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Harry Potter Pinball with Eric Meunier!

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000·video·1h 7m·analyzed·Aug 2, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Eric Meunier discusses Harry Potter Pinball design, accessibility features, and licensing challenges in extended interview.

Summary

Eric Meunier, designer of Harry Potter Pinball for Jersey Jack, joins Mystery Pinball Theater for an extended interview while playing the game at a San Francisco arcade. The conversation covers the game's conception (pitched to Warner Bros in March 2023), design philosophy balancing casual and competitive play, mechanical details of the rotating staircase, Game Changer QR code accessibility feature, and production/licensing constraints. Meunier emphasizes inclusive design that allows non-expert players to enjoy all eight films without being locked behind difficult shots, and discusses resource constraints that left some features unrealized.

Key Claims

  • Harry Potter Pinball was pitched to Warner Bros on March 2023, the day before Texas Pinball Festival, after the franchise team saw pinball machines at Warner Bros Studios and specifically requested a game

    high confidence · Eric explains the origin story: 'March 2023, the day before Texas Pinball Festival. I was in the boardroom at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and I met with the Harry Potter franchise team'

  • The staircase mechanism uses a 24-volt stepper motor with custom electrical control board that allows precise speed and movement control

    high confidence · Eric describes the mechanism: 'It's a. Yeah, 24 volt stepper motor. Um with a. with a PC board that runs it. Um we can get tons of resolution out of this thing. Lots of speed.'

  • Joe Catz, the lead programmer, had never read Harry Potter books or seen the movies before working on the game

    high confidence · Eric states: 'in your corner is the lead programmer, Joe Catz. Joe had never read a book. Had never read the Harry Potter books. He'd never seen the movies until this started.'

  • The game features a self-regulating wizard mode (Battle of Hogwarts) that adjusts difficulty requirements based on play history to ensure accessibility

    high confidence · Eric explains: 'The Battle of Hogwarts is started after you've played any four different multiballs. But if you haven't done that in 200 games, the Battle of Hogwarts has started after you've played any three multiballs'

  • Game Changer QR code keychains allow players to scan different difficulty settings (easy, normal, wizard) that customize game settings persistently

    high confidence · Eric describes: 'you hold it up in front of the QR code or in front of the camera. It scans a QR code and instantly all the rules in the game are set to easy.'

  • Warner Bros rejected alterations to movie footage, including a clever Easter egg where 'I must not tell lies' would be changed to 'I must not tilt'

    high confidence · Eric explains: 'Under no circumstances can you alter our movie footage. That's just not allowed by anyone ever, right? It's not like we hate pinball. It's just you can't alter movie footage.'

Notable Quotes

  • “This is the first Jersey Jack I've ever owned... And I said, 'Harry Potter, it's going to earn.' And that's it, man. And it is going to.”

    Manu (host, co-owner of Harry Potter machine) @ early in interview — Demonstrates operator confidence in Harry Potter's earning potential as a location machine

  • “One of the things that I love about this game is I'm not a high level player, not a super high level player. So I can't get trapped behind one shot.”

    Manu @ discussing game design — Highlights inclusive design philosophy that prevents casual players from being locked out of game content

  • “March 2023, the day before Texas Pinball Festival. I was in the boardroom at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and I met with the Harry Potter franchise team”

    Eric Meunier @ describing game origin — Establishes the specific moment and origin of Harry Potter Pinball project

  • “Everything else is shots and spinners, right? So, it's not like that or it's not like some weird thing.”

    Eric Meunier @ discussing mechanical complexity — Reveals design philosophy of minimizing complex mechanics in favor of accessible shot-based gameplay

  • “I have an electrical engineering degree... it's a really interesting electrical chip that runs it um and does current limiting and does uh voltage regulation”

    Eric Meunier @ technical discussion of staircase motor — Demonstrates sophisticated engineering approach to stepper motor control for game reliability

  • “There's so many hours in a week. Um, and us three, myself, Joe Catz, and Dan Lechek, who's the mechanical engineer on the game, put in a lot more than 40 hours a week.”

    Eric Meunier @ discussing production effort — Acknowledges intense development commitment from core team

  • “You can totally squeeze ahead in a tournament if you had Quidditch on your mind and your competition didn't. You can get... 40 million at the end of the game because you grabbed a Snitch.”

    Eric Meunier — Shows strategic depth and competitive viability through high-value endgame multiplier

Entities

Eric MeunierpersonJoe CatzpersonDan LechekpersonJack WerypersonHarry Potter PinballgameJersey Jack PinballcompanyWarner Broscompany

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Harry Potter Pinball has achieved significant commercial success; operator Manu (first Jersey Jack owner) and Matt invested in machine based on two test plays; confident in location earning potential

    high · Manu: 'This is the first Jersey Jack I've ever owned... And I said, Harry Potter, it's going to earn. And that's it, man. And it is going to' and describes ownership decision after just two games at Pinball Pirates

  • ?

    community_signal: Eric Meunier scheduled for Melbourne Pinball Expo in November (post-game release); signaling continued community presence and support tour by designer to international markets

    high · Eric discusses confirmed travel: 'I've confirmed I'm going down to Australia November to the uh Melbourne Pinball Expo' for solo trip after first family vacation in 2 years

  • ?

    competitive_signal: House Cup endgame mechanic provides tournament-level strategic depth through 10M per house point multiplier; Quidditch upper playfield offers competitive advantage (40M swing in 4-player) for knowledgeable players, creating skill differentiation

    high · Eric: 'You can totally squeeze ahead in a tournament if you had Quidditch on your mind and your competition didn't... 40 million at the end of the game because you grabbed a Snitch'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Chat members requested information on cut features, particularly wondering 'Where's the dragon?'; Eric acknowledges budget/time constraints resulted in scope cuts but declines to specify what was removed

    medium · Chat: 'Did they cost cut any ideas out? Yeah. What was it? What? Where's the dragon?' Eric declines specifics: 'I don't really want to talk about it cuz what you guys see, you don't know what's not there'

Topics

Game Design Philosophy: Inclusive AccessibilityprimaryMechanical Engineering: Rotating Staircase MechanismprimaryQR Code Game Changer Accessibility FeatureprimaryIP Licensing Constraints and Creative CompromiseprimaryDevelopment Timeline and Resource AllocationsecondaryOperator vs. Casual vs. Competitive Player NeedssecondaryTournament-Viable Game Design (Quidditch House Cup)secondaryProduction and Team Structure at Jersey Jackmentioned

Sentiment

positive(0.92)— Eric is enthusiastic about the game and the design choices, speaking proudly about inclusive design philosophy. Manu as operator is extremely positive, expressing confidence in earning potential. Discussion of licensing constraints is candid but not acrimonious. Overall tone is celebratory of the finished product.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

[Music] Hello. Hello. Hello. What's up, Ping? So, I know what I know what you guys are here for, but so far I'm here alone right now. Erica's not made it down yet. Wow, this is really hot. Okay, let me lower this. Let me lower this. Check one. Check two. Check one, two. Is my volume too hot or is it okay, guys? Let me know. One, two, one, two, one, two. Check, check, check, check. How do I sound? Voice is good. Thank you. That Chad, that Chad, that guy chat. Welcome in everybody. You're probably not here to just watch me play Harry Potter. You want to talk to Eric? And I apparently he's running late. I have to start streaming though, so I have to stream on time. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to play until he gets here and then we're going to have a little interview for about an hour. Voice like butter. I actually am here to watch you play Harry Potter. Okay. As long as Eric comes dressed as Bird. I don't know what What does that mean, dude? Dad, what does that What does that even mean? I'm not I don't I don't get that. Is that a joke between just you and Eric? So, if you see him Oh, I'm Oh, no. This is not I'm not dressed as Ernie. I'm dressed as uh I got my uh my Gryffindor colors, right? Don't I? Are these not Gryffindor colors? I don't have anything else. Like I wore my Harry Potter shirt yesterday. Ping knows the movie tonight, man. Come here, man. How dude? How was Sang Tongue? It was awesome. Really? Oh, man. Those wings are fantastic. That's dim sung though, right? Uh I got wings, so like dry fried wings. They're known for Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Were you up on like Irving? Okay. Wait, how did you get in? You waited forever. I walked in, placed a go order. It only took 10 minutes. Oh, [ __ ] Hell yeah, dude. Ladies and gentlemen, Eric is here. Oh, hey, Twitch. Hi, Twitch. How's it going? Hi, guys. Hey, Eric. Can I get you something to drink? Just grab it out of the Just grab anything you want out of. Yeah. All right. Here we go. [Music] So, what are you doing in San Francisco? So, first vacation in 2 years. Um, here with my family. Uh, we have hit up Lassen Volcanic National Park way up north. Uh, we did Mirror Woods yesterday. Uh, we just rode her out on those stupid little yellow go-kart things that are all over the city. Yeah, the ones that annoy the ones that annoy the [ __ ] out of all the locals. Oh, yeah. I totally played tourist. Um, and just having a blast hanging out with the family. So they're uh they're at the park next door right now and they're going to hang out. So I got young kids 10 and seven. So that park is wonderful. Harvey and Cameron. 10 and seven. Yep. Isn't seven a grade eight, dude? They are they are loving it. They love playing games. They love uh How many games do you have at home? Like how many? Um you don't have just pinball, right? Uh I Well, I have a lot of board games. Uh tabletop games. cuz I just started a Dungeons and Dragons campaign with my kids. Two neighborhood dads. They're two 10-year-olds. Um, are you the DM? Oh, yeah. Okay. I I know a thing or two about games, you know, and making them fun. So, so it's it's I'm really happy. So, how why are you slamming it down here? You know why? Because this man loves this freaking game. I do love this game. And let me just say, okay, you guys are going to think I'm fanboying right now, but screw you. This is the first Jersey Jack I've ever own. Oh, yeah. You got one on order. This is yours. This is This is me and Matt. Okay. Okay. So, the conversation was Harry Potter's coming out. She Matt was like, "Bro, I want you to go in on it with me." And I don't I don't have any of these games. I have a game at home, but I don't I come in, I fix them, and I go home. Sure. And I said, "Harry Potter, it's going to earn. It is going to earn." And that's it, man. And it is going to and and and I was not mistaken. Um this is a dream theme. Let me get out of the test mode. I think new code came out today actually. New beta code. Yeah. New beta. So So here's the thing. Like if you want if So beta code is cool, right? Yeah. Well, actually we're in a location. I don't recommend putting beta code on when you're in location just cuz you know it's vetted but it's not 100% vetted like yeah so anything that could cause like a look at that cash box and then I grew up as an operator rights that earn that's what we do that's awesome so so anyway we're going to we're going to we're going to do some operator talk and we're going to do some I I saw you on everybody's stream but here's the We're at a game. We have a game right here. We have a beautiful freaking I clean it every day. It's like I'm in the honey. No, because you know why? I know what kind of damage these machines take. Oh, yeah. Um I don't clean it every day, guys. I'm just joking. But I did clean it today. Um so I want to kind of get ahead of it and we're doing that to every game here. I mean it's you know so free watch is very very this we've got the most pinball in San Francisco. Yep. Yep. Um San Francisco Pinball League plays here. Team leagues play here. Um it says Matt Eric. Eric Matt. Nice to meet you, man. Thank you. Thank you. Right on, man. Appreciate it. That's my boss. That's my boss. That's my boss. That's my boss. I've been in contact with Matt for for years and I've never met him in person. So, what's funny is that I remember there was a time that when Guns and Roses was here, the keyboardist, right, Melissa? Melissa. Yeah. She's like, "Hey, can I come down and play?" I'm like, "Hell yes." So, that was pretty sick. Yep. All right. All right. So, uh, where was I? Okay. Well, let's check chat. So, I'm ignoring chat. Sorry. Cuz this is Eric right here. Um, hey, Eric. Looking forward to meeting you, meet you in Melbourne for the expo. Wow. Oh, yeah. So, I've confirmed I'm going down to Australia November to the uh Melbourne Pinball Expo. Melbourne. Melbourne. Melbourne. All right. Melbourne. I hope you I'll sound like a local if I say it that way. No, but but but it helps. Spalito, did I say that right? Yeah. Um, wow. So, it'll be a that'll be a solo trip. Again, I haven't taken time off in a long time since I was making this game. So, this is the first family trip. I'm going to Melbourne uh for the pinball show and then staying there a week to do um exploring, to do some surfing. Um such a great town. Try to see if I can take a penguin home with me in my carry. Penguin. You want a kangaroo? I'd like a kangaroo, too. That'd be fun. Don't ask for an Outback Steakhouse. No. Don't ask. No. Bloom and onion. Yeah. No, not my thing. Eat local. Hang out with the locals. Got a bunch of buddies that have invited me to their places. They're going to tour me around. Like it's Pinball has certainly like opened up doors uh to hang out with people down there. So So talking about like how long it took So from from I know that companies have schedules. Yep. But how long did this and I know you guys were burning the midnight oil to hit a schedule. How long was it to from conception to to build kind of so to here? March 2023, the day before Texas Pinball Festival. I was in the boardroom at Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank and I met with the Harry Potter franchise team and the licensing team from Warner Brothers. And they had been walking through the studio and they saw pinball machines at Warner Brothers in the lobby. They had a Hobbit. Then they had a game from another manufacturer. And they had a third game from a third manufacturer. And the franchise team from Potter stopped and said, "No way. We want a game like that." And they pointed at a So Jack happened to have called the licensing partner that we had Warning Brothers. Yeah. Jack Weri, founder, head of licensing at Jersey Jack. um called our licensing partner like that day and they're just like, "Well, actually, they just opened up the category. They want a Hobbit like machine made of their franchise. Um they're going to be in town in like a week and a half. Can you come by?" No way. Yeah. So, Jack and I go out there and they say, "Well, just, you know, from a high level, what do you think you'd make out of a potter machine?" You know, like have you you ever seen the movies? I'm like slam. I'm like bam, here's the layout. Here's the rules. Here's the characters. Here's the sound calls. We got to get Marc Silk on board cuz he's the voice of the sorting hat. He has to be here. Here's the modes that I want to do. Here's And I'm like showing them page after page that I had like furiously drawn in the last 10 days. And they're like, this Yeah. And you you kind of So this you said this was your dream theme, right? Dream theme. Absolutely. And if it's a dream theme, obviously you kind of in your mind at some point like at dinner Oh, yeah. messing around with the mashed potatoes. You were drawing a place, sketching stuff. Yep. Yep. Sketching stuff. Trying to think how you capture, you know, eight movies, seven books that are, you know, of course I've read all the books first, right? I waited in line for these books when I was a kid. Like this is Yeah, this is certainly an IP that's near and dear to me. You almost made me cry in that goddamn stupid in that stupid trailer where I talk about my wife. I was like, "Yeah, I was like this." Um, so I, you know, I, of course, I thought about what I wanted to do and how to capture not necessarily movie specific elements, but universe specific things like Hogwarts moving staircase and the magic wands and death eaters and Quidditch. It's like those kind of transcend each movie. Um, and they're they're there. So, we can use those shots for modes in all the movies and in different multiballs and coming, you know, if we just had a single shot dedicated to the mirror of Vera set, it's like, well, I could use that for two scenes out of the first movie, then what do I use it for? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's always the Okay, so that's the issue like um like home homebrew guys and and stuff like that. You come up with a cool mech. Oh, I got a great mech. All right. What does it do? Oh, it's for that one part of the thing that does the thing. one part of the scene where you stepped out to use the restroom, you came back in and you missed it, right? It's like, oh well. All right. Well, what what else can we use it for? I I don't know. So So you're This is not your first at bat, man. You you've been you've been drilling through these games forever. Mhm. Well, I I'll tell you this and um I want to talk stuff too a little bit, but just my story in the beginning was we got the game in and I'm not a huge Harry Potter. I read the first four books, okay? I saw all the movies. Okay. Um, but I'm not like, you know, we go when we go to Universal, we go obviously the Diagon Alley, obviously. We do all this stuff. And I I enjoy this series, but I'm not like deep into it like you. Sure. I stepped up to the game. I think we played two games at Pinball Pirates. Yep. When we decided we were going to buy this thing, we played two games, me and Matt Henry, two games. And I went, "Wow." Like I just like, "Okay, need this in my life. Need to Let's go." We got ours in. I played a few games and I was like I I So here's a here's a complaint that people have. Okay. Oh, I uh I don't get to enjoy the movie. What do you mean? Oh, because the movie kind of goes on and I don't get to enjoy. And I'm like, wait a minute. You would have complained if one scene was locked behind one shot that you had to make and you couldn't and you drained and you didn't see anything. So I that was intentional design. Right. One Yeah. One of the things that I love about this game is I'm not a high level player, not a super high level. So I can't get trapped behind one shot. Right. Right. Um there's another game by another developer that I kind of I'm pointing but I'm not saying I kind of lost my mind because of one shot that I couldn't get. And the game will not progress forward. You will not make that one shot. Right. So, I'm asking people to kind of honor the system where you can do everything. You can start that movie and it's like, "All right, here's some shots. All right. Okay. Maybe you didn't make them. If you didn't make them, it's all right. Here's some other shots." 30 seconds later, if you haven't made those shots, you move on. And again, that's a lot for the casual players as well who don't know much about pinball but love Harry Potter. They're like, "Oh, I remember this scene. Oh, I remember this scene." you know, and you're progressing through the films. Even if you can't make a single shot, I saw this. I saw a father, son, young kid. Oh, Harry Potter. He stepped up and the kid stepped up and he started shooting and things were happening. He wasn't trapped behind one shot. It was going nuts. Yep. And they had the multi. Wow. They walked away so happy. All right. So, anyway, um I don't want to ignore you guys, though, cuz we want to What are you making? Okay. Uh, auto install updates question mark. So, auto install updates certainly could happen. Uh, but historically we've always said there's an update available. Hit your menu button to go in and do it. It it it says it'll say, "Hey, update available." Um, being a location runner, I appreciate sometimes when it's not auto pushed, right? Um, gets a little weird. That's that's a half and half kind of thing. It's one or the other. Uh, when you making it sign Oh [ __ ] you got to sign this. Oh my god. All right, I can sign it. Don't leave without signing. I will not leave without signing it. We'll sign We'll sign something. Please don't leave without signing. Yes, I'll sign. All right, sign. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you, Jordan. Um, what's your favorite Harry Potter spell and why is it Flendo? So, I have played Hogwarts Legacy. Flipendo is a fantastic spell where you flip people up into the air. Oh, okay. Hogwarts Legacy is a uh a video game that was made Oh, that's right. in the Harry Potter universe, but not with these characters, right? So, it takes place in the 1800s. It's at Hogwarts, but none of the characters, you know, are part of the story. It's a completely new story. Um, with, again, for the modern nerds, you're like, "Oh my god, oh my god, I'm at Hogwarts." And, "Oh my god, I just saw Thes and oh my god, I just did this and I bought a broomstick and flying around." And it's totally totally for the nerds. Um, all right. What else do we have here? Uh, what about parts for the pinball players who don't know much about Harry Potter? So, in your corner, in your corner is the lead programmer, Joe Katz. Joe had never read a book. Joe is amazing. Had never read the Harry Potter books. He'd never seen the movies until this started. Oh, yeah. He was not a Potter fan. Did Joe work on Wonka? He did, but he didn't know Potter at all. So, he came into it with how do I make the pinball fun in spite of not knowing anything about Potter? And I think he nailed it. He allows, you know, quick approachable multiballs, right? Shoot the stairs twice, you got a multiball. Collect the kids names and you got a golden trio multiball. Hit the Death Eater, which is the power shot on the right flipper or an easy backhand. Beat them twice, you get a multiball. Like, there's these things that are that are up front for these players. even if you know nothing about, you're like, "Oh, there's a bad guy. I better hit him." Oh, what's that cool spinning thing? Let me hit it. And you're going to get multiball progress. You're going to get points. Of course, there's a lot of like deep rules in the game as well. But, you know, from the highle view, multiballs are there after a couple shots on the main elements. Um, and they build in. We've got a self uh regulating wizard mode in the game that's called the Battle of Hogwarts. So, the Battle of Hogwarts is started after you've played any four different multiballs. But if you haven't done that in 200 games, the Battle of Hogwarts has started after you've played any three multiballs. And if you haven't done it in another 100 games, it regul uh reflexes back down even further. Play two multiballs to play the Battle of Hogwarts. So, like we wanted to get that stuff in front of players. Yeah. Um, in a home environment, we have keychains that are on the keys that have um Wait, do you really QR codes might be It's somewhere in there. Yeah. So, there's I love this. There's some There's some keys uh that Kane ship installed on the game. Yeah, we got somewhere. Remember this. Remember this is the arcade edition. Arcade edition still came with them. Came with them. All right, we'll find them. We'll find keychains. Yep. I got to ask where you put the keychains that ship on the key for the game that have QR codes. Oh, wait. I think it's in the back. It's in the back. So, you just hold it up to the camera. Is that what that Oh, and it makes There's three different settings. There's easy, normal, and wizard. This in Oh, is that what that Ah, I know where it is in the back. But we were like, what is this? We don't know what it is. So, it's called the game changer. Uh, which is I think our trademark is pending for it, but you hold it up in front of the QR code or in front of the camera. It scans a QR code and instantly all the rules in the game are set to easy. Oh, okay. You can do that for your player. For my player, I can scan it independently and I can play on super difficult wizard mode. It it it we saw that when we pulled it out of the the thing and I read it and then I think we just filed it away cuz we were like it's too new for an operator for an operator setting. I wouldn't recommend it. Right. Um there's so many settings that are available in the game that most people never change, never adjust. Um hundreds of settings to make the game play the way you want to play, right? We just look through a lot of them. Um but that is a really cool thing. Like I'm able to play with my kids. Scan them in on easy. Scan me on on wizard. They start the game with the multiball lit. First floor Hogwarts. For a wizard player, it takes nine shots. You got to hit every shot from both of those. Um and then start, right? Yeah. Which is which is cool, too. I just figured this out. The the I just call them colors cuz I don't know what the banner. Yeah, that's fine. The the house colors is what they call the house colors. And then I got um What is lit after that? Um it's right in right Yeah. lit on the staircase. Um, let's see what else. Pinball players never complain. No, it feels good to hit the plate shot. Yes. Uh, okay. We skip that one. Uh, heck yes. Let's see. Lego feels like a theme. Eric's just smiling, guys. Um, so, so who sent the wrong art to micro? Does comp cop does disable auto easy window? I think it does. Um I think that was something that we were working on to make sure that someone couldn't in an arcade scam like if they brought their own keychain, right? They couldn't scan in and and um by the way, once again guys, make that happen. Eric designed the game. Probably has a big hand in the rules, but Eric didn't map out all the settings, so he's not going to immediately know a setting, you guys. So, well, I might I want easy JJP QR shirt. All right, now that'll be fun. All right. All right. So, um, as far as mechs and stuff go. Mhm. Okay. Obviously, I I'm I'm not necessarily an op Well, I guess I am an operator. Okay, whatever. Like, I don't know. Is my foot all the way in that camp now that I hear? And I mean, if you are an owner of a game, you are an operator. Okay. So, uh, one of the things I did is I lifted the playfield to see what trouble I'm going to get into. Sure. And I realized not much. Um, this one mech handles so much of the heavy lifting. Yes. Everything else is shots and spinners, right? So, it's not like that or it's not like some weird thing. So, um, how robust and what's what's the build of this guy that staircase? So, the staircase, um, there's a black pad that you can see there, right? And normally faces the back when the ball hits and drops into the pot bumpers. If you rotate that 45°, you can see the screw here, here, and there. So, you can take that top off with three screws. Let me see if I can change the view. Uh, that's Oh, wait. So, everybody can see what we're talking about. There you go. So, if that rotates 45° through here, here screws off, the top of it comes out. Oh, man. That is so cool. It's attached. Um, there's a gear that's molded into the gear that's screwed into the top there. And there's a motor all the way underneath the playfield. Is that a basically like what 24 volt stepper motor stepper motor? It's a Yeah, 24 volt stepper motor. Um with a with a PC board that runs it. Um we can get tons of resolution out of this thing. Lots of speed. Oh yeah. Is that the 24 volts or That is a 24 volt that that can drive it really fast. Um but it's a really So I have an electrical engineering degree. It's a really interesting electrical chip that runs it um and does current limiting and does uh voltage regulation for it to make it move in ways that are um you know very beneficial to us uh to use in the game. They said there's 13 different paths. 13 different ball paths. I found a new path today. No, no, no, no, not uhoh. It actually fed the Quidditch. It'll feed the Quidditch fish. Right. So, if you've if you've drained ball one and you never played Quidditch, the first time you get it to the orbit through any of those shots and you don't have a ball lock lit, it'll grab it, drop it, rotate the stairs, and feed it to the upper play field. We wanted casuals to be able to see that upper play field. How much time did you spend on this? Like I It It feels like alternate code. Like, it's hard enough to write the code. Yeah. But then you you're going into all these features that are almost edge cases in some places, but you're you're doing it. It's parts that we always want to address so that everyone has a fun experience. If we had, you know, interesting features, if the Quidditch pitch were only possible if you were able to hit that left ramp, there's lots of people who are never going to hit that left ramp. But a shot right up the middle, that's where most casuals live is in like this 30°, right up the middle, right? So they can hit the Diagon Alley shot, grab and feed up there through the stairs. That's crazy. That's crazy. All right, what else we got? Uh, sounds easy to understand for being deep, especially a JJP. Is Game Changer going to save save custom presets? So, you the game changer QR code. Um, you can go in and you can adjust the settings for easy, normal, and wizard, and it will stay to those settings when you scan the QR code. So, yes, that will happen. All it is is just triggering the the settings in the game. Yes, that's all it does. Okay. Uh, live points after game over for all players. So, what does that mean? So, at the end of your final ball, you get your Quidditch points turned into pinball points. Yeah. It's sort of like Wonka where you got the right the chocolate bar but at the end of the final players game the Quidditch house cup is awarded right whoever had the most quiddage points gets an extra 10 million times the number of players playing. So it's one of those uh we get this all the time. It's one of those carrot on a stick things. We want people to not just blow away Quidditch because it's on an upper play field or they don't feel it's important, right? It's an important rule. You can totally squeak ahead in a tournament if you had Quidditch on your mind and your competition didn't. You can get and it's a four-player game. You get 40 million at the end of the game because you grabbed a snitch. That's called good design. Good game design. Um Okay. So, custom easy or Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So, so for me, it's a whole different kind of world that opens up to um um like I said, I'm not the pro player. So, getting a getting a shot, one shot. All right. Harry walks down the street, another shot, right? There's there also there's no way to do that with all the movies, right? So, you're going to get these complaints of of why' you just do Toy Story 4? All right. Well, what if we do all the movies? How do we How do we do that? Eric got, "Oh, here's all the movies." It's like, "Oh, shoot." Okay. Yep. So, you do that with locations. You do that with shots based on characters. Um, you do that with universal capturing themes like the castle, like Quidditch, like Death Eaters, and then you can apply those to every movie, every scene. Uh, I know Scorb is not supported anymore. Is there any work in progress? because of uh still online functionality like leaderboards. Sure. So, it's a work in progress. Y there are there are certainly interesting things on the horizon. Um so, tell me a little bit about these wands. They're like they're Sure. So, first thing I heard from you was operator focused, right? Those wands. So, they're one to one movie replicas of the main character's wands. You got Harry's on the left, Hermione the the girl in the middle, and then Ron on the right. And I just noticed that they light up when you get there. They do light up. And they light up in an interesting way. I didn't just embed an LED in the tip of it because if that ever has a problem, you'd have to replace the whole lawn. Instead, there's a fiber optic that runs the whole length of the lawn and the LED is buried actually way in the back. So, if there ever is an LED issue, which they're LEDs, the issues happen. Yeah. Not often, less than incandescent incondesence, right? But a broken wire is a broken wire, you know. Um, that wand can can unscrew, come off, and you can replace an LED versus trying to fish cables all the way through an injection molded part. Um, now the comp is show. Okay. Um, those wands seem like they've been arriving warped in shipping. Well, here's the thing about the Let me take a guess at this. The wands are not brittle. They're not. They're flexible on purpose. They are flexible on purpose. Anything brittle in a game does not last. You've got a steel ball hitting them constantly. So, they got to give a little bit. Um, if something's rubbing, I mean, you can you can reach in there, you can grab it, scooch it over a little bit, tighten it back down. You'll be good to go. Uh, boy, you guys loving the QR codes. Will the QR codes be backported to older games? So, Potter's the first game we ever had it. Uh, it seems like there's an overwhelming interest. I know in uh the rules. I better go get those keys, which is cool. Um it's something we've discussed. Um but I can't say when that would happen if it's going to happen. Did they cost cut any ideas out? Yeah. What was it? What? Where's the dragon? Oh, there are always things. Um right, it's like I have a budget. It's not just a monetary budget. It's a time budget as well. Uh and a resource budget. Right. For the first year of the game, I had one programmer. Um, and it wasn't until we were over a year in that I got more resources applied. Um, one mechanical engineer for most of the life of the game. There's so many hours in a week. Um, and us three, myself, Joe Katz, and Dan Lechek, who's the mechanical engineer on the game, put in a lot more than 40 hours a week. Um, almost every week. We put a lot into this game, but there's still only so much time, money, and uh resources we can put into a single project. So, there is stuff that was left on the cutting room floor, but I don't really want to talk about it cuz what you guys see, you don't know what's not there. So, it's cool. It's not like So, the situation is like it's not like as a homerew, right? Where you can where you don't have where you don't have uh and and the other thing that I didn't mention. So, there's there's you don't have a bill of material, right? There's no bill of material. There's no licensing when it comes to a homebrew. Yeah. Look, the Potter folk were were great to work with, but they have a certain way they want their IP represented, and it's not always the same way that, you know, I would love to Here, here's a fun example. Something that got left on the cutting room floor in movie 5 when Harry's writing on his hand, right? I must not tell lies. He writes it in a quill that draws blood, right? and he and he cuts it into and so that was tilt, right? The words tell lies contain all the letters you need for the word tilt. So my animator took those letters and replaced them in about 2 hours and his hand wrote I must not tilt. Is that here in the blood? This is something that Warner Brothers Oh no, they didn't. They're like look that's really really cool. Under no circumstances can you alter our movie footage. That's just not allowed by anyone ever, right? It's not like we hate pinball. It's just you can't alter movie footage. That's like a sacred cow that you can't turn into a burger. So that's one of those things that Yeah, it was cool. Uh we really wanted to do it, but you know, we couldn't right. Even though it's cool and they said it's cool, it's like no, you can't adjust film footage. They said it's cool, but they like it. Yep. How bad was the IPBS? Eh. But you but you have different you've worked with different IPs. Right. Right. There's I'm sure Okay, here's the thing. Here's the thing. I'm going to let Eric off on that one cuz whether it was good or not, the game is out and they want to make everybody happy. Yep. I'll say it. Eric can't tell you if it was great or if it sucked cuz it was great. It was great. Everything was great. It was great. Loved every second of it. Since the stairs did not get caused by it, what was the thought process designed to create that mech and any issues you had to overcome? Yeah, the stairme went through dozens of iterations. Um, we would make a tweak, right? So, the whole thing used to be this injection molded Go for it. The whole thing used to be this injection molded plastic and we were getting not the results we wanted. So, we changed the bottom to be steel. Uh, and then we've altered the geometry of that steel dozens of times in order to get the best shooting mech we could. Uh, with every tweak we made, myself and Dan would shoot it each a hundred times and we'd record our results and we'd write them down and we'd look, okay, I got 3% better with this change to the ramp flap geometry or with this change to the hardened um to the hardness of the ramp flap or this change to the steel itself. There it is. Such a fun shot. Love that shot. There we go. Um, so we would iterate and iterate. That's the best shot you just made. So you just got S level seeker. You have the highest possible quiddage scoring if you shoot the shot off the off the quiddage pitch onto the great hall ramp and into the stairs. That's the best result you can get from your quiddage tryyouts. So you should focus on quiddage points for your game cuz you're going to get like 300,000 times every Quidditch point. No, I can't make that stupid shot. It's all right. Don't that will last all game. That will last all game. Okay. Okay. I got to just tell you, uh, on my stream, if you ever tell me something that I need to do, it suddenly has a force field in front of it. Not going to happen. Yep. Um, um, is that the only way to max it out? So yes, that is the only way you can get S level seeker. However, there is a uh skill shot that will give you start as seeker. There is a potion that I believe is in this update that'll jump you up to seeker. So, like if you get up there the first time and you flub, you are still a member of the Quidditch team, but you're what's called a beater, which is a person who flies around with a baseball bat and tries to knock other people off their room by hitting the bludgers, which someone asked about the captive ball. Um, the two captive balls up there are the bludgers, which is a little magicked ball that flies around and tries to knock players off their broom. The silver posts that you hit are your beers. So, you run your pinball into the beater and it hits the bludgers and flies back and hits a a sensor in the back of it. You're you're you're scaring me. There's a ton of stuff in there. Ton of stuff. I I have a How does the captive ball play work? Oh, that's what I was saying. If Eric can ask Eric if I can give suggestions for code changes to GNR beta. Sure. You can give suggestions just like a just like a DJ. You can make a request. I don't necessarily have to play it. Um I wanted an upper play field right away. Uh so this question up here from Silver Ion. Um, you know, the idea of footage of the way that's designed, trying to get that ramp, the really cool thing about the ramp that comes out and goes out of the bounds of the upper playfield and then comes back on really gave me this like this is flying like high up in the air and the speed that you can whip that thing around. Um, really cool. It's really good to keep your flipper down until needed up there. I notice you want to give it a nice quick Yep. And it's staged. Yes. Yeah. So, I've, you know, trapped here and then staged up there. If you hold left flipper, there's a secret skill shot. Oh, there it is. Yeah. Yeah. Or a full plunge and then upper right flipper repeating. All right. So, I'm a seeker now. Uh, someone yesterday asked why choosing no houses, right? Um, so I've had choices in a lot of my games. Um, you know, the first game I ever made, Pirates of the Caribbean, you walk up to the game, there's 20 characters, 20 plus characters to choose from, and that overwhelmed casual players, right? They would sit there for like, wait a minute, what am I supposed to do? Why am I Why am I choosing this? Um, that happened on Godfather as well, choosing a house. Well, which one is the best? On this one, thought about choosing houses. Um, it was something that I originally contemplated doing and putting in. Uh, but in the end, we wanted more to tell the story that Harry experiences. And he's a Gryffindor, so you're experiencing it kind of through Harry's eyes or through a a student with Harry, right? You're not Harry Potter, but you're watching Harry, which is which is is that something that you start you go, okay, I need to decide who the player is, who you are. Yes. The player is representing The player is representing a student at Hogwarts observing observing the story as it unfolds. Got it. So it wasn't like I'm Harry. Right. Right. Yeah. Lens of the trio is a good way of looking at it. Right. The golden trio, those three characters, you're you're with them the whole time. Um Yeah. And also there's a I want to scooch over. Let's mute this a little bit. Um there's a a level of complexity that you introduce once you say choose a house. Choose a choose a Yep. Is it house? Here it is house. All right. Um the four houses at Hogwarts. So then as a developer you have to go all right why would Slytherin what are their perks? What are their perks? What are their drawbacks? And that's what we did for for Godfather, right? That's what we did for all the characters in Pirates. Um, it's so funny because this stuff it it seems subjective to the casual player, but it's a very hard conversation conversation. I'm pretty sure took hours of people in a room fighting with each other to say this time maybe we make it simpler. I mean, not simpler in the in the concept of the game, but simpler lower the bar to entry. Lower the bar to entry for casual players because I I'll be 100% honest. this. All I thought about was these people. Yes. Right. And they see that license and they want to do something fun. I've seen a girl come up to this game and just stare at it. And she must have stared at it for 10 minutes and then she goes, goes in her pocket, put some coins in and plays just a little bit and was like, her friend came over and I kid you not, yesterday her friend came over. She goes, "This is really cool." Nice. And then her friend puts money in and they have an experience. And it's not about me just taking people's money, right? Guys, hello. I like money. Absolutely. It's not about that. It's the fact that they the game pulled them in in a in a way I haven't seen in a while. I've se I Wonka was one of my favorite. It's still one of my favorite. Um the license is a little old for casuals. So, yeah. Right. So, um but that was one of my favorites, but the one that really draws the kids in, take a guess. Toy Story. Toy Story. Absolutely. Toy Story. I see so many little girls and little boys standing on their Marco schools and they're just going after it and it's it's it is what it is, man. So that that's what this is kind of doing. And I Oh, uh Eric, I own Avatar. I I I own Avatar. One of my favorite games. Still a chance rule. That is a question for a different That's a Mark exciting question. Um is it? There's always still possible rule updates on every game, right? like none of our games are ever locked down. We can push updates to every game whenever. Um there's always systemwide stuff that's coming. So, uh so Eric, thanks for making HPG. Uh yeah, I was mentioned yesterday the layout on Godfather was like chef's kiss. It is a very fun, very fast game. It it it's like So speaking of speed, what are you smoking? What is So I don't I don't name other I'm not going to name other designers right now, but a designer just came out with a game with a insane upper thing. Yep. Going on. Yep. And then Eric is like, "Hold my beer." But what's what is amazing about this is you if sometimes you choose to do this, it's very stop and go. Yeah. This whips around so quick, so fast. The outer return lanes, right, where return lanes are coming from the outside allows the ball to build up so much speed that's coming down the playfield versus like a wire form that comes down, stops the ball, drops it into an in lane, and then feeds your flipper. is just like the kinematics on the ball travel so much more speed when it doesn't stop and drop and then roll, right? So, it just comes barreling around. I had I had I had two people yesterday completely asleep at the wheel. Jim and Isaiah, you know, Irod, it happened to you. Paul came down and they were like, "Yeah, let's go." Zip. Oh, what happened? It happens to you once. Yep. And then you learn either to hold your flipper up and it hits the sling or you learn to ski p jump which when it's going so fast it's it's kind of tough. Yeah. I I I gave up on the ski jump because it goes sling sling out into your box. But uh have you ever played Bat Girls? Yes. So when you sort of multiolent Bad Girls comes right down. Yep. And you learn that lesson quick. You do. Um let's see. Harry Potter looks fast. It is. It is. Uh, lol answer my question. How much is easier not to have to build a cut down pro game? How much easier is it? I mean, it's one of those things that a game designer doesn't like having to lay out three different versions of a game or even two different versions of a game, right? Um, I did it on G&R and it was something that had to happen really fast. And to me, it was anything we can do to keep the arcade game playfield the same as every other version. It's not just about the money taken out on the bill of materials. It's also about the money not required to reprogram an entire game's rule set because you don't have a mechanism. You don't have an upper play field. You don't have something there that you normally do in the other games. So, it's more than just the physical components that is adding cost or taking away cost. You have to add a new rule set when you have a different layout for your playfield. It's almost like it's almost like uh figuring out, okay, if I have a mech that doesn't work, I need to write some rules to say here's the alternate shot. Here's what happens. Yep. And that's a drag. Yeah. But it's pinball, you know? Right. Um Yeah. Let me try something else. How much time you got? Um let me check cuz we're almost done, actually. All right. That'll that'll work. Okay, Eric's going to check. If you guys have any more questions for Eric, throw them in the chat right now. Can we get updates on production and shipping backlogs? I don't know. Is that Eric's job? There is a lot of games coming off of our factory line every day. I think currently on the line, we have another run of CES. A lot of those are going international. um but we are doing our best to make sure every game comes out of the door with the best quality it possibly can. Um I personally checked myself and Dan uh check games on the line every day. Um each of us do games in the morning and in the afternoon. Do you do that for all Jersey Jack games? You were there for Avatar. Yes. You were checking. I was. It wasn't even your game. No, I wasn't. But I was there with Mark and we were both checking things, right? Making sure the games come off the right way. Cuz the people in our factory, while they they love what they do and they're good at what they do, they don't eat and sleep and breathe. There you go. Explore Hogwarts multiball. So, finally got a multiball. Four jackpots. any of the lit shots. There's one will light a robing super that'll travel from left to right across the playfield. Okay. Okay, that's two. That's two. I'm going to get that back. I'm going to get that back. Uh Hagrid stand up target right up the middle is an addabal. No way. Yep. There it is. Add a ball. Eric, can you be here all the time? I mean, how much easier the game is when someone's Yeah, this I would have discover I would have discovered this later, but I'm an old guy and I I don't have that kind of time. All right, where's my You got the roving super on the upper loop right now. Oh, no. All right. What's interesting about this roving super is we got a little bit of attack from Mars happening where the roving super will exist even if you do happen to drain out. It will. Yep. So, it'll stay even through single ball play. Ah, I need that roaming super. Go. It's under the Oh, it's under the flipper. Keep one ball alive. There it is. 27 million. Oh my god. I found my father. I found my father. All right. There is a lot to this game. There was a question um as a designer um in a in a world now where people are buying games for their homes. Yep. Um sometimes the deep rule sets throw people and um is it is it is it because people are buying games for their homes that Well, absolutely. Um when you're when you're dropping a coin in, right? Like Yeah. I love playing Harlem. It's one of my favorite games. I have it at home. That to me is absolutely You got Fox. It's absolutely 3 minutes of entertainment for a quarter, right? It is. And you can get to the end of that game. I mean, you get all the drops down and then you're making 2,000 points per spin. Um, you're not going to feel cheated if you get to the end of that on your first game, right? But if you're playing this and you just drop 10 grand on it and you're like, "Oh, I just beat it my first time up to it." That's going to be a bit disappointing. So, we want to have this carrot on a stick out there. So, you want to keep progressing in the game. You want to keep going. Oh, look at you. Um, so that there's there's something to do for the players and they're invested in the game and they don't feel like they've seen everything like they're only owning the game for a week. So, during the pandemic, I was renting games and I rented Junkyard and I love Junkyard. I rented it on a Monday, I beat it on a Tuesday, right? You beat your whole jalapy or finished your jalapy. I still had a month and a half on my rental. But I I rented Wonka and I kept it forever and I and I never saw everything. Nice. Yep. Okay. All right. Let's see here. Wow. All right. Repping repping my JJP. So, this is the license where we're able to do whatever we wanted, right? I think the bands are kind of like that, especially if you've got if you're not dealing with like a manager only. Like Slash absolutely loves pinball, is obsessed with pinball. He wanted us to make that game. So, of course, we wanted to make it the best game possible. This is one of those things where like Warner Brothers is very peculiar about the color of the label or of the licensed name, right? We put Clippers in the Guns and Roses logo and they were like, "Let's go." And the manager was like, "You guys can't touch our logo." And then Slash replies to the email. He's like, "I really like it. We should do it." And then the manager's like, "All right, we're going to go ahead with it." Oh, it looks like a good idea. Yeah, it's a good idea. So, we were able to do that sort of stuff, right? Yeah. Um but just on on Monday of this week, my international distributor in Luxembourg, um Guns and Roses is touring Europe right now. They played Luxembourg on Monday night. Slash got to play Harry Potter, the production version. Our distributor brought it backstage for him. And I got pictures I got pictures of Slash playing it. So he he stopped by the office right before he went on tour in March, but the game wasn't 100% done yet, right? It wasn't in production yet at that time. So he got to play it, but now he got to play the final version. Oh man, he was so excited. I love that you said the distributors brought it over to him. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a pinball, but it's but it's slash, right? It's slash. It's like, hey, dude, we're going to we're going to set this up backstage. You cool with that? He's like, yeah, absolutely. It might as well be a candy bar. Oh, get slash get slash of Harry Potter. Um, Eric and Slash on Speed Dial. I do. Uh, all right. All right. You got like five more minutes? Sure. Okay. I mean, it looks like it's got the text from my wife. It's uh Well, kids are having a blast at the park. No need to rush. Okay. But I But here's the thing. I'm going to We'll ask Eric a couple more questions. I'm going to show Eric. Have you ever been here? No. I'm going to show Eric around the shop. Um, and then I got to go pick my kid up at camp. So, y'all have any other questions? Say it quick. I'm going to like just gush over him for a second because this game is so good. I love its accessibility. I love that, you know, if I'm playing a crappy game, I got to see a bunch of stuff. Yep. If I play a good game, and the other day I did a good job. I I golden trioed three times. Nice. Which got me through Hey, what's up, T? Which got me through a lot of the game. Yep. Um there's there's so much fun stuff like just wrapped around that. For example, the shops in Diagon, if you visit Ollivander's wand shop. Yeah. Every shot that you make in that mode adds a modifier to your next Golden Trio multiball. Oh wow. So there's like a Oh, so it's worth going to Diagon. It's worth going to Diagon Alley some to do to do Ollivanders before you hit Golden Trio. Alanders, as I recall, is a wand place. The wand shop. Yep. Yep. So, totally worth doing. Um, lots of uh lots of great stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Lots of great stuff. H Let's see. How far am I on my next game? Well, you're already two years on your next game. I've been I've been working on it. I've been working on it. Uh, let's see what else. Mark, so voice of Marc Silk. Yeah, that is the narrator for Harry Potter. That is Marc Silk. Are you kidding me? He is the voice of the sorting hat. Park Marc Silk is looking at me right now. He is looking at you right now. Um, so he got to play at Studio Minol Lima in London. I don't know if that was today or if it was yesterday, but um, he got to play it and he got to meet Miraafhora who's one of the founders of Molina. Um, and that was the first time he got to experience the game in person. So you will hear Mark the entire time you play, right? Along with the voice of the cast. Um, Mark, welcome in. Thank you for joining. Um, that's our buddy just walk by. Let's see. What is Eric doing? Let's see. That would be a great That would be a great game. All right. How about you? Do you want to play? Sure, I'll play one. Yeah, you play one. Take the ring off. Eric's going to be better than me. Um, I have a joke question for Eric. The ball lock. Um, why did you basically copy Al's Garage Band go for Rosen? Do you know that game? Garage Band goes on a tour world tour. Um, I may have played it. So, so the answer is he hasn't copied it cuz he doesn't even know it. But, um, it's an old God. It's not a very popular game. Um, but it got some interesting stuff. So, here's the thing about the godly the godly premieres tables. All of them back in the day had like one cool idea. You know what I mean? Like they had one cool idea and the rest of the game was garbage. Like I can tell you about a game that's Miami Heat. I don't know if I know Miami Heat. It's one cool idea in Miami Heat and that's it. And we're done. All right, I got to practice my quiddage. All right, so it's not playing right. Right. No, it's all right. What I've done is I've lit all three members of the golden trio via skill shots. Oh, okay. So, I should be able to Wait a minute. You can start all of them with a skill. No way. Yeah. So, there's a Harry skill shot. There's a Ron skill shot. There's a Hermione skill shot. Do you have to lock three? So, I locked one already and I'm on ball two. Uhoh. Saved. I got a question for you, Eric. Why does Why is Why do you guys set the ball tilt to per game as opposed to So, that is one of the things that I'm very happy to do because operators, it equalizes play a lot better. Right. As a skilled player, I can use a tilt warning and I can save a ball. It's basically an extra ball, right? For a skilled player. But a casual player does not have the skill to do that. Right. Right. So they're going to be even further behind. So instead of giving a skilled player six extra chances per game, I'd rather only give them two. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And you know, all that stuff can be turned on or off. Yep. It's all adjustable. There's a lot of people out there who would prefer the traditional way, but Yeah. Just turn it on. Yeah. And you can make that setting adjustment if you want. I tell you this much. You gave um you gave Matt a little bit you guys gave Matt a little bit of uh what is it called when you So the red flipper and the and the green flipper. Yeah. Because because of the two different the good guys bad guys. Yep. Wow. Um that what is it? ADHD. What is it when you like it messed with his brain? He's like I don't know if I can get used to that. I'm like well it's Harry Potter. All right. Snitch is flying around. Snitch is flying around. I started my playfield multiplier cuz I advanced my combos so much. Oh, wow. So now I would love to catch the snitch right there. Wow. Got it. Classic is a great game. That's a fantastic game. I had that game in my house when I was a kid. Did Oh, really? Yep. That's a spooky game to have in your house. We had that. We had uh Black Knight 2K and we had a Bride of Pimbot. Oh man. But I still remember like my my father singing the 1812 overure just like the chicken. One of his favorite things in pinball. All right. I can't imagine how many how many hours and how much thought has gone into this. And I when I say I can't imagine, I'm not saying that lightly. I can't fathom. It's like trying to trying to put the galaxy in your brain. There's a there's a ton. How much work every game? And how how do you guys play test? You just play and play and play. Me and Joe tend to play a lot. Play a lot. And because we're both decent players, I mean Joe's a very very good player. Um yeah, we do things that are fun. Like we're playing the Whitewood. We're like, "Oh, that was really fun. We should build a rule around it." Um make it reward the player for doing something fun as well. So, like combos. As we were playing the Whitewood, Joe was so obsessed with all the combos that we were making. We built an entire rule structure around comboing. But it's Joe. There we go. So there's Golden Trio. Hey, I'm Eric. How you doing? Nice to meet you. I'm a game designer. Nice to meet you. Yeah, man. Absolutely. We're taking a look at Yeah. Give us the inside. Oh, is he? All for me. All for me. All right. So, golden trio, there's jackpots around the playfield for all three kids. You hit a kid's name to relight their jackpot. Okay. Oh, they're colors. They're colors. Yep. So, Ron is blue, Barry's red, Hermione is yellow. Uh, once you hit a kid's jackpot, you have to then relight them three times. Oh, I've got a snitch ready. Where'd it go? Wow. You got another snitch. I love how small the snitch targets are. They're so good. T, have you gotten to play this? Uhoh. Not like this. But not waiting for the YouTube video to come out. Here it is. Well, there's a wand super. So, if you get a one jackpot, it's an add a ball, but it's only up to three balls because it's a golden trio multiball. You can never have more than three balls on the playfield. Wow. You got Yeah, we're going to be watching this. So if you get a golden switch at a ball, then you already got three. It's just wasted. Right. Right. You can't bank it. You cannot bank it. Correct. There's no extra beetle. There's no extra beetle. There's only All right. So there's another one jackpot. Now I'm going to hit Ron. Ron's the only one I need. Uh I've hit the other ones already. There he is. Wow. All right. You only need two. Okay. Here's a man who played this a lot, guys. H once or twice. Once or twice. All right. So, I also have my movie mode sitting on Hagrid there. I'd like to advance that. There's big points there. But as it drains out, I do have to be careful cuz I've consumed all of my tilt warnings. There we go. And you're in powder frenzy. Am I? Oh, yes, I am. Oh, no. Saved it. Oh, you cheat, Dr. Jones. Okay. So now if I can lock my other ball. No way. So Juan super is ready. One shot. Oh man. Oh man. That is a tough shot. Uh it does various things at different points. Yeah. And that's all I can really say. Watch your video. No, we're not we're not really we're not really doing that. More interviewing. This is game Eric's actually cuz we're going to we're going to wrap it up soon. I got to show around the shop. Got to get that super. Oh no. Okay. Yeah. Thanks, D. Back at it. Back at it. Ski jump it. Oh, bro. Oh my god. Boom in Chad. That's a That's a terrific super, though. Oh, it's so much fun. There's so much good pressure on that. Hey, man. Did you ask him if I could have one for free yet? Yeah. He said yes. Just send me your uh address and we'll ship it right over. Oh, and I I forgot to change this, too. Oh, man. I think you guys you guys got to see it small. All the stuff he was doing was really small. Sorry. Let's see here. So, this is a really fun skill shot. If you can skill shot under the flipper, you can just straight up get an extra ball. I did it once. Yeah. And it was all luck. Not like that. Is it I think it is worth it sometimes. I agree. The question is, is it worth it? Yes, I think it's worth it. Oh man, Eric putting up a clinic here, you guys. Yeah. Wow. Oh, wow. Can you just blast up that left ramp with a stack backand? Yes. You can backhand in the middle with Yeah. back in the left from a stand still and also with a stack. Yeah. Waiting on a C from Pinball Pirate. Any chance Eric wants a truckload? No. Eric's on vacation. Eric's on vacation, guys. Oh man. So, where's your next where's your next stop on vacation? Um, well, this is actually the last day. We're heading back to Chicago tomorrow. Okay. But then you go to Melbourne. Melbourne in November. In November. Okay. All right. Well, I'm really happy that you got to come by, man. I'm I'm I'm so freaking stoked. I was wondering if there was a Cuz I'm like the kind of guy that's like, "Ah, I'm not going to bother Eric about his game." And then when Matt said, "You're in town," I was like, "Let's bother Eric." Sometimes it works out, right? We were in town. Uh we were coming here this morning to ride around in those stupid little yellow go-karts. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, they're fun. It was fun. As long as you're wearing your helmet, you're all good. Right. There's the extra ball. There you go. He just finished the final exam, you guys. Uh started the final exam. Started the final. Okay. Started. So, now each of those shots is worth some crazy points. Wow. That's how you feed it up a flipper, kids. Yes, sir. Uh, there's another lock. Everybody's kind of just watching right now. Yeah, we we uh we got our game really fast. I'm surprised to hear that some people maybe they just waited. So, we've we've been intermixing the different models. We're trying to get a lot of the arcade versions out to arcades just so people can experience it. That makes sense. We're an arcade and we're getting we're not getting precedent, right? We're not But we're just getting one of the arcades that came out. A lot of that is up to the distributor themselves as well, right? Distributor was pretty badass. Are you going for a death eater? Absolutely. Wow. Death Eater's on the mode as well. So backhand that. Well, if I can destroy this death eater, then I can light another multiball. Nice. My buddy Jim is a death eater like master right now. All right, I'll see if I can save it with Fox. All right. Who was that that just came in? What's up, Splood? Yeah, I think Splud. I think that's where we got ours. Ace. Sorry. I'm not sure. I love the fact that you have to spin to get to the next footage, too. But as a skill shot, if I hit that ramp, I can start to play this match. So, one thing you can do is if you hold the right flipper, it'll get rid of the skill shot stuff. And you can kind of see. So, I think it's totally worth my time trying to try to hit that skill shot. Otherwise, I need 105 spins in order to start a match. It spins pretty good, but not that good, right? Ah. Oh, you're up there. I don't think that counted for the skill shot, though. That's so cool. That's so cool up there. There's a potter frenzy yet again. So, here, you know, every switch scores, so spinners are your best friend. Now, the only way to feed the left winner is to shoot the middle and hope. Well, uh, it depends because it's coming down the track, right? So, right orbit. Oh, there we go. We got a free game on a free game. On a free game. Yeah. Oh, man. I'm out of tilt warnings. So, oh my god. Let's effing go. What? Whoa. Slass. Sclass seeker, baby. 150 million. Ladies and gentlemen, that you were you were So, you were seeker. Yes. Slass seeker cuz I hit that shot off the upper playfield. Oh, man. I got so many points. Well, here's the thing, guys. Everybody. Eric, thank you so much. Very welcome. Um, if you're waiting for your game, keep waiting. It's coming. Oh, Cameron. Hi. He's a little pinball wizard in making. This is Harvey. Another pinball wizard in the making. All right. What a shake. Oh. Oh. Oh. All right. Look at the stream, boys. Thank you, buddy. All right. Very well. Yeah, that was good. I'm going to show them around the shop for a little bit. They're going to have some fun. Thank you guys so much for joining me. Um, and uh, go out and play some Harry Potter, man. It's seriously seriously fun. I mean, I'm not kidding. Seriously fun. First JJP I own. So, uh, it's bolted. Thank you, guys. Thanks, guys. P. Bits. Bits. Allows follows. subs. Subsc G gifts. Gifts. Gifts. Brights. Rays. Chs. Inks. Thanks. M mystery. Pinball. Pinball. Theater. Theater.

The game had one programmer for the first year, then gained additional resources; the core team consists of Eric Meunier (designer), Joe Catz (programmer), and Dan Lechek (mechanical engineer)

high confidence · Eric states: 'For the first year of the game, I had one programmer. Um, and it wasn't until we were over a year in that I got more resources applied.'

  • The staircase has 13 different ball paths to feed different playfield modes

    medium confidence · They discuss 'They said there's 13 different paths' and Eric confirms some paths were designed to feed specific modes like Quidditch

  • @ discussing House Cup endgame feature
  • “Under no circumstances can you alter our movie footage. That's just not allowed by anyone ever.”

    Eric Meunier @ discussing IP licensing constraints — Reveals significant creative constraint imposed by Warner Bros IP licensing

  • Manu
    person
    Matt Henryperson
    Surreal (Brendan)person
    Mark Silkperson
    San Francisco Pinball Leagueorganization
    Fliptronicvenue
    Melbourne Pinball Expoevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Hogwarts Legacyproduct
    Wonkagame
    Pinball Piratesvenue
    ?

    design_philosophy: Harry Potter Pinball deliberately designed to allow casual/non-expert players to progress through all eight movie scenes without being locked behind any single difficult shot; multiballs available from simple early shots; self-regulating wizard mode adjusts difficulty based on play history

    high · Eric: 'One of the things that I love about this game is I'm not a high level player... So I can't get trapped behind one shot' and describes self-regulating Battle of Hogwarts mode that triggers after 4 multiballs normally, 3 after 200 games, 2 after 300 games

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Warner Bros maintains strict control over Potter movie footage, rejecting all alterations including clever Easter eggs (the 'I must not tilt' modification); represents significant creative constraint on IP-licensed games

    high · Eric: 'Under no circumstances can you alter our movie footage. That's just not allowed by anyone ever' regarding rejected feature where 'I must not tell lies' would become 'I must not tilt'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Core Harry Potter development team small (Eric Meunier designer, Joe Catz programmer, Dan Lechek mechanical engineer) with single programmer for first year; significant resource constraints influenced scope and cut features

    high · Eric: 'For the first year of the game, I had one programmer. Um, and it wasn't until we were over a year in that I got more resources applied... There is stuff that was left on the cutting room floor'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Staircase mechanism designed with 13 different ball paths enabling cascading feature access; fiber optic wand lighting with replaceable LED modules addresses operator maintenance concerns for location machines

    high · Discussion of 13 ball paths and wand design: 'there's a fiber optic that runs the whole length of the wand and the LED is buried actually way in the back. If there ever is an LED issue... that wand can unscrew, come off, and you can replace an LED'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Game Changer QR code feature allows location operators and home players to independently set difficulty levels (easy/normal/wizard) with persistent custom settings, addressing accessibility without requiring code changes

    high · Eric describes QR code keychains that scan to set game difficulty: 'you hold it up in front of the QR code... It scans a QR code and instantly all the rules in the game are set to easy' with persistent settings

  • ?

    product_strategy: Game Changer QR code feature is Harry Potter exclusive; potential for backport to older Jersey Jack games discussed but no timeline committed

    medium · Eric: 'Potter's the first game we ever had it. Uh, it seems like there's an overwhelming interest... it's something we've discussed. Um but I can't say when that would happen if it's going to happen'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Wands have arrived warped in shipping; Eric attributes to intentional flexibility in molded design to withstand ball impacts rather than brittleness; represents manufacturing specification that may not be well understood by field operators

    medium · Chat question: 'those wands seem like they've been arriving warped in shipping. Well, here's the thing... The wands are not brittle... They're flexible on purpose'