#33 - Led Zeppelin Announcement, Deeproot Thoughts, LIVE DMCA Strikes

A Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·29m 34s·analyzed·Dec 12, 2020

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Led Zeppelin announced; Deep Root's pre-order closure strategy questioned; DMCA strikes threaten pinball streaming.

Summary

A Pinball Podcast discusses the Led Zeppelin announcement by Stern (designed by Steve Ritchie), Deep Root Pinball's manufacturing plans and pre-order strategy for Raza, and emerging DMCA strike threats to pinball streamers on Twitch from the music industry. The host expresses cautious optimism about Stern's approach while raising concerns about Deep Root's business model efficiency and the existential threat to pinball content creation from copyright enforcement.

Key Claims

Steve Ritchie is the designer of Led Zeppelin; Timmy Sexton is assumed to be the coder based on Black Knight collaboration
medium confidence · Host states 'Steve Ritchie is the game designer' but notes 'nothing has been officially confirmed' other than Ritchie; coder assumption is speculative
Deep Root stated they will not sell Raza after December 30th regardless of sales success, with the reason being they have 20 other titles ready to go
high confidence · Host cites Jeff Teolis asking Deep Root directly about this decision; Deep Root confirmed the cutoff and provided the reasoning about 20 titles in pipeline
Deep Root indicated 4-6 weeks shipping window from when pre-orders started (December 8th), putting delivery in early to mid-February 2024
medium confidence · Host references Robert's podcast statement but acknowledges uncertainty about exact interpretation of timeline; notes this creates a concrete but potentially problematic deadline
Raza discontinuation at December 30th likely signals either the game is losing money or Deep Root cannot manufacture multiple products simultaneously
medium confidence · Host's analytical conclusion based on business logic; states 'it either means no matter what they price Raza at, it is losing money' or manufacturing cannot handle parallel production
RIAA and NMPA are targeting Twitch streamers with live DMCA strikes for copyrighted music in pinball games
high confidence · Host discusses recent DMCA muting of streamer VODs and states this is coming from 'the music industry' enforcing copyright; cites specific streamers (Dead Flip, Laser Lows, Carl)
A bill making it a felony to stream copyrighted content was inserted into the COVID relief package being voted on
low confidence · Host mentions 'just posted up this video just yesterday' about this bill but provides no verification or specific bill number; framing suggests urgency but lacks sourcing
Twitch partnership agreement prevents partners from streaming game content on YouTube for 24 hours after broadcast
high confidence · Host speaks from personal experience as a Twitch partner; provides specific example of 9pm-12am stream restriction until midnight next day

Notable Quotes

“We want a live album that's getting the most likes like on their Instagram. They're just like, we wanted a live album from Jimmy Page, and instead we get a pinball trailer.”
Host (A Pinball Podcast) @ early in episode — Illustrates non-pinball audience confusion from Stern's social media campaign using Led Zeppelin's official accounts
“They're so fired up about food truck that they're just throwing raws and just being done with it... it tells me that it is highly likely that their manufacturing line is not capable of handling multiple products at the same time”
Host (A Pinball Podcast) @ Deep Root segment — Core analysis of why Deep Root is discontinuing Raza despite stated success; raises manufacturing scalability concerns
“We have 20 other titles ready to go”
Deep Root Pinball (Robert Mueller, via Jeff Teolis question) @ podcast reference — Deep Root's stated justification for ending Raza sales; host expresses skepticism given it's their flagship product
“Four to six weeks from when they started taking orders... probably means January 5th through the 19th would be that time frame”
Host (A Pinball Podcast) @ Deep Root timeline analysis — Host calculates shipping window based on Deep Root's statement; expresses fear about their history of missing self-imposed deadlines
“If live strike DMCA's show up or, you know, it's done. Like that's it... that sucks, but that's just the way it is.”
Host (A Pinball Podcast) @ DMCA discussion — Host's assessment of existential threat to modern pinball streaming from copyright enforcement
“I think there's a big difference between somebody that's actually creating content such as like to me, if dead flip is playing a game, he's creating content. He should not be have any type of DMCA strike”
Host (A Pinball Podcast) @ DMCA fairness discussion — Host advocates for distinction between content creation and passive copyright infringement
“They're already the biggest company. So at the end of the day, they're going to sell their games... They could probably not even do anything for us in the pinball crowd besides just show a trailer, and it would be fine.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanySteve Ritchieperson Deep Root Pinballcompany Robert Muellerperson Led Zeppelingame RazagameTimmy Sextonperson

Signals

?
business_signal: Deep Root Pinball's strategy of discontinuing successful Raza sales at December 30th to pivot to Food Truck suggests either the game is unprofitable or manufacturing cannot handle parallel production
medium · Host's logical analysis: 'it either means no matter what they price Raza at, it is losing money' or 'their manufacturing line is not capable of handling multiple products at the same time'
?
business_signal: Deep Root's non-refundable deposit model for each game creates inefficient pre-order cycle vs traditional pre-orders; raises questions about whether this becomes standard practice
medium · Host questions: 'is every game...does this mean that every game that comes out from now on, is this the norm? Non-refundable deposits?'
?
competitive_signal: Stern views itself as market leader secure enough to maintain existing marketing/design approach regardless of competitor innovation (Jersey Jack Guns N' Roses)
medium · Host analysis: Stern 'are such a monster on a global scale in terms of pinball' and can 'pretty much just' continue current strategy; doesn't need to replicate Jersey Jack's approach
?
design_philosophy: Deep Root investing heavily in narrative/lore systems vs traditional gameplay mechanics focus; host questions practical implementation in pinball medium
medium · Host notes Deep Root spending 'so much time crafting these narratives' but questions 'how do you get hours and hours of information into a pen and actually give that same information to the player?'
$
market_signal: Pinball streaming ecosystem threatened by copyright enforcement; potential migration from Twitch to YouTube for pinball content

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.089

0:00

All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of A Pinball Podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here, and we're going to get directly into it. This has been one crazy week, pretty much, for the pinball industry. It's just like everything, like pinball news is all coming together. We're just jam-packing everything at the end of the year, it feels like. And so right before I start recording this, Led Zeppelin has been officially announced by Stern, And they actually, it's pretty interesting because they did a full out social media assault with Led Zeppelin's official social. So that's interesting because I'm curious to see exactly how people react to it that don't necessarily understand pinball or don't realize what pinball is. And so I looked into it a little bit this morning and it's actually kind of funny because there's some people that are immediately demanding a live album that's getting the most likes like on their Instagram. They're just like, we wanted a live album from Jimmy Page, and instead we get a pinball trailer. What is this? And so it cracks me up when we see these things come together, when you just see fans of a certain theme or rock band or whatever it could be that aren't even aware pinball exists, and then all of a sudden it's just thrown right into the face. Like, here it is, this is pinball, deal with it, and then we get those types of responses from them. Even Facebook's kind of entertaining. There's some people that are just responding just with a question mark.

1:27

Just like, what are we saying right now? What is this a trailer for? So that's cracking me up right there. But good on Stern for getting it out. You know, I don't know what to expect from it. We keep hearing that Steve Ritchie is the game designer. I have to assume that that means, oh, Timmy Sexton will be the coder as well, since they were on Black Knight together. But other than that, nothing has been officially confirmed, to my knowledge, as of the recording of this podcast, but I await seeing the final game trailer or the actual reveal of gameplay or whatever it could be. And what I'm really curious of is, is Stern going to adjust course a little bit in terms of how they really roll this out? Or are they just going to stay the course? I mean, I don't know if they necessarily need to change course, to be honest with you. I mean, yes, Guns N' Roses absolutely destroyed how they revealed their game. They absolutely did. But facing facts, too, you know, one of the things that I probably did not discuss too well when I was going over marketing with in terms of how Avengers came out and how that rolled out and what my opinions were on it based on my actual career history and work history. And, you know, one of the things to really consider with that is that when you're talking about different marketing aspects of it. Right. And I'm not going to get too much into the weeds because honestly, it's like or what's going on right now is probably going to be really boring. So I'll just keep this to 30 seconds. What it really means is there's different aspects of the marketing and different expertise in the marketing. And what Stern does really excellent at is their public relations. Like I have no doubt in my mind, obviously, they utilize a PR firm for everything. And Zach Sharp really understands that part of it. Like you can see it because they get everything out, press releases, they get into certain events, they do all that. And so because they're so good at that, do they really need to be great at how they reveal a game? Because they already have the top tier company. They're already the biggest company. So at the end of the day, they're going to sell their games. I think they're going to sell their games regardless of what they do. They could probably not even do anything for us in the pinball crowd besides just show a trailer, and it would be fine. I mean, obviously they might drop a sale or two either way, but at the end of the day, they're such a monster on a global scale in terms of pinball global scale. Although, obviously, we got the tax from the EU happening right now, but you guys know what I'm talking about. So, you know, essentially I think that they can pretty much just – they're still the kings of pinball, and they're still the kings of pinball manufacturing, obviously. And we'll touch base a little bit about that with Raza here in just a few. but I really do think that what they do is pretty good right now. And, of course, things could always get better. I'm sure they always want to get better, and I'm sure they're always analyzing it more than everybody else because obviously they're the ones putting out the product. But I think what they do is pretty excellent now, and I think, of course, what Jersey Jack did was really excellent. And, you know, maybe it's two different ways. They've got to do several different things in marketing, of course, according to what their market share already is. And so, you know, we'll see how it goes, and I'm curious to see how they roll out everything from here. I'm really curious to see how Led Zeppelin is. Now, I'm personally not expecting it to be anything near what Guns N' Roses is in terms of just looking at the pen and seeing what all it does. Like, I don't think it's going to be anywhere near. And the reason for that is it's not necessarily because that means that the designer is just terrible or the ideas are terrible. It just means that it's two different platforms. You know, I mean, it's still pinball, but it's kind of one of those things that you're always going to, of course, you're always going to be compared to each other, but it's also two different versions of what pinball should be. And it's obviously too late in the game for Stern to change anything according to what Guns N' Roses would do. And I know some people have brought that up, but in my opinion, they wouldn't change anything anyways because it's not broken. What they do, it's not broken. and they sell out of LE still. They sell tons of games. They are backed up by thousands of product, by thousands of units. So it's kind of like one of those things that you don't have to do anything that makes something just massively better. You could easily just incrementally make subtle changes. And to me, there's no reason to go away from what the bread and butter is of a designer. I don't think that, of course, if it is Steve Ritchie, they don't have to do anything crazy with that. Just make a Steve Ritchie pen. That's fun to play, and it'll sell. It doesn't have to be Guns N' Roses with all the lights, with all this, with all that, because Ritchie, he has done so many games. You just have to make it fun, and it has to feel like the Stern experience that you feel in that, and I think people will appreciate that. So speaking of Stern experience, you guys like that segue, we're moving ahead to the Deep Root experience. Now, again, I don't want to harp too long on this because I've made so much content on it this week. Legitimately, I think I did three videos on it, and I'm doing this podcast right now. And, you know, I'm trying to cover as much as I can without getting too much in the weeds because there's so much information dealing with DeepRoot. There's so much, and yet it's so weird because we know so much now, more so than probably any other company there is, yet for the number one thing that we're all wondering, we don't know, which is manufacturing. How is their manufacturing chain actually gonna work? Does it actually exist? Now, I have to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it does exist simply because that they're taking pre-order money. Now, I know Robert on a podcast, I believe it the Pinball News podcast Again I don have my notes with me so I hope I getting this right But I know that he stated on there that he was basically saying that they not going to refer to it as pre But I mean let call it what it is It a pre where consumers are handing off money in exchange for you saying that I will build this product and ship it to you at a to-be-determined time or a certain time. And so I'm just going to go ahead and just call it a pre-order. Let's call it what it is. Now, what's really interesting about that, And this is why I have to assume that they figured out their manufacturing.

7:52

They said on the same podcast that essentially that I believe the wording was is that Robert said something about four to six weeks from when they started taking orders that it would be. Yeah, it would be four to six weeks after they started taking orders is what it was. I think that's what the quote was. And so what I was trying to figure out is, does that mean from December 8th? Because that's when they started taking orders. And so that's the assumption I'm making because I didn't hear four to six weeks after the order area closes, like after that time frame closes, after that window closes from December 8th to December 30th. So that probably means then I believe it's like January 5th through the 19th would be that time frame. Now, obviously, if it's the end of the 30th of December, then that time frame is going to go a little bit further out, meaning it's going to be February to mid-February. That's when games should start rolling out. And so we have a concrete time frame now. I mean, it's there. And it's kind of scary. Like, I'm scared for them. And one of the big reasons for that is Deep Root has a history of putting these artificial time frames on themselves. Like they put this constraint on themselves and they miss it consistently. And so it's just one of those weird things that I've seen that history play out over and over again, as we all have. and now we're seeing it kind of happen again right now in terms of having a time frame, a window time frame of when this is going to happen. But kudos to them. They're saying, hey, we're going to take your money now. We're going to build something and here's a time frame that's going to be out. At least they're being transparent about that. And so I have to take them at their word for it. I haven't seen pictures of it. Nobody else has seen pictures of it. the deep six it was like the avengers apparently of pinball they all went there and saw it the nda is over for him but i haven't really heard anybody really go in depth describing what they've seen at least on a public level and i'm curious to see if that happens but another way that i feel like somebody could probably figure out exactly what is going on with their manufacturing in terms of actually seeing it is if somebody utilizes their program to homebrew the game or to take their homebrew and get it actually manufactured. And I feel like if a homebrewer comes to them and says, hey, I'm interested in this. How are you going to manufacture this? What is the process? I need to see it. I figured that that would probably happen. And for those wondering what the heck I'm talking about, there actually is a part on the website on deeprootpinball.com that gives homebrewers an opportunity to work with Deep Root. And that's kind of curious as well. Again, my thoughts are all over the place. I'm just flowing here, just free flowing. I'm curious about that as well, because it feels like, you know, the one thing about pinball, manufacturing is hard. That's got to be the hardest thing about pinball, just simply manufacturing to scale. We've seen Jersey Jack struggle to do that, and they're the second biggest producer, and they have a massive hit on their hands. It's difficult. We've seen Stern get behind, even though they are probably just busting at the seams right now. And what I'm thinking of is that if Deep Root is trying to get home-brewed games and these home-brewed designers to send games to them or get ideas and start working together, I have to think that how would that really affect the line overall at Deep Root? Because it's already difficult enough that they're going to have to start from scratch and they're hoping to scale up by 3,000 or 4,000%. We're talking from zero to 30 games or zero to 40 games. I mean, it's a jump. It really is. It doesn't sound like much, but it is a jump, especially when you consider somebody like Spooky Pinball, right, who's one of the smaller pinball companies around, yet they do get games out. Obviously, it's not that much, but they do get the games out. So I'm curious to see how Deep Root will do this. If they do something like a homebrew, wouldn't that pretty much interfere with every title that they have and speaking of titles what really caught my ear in this all what really caught my ear is that they confirmed that raza will not be sold after december 30th okay it won't be sold even if it's doing great even if it's doing well it's not going to be sold anymore you have to order it in this window of december 8th to December 30th.

17:13

like we said it before, there's so much going on with this Deep Root platform that I fear sometimes I wonder how much they're actually focused on the one thing, on the priority to get through. It sometimes makes me wonder. But at the same time, ideas are great. It's great to be ambitious because at least if you're ambitious, you're going to push through and you're going to have some breakthroughs, innovative-wise, design-wise, coding-wise, whatever it could be. Obviously, that is. You have to reach a little bit for that. I'm just hoping that they at least have their focus and their priorities all go in the right direction. Because it seems like with all these different titles, all these different designs, all these other things going on, there's so much other noise. You know, like take the narratives, for example. We've heard narratives talked about so much. And I, for one, would absolutely love a pin that's like an RPG pin or something like that to where it is a big narrative, to where you have to collect things, to where you have to build things, to where you have to craft things. That would be cool to me. It would be. I don't know if it'd be a big seller. I don't know if a lot of people would enjoy that. I mean, hell, there's a lot of people that go to arcades and they don't even know where to find the start button on these pens. I don't know how much they really want to go into depth with something like that. And that leads me back to it's really curious how they're spending, obviously, and they've touted this. They're spending so much time crafting these narratives behind everything. And I'm just like, I don't know. For me, it feels like it's a little too much. For instance, when I look at Stern and I see Avengers, if you go to their PDF for Avengers Infinity Quest rule set, you'll see it's legitimately just five or six lines explaining what the story of the pen is. And to me, that's all you need. And then just have your pen do the talking. But I don't know. And from the videos that we've seen of Raza, I don't feel like it really explains a narrative, like a really deep narrative. I feel like that this is almost something that could be explained or somebody could come up with just in one morning. You know, just based on what's in the pen. Now, I'm not saying you're not going to make all this other lore, kind of like Destiny is on video games with Bungie, where there's all this other lore you could just absolutely explore and hours and hours and hours of information. But how do you get hours and hours of information into a pen and actually give that same information to the player? And I don't think it's possible because we don't have, unless you're just, you know, outstandingly good, you're not playing a pinball game that lasts forever. It doesn't last a long time unless the code is designed for that. I mean, and I don't know if that's going to happen. I don't know if that, maybe that's part of their DLC. I did in the future. Maybe they're looking at just making it to where you don't have, you might have ball saves you might have lives or they're like the ball but maybe you just go like 10 10 ball lives or something like that and you just try to play through a story i'm not sure how you do that but i'm just really curious and i'm hoping that it's not too much of an overreach to really focus too much on narrative and on lore instead of just gameplay mechanics and coding and rule sets and that's you know that's another thing it's just there's so much going into this pen and you know harking back on the rule sets, I really did enjoy Bowden's video that they showed. This is the type of video that I think all pinball companies should do. I think you should always get either your designer or your rule set person right there. If your designer is a player like Elwin, let them play. That's perfectly fine. Even if your designer and your coder aren't great players, find a great player to come in to be able to show different things and explain what is happening. That was excellent. I love that. I was not lost at all, you know, and I enjoyed seeing Bowden's enthusiasm. Obviously, he's digging it. Obviously, he's into it. My only two big critiques of it is just obviously we had a hard time seeing the pin bar because of the hat. That was kind of funny a little bit. But, you know, there's other information you could find on the pin bar. But my only other thing is, is just make sure in the future for anybody that's looking at streaming pinball, make sure you're in 60 frames per second. I discovered that the hard way early on because I forgot to do that. And I was in 30 frames per second. And that ball, it just doesn't look right. When you do 30 frames per second, it just, it doesn't work for something that's in motion that quickly. So 60 frames per second, that'll fix it up. Other than that, that video was excellent. If you haven't seen it yet, I highly encourage you to go to their YouTube channel. It's up on there or it's even on their website, I believe somewhere on there. But, you know, That pretty much going to wrap it up in terms of me talking about Deep Root and talking about Raza for now I might have a video coming out later next week just going over everything together but I don know if it even necessary because so many people are talking about it already and it's just information overload at the moment. And there's other things that I feel like talking about as well. And like I said, if you guys are listening to this and you also are on the YouTube channel, you probably notice I'm doing things a little bit different right now in terms of doing commentary along with it. And I have plans for that. My basic plans are is that I wanna do commentary in a sense that is a way that people can just watch real quick and can get the information that might not necessarily follow the news all the time. And I want to try to give it my own little spin and my own little, uh, my own little, what am I trying to say? Just my own little spin. I'll just leave it at that. And so from there, my plans are just to take those videos from YouTube. And even if you don't watch them on there, I'll just upload the audio back onto my pod catcher here. And that way, anybody that wants to listen to it can. And that seems like an easy way just to keep the information flowing, keep the content flowing. And I also, I personally, I want to dabble a little bit more into gaming and into pop culture news. And so you'll see me doing that as well if you haven't already. And that being said, one of the things that I was talking about on there a lot is the possible end of pinball streaming. And, you know, I got a couple of messages about it, people wondering what is going on exactly. And what it really amounts to right now, guys, is that if you haven't seen those videos yet, what's happening is for Twitch and any other content creators that are out there on streaming platforms, there's a distinct possibility that live strike DMCAs are going to come out. And I don't want to bore you guys too much. It basically just means that if you're playing copyrighted content, such as music in the background or even on your stream at any point, there's a chance that it will be muted, obviously. And not only will it be muted, your channel will have a strike against it in which that platform will issue. And if you get too many, well, you're done and you're removed from it. And these strikes are a result of an outside party. The RIAA and the, I believe it's the NMPA off the top of my head, which is basically the music industry. Let's just put it that way. Let's keep it simple. And the music industry wants what's theirs. And they're coming after Twitch hardcore. core. And we've seen this kind of play out a little bit. If you guys watch pinball on Twitch at all, any Twitch streamers, whether it's dead flip, laser lows, uh, Carl with IE pinball. I mean, there's so many different ones. So if I left you off apologies, but essentially you might notice if you look back on some of their VODs, if they keep VODs up, you might see some of them have parts that are muted. And you know, it's really, it's an interesting thing that's going to happen in terms of these certain companies or third-party companies coming after the content. And it's not necessarily Stern reporting it or anything like that, but that does lend a thing that it's, you know, it's going to affect things. And I'm curious to see how that plays out. How is that going to affect how modern pens are streamed? And I think obviously if live strike DMCA's show up or, you know, it's done. Like that's it. A lot of modern pens have so many sounds and so much music that are, that's copyrighted that Stern is acquiring a license from. And if they're, if it's copyrighted, you're just, you're done. That's just, it's, it sucks, but that's just the way it is. And what really stinks about that, you know, it's not like you're just playing music in the background, you know, in that case, that's directly from the game. Now, of course, if you're just playing music in the background, which some people do, and I watch some of the streams, I enjoy it. Yeah, those are pretty much going to be done very soon. And then another blow that came to streamers, I just posted up this video just yesterday, was the fact that they are actually putting a bill into the whole COVID package that's coming out, the relief package from our government pretty soon that they're voting on. There's another bill in there that essentially makes it a felony to stream copyrighted content, which that doesn't mean that all of a sudden all pinball people are criminals. But what it does mean is, is they're going to crack down a lot on video assets, which has been a huge debate in the pinball industry, whether or not a pin needs video assets or not. And they're going to crack down a lot again on the sound. And this is all, this is all basically coming back down on Amazon, on Twitch. This is going to come back on the end user on us as consumers or us as content creators. And I hope they get it all figured out because this kind of sucks. I think there's a big difference between somebody that's actually creating content such as like to me, if dead flip is playing a game, he's creating content. He should not be have any type of DMCA strike because of music coming from the game or a, you know, a video clip from the game that should not be happening. That's creating content. I think people like that should be left alone. And I hope that there's a, you know, they get the difference of that compared to, say, if I'm sitting here and I'm talking to you and then I just have Avengers Endgame just playing like right here in this spot and I just leave it going the whole time. That's a big difference right there, you know. And so if somebody's creating content, I think they should be left alone. I hope this all gets sorted out. If not, it's going to be weird. It's going to be weird for pinball because that means that there's a lot of changes that would have to be made. I'm not sure how YouTube would react to it because they dealt with their same thing about eight years ago. But I imagine tournaments for sure would have to move from Twitch to YouTube. I've talked to a lot of different streamers before, and I'm of the mindset if you are going to start pinball streaming and you're thinking about it, I would start on YouTube. For me, I'm partnered on Twitch, but I barely ever stream there anymore, and I'm pretty much dead set on moving over to YouTube gaming. I've been talking back and forth with Twitch about that, about figuring out what I'm going to do about my partnership there, because I definitely I don't want to violate it. But I also am thinking about just getting let go from it so I can go over to YouTube gaming, because as it is right now, since I am a Twitch partner, I legally cannot stream a game on YouTube. I can stay here and stream live talking. I can do that. But other than that, Twitch has the rights to all my content, all my live game content for 24 hours before I can even put it over. So if I streamed, like literally if you're a partner and you stream, say, from 9 p.m. until 12 a.m., you can't put that stream on YouTube until midnight the next day. That's the way it goes. If I turn around and I put it up there by 6 a.m. the next morning, I'm actually violating my contract with Twitch. And so it's just this big weird thing. But hopefully it all gets sorted out because that would really stink. But I'm going to finish it up right there, guys. I will have a video coming out pretty soon. We're going to talk about what Gary Stern's comments about modifications on pinball machines and what that really means. And, again, he even pointed out in that that when you take music, it's bad without a license. And that, again, comes back to all the pinball stuff. But take a breath, and we're about done right there. Thank you guys so much for making it to the end of this podcast. If you're here, you are awesome, and that's all I got.