Dutch Pinball Museum, An evening with... Gary Stern

Dutch Pinball Museum·video·1h 35m·analyzed·Sep 29, 2024

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Gary Stern traces Stern Pinball's 86-year history and explains how the industry shifted from commercial-only to 70% home ownership.

Summary

Gary Stern, CEO of Stern Pinball, delivered a comprehensive presentation at the Dutch Pinball Museum covering the company's 86-year history, from his father Sam's entry into the arcade business in the 1930s through modern game development. He discussed the evolution from operator to distributor to manufacturer, key historical figures like Harry Williams, and explained why modern Stern differs from his father's company—today 70% of games are in homes (vs. all commercial in earlier eras), while 70% of play still happens on location. Stern outlined the business model, survival through recessions, partnership structure, and the sophisticated rule design process for contemporary games targeting adult gamers.

Key Claims

Stern Pinball makes 85-90% of the world's pinball machines
high confidence · Gary Stern stated this directly in the context of discussing why customers seeking pinball discover Stern when they want to buy a home machine
70% of Stern's games worldwide are in the home/consumer market; 30% are in commercial venues (bars, arcades, bowling alleys)
high confidence · Gary Stern explicitly stated these figures when contrasting his father's all-commercial business model to modern Stern
70% of actual play happens in commercial locations despite 70% of machines being in homes
high confidence · Gary attributed this observation to Seth, current CEO, and used it to illustrate why commercial/location presence remains important
Approximately 40-50% of first-time home buyers purchase a second game
medium confidence · Gary cited this statistic as reported by dealers; represents second-purchase rate of initial home market entrants
Stern Pinball nearly went bankrupt multiple times, including during the 2008 Lehman Brothers recession
high confidence · Gary confirmed this when LJ asked directly about near-bankruptcies; cited 2008 financial crisis specifically
Stern was sued by Williams multiple times in the early days, including over a simulated ramp design allegedly copied from Terminator
high confidence · Gary discussed a lawsuit where Steve Richie/Williams claimed a seven-shot array ramp copied Terminator's simulated ramp design
Modern Stern games have sophisticated rule sets designed for adult gamers who grew up as gamers, not simple 'roll three lanes' mechanics
high confidence · Gary contrasted today's complex rule design (managed by Seth and programming team) with simple historical mechanics
The new Stern Factory is 23,000 square meters and is the first modern, fully air-conditioned high-tech pinball factory Gary has seen in the industry
high confidence · Gary described the new facility during opening remarks, contrasting it with older multi-story Williams buildings

Notable Quotes

“We are pinball manufacturers but more important than that we're game designers we design games we design fun they're not heart lung machines there's fun and that's what we have to do is create fun there's no point in manufacturing a game if nobody's going to have fun playing it”
Gary Stern @ ~0:05:00 — Core philosophy: Stern prioritizes fun/game design over manufacturing, reframing the company identity
“My father's pinball company sold games to commercial establishments only today 70% of our games worldwide belong to you all the community and to firsttime buyers”
Gary Stern @ ~1:20:00 — Key distinction explaining why Stern is fundamentally different from the original business model despite continuity
“Pinball is a tennis court the rules it's supposed to be a particular size wide bodies play fields not as good”
Gary Stern @ ~0:35:00 — Design philosophy: Narrow playfields are superior for game balance and playability; references ongoing industry debate
“I proved I proved I was the one so smart to try it I proved it didn't work”
Gary Stern @ ~0:45:00 — Self-aware critique of Pinball 2000 conversion kit concept; acknowledgment of failed innovation
“Pinball manufacturer is not for the faint of heart uh you have to love what you're doing um in particular um the Lehman Brothers recession in 2008 wasn't wasn't a happy time”
Gary Stern @ ~1:15:00 — Candid admission of industry difficulty and personal resilience through 2008 crisis
“20-year-olds play games in bars they come back at 45-50 and want to flex for home games this is a cycle that goes on you're part of a cycle and it's very important to the continuation of pinball”
Gary Stern @ ~1:25:00 — Describes the customer lifecycle model and symbiosis between location and home markets

Entities

Gary SternpersonStern PinballcompanySam Sternperson Harry Williamsperson Sethperson Dave Petersonperson

Signals

?
business_signal: Stern nearly went bankrupt multiple times including during 2008 Lehman Brothers recession; survival dependent on founder tenacity and late-stage investor partnership with Dave Peterson
high · Gary confirmed multiple near-bankruptcies; cited 2008 crisis as difficult period; described partnership with Peterson as critical to turnaround
?
business_signal: Stern's business model fundamentally shifted: 70% home ownership today vs. 100% commercial in founder era; 70% of play still occurs on location despite home-heavy ownership distribution
high · Gary Stern explicitly stated these percentages and framed this as why Stern is not his father's company
?
community_signal: Customer awareness problem: many potential buyers don't know Stern makes pinball or where to purchase; Stern mission includes directing consumers to authorized dealers
high · Gary described airline pilot example who played pinball but didn't know where to buy; framed dealer visibility as strategic priority
?
operational_signal: Stern relies on pipeline: teens/20s play location machines in bars, return as 45-50 year olds wanting home machines; then some become operators placing machines for next generation
high · Gary described this cycle explicitly and emphasized its importance to industry continuation
?
design_philosophy: Stern principle: narrow playfields superior to wide bodies due to better ball physics and game balance; wide bodies require excessive geometry and cost
high · Gary discussed Flight 2000 (wide body) vs. Gammatron (narrow body conversion); cited Neil Falconer's practice of updating resume whenever wide bodies announced

Topics

Stern Pinball company history and evolutionprimaryModern vs. legacy business model: home vs. commercial machinesprimaryFactory infrastructure and manufacturing capabilitiessecondaryGame design philosophy and rule complexity for modern gamerssecondaryPlayfield design principles (narrow vs. wide bodies)secondaryLegal disputes with competitors (Williams lawsuits)mentionedBusiness resilience through 2008 financial crisissecondaryCustomer lifecycle and location-to-home pipelineprimary

Sentiment

positive(0.78)— Gary Stern is nostalgic and proud of company history; candid about failures (Pinball 2000, near-bankruptcies) but optimistic about modern business model and market potential. Tone is self-deprecating, humorous, and engaged. Community-focused messaging emphasizes partnership with collectors/players. No significant negative sentiment detected.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

so welcome everybody so the first people that came up can sit and the rest have to stand it takes about two hours good luck yeah yeah so um welcome at the Dutch Pinball Museum uh started nine years ago and one of my biggest wishes was that Gary Stern could come over once and look what he brought he got a complete layer top layer of the complete Stern Factory welcome everybody uh Gary Stern set Davis co-owners how do you say that yeah owner co-owner founder he's the CEO he's the CEO own he will be he will be well we can tell everything about it uh enjoy it um if you want to drink go downstairs go upstairs don't play Pinball in these two hours because uh so we want to do a the full Mony people welcome give him a warm Applause Gary St thank you very much for having me thank you all um we're gonna we're going to chat for a little while before LJ gets to go to work thank you um Seth is our CEO he's replaced me he's smarter than I am and has better questions than I do better educated than I am you know I'm a lawyer he's an MBA uh and um and understands what we're doing where the game business is going uh he has an undergraduate degree in information technology that's computers which I can't do anything with which everybody will tell you our uh Jesse at our place he spends half his day trying to fix stuff for me um and in accounting and then work for GE in the days when GE was a great company it's still a good company but it was a it was the Cadillac of companies um Wharton business school a decade Plus at Disney in games and streaming he is a gamer he knows games he knows not just pinball but he knows all kinds of games and that's important to where pinball is going which we'll talk about that um also here our cro John Balia [Applause] pat pat Powers our head of uh tech service been with us for as long as I can remember uh Doug Skor the uh the uh our director of international sales Doug like me is second generation in this business uh he comes from his family had a very successful Chicago distributorship and then he was president of warlander jukebox in America all different kind of stuff that relates to to what we're doing and Lloyd you all know because he's from here and he Lloyd has Lloyd's joined us recently and so because we want Europe is so important to us that we want to have feet on the ground boots on the ground so we can develop Europe um further and further all of these people all all uh six of us are together going to tell you no back back up back up how the we need to tell you what we're doing what Stern is the Stern Pinball vision statement guys please to create compelling with me with me to to create compelling entertainment that inspires a lifetime of Love of game Sparks passion forges friendships and connects people everywhere through fun Innovative technologically advanced pinball games and experiences we will end with that please pay attention to it try and memorize it because we're all going to read it together I always do it that way these these guys will tell you um you notice it doesn't say manufacturing pinball in there we are pinball manufacturers but more important than that we're game designers we design games we design fun they're not heart lung machines there's fun and that's what we have to do is create fun there's no point in manufacturing a game if nobody's going to have fun playing it now we have a great new Factory we've got about 23,000 23,000 square m of manufacturing space it's the first time I've ever been in a a game Factory of any sort video pinball whatever it is that really looks like a modern Factory and it is it's it's fully air conditioned High-Tech high ceilings on high it's just it's just fantastic those of you who come to uh um uh pinball Expo uh we have a tour of course and we look forward to seeing you all there and if you haven't signed up for it please do if you have trouble if they filled uh somebody said they filled I hope not because we'll make sure that there's enough space for everybody to tour we're going to do a little bit of History just a little bit [Music] um that's my father Sam Stern that's my father Sam [Music] Stern that's me it's pi picture goes back don't tear the place up Carri goes back a a while Sam started as a game operator in there how much time do I got with you all two hours oh good Sam started I can do that just you know that somebody get the hook to pull me off when we're done here uh Sam started as a game operator in the uh 30s he had couple friends of his they were policemen couple friends of his said you should you know he's he's in maybe in his 20s if barely they said you should get a couple games and put them you know out in this Lo find a location he puts them in a a u drug store on the counter and they were like the games you see down here countertop push shoot uh games with the pins in them and all that pinball pins in them so he puts two games there comes back the next day his two games are behind the C ER somebody else's two games are there he said to these two copper friends of his what do you get me into what I bought these games they're you know they're they got pushed aside somebody else's games are there and they said not there Sam over there not there there were those guys were over there okay so he put his games in in the next drugstore 10 at night he gets a phone call one of the games is broken that's it I am done with this business no more I'm done he goes running down there it was broken there were so many coins in it the shoot wouldn't push in anymore and so that's how he stayed in the game business and we were the family were game operators used to take my mom out on a date and stop at a spot and collect the Jukebox um in uh that was in the 30s sometime in the 30s 40s early 40s he became a game distributor like Doug comes from and that's because in those days you could get you people became game Distributors to get games sooner and cheaper well he concentrated on on Distributing in 1947 he was selling pinball machines made by Harry Williams Sam was a 37y old punk kid I can say that cuz I'm 79 I wouldn't say that to his face but he's it's he's been going for a long time um he's been gone since 8384 yeah um and he never got to see this company he would have been so happy and proud with it uh we started it in ' 86 after he had passed any EV so he comes in to see Harry Williams um the great we'll come back to wait back up a minute back up a minute uh not my father pinball company we'll talk about that later that's one of the things that uh LJ is going to ask me got it don't forget that one we'll talk about why it's not my father's pinball company let's go so he uh that's Harry Williams uh MBS was the sales guy um Sam comes in to see Harry his supplier 37y old punk kid Harry was probably 39y old punk kid sits behind uh 35-year-old bu kid sits behind Harry's desk puts his feet up on the desk and says why don't you sell me the company Harry says I'll have to think about that goes up in his airplane flies around Chicago at a single engine plane for three hours came down and sold my father half of the business half of the pinball company and that's how we got into pinball manufacturing later uh Sam bought Harry out but Harry was always a consultant with us was one year my father went to Valley as Executive Vice President for pinball and Harry went there too with us and uh uh always together um Harry Harry had uh uh three wives three wives no not at the same time but two of them two of them two of them died on the same day I don't mean the same date the same day you know this and um there were dunion Ray no Raymond ah they were all wild characters what's the word I'm thinking of uh I'll get back to it Damon R Damon runan characters it's a American uh literature next NE notice the white oh wait back up back up how do you like the white shoes that's Harry he was very dab he was a great dancer by the way uh next one we'll just show a little more of this stuff and then well Harry in his boat uh Harry in his plane this was a Starlight Room in the old Williams that's where the executive dining room was was called The Starlight Room Stars the light fixures you can't tell where Stars uh I remember it well the original Factory was on Huron Street it was a this was not like a business like today it wasn't a Factory like we have it was six stories six floors the first floor was Jack holding up the second floor the third floor was Jax holding up the fourth floor and the fifth floor was Jack's holding up the sixth floor these weren't businesses that were structured like today uh let's do another one and before maybe uh this is Harry and Sam at the old Stern electronic Chicago Coin Factory I recognize it looking at a drop Target uh this was a promo piece that they that the old Williams did uh years ago and uh let's do the next one see how many more of these we're going to do before we start Harry me Sam me I don't know why I'm in it so much let's do another one uh some more whoever put oh one this was uh the stern pball Factory one that we moved out a few years ago this big building is a data center see I didn't need that anyways I got enough this big building's a data center um but Williams before California Avenue was at 4242 West Filmore that's the the second Williams building after hon that's where we were then it's it's a blighted neighborhood now you can tell looking at this building it's not particularly tracked it was a little rough then it was down the street from the Filmore police station and uh somehow batteries got of the cop cars got robbed out of the cop cars in those days uh was a little rough the getaway car for a big Michigan Avenue Jewel robbery came off our parking lot uh and anyway let's see what I got next okay this is more this is what a factory looked like in those days 4242 West Filmore you see all the workers lined up looks similar and different today you come by and see us and you'll see next one this was when we were on Janice Avenue where we started almost started out we started out in a temporary space before that but we were in uh in Melrose Park for years let's see what I got next uh more of the factory this is when we moved to Elk Ro that building this that we moved out of which by the way the landlord uh the big real estate company sold it to that data center next to us they became our landlord then they wanted us to leave and now the building was our building was torn down and a new building is being built there as a data center they put fiber optic um cables down all through the highway what do we got next uh okay I like this one I'll tell you why you see the reflection here oh boy upside down this is actually not a game it's a picture it was a game Williams game it's a picture of a of artwork there was an artist and the this art uh went for a couple hundred thousand dollar at soube but when he was painting playfields for color pictures of playfields he picked up the reflection that reflection of the backlash onto the Playfield is not something new with our games and we you know we have now we have glass uh non glare glass so forth if you have a reflection problem but this an age-old problem the pinball next one let's see what I got next uh Strike Zone i' probably showed that that did this once before you notice the the rollover switches for uh uh bowling Let's uh let's look for another one in in here okay I'm I was showing a lot of the this this is how the games you all know used to look but go again let's keep going see if I get to what I wanted here space mission was Williams that brought pinball back uh it was an important game with ramps and so forth let's keep going I'm looking for something you in particular uh all the this was the first of the old Stern pinball machines pinball by Stern and this was a calendar for the Chicago Coin did and I looked at it and I said that made nice backlash and so that was our backl go ahead and we'll do a couple ah okay Memory Lane this is what I wanted to get to which again the same this one was bowling uh the same uh rollover switch is there and Joe Robbins of uh of uh valy called me and said yeah it should be mamory Lane you shouldn't be building that game it should be mamory Lane they came out with strikes and Spares do I have a picture that next I don't think so yes they came out with strikes and Spares at the same time same basic lame I said you're you're criticizing my game your game is the same thing but that's something we really don't have in pinball anymore because we're in the home so much we don't really have TNA with as I'm saying that I say that while I'm standing next to Alvar but other than that we really don't have TNA in pinball uh in fact uh um um George Petro of uh he was very upset with me of uh play mechanics and of course there's no TNA in his game but he said you know what happened to TNA and pball I said you guys we just don't have it anymore let's see if we'll look at a few more before we do a little discussion you see same same Playfield uh this was just some of the stuff from the old from old wait back up for a minute these games uh yeah these games were all the Steve Kirk games Steve Kirk whose name wasn't Kirk he just decided his name should be Kirk because of Captain Kirk but these are his games which you all probably are familiar with with he was a great designer just a little difficult to deal with he once uh he was I called me and he said he's you know we're talking and he's he's living in his car I said I'll get you a hotel room you got to get out of the I'll get you a hotel room he said I can't I have cats I said that's right you can take the cat to a hotel room no I have cats how many cats do you have I have double digit cats he had double digit cats living in the car with him but okay okay okay what else we got here uh those were his this is flight 2000 now flight 2000 Harry Williams game Harry was great Harry's a great designer although I I with my father and Harry I pushed them both out of the way once for Steve's uh one of Steve's games uh because Steve was really on he was really good in those days for for what we were doing it was very important to us flight 2000 a widebody you know the problem Harry taught me the problem with wi bodies is there's too much space there's too much geometry the ball floats back and forth the exception is Orbiter sitting over there the ball will float back and forth it slows up so you got to put a lot more stuff in the game yes it makes it expensive but it's also not as good a game and there was um Neil Falconer a designer in since pasted in our business whenever somebody came out with Y bodies he would freshen up his resume uh because he knew there was something wrong business was in trouble don't make wide bodies pin is a it's a tennis court the rules it's supposed to be a particular size it you know the the round playfields the cocktail playfields the widebody playfields not as good but you take this widebody playf it's still one of my favorite with a ball Walker on the left and let's click here and see if I get there uh soon okay okay here's the more of it let's gamron okay what gammatron was we we two things about it that was after Stern and before Stern so we made a conversion kit for pinball the good thing is we took that Playfield and instead of the ball Walker we used eex but and one top bumper this game played so much better than flight 2000 because it was a narrow body it just had such better action it was great the other thing that we proved and I did that with Steve Kirk the other thing that we proved is nobody listened nobody learned the lesson what we proved is we made it as a conversion kit there's no reason to convert a pinball trade it in and get a new pinball we came out with this the same time uh Steve Ritchie had um uh highp speed well who was going to convert convert their game their old beat up Bley game to this when they could traded in and buy a highp speeed and I'll tell you you know um pinball 2K was a great engineering effort fantastic our friend and our chief creative officer George Gomez very involved in it no no real marketing plan for it uh because the marketing people weren't involved the idea was you move playfields from game to game and have multiple playfields people try and do that now buy a good game play it trade it in get another good game um I proved I proved I was the one so smart to try it I proved it did it didn't work the other problem with uh with p2k is you didn't have a flat screen at the time so when the first operator came to um to a French distributor to pick it up with this hatchback to put a game in it found out it was two-car game you couldn't carry that game with one car so you couldn't take it to location I think that's most of what I want to do here before I let you all do some ask me some questions let's see what we got here uh Viper just let's flick through some of the things we did oh photograph at backlash which gotl started okay not not not us but we did a number of LJ knows this we did a n a number of photographic backlashes this was a photograph uh yeah this is that was our first okay who put this in here yeah yeah that's Joe Camco that's me you notice I had more hair in here I couldn't do that picture today uh but that was us um I think we've probably done enough of these we can Lethal Weapon 3 when we we made game and I go go to the French and I said we have Lethal Weapon 3 you should buy this game I said what what is Lethal Weapon 3 I go over and go over and go over you know Mel Gibson Danny Glover Le oh L Lela the name in of movie in America is not the same as in France oh yeah we want that game you know okay what else oh uh that's back to there for a minute back up um so this is where Steve Ritchie decided that this was a copy of Terminator seven shot array ramp you know this that simulated ramp over there they they actually sued me and Joe personally about it and uh that sort of that that that went away but that's that was the the basis of one of the lawsuits Williams sued us a number of times back in the day at day to East when we were for uh getting started I'm going to give you one more little history and then we'll do some other stuff let's see if there's anything else we really want to do uh now I think we did we've done enough of enough of old pinball here I'll let you ask questions but let me just give you a little history of of the company that we are right now we started as DD's pinball same company formed in uh in 886 with money from dat East the Japanese company they were our investor in 99 94 we sold the company from day to East to its shareholder Sega and we renamed it Sega pinball same company same company just different owner of the company in 99 I bought it from uh from uh Sega and renamed it Stern Pinball same company so it's the same company been in existence since uh and late 86 those of you who think dates was a different company or Sega was a different company same people some of the same people a lot of different people we do happen to have right now uh some of our original people our near original people um we have a lot of people that come from other companies a few from Godly we have the best of from everywhere we have a lot of people from Williams uh and we are often called Willie West because we're west of downtown Chicago so we have many of the same people um now you're going to ask me why it's not my father's pinball company I'm going to ask you exactly that Gary why is it your father's pinball company I'm going to sit now it's that's right okay oh God okay he would like to serve you some Herring American guests is this hering hering yeah I happen to love Harry I love Harry I can't do Harry you ever had Dutch Herring uh I don't know about Dutch Herring I've had a lot of Herring you know Norwegian Herring uh Jewish Herring uh Herring is hering I love Herring this is a typical Dutch okay Dutch tradition and we're very proud of it of it um people say it's raw but it's not raw because it's salted and uh it's been in the fridge so it's safe to eat and uh this Herring has a very happy ending because it gets a massage uh for me that's why it's extra soft so and I made it for you um and I uh you think why why do I wear a crown because I'm the D hering queen and I like to wear a crown thank [Applause] you man to live 79 years without having to taste this delicacy best machine I'm the best harop I I will finish it later John John John it's vegan you can eat it it's vegan it's vegan success spe I okay thank you that was [Applause] great Gary I just insulted an entire country yeah that's not the first country that you've insulted okay I'm going to just do a quick introduction of how the questions will run here real quick by the way I'll introduce myself my name is LJ green I live here in the Netherlands for the last 13 years um I started my work career in Chicago in pinball and you're the one guy I didn't work for I worked for Williams Bley and I also worked for gotle um in the 90s so in the Heyday I guess were suing you when I wor if you when you were well Godly didn't sue me know Gil and I got along better got yeah so that um and then um met herard and and I feel super at home because this this um wonderful museum is 20 minutes from my house so it's fabulous to see this congratulations to you for building this it's it's big for Americans to see something like this sitting in the middle of Rotterdam um and celebrating Heritage like what your dad it's started so um I'm going to do the commercial Questions game questions are going to come from herard um I guess that's how we're going to split it up to start with but one thing I just want to ask you just you just told a story here you you came close to going bankrupt a couple of times did you couple times many pimple manufacturer is not for the faint of heart uh you have to love what you're doing um in particular um the Layman Brothers recession in 2008 wasn't wasn't a happy time um and uh for many businesses um tenacity is the word that comes to mind you just stay with it I needed a job where was I going to go there's not a lot of jobs for pinball presidents so um we uh we uh my partner Dave Peterson [Music] uh was a client of of my lawyer and small shareholder uh David schenberg and David said to him that uh this company I know you'll be interested in and uh said yeah pinball I I I don't know L about three months later uh David said to Dave well you know I own part of the company well why don't you tell me that I'll go take a look and it took Dave a little while to look around Dave's takes a while to study things uh he had worked on Harley Harley-Davidson as a young investment banker um he uh he would tell you that he carried the briefcases for the big shot investment bankers but he was there and he saw that Harley had a Comm Community I explained that we have a community that I I was the commercial guy but we have a big consumer business potential and we have a community of players I described I was at the uh at a u before there was much home owning of pinball uh I was at a uh show for the billion industry and this one guy came up and he showed uh Jolly my sales guy and myself his back which he had almost completed the tattoo of the Paragon backlash and you know that kind of thing you tell Davey say oh yeah you got enthusiasts you got people who are really into this thing so they you know they thought about it and uh second time he came in he came in with a A friend of Dougs Mike Rymer who was a uh uh big you know a consumer sales guy and he really dug into this and we you see he invested he lent and then later changed to invested uh he's my partner I control half the company he controls half the company we have a fiveman board of directors I nominate elect two he nominates elect two the fifth would be a tiebreaker but we've never appointed the fifth cuz we get along and we build this business together with the help of Seth and the rest of the guys here uh and um yeah we had a couple troubles but we we we went through them what we what we did do though you know mentioning you know the the homas and this is why it's not my father's pinball company it's not my father's pinball company because my father's pinball company sold games to commercial establishments only today 70% of our games worldwide belong to you all the community and to firsttime buyers and to people in general 30% are in the street in in bar arcades in breweries which are big in uh in in America to have games uh in your normal bowling alleys uh uh bars what have you restaurants family entertainment centers interestingly Seth points out and he can can tell you these statistics because of Insider connected which we'll talk about 70% of the games are in the home 70% of the play is in operation on the street and that play you know we have we have a cycle I'm digressing all over the place I do this all the time I like to hear myself don't laugh you're not supposed to laugh at you're not supposed to laugh at that s you're not supposed to laugh at that 70% we have a cycle that uh you know the 20s somethings or the teens are playing games in the bars in our country are supposed to be 21 but they all have these phony IDs I don't know how uh they they play games in the bars like my daughter had a a very bad phony ID and so my then wife took it outside in the driveway of the house and drove the car back and forth over it so that she could it would work for her and my two daughters are I'm digressing my two daughters must love each other because my older daughter was 21 dyed her hair my younger daughter's color got a new driver's license and that was the younger ones phony IDs and that say this was all so that they can go in to different bars and play pinball machine because that's what nobody drinks or any other reason but to play Pinball so these people playing pinball who are in their teens and 20s are when they're 4550 they're going to want to flex for home or or CO's going to come they're going to want things to do at home and somehow they discover they didn't they'll normally say they still make pinball well they discover that that we make pinball we make 85 90% of the pinball machines in the world and they'll buy one for the home and maybe they'll buy another one 40 50% of the people first-time buyers will buy a second game that's what our dealers tell us and maybe they get maybe they get four or three or four or five or or um as a Marcus in in Germany's got a th over a thousand uh and uh sometimes sometimes they find they have too many games so like the president of our operators Association they go to a uh a bowling alley and say can I put a game in here and they become a game operator and those game operators put games out so 20-year-olds can play the games be interested in them when they're 4550 this is just a cycle that goes on you're part of a cycle and it's very important to the continuation of pinball that there are places like this and there are groups like you and there firsttime buyers and one of them we I was talking to a uh uh airline pilot the other day uh who had written me and uh he had been playing pinball not ours gosh and somebody else's uh somebody else's home and she said ah I wish I could get one of these I don't know where you buy them so not only do people not know that the not enough people that know that their pinballs are being made they don't know there's a place they can buy them and they can and that's one of our missions is to show people where they can buy them this is still the answer to the last question um I just want to let you know if I interrupt you not because I'm rude it's because some people fed me some questions before they really want to hear your answer so okay well I'm just going to finish this one this is important this is important we're again why why is it uh why is this not my father's pinball come two things today's player the guy who buys that home 20 30 years ago bought a game for the home 45 years old his kids might have played it he had a flex it was great I used to watch a TV show called cribs on uh TV in America uh three 10 minute SE segments of of rappers rock stars whatever they all had you know at least one of them had a pinball machine and was as proud of it as as uh his Ferrari I keep trying to get to trade a pinball for a Ferrari hasn't worked yet but I'm I haven't given up the uh the the the player today you all grew up as Gamers you know 45 55 year old he grew up as a gamer and they understand it so the game rules that you're getting today aren't just like a b c the three rollovers Lanes at the top lights special and uh you get an extra ball there just whack the ball you know uh Whack The Sentinel on uh X-Men for me and I get multiball but there's all kinds of rules and gameplay going on in these games they're very much more sophisticated than the gam question about that then when you guys are developing a game how do you come about laying out the game play and then often times it's license do you have to get it approved by the Lor when you're doing it everything's approved by the license or except the the particular rules how they work is they're not Gamers we're Gamers and Seth is very involved in the current gameplay I used to be in game rules I used to be involved in it but it's way past my understanding um they care a lot about all the VIS visual representation right when it comes to gameplay rules in the game playay our guys will lay that out so you know the development of these games starts with really a designer kind of coming up with a concept for this is what I think my play Field's going to look like these are the toys and the different elements I want to have in that and then they they'll work with the programmer we'll start thinking about the rule sets that are going to go with that and they'll all kind of work together on that um licensers get heavily involved in okay what what mechs what toys are you going to have how are they going to look do they represent our franchise appropriately they want to see every little detail of everything you're going to put there right like a good example was in our James Bond game the asked them Martin car we actually had to do a deal with Aston Martin on top of the bond deal and Aston Martin was was commenting on the lines on the car and exactly how they wanted them so it gets to kind of that level of detail so somebody like Georg gz will come up and say I think we should put an Aston Martin here because the you know that that makes sense for this franchise but that was actually two license ORS I had to feed on that one and and so really Gary's right when it comes to the gameplay rules themselves they don't know much about that but everything we're going to show on on the screen when that happens so every little every little speech every little sound everything we're going to use to represent that franchise they'll they'll feedback on all those oh yeah so the on the Aston Martin um we were going to not have a top on the Aston Martin because why would you want to have this top that had to open and close and deal with all that you shoot the pinball they said well there's a top on the Aston Martin there has to be a top on the car so George and team had to actually design that top for the Aston Martin because the lur wouldn't let us do the ejector seat without a top that opened and closed on the car so those are the kind of things that come up during development where you're like okay didn't think of that I guess we're gonna have to figure out how to open and close this thing when we shoot a pinball through it they had to had to rework the whole mechanical we we spent a lot of time figuring out how to get that because it's got to be reliable right you can't have that thing breaking and staying shut are breaking and staying open so you've got to put it there and you got to make sure ites it's not going to break that being said so so license license games I think you guys I think it was you and Joey that brought them in the 90s that made everything just shoot the sales go off that was a new thing at the actually um um Tommy nean Tommy Neiman at Bal did the first licensing and B did quite a few licensed G musicians though um they did uh well evil coneval that that's when they had to take him off of all the they they made a home game for Sears just about the time evil Cana beat the out of somebody with a baseball bat s said change change that change all those but uh they did a lot of that's how we ended up with nent was Tommy gave it to us okay you you I'm sure you guys in the corner the N yeah the nen game over in America and now a controversial Republican Michigan yeah well here here's here that that came that came this is going to get better okay so uh Epic Records we magazine which was like Playboy and uh we're going and we're going to have the same artwork that artwork on the album cover and on the magazine cover and they went to Bal and said can you know we'd like to get a couple of these made we can't make a couple gay but they Tommy and nean said go to stern maybe he'll make you a couple games I said okay I'll make you a couple games actually I'll make you hundreds or thousands of games you give me the license and we'll make this game and we took a game we were already already uh had designed and in those days there weren't video that you had to match you know the film and so forth you could take a game got Le did this all the time you know they would name the game after they designed it okay we've got seven drop targets we need a seven-letter name well here you could take the game the whatever game we were designing and make it nent and we did um and he was great he came by the factory took pictures everything in the factory um I was taking the glass A back glass from a different game to New York to show Epic Records what a backglass was like and uh the flight attendant uh sort of dropped the glass because she's backl cuz she saw somebody that she knew flew with all the time so the other flight attendant helped me and took care of me and that other flight attendant is Denise my second wife she uh I accuse her of picking me up on the plane and she accuses me of picking her up um that sometime after that way after that in the Jody put some Nan stuff up on our website and I get within a half an hour a call from my kids you got to get that nen stuff off your website because cuz he is really toxic at this point he is he's somewhere right of a till of the Hun and got to get it down got to get it down and then there was something recent where they wanted to use him for something set yeah we get contacted a lot for for movies and TV shows and things like that and that that's actually one of the places where it's trickier with the licensed properties because we can say yeah we're fine with you using the pinball machine but you know you want to use elvar you got to call Alva as well because they still have some rights to that to place a pinball machine inside of a movie or yeah anything like that you have to approve it we well so we have to approve it and the licensor has to approve it as well so they've got to get double approval so it makes it a little harder sometimes while people contact us we'll say yeah we're fine with it you got to go talk to whoever made it or whoever's IP it is and um sometimes they'll do it sometimes they'll say that sounds like too much work now you've done a what are the ones I want to do all the time they they they often contact the old Stern games Stern Electronics belong to Denise so they'll contact me they always want to do meteor and nobody realizes that meteor is a licensed title it was a Shan connory movie and uh and and nobody knows who owns the rights to it anymore either you know so I yeah go find out who who owns I don't know nobody can find out there was a time in the 90s I think you did a couple of one-offs did you do an erron spelling game for a birthday present perhaps yeah yeah we we made a little mistake um we did we Reed we re well oh well first we okay so we were making a different game Lethal Weapon different story Lethal Weapon and uh um the uh Michael Jordan Foundation wanted some a one-off game so we made a one-off game and uh we we just for them and uh we shouldn't have but we put it in the Rock and Roll McDonald's just to see what the attraction would be with Michael Jordan a great American basketball player and uh the Rock and Roll McDonald's is in the center of downtown Chicago and uh reference Allison Allison was doing the marketing uh the the testing there and she turned us into the to the uh NBA the the Basketball Association because we had no license to do that we didn't have permission and so they they write us a a scathing letter you know cease and this this this or that and so I had our lawyer write back to them this game was made specifically at Michael Jordan's request for the Michael Jordan uh Foundation I'm sure that you like we support this very excellent charity never heard from them again but what was the other one you mentioned oh the spelling spelling yeah Mrs spelling wanted to make a um a a Aaron Spelling was a a television producer a lot of the the uh uh shows that were very popular were were his shows so she wanted a a game um we ear we Ed in two respects and this was 20 25 years ago and the first ER was we charged her 200,000 for one game we should have charged her 400 500,000 didn't matter the second error was Joe's mistake not mine he said she could have the second game at the at the regular price 20 some hundred bucks so so we made a couple mistakes we left a lot of money on the table but yeah we did make Were you invited to the party no no but we're invited to all all these Playboy parties yeah and and so okay mid the uh Midsummer I dream is always a pajama pajama party so I of course went with the uh same costume almost every male had on which is black Marc Silk pajamas idiot walking around there and I'm sitting there this great food I'm eating and all that and uh the other folks Joe C Ando my associate and others they're walking around following the cameraman because wherever the cameraman is going the ladies are going like this you know I'm eating I'm eating I wasn't smart enough what was your favorite license besides all the ones with the good does everybody know what TNA means when he was saying it before it's tits an ass tits an ass TNA it's a phrase what is my favorite [Music] license my favorite license is oncy X-Men and this is a fantastic game have you all seen the everybody see the video of the game anybody who hasn't seen the video of the game the the video that that we live stream or what have the live stream or the uh uh the video that we put up huh the 18 minute the 18-minute production did have you all SE who hasn't seen it just a couple of you well we'll see how much time we got I can do the short version on the on the but your favorite license is always your last one is that what you're trying to tell us okay got it who buys your licenses now um who makes the decision thank you thank you so one uh more than two yeah more than more than 10 yeah more than 20 so more than 30 wow wow thank you wow okay [Music] awesome um yeah um Gary Stern um what I'm always proud of if there is a new game coming out and the standard high scores are there I'm always on top because I have the same initials I am jide so that's that's good when the guys are going playing I'm off there but I can take it I can take over your job that's it's easy um okay you want okay I'll keep going with the questions um one of the questions I did get from Misha in the room was when you're going to do the um the the the cabinet design of pinball machines is still looks like a coffin it has ever since they came out why hasn't is there a limitation for examp I think uh the question revolved around pinball 2000 which I know was a Williams game but it was a Gomez game and you guys have them on your staff they tried to change up the look and feel of the game it wasn't a huge success why why is the game why do pinball machines still maintain the same cabinet shape two issues to it one is the Playfield size and the other is the look of the cabinet we have over the years um you've got wedge heads here we've we've had the metal curve backbox um our backbox operates significantly different the way that it locks down today um the cabinet size um is somewhat dictated by the the underlying cabinet by the size of the play field Pinball's a sport you know it's a ball and bat game so the again widebody games play too slow every time you know somebody tries to make wide bodies it's it's an indication there's either trouble in the business or they don't understand the business um it's a tennis court you don't change you don't make round tennis courts or round playfields having said that the construction is similar uh tongue and grooove uh uh plywood cabinet it's got to be strong um some some look looking look look can change without changing the feel because part of the feel part of the play of that game is the feel of the cabinet the feel of the legs the construction and some of the look may change sometime um and and we've been experimenting with that a little bit we have the home edition games that are slightly different which some of you may have seen we're selling those in Costco in the US to get to first-time buyers that are maybe not familiar with our Pro Edition games and don't know where to get them um because we keep getting that comment people don't necessarily always know where to buy the product so um we have the ability to experiment with new things and as Gary said we're going to continue to look at um you know these games were designed for commercial environments we always want them to be commercial grade but a lot of these are going into your homes and they're not always the easiest things to deal with they don't necessarily all have all the bells and whistles you you like them to have so um we continue to look at all the elements of the game and say you know what is part of pinball and what um is an artifact of the commercial origin of these games that you know maybe needs a user experience um Improvement one of my favorites is that uh with the home Edition game I said you can't you can't sell this home addition to people that don't even know pinball and tell them that the first thing they have to do is take the glass off the machine to get the balls in the game so there's actually on that machine there's a little hole in the back where you can drop the balls in before you put the head up so that you don't have to actually tell these brand new to pinball folks I need you to slide a piece of glass off this machine now that's something that once I challenged the team on how can we do this and make it a little easier there's a way to do it and there's not really any reason why we can't do that on our commercial grade machines as well so some of the things we learned from that experience will probably make their way back over we've also uh made it a lot easier to connect your machine online which is as you guys probably know super annoying with the little buttons inside to try to type in a Wi-Fi password so there's a lot of stuff like that where just because we've always used two little buttons inside doesn't mean that that's what we need to do forever um we need to look at what we can change AH connect your machine online seg thank you thank you Insider connected let give a little story here uh my partner and I went to investment bankers meeting that they wanted us to go to um every it was speed dating for lenders or investors every product they were interested in had connectivity I start my car with my telephone uh my new washer dryer is sending me text messages to my telephone I really don't want to commun communicate with my new washer dryer but it wants to communicate with me everything you do today is connected anything that is not connected does not really have a future okay collecting old G old older games great here great but as far as you using them and the play of them if it's not connected it's you know it's a a box on four legs is the way that I say it why any operator or for that matter most homeowners buy anything that's not connected I I I don't understand and that sounds arrogant on my part but I really believe and invested millions of dollars in this it adds to the gameplay the things you can do in the cloud it's um it's based on Xbox Live and you know the I talked earlier that uh that you all are Gamers whereas the uh 50-year-old 30 years ago was a gamer is buying a flexx people understand this they know this they expect to U Get Badges and there's more you can do the top you know the the the Toppers the uh the connectivity all this adds another element to gameplay and and without that it's it's a box on four legs yep so we're continuing to upgrade and update Insider connected based on what we hear from people and the feedback and um it's been amazing we're uh we saw the greatest play we've ever seen on the machines worldwide in this past August um it just keeps going up and up and up that's why we're running more and more quests and badges and other things for people to play because it you know gets everybody out to play and gets everybody playing with all these all these games and all these experiences um the month of Marvel that had we had Quest on Venom we had Quest on Deadpool um and then we culminated with the X-Men announce um that was the highest play we've ever seen is kind of on those so with Insider connected we're going to continue to make updates and changes you'll see a UI update coming pretty soon hopefully make the thing all easier for you all to use um and we're just going to continue to to do that so make sure you tell us the kind of things you want to see and what you want uh I will say we have a backlog list from the community of millions and millions of things and Doug and Lloyd are always bringing up things that Europe wants uh for the games as well so I have a I have a followup to that to to his point one of the things that is exceptionally popular right now you have here is the leaderboard well that was way down on our list of things that developed we took it to pinball Expo we took it to IA enthusiasts wanted it I happen in the US and a month later in November operators wanted it so we rearranged we changed our schedule in order to uh to bring it forward sooner and and so that became one of the most important you know Endeavors we had one other thing is that we had a Valentine's Day badge and you had to play with somebody so I'm in Veil and I go find myself a game to play I didn't know you had to play with somebody so I play the game well there was no body around I didn't know I could have played the second player myself just not registering it so I didn't get the badge as I didn't know and this was by the way was the Gary Stern badge so Gary Stern could not get the Gary Stern Valentine's Day badge and I had to be the one to break it to him that you could have just pretended to be player too another question um and then on on a commercial question and then we're going to switch to some game questions from the people um recently I saw in LinkedIn that you guys are promoting a corporate rental program and that was an I can say that here in the in Europe many companies are faced with the challenge of people worked remotely during Co and now they don't want to go back to and of course it's cool that you could get a pinball machine in that will spark kind of some sort of community in the office is there a way to use your Insider connected across a simple an inter in inter tournament so if you had the same game in several different locations of a company they could run it yeah so uh we have some uh we we didn't put it on there when we posted online but we have some at Google offices in the US so that's the kind of companies that we're partnering with and getting involved with so like you said people want to get folks back to the office they also want to be able to play games with each other they want to have a fun time when they're in the office and I can't think of a better thing to do that with than pinball because it's nice and phys yeah physical and and and out there as well um with Insider connected you can do leaderboards and all that and we're hoping to be able to yeah right now we don't have explicit group functionality but that's something we're going to look at doing in the future but as the corporates take off I mean it makes sense that they would want to play office versus office so actually we have some in a couple of different Google offices and they're competing against each other on the waiter board okay can I get some questions from people here that are you wanted to wel around do you want to ask a question no first um what I always say is Stern don't talk about future games and don't talk talk about production numbers so if you have a question about that no but going to working from the left to the right thank you all very much for being here with us it's much appreciated um I have a question about Innovation maybe for a i you need to innovate in this business also in terms of gameplay in terms those mechanics that you integrate uh but then of course yeah you both all know and the TI and bottoms are great they work and you should build on this expertise you should build on this knowledge but yeah people want to see Innovation people want to see what J did te dangerous doing these dat so so how do you organize your company to be open for crazy ideas from Innovative designers while building know like good practic yeah so we have um we have a number of individual design teams led by uh led by designers and and they have a lot of freedom in the early days I mean we do we haven't we you guys probably have questions we haven't talked a lot about sort of selecting IP and we're happy to talk about that if you guys want to know about it but we do select the IP pretty early on because like G talked about we're no longer in the days of you design a game and then you go find an IP to put on it we're designing from the ground up to match the the property or the franchise that we're working on and so from that time it's really given to the designer and said think of all the crazy thoughts you can think of think of all these things and you know we want them to think outside the box and try new things that's that's always part of the process there's tons of stuff that just like with a movie or anything else hits The Cutting Room floor along the way because they come up with all sorts of ideas but there's also some controls on them for you have a timeline you have to hit so you can only think Grand thoughts for so long before the train needs to leave the station and move forward um and then the other thing is they know the crazier the ideas the more they're going to have to sell and convince and and prototype what they're doing to to show it off so even on the on the X-Men title in particular um you know Jack has joked a little bit and it was true that oh Gary's not gonna like that Gary's not gonna like that Gary's you know Gary's not GNA let you do that by the way he proved it and Gary let him do it and so the designers got to be able to demonstrate and have the conviction of their idea for what they want to do but that's how you get Innovation and that's how you get new things and sort of based on the reception of that you'll you'll see more innovation in those different directions there but you know if we gave you a different bottom every time on every game after a while you'd be like these are crazy this one doesn't make sense so it's a very happy balance to find that balance between trying something new but also making sure people recognize it as pinball and and and still love it so that's really how we do it with the teams they get to kind of think the thoughts and then we try to figure out how we get it done that a different bottoms um you know X-Men I'm going to call a a very modified uh Italian bottom I mean it's it's a modified Italian bottom um we we we yeah yeah no no what what you do is you go on a two-day Harley ride with me that's what Jack did with with John um um the um uh I think it was uh Wheel of Fortune had the goofy bottom and Armon from France just called me and said you know better you know better than to do that and yeah I did and it wasn't it wasn't right um but where's Alison has she left she get do we bore her are you in the back Allison where are you Allison are you back there says apparently she's downstairs downstairs playing gam or eating Herring maybe uh I'm almost done with mine SE Seth's wife is uh Alison is here you should all say hello she's humoring us uh by coming along any other questions okay you're going to ask a question while videotaping yeah there you go okay so pinbo is now all about licensed IP because if you don't have licensed IP you're really struggling see American pinball um but that also I mean when when you guys picked up licensing as data e uh you are well one of two companies that were doing it uh now we have 15 pimble companies going after IP um how has the licensing uh Market for pinball changed and how do you deal with competitors that are going after the same license as you are uh before we answer that um uh American pinball is not suffering because they don't have licenses or they had bad licenses or this or that or the G quality of the games what they don't have is Insider connected and anybody any game that is does not have Insider conect connected is is dealing in the past we are dealing in the future with technology um can you put up one more time our uh right from the beginning our how do we get back to the beginning uh here we go here we go you see technology it's all about technology oh you had and too okay um you know we're talking I can't read it in those colors uh uh that's not no that's an old one that's an old there we go that's that's the old one when we talked about ourselves being a Lifestyle brand like Harley but we're really much more than a Lifestyle brand we're a game company and the game company technologically advanced pinball Insider connected new uh devices new uh uh game rules all all that's connected but it's connected it's got to be Insider connected I believe so much that this I more excited about the future of pinball than I've been in my 79 years and it's all because The Insider connected this is a future and it will broaden enlarge our community good for my business but good for all of us license we can talk yeah no we'll we'll answer the question um more more pinball companies do a couple of things one it demonstrates that pinball is really getting bigger and bigger and bigger all the time so it's great to have more pinball compan is around from that um you know more pinball companies do create noise in the licensing Marketplace um particularly ones that are out over their skis trying to get bigger than they actually are but you know licensers are pretty smart it takes them about 5 Seconds to figure out who they should really be working with and so like you know we we have lots of options there um you know and I'm glad that some of these other companies in IP are able to get games made for themselves that might not be you know that might not be big enough for us to make there are some there are some IP that you know you could do some number of pinball machines with but it won't be kind of at the size and scope of the stuff we're doing so that's good for both the IP holder and for those companies as well yeah I mean you know we we we're we're focused on stuff that can sell here in Europe that can sell in the US that can sell in Australia that can sell everywhere um and can kind of sell in all the different places uh whereas other companies have different Focus did you say we don't know no you don't you don't know the band uh but it's great music and it did something very interesting um I talk about he's speaking about Rush did everybody catch that yeah the rush pinball guys yeah yeah and which is a very good game uh and a very good band and uh friends friends of ours friends of our friends it did something uh that we don't get to happen often we talk about um three legs of our stool uh operators which means really players in in the bar arcades and what have you it we talk about casual buyers firsttime recro buyers uh people who just want a game we talk about Enthusiast uh Community like you all there's a fourth leg to the stool that we that we strive to get and that is the interest new people pinball who are interested in the underlying IP the theme the title we got a lot of Rush buyers Rush people Enthusiast people wild for The Rush band we got a lot of new people into pinball with that title and we would hope that we can do that with many of our titles some have worked some haven't next question here yeah as 70% of the machines go to home why does it take so long to bring scoreboarding to home environment yeah um we know that that is something that people want um that is something that we are working on um leaderboards and Commercial locations get a ton of usage whereas leaderboards and home locations would get a lot less usage for a lot more people and a lot more volume um so it's a little bit tied to our infrastructure and a little bit tied to sort of cost associated with scaling all that up for that so we uh we have heard it and we are working on it yeah I know because I talked to George now and then and he said that for a long time but sounds a bit strange that you have inter connected machine and you have to manually type your scores in the third party too when you have the machine from Stern the software from Stern and inside the connection from Stern so yeah sounds a bit strange we we you know you can the game already has its own individual you know no no I mean it if you have a lot of staring you're right but there's there's infrastructure there's a it's not as simple as doing it you're getting me listen to him it's on the development pip here we go here I'm uh When developing Insider connected um I know George worked quite a few years on it probably behind the the scenes but how much data does does it use do you have your own data center for the yeah traffic it generates yeah I'm sorry the questions around the use of the data yeah the data it generates do you have you have your own data center to facilitate all the yeah the gigabytes that come to um so I mean we use like a lot of companies we use cloud providers we use an AWS to house um all the data for Insider connected and then we've been um developing and trying to understand what that data can tell us about players game playay feedback and all of that and um you know those are things you uh you can't build them before you have the data you have to wait till you start to have the data and then honestly you spend some and then and then you spend some time figuring out what should I be looking for in this pile of data so I would say we we we have a pile of information now and and one of the big things that we're working on now and we've been um adding to the team in terms of like data science to just say how do I get that information in a place where I can use it how do I parse through it find what is interesting and useful there so we have some early reporting but um over time I think it's going to give the design teams even more information about you know how people are playing what their experience is how they're using it and a lot us to make better games this is it doesn't it maybe it sounds like a long time it's a very short time this is three years old starting with Godzilla um they've they've come a long way a lot you know gotten a lot done um there a long way to go a lot of suggestions from you all um we we have hundreds of thousands of players signed up for Insider connect uh I mean okay Xbox Live has more than we do but we have grow we're growing at a at a significant rate um and that's what will get him the data that he can figure out what to do with having more people connected and so it's very important connect all your games we also have about 100,000 machines that can be connected out in the field right now um we'll have more we add significant to it each year all of our LCD games and again we we're going to lead this because we're the only ones who can do this not just investing millions of dollars which we have uh and again I after I went to that meeting I was ready to invest the money um but we will the we're the only company that will ever have the scale for it to be meaningful um again br bragging or whatever being arrogant but you got to have scale to do this for him to get enough information for you to get enough feedback um we' got 100,000 growing it tens of thousands a year games that can be part of this many of which are part of this already and we're always very happy to hear that we're not moving fast enough because we never are on things like uh home leader boards and all that that's is this is an exercise of figuring out you know we got operators screaming for more functionality we got home users screaming for more functionality we've got desires around making the games better um and I think this is one of the reasons why Gary says he's so excited about what's to come because now it's now it's a matter of saying we got to use this and we got to move faster because there's so much more that can be done with this than than what we've already been able to do okay next question over here thank you my name is Peter norlander I'm FAL operator for 45 years it's not nothing thank you yes I have the simplest question of this evening nothing to do with data or connection or whatever the simplest question but it's a multi-million dollar question and you're doing right but the question is very simple I was operating machines for 45 years and uh the question is why did Bali and gotle uh miss the switch to the sharp flipp they used to have for 20 years the blend flippers and all my clients they were saying it's a lovely pinball but we missed the sharp flippers why did the the the company of Godly and um B why did they miss that important question I I'm going to take this Seth wasn't around I don't know were you were you even alive yeah um let's take them separately goly at one time was the Cadillac of of of games and the uh electrome Mechanicals what have you uh they were they were late in solid state and they were wrong in solid state they did a 4-bit instead of an 8-bit processor in those days and their games didn't play they they they earned long so it was good in the earlier days they didn't play uh as the player wanted them when we started D's pinball we brought in Bal games Williams games we didn't even bother to bring in any got Le games they weren't uh of of the right uh game play they were uh if you remember 24 instead of 48 Vol coils things like that um as to Bal and Williams well B sold to Williams uh in 99 uh no in 89 89 89 was 99 when they got when Val Williams got out of pinball which made p2k a misnomer because it didn't make it to 2000 um the uh but if you look at if you look at Williams which was my father's company um Williams think of it as a Juke Box Company you say a jukebox company it came seberg bought Williams in [Music] 1964 um and the NEC castros or ran Williams were very good business people in their own way um you know they teach you in business school to be in love with business not in be in love with your business I'm in love with my business so I violate the rule Williams you know seberg bought Williams Williams when uh when uh pinballs were more important became a seberg Williams became a pinball company instead of a jukebox company they later became Midway a video game company then a home video game company then a slot machine company which now belongs to Scientific Games they changed the company to where the business was going it didn't make sense for them to stay in pinball they tried and when when I bought the company from from Sega I told them Williams is going to get out this was 99 I said they're getting out of the pinball business because public companies uh filed uh documents with the security exchange commit and it shows profits per category and you could see that in a uh in a um depressed Market they had to make 20 25,000 games a year to break even they weren't going to do it they were going to lose money in it but in slot machines you carry a public company with slot machines I ran the SE seberg had a slot machine program in the uh 70s and the reason we had it is Luna Castro wanted the uh stock multiple that b had as a slot machine company so he decided to go on slot machines well the second generation second time going slot machine work so they got out they got they went into the business and made sense they moved it from the from a jukebox to a pinball to a home coin op to a to a home video game company to a to a slot machine company that's why the that's why both those companies aren't in it I could had nowhere else to go I I needed a job there weren't a lot of jobs for presidents of pinball companies and uh we were t ious and we you know we stuck with it I told Sega when I was buying it from them they're going to get out of this but to Sega there were $4 billion a year company what did we mean not enough so i' like I hope that answered your question I'd like to wrap a little bit here and and um oh yeah sorry but I do want to un your point here one question how technical is it y question for S hi um I've been to pinball since forever I really like pinball I'm trying to get my girlfriend more into pinball but most of the St machines are pretty masculine O7 types maybe except for Deadpool she really likes this machine are there any plans on something more Barbie like to attract also the female players you couldn't be here today but yeah I'll uh I'll I'll take that one and I'll I'll answer the question we get it a lot and everybody likes to know and it's kind of a fun question about sort of where the IP choices come from and how do we choose IP so um one of the things is sort of from you all right uh conversations online feedback we receive from you we run surveys and research as well to find out what you are all interested in um lists from you know influencer outlets and things like that we we follow all of that we see what people are asking for and we follow that information um you know another piece comes from lense orce right not everything we want to make is available um some of the stuff that just we don't make you know arcade machines a lot of folks still consider us arcade machines even though we have a big Home Presence as well you know some IP just don't want to do it some really popular actors just don't want to be in consumer products right and this is a consumer oriented product um so whatever is available on that side and then expertise from the team internally right are the designers excited to make a game about it do they have ideas of things they'd like to make um what do we think from a business standpoint you know John and team get to feed in on a sales standpoint what they think they can sell and and what opportunities are there so we kind of all get together and go through that so another piece of that consideration is trying to balance a portfolio right balance a portfolio with enough stuff that hits right at the core of our market and take some shots on some things that will help us hopefully expand the market um and so we're looking at you know how does gender diversity and other diversity play in we'd like to expand the market of pinball we'd like it to be for everyone um but we also can't afford to alienate the current people that buy our pinball right like you got to find something that gets enough new people without all of the current people saying well that's not for me and I'm not interested in that so that's really the the trick for us we we do a lot of things that have like ensemble cast and we'll play up certain characters and things like that but we are um we're dying for an opportunity we have succeeded if we're in a place in pinball where we can make a female oriented title that blows the doors off you know in the pinball Marketplace as well because that means we've expanded the P so much that we've brought everybody into it um and that's what we want to do over time two comments to that um you all probably have read about or have your own bells and Chimes which are a group uh of ladies that compete we're finding more and more women playing pinball uh his statistics from Insider connected will tell you there are more and more women another point is to properly do a more feminine or woman's title you really need input from a female designer we have now a rules software designer that is taking developed with us she is taking first seat in the software and we are developing the people who could do this for a bunch of guys to develop a woman's game if you would is doesn't read right it just doesn't read right it we meet people who can see the other side uh whatever that is it's certainly not me uh and uh so we're developing that patience is a virtue we're going to get there we really have this uh as a goal um and likewise other ethnic groups we need to expand uh our player community uh United States is a very mixed uh yeah there's one uh one bar arcade in particular I go to the Emporium over in the Logan Square area and you go in there and it's it's very cool it is it is truly an ethnic ethnically mixed environment and it's great to see you know all different uh groups playing pinball instead of back in the day white male what can I say we don't want that so to to wrap this up just okay yeah to wrap it up a little I just like to say on behalf of most of the people that are here you got one more thing he's got to you got yeah don't stop keep going then this is not Insider connected not Insider connected tell them about the warranty oh yeah the warranty yes so uh I I I had mentioned that we're trying to revisit things like what is sort of in what ways does the history of being a commercial business help us and in what ways does it get in our way right now one of the ways that gets in our way is things like a warranty right we haven't had an official warranty for a long time the reality is you call Pat he'll take care of you but um for new buyers new buyers say well what's the warranty where where's my warranty and and I can't say well you just got to know about Pat and you got to call Pat that's not a good enough answer so uh We've now added an official you know warranty to our products that goes out to everybody so that new buyers can feel confident because one of the things we've we we know we knew but we've learned more and more as we've done research is that the first- time buyer needs frankly some of you all in this room to help them they need a buddy who's got their back because the worst thing you could do buy a pinball machine and not have it work sometime after you buy it and then it sits there not working so people need to know they're being taken care of either by a friend or by the company um and so we've added a warranty you guys should all feel comfortable that you're going to get taken care of and you you guys all know how to find Pat and if you don't we'll tell you how to find him and we'll take care of you and so we're going to have a warranty on all of our products going forward um and it's just something we we probably should have done a while ago we've been taking care of people but we're going to officially do it and help promote it so is it on the website is that what you it is G's got it on the website it's on the website so it's there with all the legal EAS Gary's a lawyer so you know as he likes to say reformed lawyer but all the legal EAS is there on the website so you guys can look it up yourselves as well but um you know it's some every game every if you buy if bu since since we launched X-Men so it's basically all the games going back any game bought within the last year or bought in the future will all be okay any other points you want to sneak in before we close X-Men this is I have I I was in you know I semi-retired shall we say I live in Vale and I live in Chicago so I was in Vil the other day I have I I still have a Foo Fighters in my I small apartment I don't live in a a big place I have Foo Fighters at home uh these guys all have Godzillas and things like that because Godzilla's you know a great game um I have figured out I have workmen coming I've figured out how to rearrange my lower bedroom but second bedroom in Vil to put an X X-Men uncanny X-Men in it this game is great now my my seven-year-old granddaughter um plays pinball loves to go to AC GOI which is a Korean barbecue in um in uh vanise California she goes there with me because a we eat for free he won't let me pay but um they've got a bunch of games and she just loves to play Pinball she'll she'll go there she she has two pinball machines or her mother and father have two I don't know I guess they're hers I've got to put a game in my veil apartment and it's going to be X-Men and I've figured out how to do it fabulous you guys you guys don't know know G this is the first time Gary has figured out how to put a game in this apartment so this is a game that's got Gary figuring out how he's going to get in in this apartment so I'll tell you a little bit about what we sort of think about the game if any of you were able to sneak into ayaa this week up in Amsterdam we'll be there demoing the game so you get a chance to to play it but this is a it's a it's a pretty special here I used to Pi Pros home because I wanted to learn them because I was selling operators um bu fuit Fighters a premium this will be a premium at least oh it'll be no not not an LA it's a premium uh [Music] okay so I'm going to say what all right I just my partner my partner and I own all the number one premium Ellie guys we own them all I just want to say you were born into this industry I mean um you didn't you didn't really well you had choices to do other things but I I'm for a whole life and a legacy of what you've contributed to pinball how you didn't stop production when all the other guys were saying that the industry was dead and what you've contributed is is beyond words and thank you for coming here to share your stories and to to to come to the Dutch Pinball Museum we owe you a dead of gratitude so I just want to say thank you on behalf of a lot of people for that and we all owe you all a debt of gr gratitude you're the community you're the ones who let us do this we have fun they're not heart lung machines we're having a good time we're making fun as long as you're having fun we're having fun [Applause] so I already uh give Gary uh a gift a wooden clocks that's a present but I got another present uh pimbo we call it Americana and something others that is really Americana is sports and if you are the champion in a certain kind of sports you will always be rewarded so what did I think of I get you a championship [Applause] ring for being the number one p manufacturer in the world thank you fantastic maybe this is your next [Music] game angled a little bit this way it yeah hold