment. How much time does it take tweaking that physically to then feel confident, yes, that is a repeatable shot? That shot actually, that was the toughest shot to design, actually, because just where it's located in the space I had to work with, I knew it was going to be a really hard shot, so I wanted it to feel somewhat good, and I think it does most of the time. It could still, you know, if you shoot it too soon, it could still rattle a little bit. But, yeah, I just wanted something, a way to feed the upper left flipper from the upper right flipper. And so I just said, well, maybe I just kind of do like a small U-turn and kind of throw the ball out towards the side there and feed it. And it didn't work very well the first couple iterations. It was either the feeding into the little micro sling above the upper left flipper or just rejecting altogether. So we came up with, I think, a happy medium because there was no perfect way to get it perfectly smooth and feed the upper lift up every time. But I think it's as good as it's going to get. It's very repeatable. And, I mean, have you had a shot in a game because you said it wasn't very good initially, but you kept working at it? I mean, have you had a shot in a game, in a previous game that you gave up on where it's like, this shot, okay, it's not going to work? Yeah, so Jaws, actually originally, the left orbit went all the way around to the right side, to the right orbit. And it was just so clunky because we had the reel there. So I kind of had to wrap behind the reel and just kind of dump out into the right orbit. And when I did that, it was just a rattle fest, and I hated it. So then I was just like, maybe I'll just have it U-turn onto itself. and we tried that and everyone's like oh that's great perfect so if you actually if you look at the pro you'll see all kinds of space in the back of the game because originally there was an orbit back there interesting okay yeah no that that actually makes total sense because that was another game i remember when that came out i'm like i do not i mean you had the upper play field but i'm like i do not know what's going on in this upper left section it just doesn't but yet it's not it's not like you're doing trickery with subways or this or this or this it's just like no the ball's staying on the play field the whole time. It's just going in a path that's – It's much easier to see on the pro, obviously. Yeah. On the LE, it's kind of like, where's the ball going? Okay. Keep you on your toes a bit. Let's do this. Let's go around the corner – or around the circle here, and we'll each say what our least favorite Elwin shot is. I'll start. It's the O shot in Jurassic Park. Is this the roast of Elwin? Is that what he's walking through? This is just to get honest because I'm curious to hear this. So mine, what is my least favorite shot? I will say for me it was the O shot in Jurassic Park. I say that with a grain of salt, though, because it's so frustrating. But, man, when you hit it, it feels good. I mean, was that – be honest. The O shot in Jurassic Park, if you could have made that wider, would you? Or what was your thought there? That was exactly what you wanted. The problem is because Spelling Chaos would be super easy if that was a good shot. so I wanted one hard shot you know I already had the super hard you know smart missile shot so I was like okay here's the really hard shot in the game and then I just wanted a way to make chaos harder so actually you know I could either make the you know pteranodon ramp tighter which I didn't want to do because I thought it was really cool or this shot that basically just feeds the pops I'll make this the hard shot you're not gonna have to shoot it very often there's really no key shots on it other than the oh or if you're catching a dinosaur maybe but you know it was just i wanted it tough just so i can have chaos the cadence of chaos spell out just the way i wanted okay um that's fair uh my i will speak for my brother on my brother's behalf his one of his least favorite shots is the scoop on godzilla he finds it so frustrating and i know we on this podcast have talked about when you limit starting of modes or starting of things behind a tough scoop shot, how frustrating that can be. But I know in Godzilla, that area was designed and messed around with a bunch. So, I don't know, thoughts on the scoop shot on Godzilla? Yeah, I agree. It's not the most fun shot. But I needed a scoop somewhere to introduce the modes and everything. So, yeah, because, you know me, I don't like scoops. Hardly any of my games have them. And it's like, well, maybe, you know, maybe people forgive me because, you know, sometimes I need one. Yeah. So that's how that came about. Yeah. You know, it's not as bad as Guardians. It's not way in the corner there, but it is. Yeah, it is off where you're used to shooting the scoop. Well, and then you put a pop bumper right next to it. So when you miss, when you miss, things get scary. Tom, what do you hate about Keith Elman Design? Go ahead. Just let me get it out there. Well, since Jared stole mine and you stole my other one, I don't know. Okay, Travis. Should we ask, do you have any other people you want to think of before Travis? No, I thought, you know, Keith's designed a lot of pinball, all right? I didn't think we were narrowed down to two. Oh, gosh. Let me think. Maybe the hat shot on James Bond's 60th. The real? Yeah, yeah. where you just spin the hat around. It's always in the freaking way when I want to hit a drop target. Yeah, unless you just hit drop targets like that. Right, yeah. The game is too hard for me. Give me a break. I'm surprised it shoots as well as it does because it was like a one-shot to get it right. Would there be any chance that you would use some of those features in Bond 60th in another game? features? Well, like some of the shots, like the loop around or the inline drop. We did. He used one in X-Men. Remember? There's that shot right there. I forgot. I was actually screwing around with the Whitewood Net game, and I put a ramp there. Not quite like Jack did it, but it kind of came up and fed the upper left flipper. I was like, oh, this actually works. But then it was like, nope, no ramps in this game. So I kind of, you know, we'll just stick to it. Keith, I mean, people have talked about, you know, with the home pin series, you know, it's the same layout over and over and over again, or has been reused in some of those. So I, you know, there were people saying, man, I wish, I wish you could just literally take the bond 60th layout and paste it on a different theme or something because that layout's incredible. But because of the cost of the game and the limit, you know, how, how they're limited, it's kind of like, man, it would be awesome to reuse this layout elsewhere. I think that's kind of what people are hoping would happen but as a Bond 60th owner Tom, I don't think you want that to happen maybe I'm wrong maybe I'm speaking for you but I don't know that layout's amazing I just want to know Joel, why do you hate the O shot? that's like legitimately the O shot on Jurassic Park is my favorite shot on any Keith Elwin game but I'm scared of the gong well yeah here's why I like the O shot Because one, it feels good when you hit it. You know you're closer to multiball. But then the ball can come all the way around. You can do like a little flutter catch with the upper flipper and send it back through the tower or the loop as well. So it allows for a lot of different combinations. Maybe I just defaulted to what, you know. Tighter shots. Yeah. Yes, okay. In a perfect world, I'd love to be as good as a pinball player as the three of you. I would love that. You can hit the shot. When you put challenging stuff on a play field, it humbles me very quickly as like, crap, I'm not as good as I want to be. If I actually think about a shot that, like I know the wave ramp, the wave ramp on Jaws. When you hit that. Let's be honest. Your favorite shot is the right ramp on Avengers, the big jump shot. I do like that. Honestly, I like the right orbit shot on Jaws a lot. There's just something about that way that feels and watching the ball path. That is a cool feeling. I think you have some amazing shots. I just know what I was saying with the wave ramp, though, on Jaws on a premium. If you don't hit that perfect, it doesn't have enough to get up there. And you did design it in a good way where it can fall on the wire form, and you can still get credit for some stuff. But that's another one of those shots where the amount of movement that ball has to do, I mean, you really have to hit that shot well. I heard Kerry Hardy said that game's completely cooked because that shot would not go all the way up. So, you know, I don't know how Jaws cells have been lately, but yeah. What are your thoughts? I mean, Keith, is that a shot where, like, was that a lot of work to get that in? Or is there, I don't know, do you ever feel like you have certain shots in your games where, man, one or two more passes could have done better? Or just, I know you, because there's time restraints with everything that you do. So, yeah, the whole wave ramp shot, obviously I wish it could be easier, but the ball had to go up so high. So it really does have to be a clean shot. And, you know, I've taken apart my game and it's like, oh, this ball guy isn't quite aligned to that one and, you know, worked great. And I was like, oh, I fixed it. And then, you know, as a flipper, you know, heats up and you have to – the more perfect you have to be. Yeah, it can be frustrating. But actually my least favorite – my personal least favorite shot is the reel in Jaws. that uh originally we had a ball-eating shark in it it was it was skinnier than what we ended up with so both the right side shots kind of narrowed up so actually if i had to if i had to redo that i would probably just remove a stand-up target and make that as easy as it originally was intended to be so the the reel was easier to hit is what you're saying yeah but we ended up having to move a stand-up target, one of those stand-up targets between the right orbit ramp slash whatever and the reel, and it kind of shrunk both those shots. That would be the one shot that I wish I probably should have just pulled that stand-up out and rewritten the rules. Well, you did it, and the game's cooked, right? That's word on the street. What do you got, Tom? What do you hate? I was going to say, as somebody who's never designed a game, Keith, are there a lot of times where you're frustrated and you're like, man, I really wanted this to work, but it didn't, and then, like, do you just move on from it, or do you, you know, do you harp on it a while? So the magnetic, well, hey. Sorry, destructor back there tearing up on my stuff. The magnetic Newton ball, which was originally going to be on Avengers, but we couldn't get it to work because the geometry was wrong, and it was way too late in the process to change it. So that's why when I started Godzilla, that was the first thing I put in the geometry exactly the way it needed to be. That was the first thing I designed in there just to make sure that worked. Never anything too frustrating. I know Iron Maiden was a bit of a chore trying to get the repeating loop to slow down and we actually have an adjustment screw behind the back panel so you can actually add a little bit of rattle to it to slow it down so I don't know if anyone's ever noticed they go back there and they look and it's like what does this screw do? It actually just pushes the ball gate out a little bit and it actually slows that loop shot down so that was one of the ones where it was frustrating because sometimes you shoot especially if you just wax it I would come around there so fast, it would be hard to react. So what are your thoughts as a game designer when it comes to, you know, I think a lot of your games, some of them favor heavily where it's like a lot of people buy the premium or the LE of that game or a lot of people buy the pro. So like Jaws, like I don't know, I don't know sales numbers, but I feel like Jaws, almost the vast majority of people that buy Jaws, they buy the premium rarely. and but yet I think you have other games where it's like there's a ton of Jurassic Park pros out there and so what does that I don't know do you feel do you feel like do you care if you if you come away from or Kong or King Kong right now a lot of pros are selling of King Kong do you want that balance or do you feel better or worse when one model you know greatly outsells the other or I don't know what what are your thoughts on that I mean yeah I mean obviously I'm sure Stern would love to sell all the premiums in the world but you know we got to cater to operators too so you know we got we have to make a compelling product still uh you know in some cases so in the case of jaws we decided to keep the whole fin mic which is extremely expensive it's basically a motorized drop target with a bunch of sensors and um when we were talking about cutting that it was like well we need this because you know so many of the rules you know gameplay is tied to this moving fin that, you know, we kept it on the pro and deleted the upper play field. So now when you look at the pro, it's like, well, there's nothing on here, but there's actually a very massive, expensive mech under there. So, you know, that's kind of the trade-off. You want people to walk up to the game and say, oh, look at all this cool stuff. But if it's all under the play field, you know, it kind of feels like, oh, that's empty. That's, you know, what a waste, barren, you know, it's actually, now if you look under there, there's actually a very expensive mech. And so with King Kong, yeah, I tried to make more of a point. You know, Seth really wanted the Kong, even on the pro, just the static model, just to fill in space, make it look like, oh, man, you just look thick. OK, you just look at the premium in the pro and, you know, you can't really tell the difference. Yeah. So you start playing. no and i i think that's i like that because i know kong is one of those that it is much more i think it's a harder decision because the pro and premium really do seem uh more equal and i'm not saying that that means the premium doesn't have enough it's just it's it's not obvious where you just look at the game like you're saying and you feel like you're lacking um now i know with stern and spike three you guys have added more to the game between with the expression lights in, I'm assuming those are going to be in every game, and expression lights on the speakers. I'm getting the vibe. I could be wrong. I don't think designing accessories is your favorite part of designing pinball, Keith, but I'm guessing you now, there's more to add into your games outside of the play field that you as a game designer have to consider. Is that exciting for you, or is it just flashy lights? What are your thoughts with all the new technology stuff that are being shoved into pinball machines. So I haven't actually designed an accessory since Godzilla. You know, we have engineers that do that now. You know, obviously they'll get input and stuff. But, yeah, I haven't designed a topper in a while, which is kind of nice. You know, the, like, ah, man, I don't even remember. Oh the barrel yeah barrel shooter rod and jaws Harrison was like hey I have an idea and I was like perfect And same with Kong We wanted like an actual because I hate shooter rods These custom shooter rods don't actually work well as a shooter rod. So if it has a natural shape that they can still be used as a shooter rod, then that's what I'm going to lean towards. But other than that, yeah, accessories. I mean, I don't even have a spike three development cabinet yet for my next game. So I haven't really looked at what's needed for the accessories. so I can't really answer that question. Yeah, that's fair. You did make me think of, there's another manufacturer out there that they don't do shooter rods at all. They don't like them. They don't use them. Would you, Keith, ever consider putting just a launch button in your game or do you feel like that's... That violates the Gary rule. Okay. Yeah, we got to have the combo manual plunge auto launcher. All right, let me take care of this. that cat is so interested in this conversation we we're engaging that's what it is that cat is giving a spanking right now Keith Elwin is doing austin powers next just because you saw the cat but the rumor out there now keith you said i mean that's a gary rule but i mean as a pinball enthusiast yourself do you do you like the launch button or does that bother you at all when you can't manually plunge a game no i'm not a fan of the launch button um i always prefer the the manual plunge. I mean, the combo auto launch manual plunge, I think it's perfect. I, the only reason I ask is because X-Men here, which I'm an owner of, and I know Tom, Tom Graft, he's a wonderful owner of X-Men. He's on the X-Men club. Um, that's a game where I was like, you've had it twice. That's a game where I think you could, you could take out that plunge and you could put it in a, a, a launch button and the game would not change at all. And if anything, it would make dialing it the whole thing in easier. So that's, that was one of those things that I'm like this game because of the way it's designed, a launch button makes sense, but I understand if there's limitations or I don't know. I just feel like maybe there's some designers that are all for in a launch button and some are completely against it. Okay. I mean, case in point, if you're a pro in location and something goes wrong with that coil, your game's down. Oh, okay. I think that's Gary's argument to always keep a combo on there. Okay. I just saw the light bulb go off on Joel's head. I never thought about that. Never thought about that. Have you ever stepped up to a game where it is broke and you're just hitting the button over and over again and nothing happens? Like Attack from Mars or something like that? Attack from Mars is going to say, if that button is broken, it will eventually launch the ball, but after like two minutes. So you play something else, and when it launches the ball, you go there and play that. Then you go play something else after you drink. I never thought about that. I know Travis was asking me the question with the whole, oh, why do I not like that? And we were talking about difficulty. And so let's just take a big, broader step back of game design in general. Today, 2025 pinball as a as an entire hobby. Do we do you feel that expectations are the games are too hard? They're too easy. Are we I don't know what like. Just that question alone, what are your thoughts when I just ask that? yeah it's so it's tough man because i i'm an old school player i grew up playing valleys and the classic williams that all of the system 11s all those games are super tough and then as soon as we hit the ltd era it's like all right you know we signed this license we have all these assets we have to use these assets well how are we going to use these assets if we don't have a long playing game and so it's kind of the conundrum that as a game designer i have to deal with it's like okay like a jaws i mean we had so many assets in jaws it was just like this game's gonna take hours so i decided that um i'm gonna take a good 30 minutes of these assets and just randomly play these as bonus clips when you're counting your bonus it's like that that's you know we can use all these and it's not going to slow the game down you know any further than we're already using probably 45 minutes of footage in there um so that's the biggest thing and you know you got to get the ball times you know a little bit of ball times uh extra balls another thing you really gotta you know manage you know you think of like twilight zone you could get so many extra balls in that game because the rules are so deep but obviously they didn't have the assets so if you play a game like twilight zone now he's like oh that game's not very deep but you know for his time everyone's like oh this takes forever and you know i have pinball adhd now i hardly ever finish a game that i start these days because i just like i'm good for like 15 20 minutes and then you know it's one of the reasons i keep a safe cracker in my office so it's like oh i can be done with this in five minutes and have a good game and move on you know and he's playing you at indisc joel then he'll play for 45 minutes straight on congo yeah yeah well we talked about this last episode i think that it's it's when you're given an ip like harry potter and you're supposed to shove eight movies into a game or you're given a an ip like star wars and you're supposed to shoot you know shove three movies with nothing but iconic scenes into a pinball game how do you how do you experience that license without making it a long playing game and yet i feel like star wars that layout is actually pretty challenging and harry potter i think that layout is actually pretty challenging. So it's almost like the physical layouts are counter what you would need with the IP, but yet I don't know, you can't like, I just feel like you're immediately given a problem that's almost impossible to solve. And I, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. Do you have like, you haven't, you haven't been given Keith an IP of, well, Jaws, nevermind. Jaws was like four movies worth, but yet you did create, find a creative solution to include clips of all four movies, but not make it like a crazy game. I think really probably what you're asking is, is there a certain framework that you have to use when you have an IP and you know, you need the game to last X amount of time as opposed to not lasting that long, or as opposed to being like a 45 minute players, like where do you go with that type of framework to start even coming up with ideation from that, like from the get go. Yeah. I mean, I have some thoughts of my next game of how I can do the best of both worlds. Nobody listens to this podcast. You can tell us all of them. Tell us everything. Yeah. The ability to create a journey that is unique to each button press, but doesn't include everything. So you're not stuck there for 45 minutes, you know, that kind of thing. You know, it's something I've been wrestling with for a while. Um, hopefully I'll start to see, uh, work out in the next game. Um, yeah. Yeah. I mean, do you not feel like you kind of accomplished that with Godzilla since you have just like you have jet fighters, for instance, or you have the rage combos. Right. And you have like power ups, you go for loops like I feel like there's a lot of side quests in there that you could do that. You could completely ignore the meat of the game and you still get places with it. So, I mean, do you feel like you've kind of accomplished that already and that you can kind of build off that framework and that idea moving forward? so godzilla is so simplistic and stupid that's why it was i think that's why it's such a great game because you know what what is it you know aliens are trying to control the monsters and godzilla is stopping them that is the entire premise of the game you know slash you know a couple of the movies so that would you know nothing had to make sense you're just here's a battle here's another battle what's this have to do with that battle doesn't matter here's another about it here's Godzilla destroying stuff so that that was such an easy IP to work with uh whereas Jaws you know you had kind of a linear story to tell you can't show him like killing the shark and then you know all of a sudden you're playing a mode where the shark's alive again which is why you know I do stuff like uh in Jurassic Park you don't you can't actually catch the T-Rex because I need the T-Rex for the wizard mode and it's the same with Jaws when you do the bounty hunt for the great white uh you know he eventually gets away because i need him for the smile mode so you know it's stuff like that you know when it has a linear story to tell it's way tougher than like yeah godzilla godzilla smash nobody knows oh well he he doesn't appear in this movie before that movie that doesn't make sense yeah i don't have to deal with that well you you say it's you say it's simple but i mean i i try to film tutorial videos uh for flipping out and i will tell you keith yours are the hardest to do and it's not because of anything negative it's just you have added so much into that game you just it's like you sprinkle it with so many extra things you can do that i i put pressure myself of like i don't want to mess this up and i don't want to forget anything so i have to study i have to study it i have to learn think of it this way joel best communicate how to work through this game it's it's more simple to be creative because you don't have the constraint of linear right so it's like you could go this direction i mean it does make sense because i haven't even thought about godzilla this way tom you probably have because you're a freaking beauty you you know all about these things but it's like it even dawned on me it's like wait rampage is starting but you're already in a certain like whatever right it could happen whenever you finally get it going or like the jet fighters for instance it it makes sense for jet fighters to show up whenever but they don't necessarily have to show up in only one particular battle so i mean and it still feels like it it has kind of a linear structure to it in essence that isn't a constraint that was put on by the ip but more or less by you yourself keith like for instance going from tier one to tier two and knowing what you could unlock from there so i feel like that just does that allow you to be more creative in your process because an ip allows you to just take those many detours and then just circle back around to get back to the main parts of the game? Yeah, yeah, exactly. The side quests or, you know, hey, let me use this scene from this movie. It's a little side thing. It has nothing to do with the main plot, but, you know, it's points, it's entertainment, whatever. Okay, now we're back on track. What about, we've talked a lot about overlap, and we think there's a lot of, that's the problem with, when you put a lot into the game, how do you keep it? How do you even digest what's going on? You know, when you have all these different lights and it's like, well, those lights are telling you what's going on with your multiball or where you're at with the multiball progressing, locking balls for the multiball. These are your load mode progression shots. These are, these are hurry up lights. These are some other feature that you could enable. And, you know, you got the whole rainbow going on on a play field because you have all these different paths to go down. And then we've talked a lot about when now all of a sudden, And if you have two, three things overlapping, you just get lost. And you, Keith, have so, like, you put so much into your game, but I don't feel, I feel like you found a good way to balance what can stack and what can overlap. Do you have a design philosophy on, like, how much is too much going on at one time? Or how do you control that? Yeah, I try not to stack multi-balls for that very reason. You know, because usually when you're in multiball, that kind of takes over some inserts. and then if you get two of them stacked together, it can get confusing. So I was playing Dracula a couple days ago. You know, the whole point of that game is to stack three multi-balls at once, but if you actually pay attention, it does not hold your hand. It does not tell you what to shoot. There's no indicator of anything other than relighting locks at the castle or if you actually light the jackpot at the thing. It does not tell you anything. So when you have all three of those multi-balls going, And it's an audio-visual display and everything. And nothing on the play field is helping you at all. And I think games have evolved since then. We have a lot more inserts. We have color-changing inserts. And you're right. The downside of that is, okay, now when you've got a bunch of stuff stacked together, now you've got all this insert blinking three different colors. It's blinking two different colors. Which one do I want? It is a battle. So we try not to have more than two things running at once. But sometimes it can happen. and yeah, it makes a mess. But we also don't want to nerf the game and make it, it's like, all right, you're playing this mode. Oh, I'm going to lock out this multiball or vice versa. So with that statement right there, what are your thoughts on Pulp Fiction? Because I know Josh has made it very clear that his whole design philosophy was No stacking. No stack. No stack. I see where he's coming from. I'm not against it, but I think you need some stacking. Okay. Some stacking. So, like, you know, William said it a lot, too. I think Dirty Harry, if you start a mode, then you start a multiball. It just pauses the mode, and it's just gone until you're done with the multiball. And that's fine. But I think strategically, you know, I kind of like being able to do it. Well, this mode's boring, but there's good points. So I'm going to just start this mode, and then start the multiball, and this mode could just happen in the background. So it works both ways. Josh Sharpe, you know how to get a hold of us to tell us why you disagree with Keith. we will file your answer away into a folder no I think that's cool the last few months I borrowed a Monsters LE and the vibe what I heard a lot of people say from Monsters the game is shallow the code is too simple they need to blah blah blah but long story short my brother and I had a blast with that game this is a modern game with a simple fan layout The code is super easy to understand. It's like I kept thinking, comparing it to Monster Bash, not only from a theme standpoint, but it's just like, yeah, you just got to do these five things and then boom, instead of Monster Bash, you're in Monster Madness. Like, it's so simple and straightforward, but yet I feel like Stern as a company got backlash because of that simplicity, not only with a fan layout, but also the rules design. But the eye-opening moment to me was like, simple can still be really, really fun. Do you feel like, Keith, do you think there would ever be a time where you would purposely design a game that is more simple? Like, is that fair to do? Or do you just feel today in 2025 we can't do that type of rule set anymore? Oh, yeah. Here's the thing. People will tell you, oh, okay, Drakken, for example. Oh, I love Drakken. That's a great game. The perfect rule set for it. Oh, how much was it? Oh, well, $4,000. Oh, and how much is this game? Oh, it's $10,000. Oh, so it comes with, what, two and a half times more stuff? Well, yeah, it better. That's exactly how that pans out. It's the cost of the games and plus all the multimedia, which has progressed since Dracula came out. We have the screen. We have a whole team of people making assets for the screen and everything. and I think you know if I try to make a game I would love to make a simple game but I think it had to be more like the Bond 60th type game I didn't do the rule set in that game Mark Panaccio did so I basically just designed it and he was like yeah I got a basic rule set I can put on this and I think it's fine it's you know it still takes a while to get through it but nothing you know it's definitely not well I gotta do chop wood through these modes get to this mode nothing like that And, you know, I would love to do a simpler rule set, but I think it would have to be on more of a special project like that. Interesting. I see what you're saying. You want to get the money. Well, yeah. So, Travis, you sell pinball machines to people all the time. Joel, I had this exact conversation with a customer two and a half hours ago. Well, let's repeat it. What I was going to ask is when somebody walks into the pinball company and says, hey, we just finished our basement. We need name, credit card numbers. Yeah. We just finished our basement and we want a pinball machine. You sell a lot of old games and you sell modern games. I'm like, hey, how about a Venom LE? That's where I'm like, come get these machines. But no, so the way it goes, you got to consider too, different dealers, different distributors, they have different customers, right? There's retail, there's pinball enthusiasts, there's operators. There's a lot of people that will simply like, I know of people out there that will never pay for a game. It's always via trades constantly. Like there's all kinds of people. They do things for different reasons. But the number one thing that we hear from people that are new to pinball and have done some research, what happens is they always see what the top five games are listed on pin side every single time. And they go down a little rabbit hole and they start to see why they start to see the comments like, why are these games popular? And so more times than not, we do get the questions of not necessarily what are the rules to this, but will I get bored of this? Like, how long will it take me to master the game? Like, we hear that a lot because people often think that even if they haven't played ever, they seem to think that they will literally beat the game within a month. and we have to tell them pretty much like the reality is that's probably not going to happen for you because a lot of them do remember solid state games or they remember like a dolly parton for instance right to where it's very simplistic that way but no more times than not like the customers that we have to come in they want to see a game with some depth but they can't necessarily define what that is because they don't know but they just know they want an experience that doesn't get boring is essentially what it is so that's like a large part of the feedback that that we get in general so it was even uh godzilla today the exact same thing happened like person came in and they're they're like i know it has four battles early on but i feel like there's all this other stuff attached to it and we just like went down and i was just like how how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go and he's like i want to know the whole thing so we just sat there for 15, 20 minutes going over it. And he's like, I know for sure I want this game. And now I want Jurassic Park. So it's like, I mean, that's what happens once they get hooked and they understand it. But when you, when you say going through it, does that mean you took the glass off and you were throwing the ball around? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. So the important thing to understand, it's, it's a little bit different than the listeners that listen to this. We can use jargon. Everybody knows designer names. They know, they know the manufacturers, they know everything. But a lot of people that walk in, they're just now discovering pinball. They don't know any of that. So you got to be very careful of giving them all this information through a fire hose and their eyes just glaze over. Like I've seen it happen tons of times. So it's keeping things simple. That's like, for instance, like the building, they wanted to know, is there anything to shoot at? And I'm like, yeah, just shoot the building, shoot the three white arrows as often as you can. Eventually you'll make something happen. What I like to do is I like to not tell them what's going to happen. I just lead them through it, let them play, let them discover it for themselves because there's a lot of joy and fun in discovery. So it's more like just hold their hand through the first part, almost like that mini tutorial. And sometimes they just want to see it. They just want to see you do it. But that's often all it is. You just, you break them in through the first step of something that the game does that's cool, that's fun. And then once you do that, it's a lot easier just to bring in the side stuff and just kind of be like, yeah, and while you're doing this, this might happen. Or while you're doing that, that might happen. And their question always is, well, how do I know what's going on? And we tell them, just play the game. Play the game over and over again. Enjoy it. And you're going to catch on to it. I mean, if you're really focused on it, if you decide I want to only play this mode, you're going to understand how to play that mode within 30 minutes of play. You're going to know where the shots are. You're going to know how to start it. Same way. If you want to know how to start a multiball, do nothing but focus on that. You're going to memorize it either way. And I think just a lot of people, they just they they get intimidated easily because they think they have to know the whole thing. They want. And it's like you're not going to go to high school or take a college course and set the textbook down. And you're not expected to know everything in that textbook immediately. Like there's a lot of stuff in discovery. I mean, that's why it's fun having these machines at home. You have to want to discover it, though. What I mean is my wife, when I get these games and they come in. Are you trying to figure out how to get a dune? No, I'm not saying that. But to her, she'll play a ball or whatever, play a game. And if it's not blatantly obvious immediately what her goal is, if the whole game is just screaming at her, lights and everything, it's like, well, this looks pretty, but I don't know what I'm doing. after one game she's like I have no idea what I was doing and I have no idea what I did right so I played the game and that's key so like how early when you're doing rule layout I don't know like how do you prioritize that because I think your game does a very your game always has a very clear you know like there's a shark I should probably shoot the shark oh there's a building here that's reacting I should probably oh or the the t-rex I that looks like that thing is gonna eat the ball how do I get that to like I think you do a and it's not just a bash toy I think you do a good job giving something obvious you dangle a very obvious carrot right there how early on in rules design do you do you try to focus on that or prioritize that we obviously very early um so yeah anytime you're designing a mech the first thing i think of how is this going to integrate the game because this is front and center and so like you know a case of godzilla is like okay people are going to know to shoot this big giant building we're going to put these little flame panels you know in front of it and the more you hit the building the more the fire builds up on this on these inserts and but we also have you know the the bridge you know say oh if i hit this captive ball you know the bridge reacts so i must be doing something good and then of course mechagodzilla um actually i wasn't sure how i was going to use it at first there originally wasn't a spinner on that the that mech and i was like oh this is this is boring it needs a spinner and yeah so then you shoot the spinner bring mechagodzilla online this thing rotates you're like oh i need to bash that yeah you know we try to make it obvious uh and the rules are kind of built starting there and then you just work everything else around it what about kong though because kong's layout is not it's such a unique layout that i think you put a complete novice up in front of king kong and it's i think it's a more challenging layout because it's not so open or it's not so fanny and then your main mech you know you've put that in the back corner and that back corner, you know, to lock balls, to experience the whole subway, there's a decent amount of work you've got to do before you can start doing that. So, I mean, that's a game where I don't know. I don't think there's an – well, the spider. I think the spider is your obvious mech. Is that the answer? The spider and the gong are definitely the obvious mechs on there. You know, even the drop targets, they're not that hard to hit. So you're probably going to accidentally get those. But, yeah, definitely because the pit multiball is, like, super easy to start. You shoot the gong. So right now, with the latest code update, you don't need to bash the gong before it unlocks. So the first shot through there, you know, you ring the gong. It goes in there, and you start the mode rather than before when it kicks back at you. And you're like, oh, I don't want to shoot that. So, you know, I give you the first one, and then it's like, okay, so if I want to unlock that again, now I've got to do Fit Travis's favorite dangerous shot. Well, let's talk about con code. Where are we at with Kong Code? I know you did some pretty awesome stuff with the New York City modes with the fact that now when you get to those I mean I said this before the fact that you do such a great job putting modes into games where you slowly progressing towards them Bounty was one of them. I love the concept of bounty. Now New York City modes, the fact that those yellow lights are always, you're always progressing up the tower. Now you can get to New York City. But what you did with New York City is you've given the ability to play single ball or multiball, and the scoring is totally different, and you get to pick your mode. I mean, that alone, the replayability and the strategy there is incredible. But I don't know, what are your future, what's more to add in the game, or what else are you, where are you at with Kong Code? I'm glad you mentioned the New York stuff because I really grappled with that because obviously the events in New York City go in a particular order. And so my initial thought was, okay, you can, we'll keep it in the same order and then you could choose, do I want to get single ball, multiball, limited flip? But I didn't like locking people into a certain mode, even if they're all slightly different. So I made the decision, much to the chagrin of some people, that you can play the modes in any order you want, even though you're playing a mode where he's climbing a building and then next time you get there, you're climbing a mode where he's chained up. And it's like, oh, yeah, it's fun to object, but it doesn't make sense. but it's way more fun to, you know, you want to feel like you accomplished something and you're not going to feel that way. It was like, ah, because when the game shift, you only had the one stage fright mode. And I was like, Oh, I'm so sick of this mode. And I'm like, yeah, sorry. There's way more going in there. Yeah. So at least now we have two more modes in there. We'll get the wizard in there shortly. The licensor allowed it. That's the thing, right? They sure did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think we're really waiting to get into the game is the power-up system, which is going to help with a lot of different things. The next update, we should have our pit mode wizard, and I think the, what's it called, cliffhanger, that ball save. Cool. Yeah. No, I'm excited that's a game. I've told Zach I want to get one back. I want to stream it again because you just keep pumping awesome stuff and awesome features into that. and it was cool at Expo when Jared and I were commentating on Tom's amazing stream, we were watching these high level tournament players play and I was actually sitting next to Josh Sharpe's son and they were playing Kong and they get to the New York City mode and he's like, he should do this mode this way and whoever was playing it, it might have even been you Tom but whoever was playing it picked the wrong mode and played it as a multiball and here's Josh's son and go, nope, shouldn't have done it that way, and here's why. And it's like to hear all this logic or thought of, I love it. To my credit, I still won my match. But that's the goal, right, Keith? You want there to be challenge, risk, reward, but also balance enough that it's not blatantly obvious of this is the only way to play the game. Yeah, it probably needs a second scoring pass for sure, but we're still focused on getting stuff into the game. Every time we do that, we'll take like five minutes to give it a little score balancing pass. But I think with all the New York stuff, that's going to be a bit more of a challenge to balance those. But if there is a certain mode at a certain time, I'm not aware of it, but I'll look into that. So I got a good question. At least I think it's good in my head. Maybe it sounds like shit when I get it out, but either way. So the question I've got, Keith, is, is there a particular mode or rule that you can think of from simpler games, right? From like Valley Williams days or even like solid state, anything you could think of in general that hasn't either hasn't been around for a while or something that you haven't implemented into one of your rule sets yet that you're thinking about going back to yet? I know that's the hard part because you've done a lot of it. I know a lot of people probably don't realize some of the callbacks to it, but there's gotta be something still that you're like, this hasn't been done in a while. It'd be interesting to do. Here's a trivia for you. What is the rampage mode based on in Godzilla? Uh, pass. Tom's got it. I know that I knew this answer like two years ago. Cause I know you've told me this before. I distinctly remember us talking about this. Dolly Parton. Is that right? The wet willy in Whitewater, which I thought was a brilliant idea that they just horribly executed on, where there's this traveling shot going across the play field. And then as soon as you hit it, that's it. Mode's over. And I was like, oh, well, that's disappointing because then you can just trap up and wait to get to an easy shot. I was like, what if we just kept it going? So I kind of built my own mode around that. And that's how Rampage was born. um honestly the the thing that fascinates me the most and a lot of my co-workers is how again dracula works with its stacking of multi balls uh i think the key is how do you i think i just heard Josh Sharpe just cringe right now stacking how do you make that work on a game that also has a bunch of other features? So Dracula can get away with it because there's not much else going on. Bats and rats. Video mode maybe, but it's like how do you take that and make it so it's not the only thing you do in the game? I think if you can solve that question, that would be my next challenge. Well, I know this is one of Travis's favorite games. Toy Story 4 or not Toy Story, sorry Elton John which is actually, Travis actually likes Elton John Elton John, if you stack, I don't know if you knew this Keith, but if you stack Rocket Man multiball and Croc multiball you get Croc Man multiball so I mean, I think they might have is that the solve that you were looking for? you know, the stacker it is, but I mean, it's still when you get that triple going on Dracula and you execute correctly, you're blowing it up. If you get Crockett man, you're getting, what, 20 million points? So you only have your points. They have it in there. The only modern Stern game I can think of that's kind of like Dracula would maybe be ACDC, just where you can stack all three of the multiballs together. But it's still different. Yeah, and again, there's not much payoff. Right. Right. Yeah. That's that's the key is like, hey, here's this cool idea. And it's like, I think you only get like you shoot the bell and you get a bonus. I think that's all it does. Yeah. But what. But if you do that, right. If you focus on you got to get the stack, you got to do the thing. Well, remember, there's people like me that let's say I magically start the thing and then find a way to brick shots for 30 seconds and drain out and the thing's over. And then I'm on ball, too. And I'm like, I'm not going to do it. Like, how do you recover for that or how do you pivot? How do you get back to it? And that's that's that's a challenge, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'll let you know when I figure it out. Well, OK, so I talked about New York City and this is something that I've identified in your game. Cyborg multiball is another one. Recently in X-Men, the latest code, they just added the berserker multiball. And it's all about defeating sentinels. And the fact that you you are defeating sentinels not only in sentinel multiball, but certain modes. I mean, it's something that you kind of are slowly chipping away at. And just having that goal where it's something you're slowly chipping away at, you're working towards, it's always there. Combos with MechSoup Multiball, with Deadpool is another example. Like, I love those modes. And your games do a great job with that. You have a term for that. Or, like, what's that type of mode? I swear you've said something in the past, Keith, where it's a mode that you're chipping away at, you're slowly progressing towards. I don't know. What are your thoughts on those, or how do we do more of that in pinball? You mean like a base game mode? Maybe that's the way you said it. It's like you have your bit. Yeah, it's like something that's always there. In comm, that's the climb feature. It's always there. Jurassic Park, the catching dinosaurs is always there. Jaws, the bounty hunt is always there. Yeah, I always try to have something. And, you know, like if you play Ghostbusters and you have nothing running, oh, I can catch ghosts because that will lead to something. You know, I always like to have some kind of fun thing. Walking Dead is another one. If you have nothing else running, you can just sit there and shoot zombies, you know, because it will progress to something. But, yeah, I just call that a base game mode. Base game. It seems so simple, but I do think there are, like Dune, the latest Dune code, they released a new multiball, and it's something that if you progress through day and night, day and night. So once you get through four Busy Jezzeret Awards, there's the mode. And it's something like, okay, well, even if you're bricking shots, you're still hitting enough switches to progress through day or night. So it's something that if you play enough, you will get, like, those are the types of modes that I find really appealing because that way you can totally tank during modes or multiballs. So it's not a mode based off of the number of completions. It's something that you're just slowly, you know, you're progressing towards. I like that. I just wish that was a more standard design feature in pinball. Like a participation trophy? No, it's not a, okay, ball three, you haven't done anything, here's your mode. But you've got to hit, it's one of those things you're doing and you don't realize you're doing it. I think there's cool ways to implement it. I mean, bridge is kind of like that, right? Bridge attack, in a way, on Godzilla, to where you've got to hit so many switches, but then you have to execute a shot to start the next phase, and you keep doing that. So, yeah, I mean, that's always interesting if it's like a switch-based thing that lights a shot or lights a sequence of shots that you've got to complete to go to the next level. Yeah. That's why I love Cyborg multiball on Iron Maiden because it's like you're doing stuff already and you're progressing towards it. That was Spy Car multiball from Archer, yeah. So all different areas are upgrading parts of your car, then you get it all together and you get your Spy Car. So I would say a friend of the show, and I know you're friends with him as well, Carl D'Python Anghelo with his game, which is crazy that he has a game, Winchester, he has this 13 mode, and it's a similar thing of you've got to collect 13 ramps, 13 targets, 13 summons. So it's kind of like a cyborg multiball situation of you're building, you're getting so many of each thing, and you're building towards this opportunity to play something. I don't know. I like that because, once again, it's something that's always going on and you don't realize it. Carl did something unique. I'm curious your thoughts. I don't care about points. I've made that very clear. But Carl did a unique thing with his jackpot where if you activate two times play field, what you've done is you now you're not earning any points. All the points that you earn go into essentially a pot that the ghosts are going to steal from you. and then when the play field runs out, you have a certain amount of time to collect all those points or they're all gone. Is that exciting for the three of you that like your points, or do you not like that? I know this cat. This cat's really pissed off about that in the background. The cat loves points. Do you like that, though, to hit that crazy valuable shot or to miss all those points? That sounds familiar for some of you. I don't know. Is that a unique mode? to that game uh i don't know if carl carl was i think he's excited about that that idea of of you're building up this it's you don't as soon as the playfield multiplier starts you you are earning no points it's all going into a pot is it time based that you have to cash it in like a risk reward or is it just build it for the like the time is set you build it to and then after you run out of time then you have a certain number of seconds to collect yeah i mean as long as there's a constraint there i mean that's a cool little side path but if it's like in perpetuity like that just for the rest of the ball or something that would be a little a little too much if you have something going on or a mode or something and all you know you're crushing it then it's like oh i just i just hit that that playfield x does it take priority is it priority over everything or is it just it's just it's just like initiating a playfield multiplier but from that moment on until the playfield multiplier runs out all your points are going so it's like all points all All the points. Yeah, it's 1x, and then you have a chance to double it off. Well, there's a 2x. So you hit it once, and it becomes a 2x playfield multiplier, and at that point, they're stealing all your points. If you hit the shot again, it can become a 3x multiplier, same thing, but they're stealing all your points, and when the time runs out, you only have a few seconds to hit the right orbit to collect all those points, or they're gone. So if you're in a mode, if you're doing anything, it doesn't matter how successful you're doing it. If you don't collect those points, they're gone. It sounds similar. It sounds evil. It sounds a little similar to like Guns N' Roses with cashing out the jackpot. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of, yeah. But that's a, do you want to progress and cash out? Same thing with crank it up, right? Do you want to cash out or do you want to keep going? This is, no. What's the timer on this? Are we talking 10 seconds or are we talking 15, 20? Well, I would say, I don't know. It's probably, a lot of it's 13. So it wouldn't surprise me if it's 13 seconds to build, and then you have, whatever, 13 seconds to hit the shot to cash it all out. Yeah, that wouldn't be bad if there's a build phase that's not outrageous and then a quick cash-out phase. I mean, that makes sense. What about another game that's done this, Josh Sharpe, with the Cactus Canyon remake, the new addition with the saloon? He now allows you to— You have angered this cat, Joel. I dissing on points. It's because the cat's outside. We have Keith Elwin on, and you're talking about points don't matter in games. Well, I'm giving you an opportunity to tell me why points do matter, because in this one, in the Cactus Canyon remakes, you have the ability. They do and they don't. You know that, Joel. It just depends. You can stack your showdowns. And so you stack them all up, and then all of a sudden, for all the things you did to qualify the showdowns, they're all stacked. And then you have that gunfight. And then you literally have one shot at a drop target to collect all those points, or you miss it and it's gone. Isn't that like a 7, 8, 9 X multiplier? If you stack 7, 8, 9 qualifiers to do it. And so I think that's really cool. I mean, Josh has a story of how Lyman punched his garage wall because he missed the shot and he lost out on 100 plus million points. Yeah, he was there. He was on a tech from Mars. There we go. But that idea of build, build, build, build, build, there you go. You got one shot, one opportunity. You miss it, it's all gone. For you points people, do you like that? Or it's like, no, to put all that pressure on one shot is not what you want in pinball. Yeah, I like it. I haven't actually tried any of these games, so I can't really comment on it. I own a Cactus Canyon, but it's an OG. I haven't played the new rules. I haven't played a Winchester yet. Well, when you, let me, well, yeah, report back, report back if you miss that one shot in your showdown and you miss the, your drop report back on that feeling, but your Keith Owen, you probably won't miss. And then same thing with Winchester. If those ghosts walk away with all your points, you know, right into Carl at IU pinball and say, as long as it's not, as long as you're not losing points, I think that's kind of where we draw the line. And, like, if you're playing Hoot on it, you're gambling. Oh, yeah. It's like, well, that was fun. Because at least in tournament mode, you know, it's like win-lose, win-lose, win-lose. But if you just play it for fun and location, for fun, you never know what you're going to get. And it's just frustrating. So you don't see yourself ever implementing a rule with a negative value? No. Like, avoid targets. You hit the targets, you lose points. People don't like losing points. They tried, Joel, with Scars. They teased it. They didn't go all the way with it. It was teased. Well, you're not losing points. You're just reducing the value. You're not losing. That's why I said it was teased. It didn't go all the way. People are going to hate that because she wrote two rules for that game. That was one of them. That was the first one she did, and I was like, I don't know if people are going to like that. But then we actually neutered it a little bit so it wasn't as dangerous as it originally was. I will tell you one of my all-time favorite pinball experiences is at Pinball Olympics, they link up two games, and then they make it where the target on one game, they did it with Godzilla, and the target on one game will tilt the ball of the other game. Yeah, tilt that like a two from Golden State. And I understand the linking of the games is the hard part. But if you, Keith, if you ever implemented that in one of your games where you have some ridiculous mode and you put one random thing on that play field that if you hit that target, boom, you tilt. It'll randomly tilt someone on IC's game. How's that? No. Yes. Randomly tilt. What? How did Python Anghelo tilt it? That would be funny. But I'm saying if it's your fault where it's, I mean, would you ever consider doing that? You put something in your game where you hit that target. You're talking just a challenge mode, right? Not during an actual, like, real game, free ball game. I'm saying, fine. This is Joe we're talking about. He doesn't care about the score. I know. He's like, I just want to fuck over player two. No, it wouldn't be player two. I'm saying it's you. It's you hit your target. That's on you. You tilted your own ball. What you're describing is Mario Kart. So, yeah, hit this target. You're going to screw everyone else. That's kind of what you're describing. But I'm saying, what if you did, what if you had a New York City mode where you say, yeah, you can do single ball play, but it's going to be 3x value, but one of those targets will end your ball. Like, that's what I'm saying, is you give that risk-reward of, you get, all the points are there, but you have to play that. But if you hit this target. There would be a riot, I'm telling you. It would have to be a challenge mode or a wizard mode. You cannot put that in normal gameplay. You put that in the tilt. But if you think about Kong, the power-up target, right? It's dead center. It's nice and small. That's just not going to happen. Stop trying to make it happen. I just think it would be – We can't do it. Hey, let me know, Carl, when you do that because I would love – nothing would bring me more joy than to see Travis tilt his own ball because he hit a target he wasn't supposed to. I would trap up and just time it out. That's what I would do. That's exciting to me. But then again, I don't care. But you guys hear that and you're like, that's a ridiculous thing to even offer. I like the idea that you have. I think we just go too far, right? This is like Thelma and Louise, and you've just done drove us off the cliff. You can get us close to the cliff, right? Well, okay. If people are watching this on YouTube, comment below. Does that excite you or not? Because I like modes that kill your flippers because you reward, right? You did the thing. You blew it up, killed your flippers. Enjoy the moment. This is the opposite, right? what's the word for this? Masochist? Is that the word I'm looking for? Reminds me of Dialed In where I think if you don't hit a target with a certain amount of time doesn't that kill your flippers? Oh yeah, it has like the BMP pulse thing. That's kind of fine. Joel, they already have the Death Star shot. I mean, come on. It's true. The other way you could implement it would be, you know, you have Oxygen destroyer right you have oxygen destroyer and godzilla so you have 10 seconds well what if instead of 10 seconds to hit a shot you have to hit a shot but slowly more and more shots are lighting up and if you hit any of those shots boom you just killed yourself like that's see i actually like that idea that's cool you had a great idea joel now that actually makes thematic sense in that you have to skillfully do something you're not necessarily screwing yourself over so it's part of the actual mode so the only shift there travis is instead of hitting a target that kills you, you're saying no, you want to hit a shot that saves you. Because if you don't... Yeah, that's a difference. Like, you're given positive progression towards somebody. Like, imagine if you did, if we did this, right? We created a game in which you hit a shot, and it tilts out your game. Do you know how many letters and angry emails we will get that our game is constantly broke? Oh. I'm not selling games, Tom. You selling games? I'm not selling games. Like I said, that's got to be a challenge mode. Don't bring me into this discussion. Okay, that would be fun. I am not for this at all. Just contact Bug. This sounds like some Spooky would do. A timed event or something. Oh, God. Tell us at the Stern Pro event. That would go really quick. Oh, my gosh. It's just thought, hey, and you guys are all making it clear that it's a bad thought. No, your second idea was great. Like, that's why whenever you're coming up with creative ideas, you never just straight up shut it down and just say, okay, don't go with anything. You could say, hey, that's a bad idea, but keep going, and then eventually you'll find the good idea, which is what you just did. How about this, Joel? You hit one target, and you're done with the game. It's finished. You have defeated the wizard mode. It's the ultra secret skill shot. Yes. I have thought of a wizard mode that's all or nothing. So you can double your score or lose all your score. Would you have that in competition mode? Well, if you're getting to the main wizard mode in competition mode, you probably wouldn't. I mean, expo. Expo. It could happen. True. So you're saying you roll into that final wizard mode, that ultimate wizard mode, with 2 billion points, and your options right there are double or nothing. and if you don't finish the mode, you drain out, your game ends at zero points. Yep. We'll give you ten points. How's that? Hey, I'm all for that. No, make it double zero. Make it double zero. Make it her, Keith. I don't know. I just – okay, kind of a side thing, but I have to give Raymond Davidson a shout out. I was kind of harsh on Star Wars last game. Harsh? Ray Day reached out. Ray's still crying about it. Well, he reached out and originally it was like, Joel, you're off base or like basically was like you're wrong. And then but honestly, we had a great discussion back and forth and he gave me some validity to some to some of my points. And then he also made it clear on on limitations or why he had to do what he had to do. And I understand, you know, that many modes, that many movie clips, you know, your hands are tied in a way to like, how do you make these? You can't you can't have them crazy unique or stand out because of just how many there are, but also the complexity of what that would be. So he tried to be consistent with what they are. And that way they're a little easier to understand how you get through those modes. But to me, I don't know. To me, that's what I like about pinball. And I think, Keith, that's something you're doing very well with Kong, with how different the modes feel. And I understand that's a challenge as a rule designer because the layout of the play field isn't changing. So how do you approach that? How do you hone in with a mode Unless it Venom Unless it Venom But how do you hone in on that with a mode where you like okay i want a special i want to make sure that this mode is focused on this area of the play field or i'm going to play this mode you know different than just the other mode yeah so when i was designing kong obviously i had the you know the cross shots putting up flippers in mind so i definitely wanted to design a mode around that which is across the chasm Then I have drop targets. Okay, so, you know, Tranidon, because it was in the story, there was no rhyme or reason for it, but there was just a focus of not only the drop targets, but then the cave. Savan was basically based off the gong, because in the story, they ring the gong to summon Kong. and then you know you have your your everything mode like in godzilla i had um megalon which is like it could be any shot and that's kind of what stegosaurus is it's like okay this can be anywhere in the play field uh you're just moving around and then uh escape the swamp i let uh Joshua Henderson write that rule but i i said we should probably use the the punch bag target um so you know he did that and added like a little combo at the end so yeah we try to you know we don't want to use the exact same uh shots and if you ask me uh games where every single mode is just shoot the colored arrow to me those get boring fast you can just swap in any asset for that and you know you don't even you don't even care so i think it's important to yeah compartmentalize each mode to either a device or a section of the play field that is otherwise, you know, not used enough. Yeah, I completely agree. Now, Travis had thrown out the idea last time of how do you do that with a fan layout though? Like, how do you do that? Can you do that? Can you do a modern rule set with the complexity and depth that people want with a layout that is, cause you, you, you know, the way you just described it, you know, you've got the Kong area, the drop target area, the upper left area that this, but if you just, if you have a fan layout, can you do that? Can you, can you design rules with that uniqueness? Well, I think, yeah, you are kind of, you're kind of crippled. It would depend on the inserts, honestly. Cause like if you have a whole, like in Jaws, for example, we had three different swimmer inserts on each shot. You know, you could probably do something if you had unique inserts for it, but yeah, It's just all you have is an RGB arrow. Basically all you can do is, well, it's either lit, not lit, or you're making it change colors. But, yeah, other than that, that's tough. It becomes harder. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we were brainstorming different things of, you know, like when you have different modes based on it. Like I really love in D&D how they have a mode about stealth, and if you now hit your slings, you know, so for the first time ever you're actually worried about sling hits, how that affects the mode, you know. That's funny. We have something in Kong for that, but it's just not as obvious in the T-Rex mode. It's the same thing. After someone's sling hits, then you have to rescue Anne from one of the T-Rexes. But it's probably not as obvious as D&D when you're trying to sneak. But, yeah. But that, I mean, yeah, the slings are there at all times. And for now, all of a sudden, a mode is highlighting those and making those feel special. So it's, I don't know. I think that's the challenge. I mean, that's what I think the goal with this conversation was just like bringing up the challenges. And that's, you know, Tom, Travis, none of us are designers. And so it's easy for us to be critical. Right. Because we know best. But we we don't. That's what it's so obvious that this box of lights is so much more complex than all the decision making that you have to have. Is there anything maybe we'll just leave that open ended for you, Keith. Is there what's something that the pinball enthusiast doesn't realize is as hard as it is? or like, yeah, we're downplaying it as, you know, we're saying, well, just do that. And you're sitting there going, you can't do that. And here's why, I don't know. It's hard not to start repeating yourself. I think that's the thing. You know, when you first come on the scene, everything's new. And so, you know, I've, I catch myself sometimes like, Oh, now that that mode's too similar to so-and-so, but you know, it gets harder as you go. I'll say that. managing a team also it's probably you know people don't realize even though I'm not working on geometry today I'm not working on rules but I am you know managing my next project and I'm still in Kong so you know that's all stuff that you know you're dealing with artists you're dealing with sound guys you're dealing you know licensors so it's that's part of the job that I think people don't realize um it's like most of your time is spent doing i mean i can like i said i i kicked out that uh on bond 60 that i did that cad work in two weeks because that's all i had to do i didn't have to deal with the rules i didn't have to deal with the licensor and just say yeah just make me a playfield done that's the easy part the rest the rest is like um managing you know it's it's harder than that uh it seems when the projects you know as soon as you finish one project you got to start another, but then you still got to keep going back to this one for icy updates and, you know, topper stuff and all that. So yeah, it gets to be a lot. Yeah, I know. I'd, I'd ask you something similar in the past and that was your answer. And that was very eyeopening to me that I think, I think a lot of people assume a game designer is just screwing stuff in and out of a play field and moving posts around and dialing in shots and working with a mechanical engineer to probably, you know, really fix the mech. Um, but I think you really made it sound like that's the fun and easy part in a way it's the managing the team and the whole overarching project to make sure that every aspect is addressed the way it needs to that's that's your that's your everyday work i mean i have a great team so it's not like um it's it's not like hard to manage or anything but i think that is part of a job that people don't realize you're spending a lot of time doing yeah it's up to the game designer you know all this stuff is up to the game designer it's like oh what sound do you want here what music do you want here you know like with jerry thompson he just like we kicked back and forth stuff he's like you know what do you think of this song i was like oh that's perfect or i don't know why i'm gonna use this try something else you know if there's assets who cuts up all those assets like all those clips and jaws that's me so yeah that took months so yeah there's a lot of stuff that the game designer is responsible for that i think people don't realize is that why you've never had Ray Day as one of your lead code guys because he's too hard to work with? Yeah, I worked with him on Avengers. Yeah, that trophy, all those trophies. He did the trophies, yeah. Yeah, he did all the trophy mania stuff. Well, you did say earlier that you typically tune out after the first hour because at that point we just ramble. So we're at an hour and 20 minutes. But Tom, was there anything specific you want to talk about, Keith? Or Tom or Travis, do you have any other questions questions that we want to work through or discuss? Hmm. That in itself is a good question. I think it pretty much, well, I think here's the unique thing. It's okay. Here's a good question. All these we've noticed at Expo, for instance, the homebrew section is just exploding, like absolutely exploding. Like there's everybody that's interested in design. I know like me personally, I'm starting to get more and more interested in design just from like a game theory standpoint. So what would you tell people, Keith, listening to today? Because obviously you worked on Archer, you had homebrews. I think South Park was another one that you worked on a long time ago. So it's like, what would you tell people today that are halfway thinking about doing it? Like, what is like the number one thing you say? Not just like, hey, just do it. But it's like, what's something that you've learned that's kind of like you wish you knew when you first started that would probably help guide you further down the line or get you to where you wanted to be a little bit quicker with your design philosophy so i'm on the hands-on philosophy um like when i designed archer i just grabbed wood started screwing stuff together you know trying different shots and then once i got to a point where okay this shoot's pretty good now i'm gonna put it on cad which sounds backwards but actually it saves you so much time uh because in cad work you know oh I think this shot will work so you go through all the trouble designing the CAD you print it out one to one or you cut it and then you're like well this doesn't work let's you know let's cut another play field let's cut another play field when in reality is you it's not that hard to transfer anything you screw on to as long as the wood's the same size obviously as the normal play field um so that's kind of how I designed Archer I just started throwing ball guides uh I had I think I started with ramps from other games just as placeholders you know they didn't go where I wanted them to at least I could say okay I could shoot this ramp and then when the time came to actually make the ramp you know I did that because I knew okay this is locked in I'm not gonna have to move it which will totally change the geometry um yeah and it seems like uh I mean these guys are awesome when I did Archer I I didn't spend any money on that thing I I basically bought the computer and the monitor. I had an old junk Congo cabinet. My friend and coworker, Mike Grittarelli, had boxes and boxes of Pinball 2000 Star Wars Episode I parts. So he gave all that to me. So, you know, I just took all these parts, screwed them to the wood. And that was a homebrew for the time, which I know now, if I bring that to Expo and compare it to these guys now that have art, and they have rules and nice displays and everything. It looked like a piece of crap. So hats off to those guys for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. See, Joel agrees. Your initial design would look like crap compared to everybody else. You heard it here. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. To the point, I've had a lot of people, hey, I want to get into game design. I got SolidWorks or AutoCAD. And I was like, just don't even worry about that. Just grab yourself some flipper mechs. And what I did is these really cheap aluminum strips. I don't know exactly what they're used for, but I got them from the hardware store. They're super easy to bend by hand. You can 3D print some things to hold them, or you can actually rivet stuff together. But that's all I did. I took these super cheap strips. I would bend them. Okay, this works great. Then you can switch to steel after you already have the ball pass figured out. But that's my advice. Just, you know, screw stuff to wood and try it before you burn out. That goes for you, Travis, before you burn out, not only learning CAD software, but trying to like shoot it in your mind, which is way harder than you think it is. Yeah. And we asked Carl a similar because we're like, how did you design Winchester in California when the factory is in Texas? And and it's basically like you just do it in 3D printing, like 3D printing has really opened the doors for so much. because you can, he's like, basically every mech in Winchester was 3D printed before it was anything else. And I don't know. That's awesome that there's so many cool tools for creators nowadays in the homebrew community. I forgot one question I was supposed to ask you, Keith. Somebody said, I don't remember who said it, but they said that you don't make good tournament games, essentially. I mean, I may be paraphrasing, that your games are not good tournament games. Do you agree with that? And as one of the best tournament players of all time, and rumors are that Stern only designs tournament games, apparently you don't do that well. I did not say for the record they are not good tournament games. I said they're not designed to be for tournament players in tournament games. Exactly. If you focus on making a game for tournament players, you're going to put off 99% of Joe Sixpack. He walks up at the bar. Oh, I like Jaws. I have no idea what I'm doing. This is crazy. So, yeah, I definitely do not design games for tournament players. But, I mean, usually the knobs are there to make them harder, but for some reason most tournament directors do not. But, I mean, taking a gate out on Kong, that's definitely one of the things you can do. You know, on Jaws, you can make Jaws really hard, really easily, just by removing all the post rubbers and the net lanes. You know, there's always stuff you can do to make it rubber. But, you know, if it's a location tournament where you can't do any of that, then, yeah, I just, you know, I don't want to piss off the casual player just so people can use my games in tournaments. But all of your suggestions involved editing hardware, moving hardware, not changing. Joel, you hear this, Joel? I'm not going to let this go, Joel. You hear this? What? That makes me right and you partially not as right. I didn't say you're wrong. I said partially not as right. I just thought you had said a very bold statement about a well-respected designer, and I'm just calling it out. That's all I was doing. But, Keith, you're suggesting all the changes you would suggest are hardware changes. You're not saying go into the code and make things, you know, double the amount of hits or something like that. You know, you can do that, but, you know, is it fun? No. Yeah. All right. Tom and I will answer you for that, Keith. Like, no. All TVs, if you're making your software more difficult, besides no ball save, like, anything else is just annoying. Yeah, if you make the PID on King Kong, oh, instead of three hits, it's ten. Is that, you're just taking that whole feature out of the game. It's like, what's the point? Yeah. So I'd rather, you know, not only can you move the rubber, you can move the entire post on most of my games. And, you know, it's still, it's not going to hurt anything. And you'll create a lot more drains. But, yeah, actually, removing gates on Kong, that's brilliant. I never even thought of that. Brilliant. Speaking of brilliant, Tom, do you have any other questions for Keith or any other thoughts? Yeah, just a follow-up on that. I like Keith and Godzilla, how you didn't or you can't decrease the ball save time to zero, and it pisses Josh Sharpe. Josh Sharpe. Josh Sharpe. yeah actually it pissed me off so bad uh when i i don't remember what game it was but yeah i spent all this time getting to some multiball and it kicked another ball out right when the you know i started right i think it was bridge or something ball drain kicked another ball it was over i was like dude what the hell it's in the adjustments okay you were like i know a guy yeah i do i know guy. We'll take care of that. I don't want people to feel ripped off in a tournament because they're going to say, this thing sucks. Definitely his strident response generated, I think, a minimum of eight seconds. Wow. Because you did one second. We had a mass update, I think, for IC a couple years ago, and I told Rick, all my games, get rid of a zero. Put the floor at eight. Get rid of that Josh Rule nonsense out of here. I do remember the one other question I wanted to have, and it's, you know, when we look at some of the success that some of the other pinball manufacturers are having with some of their games selling out immediately, and one of the things that stood out to me about some of their games is when you look at the world under glass, there's a lot of sculpts, a lot of sculpts, a lot of sculpts, you know, not so much flat plastic, a lot of sculpts. And I understand that, you know, they're they're spending money on those. That's part of their bomb. I think, Keith, your bomb has always I feel like you spend your bomb on shots and layouts and mechs like that's the playing of the of the game. I don't know what's your view on like that type of stuff? Cosmetic play field sculpts. Do you feel like now in twenty twenty five that is needed for a game to feel value? You know, the values there or do you feel like, no, I'd rather spend the money on an opto spinner? You know, I don't. So it's a double edged sword because everyone is like, oh, that's, you know, a five dollar plastic. I was like, yes, that's true. But in order to make that tool to create that five dollar plastic, it costs tens of thousands of dollars. So you have to draw the line somewhere. It's like, yeah, would I love to have a really ornate Quint Shack and Jaws? Yes. But, you know, you're looking at twenty, thirty thousand dollars to have someone actually make that. and then, okay, now we can pop those out for $5 a piece. But that's the hidden expense I think people don't see. I think what these boutiques can get away with, since they're so limited productions and they release games so slowly, I'm sure they 3D print a lot of their stuff. So I think they benefit from that greatly if that is what they're doing. But for us, we always injection mold everything. We don't 3D print anything. so it's a whole thing and it takes months so believe it or not six months before the game comes out we have to lock these Sculpts in because it takes so long to get made it's something you have to think about way in advance so if there's any kind of thing you need to change you can't so that's the tough part of Sculpts but I do agree I like them, I think it's cool they fill out dead spaces of your layout yeah I think that's a great answer, really. I mean, and I also think, I'm curious, as a designer, do you ever consider, like, modding potential? As in, you know, I wouldn't expect a modder to add a whole new mech shot, whatever, into a game, but the modding community could add a cosmetic whatever. Like, they could replace that flat plastic with this, or they could add, you know, like... plastic with a bracket to hold, you know, a commercial, you know, figurine. I forget which game it was. And then people are complaining about, oh, it was just plastic. And you're not noticing there's this big sturdy bracket there that you can screw anything to that, yeah, we gave you so you wouldn't have to glue it to your game, you know. We did think about that. Like I said, I wish I remember the game. So, but, yeah, we think about that. Even Kong, I didn't have anything left in the budget to do, like, a molded skull in the back left corner. But, you know, I put lights there for people. You know, I figured people would be modding that, take that plastic out, 3D printing their own stuff. So, yeah, I definitely think about that stuff. Yeah. And it's interesting that you brought up earlier just perceived value of these games because these games are expensive. So it does the perception of I'm getting my value in code depth and I'm getting my value in what's physically in the game. I don't know. It's just stuff like that that I hadn't – I don't think I've thought to at the same level as you. And then, obviously, I know Travis does this as well with the selling of pinball machines. But that's a fine tightrope for sure. They are expensive games. They're also getting more expensive to make. Obviously, the tariffs and the cost of steel and wood. and it's with all these like boutique companies it's it's raised the price of um you know licensing stuff so it's it's all these hidden costs you know and stern has kept the prices where they have for a while now and it gets tougher and tougher for sure with all this like everything that's going on in the world right now yeah no i think that's great well uh before we get rambling we should probably wrap it up but uh uh carl or wow carl wow keith you have oh i fixed i caught it oh i caught it um well it's nice having you on keith sorry it won't be back yeah we uh we said before we started actually before you hopped on i think you are now are i think you i think you have appeared the most of any guest so well done second time right no i think it's your third third third for sure maybe four wasn't there yeah i could we'd have to double check this episode 70 which is crazy we're at uh i think it was when was it when kong released when did we have like the four hour podcast that was a live session yeah we did live yeah we love live and you've been on this twice and i think hopefully this is the first time we've gotten through technically sound we will see but uh keith keith if do you have anything uh you want to plug or anything left you want to say? I'm attempting to bring back a feature from the 50s. Wish me luck. The 50s? Okay. Time to look at a... Humpty Dumpty remake. Here we go. Sick. Okay, thank you for that. Now the wheels are spinning. That's awesome. I think I know what it is, but I'm not going to say it publicly. I think I got an idea. Okay. Well, Tom, I think I know what it is, but I'm not going to say it either. You've never played a game before. I'll say it after we go off air. I'll say it after we go off air. Wood rails is what it is. Spike for wood rails. The stool pigeon is coming back. While DC's gone, it's just going to be lights in the back for the score, Joel. But Joel, you won't have to worry about that anyways. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Score, yep. Alright, Tom, plug away, man. I am on this podcast and Fox of the Spinball. I will be hopefully at the Winter Bash if there's not a snow apocalypse next weekend. So turn in for that. I believe Travis and Keith will also be there. Actually, I have to pull out of that. Because Travis and I are going somewhere else a couple days after that. Ah, gotcha. Secret mission. Yeah. Oh, okay. We're going to solve this plastic crisis is what we're going to do. We'll miss you there, Keith. Yeah, sorry. But hopefully there's not a snowstorm. I don't think there's going to be. Maybe there is. Fingers crossed. Nope, we're good. It's 28 degrees. It's sunny. It's fine. We're all good. Well, thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom, for being here. Maybe by you. Oh, true. Appleton. Travis, plug away, man. Yeah, this podcast. and then my job. Sick plug. Sick plug. Yep. My name's Joel. I stream on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel with my brother. Check out some of the tutorials I've made. I've made a few tutorials of Keith's amazing games. So feel free to check those out. Those are actually some of our higher viewed videos, believe it or not. Keith, our tutorials. And what I love is on the Flip N Out Pinball YouTube channel, the highest viewed stream that I've ever done was Godzilla Pro from like years ago. That thing just keeps getting views, which makes me laugh. But yeah, and then I'm on this podcast as well. Keith, thank you so much for being on here and really appreciate you coming on. And it's always fun talking pinball and who better to talk design with than one of the best designers currently doing the job. Same guys. Maybe ever. Yeah, it's a good time. All right. Well, like always, Tom, you get the last words. play more pinball _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: de704d80-dcd5-4124-9171-a71fa5884923*