George Gomez and Stern 2018

Pintastic New England·video·1h 8m·analyzed·Jul 10, 2018

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

George Gomez seminar on career, Stern operations, and 2018 product roadmap.

Summary

George Gomez, Chief Creative Officer and Head of Product Development at Stern Pinball, delivers a comprehensive seminar on his career path and philosophy. He traces his journey from Cuban refugee to industrial designer at Midway Games (Tron, Spy Hunter), toy inventor at Marvin Glass, and finally pinball designer, while discussing Stern's manufacturing operations, quality improvements, licensing strategy, and upcoming code updates.

Key Claims

George Gomez is responsible for all of Stern Pinball's product development efforts including game design teams, engineers, artists, and sound designers
high confidence · George Gomez directly states his role and responsibilities at the beginning of the presentation
George Gomez designed or co-designed Corvette, Fast Break, Monster Bash, Revenge from Mars, Playboy, The Sopranos, The Lord of the Rings, The Dark Knight, Transformers, and Batman 66
high confidence · Gomez explicitly lists his design portfolio during the seminar with visual aids showing game artwork
Stern Pinball has 110,000 square feet of facility space in Elk Grove Village, Chicago
high confidence · George Gomez states this specific measurement during factory discussion
R2D2 topper for Star Wars is complete and awaiting Lucasfilm approval for release
high confidence · Gomez directly addresses audience speculation: 'let me beat you to the punch it's all done' and notes Lucasfilm is 'very particular about their colors and their finishes'
Kiss, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, and Batman games will receive code updates before summer 2018
high confidence · Gomez explicitly promises: 'before the summer's out you'll see a Kiss update before the summer's out you see an Aerosmith update' and 'Batman probably will get to one item relatively soon'
Stern has recently hired professional mass production and manufacturing specialists and is implementing Six Sigma quality processes
high confidence · Gomez states: 'there's been a lot of efforts this past year into hiring more professional mass production manufacturing guys' and mentions 'the beginnings of a Six Sigma program'
Iron Maiden is a four-flipper game designed by Keith Owen, Stern's first professional pinball game
high confidence · Keith Owen appears in video segment and states 'this is my first game I was hired to do this design' and describes the four-flipper configuration
Stern produces multiple product lines simultaneously and can switch game titles week-to-week on the production line

Notable Quotes

“I'm responsible for all of the company's product development efforts so all of the game design teams all the engineers all the artists all the sound designers everybody who makes pinball machines essentially my responsibility”
George Gomez@ 2:04 — Establishes Gomez's leadership scope at Stern Pinball and clarifies his role in shaping company direction
“the only thing that's sacred is the ball in the flippers they can do a lot of other things but the game really is beneath the glass for us and certainly on my watch that's that's what I want”
George Gomez@ 23:24 — Core design philosophy statement emphasizing Stern's commitment to traditional pinball mechanics
“we think of ourselves as creating a global lifestyle brand that's based on pinball we were you know we we think that part of what we're doing is enabling a generation of people that grew up with virtual games to discover the coolness of our game”
George Gomez@ 22:31 — Reveals Stern's strategic positioning beyond pinball machines and goals for market expansion
“we make games as long as there's demand for them so if you look closely this guy's testing one of the home Transformers but next to limits of Star Trek and and over behind the Museum of Medieval Madness right because we made those for Chicago Gaming Company”
George Gomez@ 28:22 — Indicates Stern's flexible production model and willingness to manufacture for other companies
“I'm gonna try to revise it and if it's necessary I'll do a service bulletin and it's necessary we'll do a kit to send out to you”
George Gomez@ 32:18 — Shows Stern's commitment to post-sale support and ongoing machine improvement

Entities

George GomezpersonStern PinballcompanyGary Sternperson Keith Owenperson Midway GamescompanyMarvin Glass and AssociatescompanyTrongame

Signals

?
announcement: George Gomez confirms Batman 66 is coming at end of summer 2018 and hints at a previously rumored additional game
high · Gomez states: 'I know it's rumored that I have another one coming out at the end of the summer I'm here to tell you the rumors true'
?
code_update: Kiss, Aerosmith, Iron Maiden, and Batman games will receive code updates before summer 2018
high · Gomez promises: 'before the summer's out you'll see a Kiss update before the summer's out you see an Aerosmith update' and 'you're gonna see continuous you'll probably see another Iron Maiden update very shortly with some bug fixes'
?
manufacturing_signal: Stern is implementing Six Sigma and other professional manufacturing quality processes
high · Gomez states: 'there's been a lot of efforts this past year into hiring more professional mass production manufacturing guys guys that are bringing in technology and techniques that are new to pinball we have the beginnings of a Six Sigma program'
?
product_launch: R2D2 topper for Star Wars awaiting Lucasfilm approval; described as complete and very close to release
high · Gomez states: 'it's all done it's been all done the folks at Lucasfilm are very particular about their colors and their finishes and things and so as soon as we get full approval you guys will have it we want to get it to you soon as you can we're very close we're very very close'
?
design_innovation: Iron Maiden features a four-flipper configuration, the first four-flipper game in approximately 15 years

Topics

Career trajectory and personal backgroundprimaryStern Pinball manufacturing and quality initiativesprimaryGame design philosophy and team structureprimaryCode updates and post-launch supportprimaryLicensing strategy and global market presencesecondaryNew game announcements and featuresprimaryHistorical video game design at MidwaysecondaryProduct diversification and accessoriessecondary

Sentiment

positive(0.82)— Gomez is enthusiastic and proud of Stern's operations, the team's work, and the company's direction. He acknowledges quality challenges honestly but frames them constructively. Tone is educational, confident, and community-focused. No significant negativity toward competitors or industry.

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

so last seminar series this year building up that connection with stern pinball the big Factory in Chicago and so this year I'm happy to say we have their executive vice president and chief creative officer Jorge Gomez well fantastic thanks for inviting me out so what I know that this said Stern update and at the end of the presentation we're definitely gonna do a stern update but I think if I did this entire thing start an update every time I want to we're showing talks since all this stuff gets broadcast through social media and the internet etc you guys be pretty bored so today's presentation I thought it would they might be interesting there's a lot of I read a lot of interesting things online about myself and so I thought well I said these people clearly don't know me so I thought I should I should tell you a little bit about myself tonight so the beginning of the presentation and actually this entire thing is is kind of about my trip to arriving at being the you know chief creative officer for certain pinball and so it really should be titled what a long strange trip this has been so so without further ado I'm going to tell you a lot about my career before pinball and then I can tell you that hopefully when you walk out of here tonight a lot of people wonder a lot of people say to me you know how did you get to be you know where you are and what you do for those of you don't know I'm responsible for all of the company's product development efforts so all of the game design teams all the engineers all the artists all the sound designers everybody who makes pinball machines essentially my responsibility and one of my job's is to not only make sure that they're making great compelling stuff but also that the direction of the company is what we want it to be as pinball enthusiasts and as guys that own and played them on machines so I can tell you that there's no way that I could be doing the job I do every day had I not been all the places that I'm going to show you that I've been and so I want you to kind of keep that in the back of your head when you think about ok so I can do my job today because of all these weird different places that I've been so I'm going to show you some of that so I came to this country as a political refugee from communism on 21 September 1962 with my family's is up this is a shot in the old country I'm a little kid in the middle I was seven years old and we took what was tall a pan-american freedom flight from Havana to Miami and we came here with with basically it's it's it's a it's really it's an American story it's really what it is it's it's something it happens all the time people come to this country for a better life and and I'm very very glad they've been very very we'll be forever grateful to your country which is my country now because I'm an American citizen now to give me this opportunity to have the career in the life that I've had so somewhere along the line I became an Eagle Scout I was the first in twenty years of my truth and that's me presenting the President of the United States with Gerald are toured with his English legal model so that's probably you know seven ten years in the future from when I was seven so I was probably 17 at the time so I'm the kid that you know I'm the kid that grew up sketching and drawing cars and airplanes and customizing my bicycles and building models and my parents kind of encouraged it so you know I I went I went to art school I came out with a degree in industrial design and that's what I looked like there's there's one guy in the room that knows this picture of me and that's Paul Faris cuz we were both working together at the time I was 26 years old in that shot I was working at Midway Games it was my first job right out of design school so they had that picture I think the calendar on the wall says of 1982 or something but I started at Midway in the fall of 1978 I graduated from school in may of 1978 my mother in the fall you know started counting about getting a real job so I got lucky and I took back in those days designers interviewed with portfolios you know it was like a big giant thing that you carried around with renderings and pictures of models you built and all this stuff and I ran around the city with a Polaroid camera remember those and I took pictures of all of Midway games that I could find and I redesigned them for a section of my portfolio I didn't really know what I was doing I didn't know where the lines were drawn meaning I didn't know boomers whose responsibility was what's I did everything and did the art on the cabinets and the controls and what should be on the screen and all the sudden and out of ignorance I you know and so when I went from my interview you know these guys are paging through my portfolio and at the end of the interview this guy said to me you know 300 bucks a week kid when can you start and and then you know he's shaking my hand on the way out the door he says I'm gonna change your life son and I was like sure whatever yeah I guess he knew so I guess I had some early success this is the Tron video game in 1983 electronic games magazine gave me the video game of the Year award those are my actual storyboards from the video game which you guys haven't seen they're in the permanent collection of the strong Museum in New York it says the strong Museum of play you're in Rochester New York yeah if you ever get a chance go up there it's an amazing place it's you know I think they're it's it's like a real-deal Museum with curators and all the stuff but so those are my hand built and you can see there was the light cycles are clearly evident the tanks you know changed a little bit and the thing in the that looks like a spider in the center each one of those things that simulates a computer chip we're representing a wave in the game the consequence you start in the center just like the real game you you know kind of pick the direction you go in the direction into the computer so some some time after I did these you know reality intruded and so the game that you see that you know was you know evolved from this but this is like this is very very early thinking right after we just read the scripts from Disney and went away and started designing stuff later on I also had success with this one right slider which I'm gonna show you some I'm going to show you some funds buy her stuff so I must have been 2008 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and above the car Autocar under 30 grand so now believe it or not you know I did I did two tours of duty at Midway Games I was in the great games from October of 1978 until sometime in 1984 and um and then I went back to my way games many many years later in my career and I was at memory games when this happened and the ad agency for Pawnee Anna called us up and said you know what the demographic for this car like the guys we want buying the Pontiac g8 are the guys were playing your game when they were you know 12 and so that's why they made this commercial and so he has his permission I was like yeah absolutely let's do it and last summer I was at the Lego store and Fifth Avenue in New York and I stumbled on this and oh no I don't know if you guys can see this but you see at the bottom there on the right g60 155 spyhunter okay so back in the day the company was very afraid that we were all going to become rock stars and they wouldn't let us sign our games so all of our stuff was snuck into the game so six months 55 is my birthday and G is my initial and so I thought it was really nice that the Lego guys preserved it and then somewhere spider went on to be a long-running video game franchise into the console era and long after I had anything to do with a bunch of guys working on the game who were at Midway at the time who knew me because I was also a Midway working on different stuff said to me we want to make you the bad guy in the game so I don't know there's a version of meet up Spy Hunter for the PlayStation 2 or 3 I can remember which has me running around the game you know trying to you know trying my hand at world domination so so and when they did when they did their presentation they brought up this painting and they've made up me as the bad guy and and the guy doing the presentation running the video game team set and so a bad guy Jorge Gomez is Gomez so I've done novelty games lots of different you know that there's no by the way there's a look there's some timeline shifts in here because you'll see some dates on here that don't make sense to you and that's because in 2008 Midway blew up and I was out of a job and for for about I don't know six months or something I was doing anything and everything for anyone and so I I tried my hand at a bunch of different novelty gansan so this is you can see Anna fighting this idea for a Wally crane game see that up there and and then of course Rock'em Sock'em robot like like larger than life this is the thing I did while I was a big way in my second tour of duty the video game companies just like nipple companies they live and die by the success of a current title and so this creates a really bad business thing where you have these incredible Peaks and followed by incredible valleys and so you know you're only as soon as your last game kind of thing and so it occurred to me that why don't we have a what we call you know a bread and butter product line something that would be agnostic to the to whether we had a hit game or not and so Midway had a strong history of in the arcades and so I thought why don't I do a line of peripherals that are Midway branded so I came up with the same called race real arcade control equipment and and it was intended for to plug into the console and it would work with anybody's game but there was a twist and the twist was that when the Midway for I'll saw the Midway game let's say you've connected a Midway gun game or a Midway driving game to the console with the peripheral then it unlocked things that we weren't available in any other way unless the peripheral was connected to it so the whole line of you know the idea was when Electronic Arts has a hot game we can have a peripheral that works with it but when when when it's connected to the Midway game that unlocks things and it doesn't unlock anybody else's game this is a novice game that I did for Lauren Bromley Bromley is a company noted for tickets there's this was an attempt to basically replicate the whirlybirds and those kinds of games from from that era and so you know this work just like this is back when Gulf Wars were popular this is about 1990 or so and my old buddy Kevin O'Connor and I we've done many many games together and he was the artists on this and if you look closely at this thing I find the pilot you know it's got my name on the on the side of the helicopter and and on the helmet of the guy's helmet so in 1984 when the video game business tanked that left Midway and I went to work at a company called Marvin glass and associates the most invent the most famous toy adventure invention company in the world in history of toys got something firm in Chicago and I worked there for about five years as a toy inventor inventing toys and this is a thing that I did this is a concept to do a line of wearable like jewelry kinds of things for boys so this was like a watch if you look closely you know that would also be watching when you open it it's got a little guy inside and launches love that out this is another toy that I did while I was there so so that was a little like a really fun job the coolest part of that job was that no one told you what to do so every day I went to work I didn't have a boss I didn't work for anyone I work for myself and so whatever I did that day is what I did that day and so it was really really kind of fun because you could like you know this week you could be working on a board game next week you could have an idea for an outdoor water toy and you could be playing around with that so I did a lot of really diverse stuff mostly boys toys because that's what I could relate to that's how you know I grew up with all that stuff and so I really kind of had a lot of fun with it so my second tour of duty at Midway Games I worked on a console basketball game it was called a lifestyle basketball game meaning that it was here was like one on one to one to further for you know Xbox and Playstation call NBA ballers I spent nine years of my life working on this franchise if you can believe it and and one thing that this afforded me was this was after Williamson this is after pinball mm and Williams have basically gotten onto the football business and while I was doing this Gary Stern approached me and said hey would you do pinball machines on for me and so a lot of the games that I'm known for with you guys I did as a consultant designer - Gary CERN because so I wanted to see my graduate he has any issue with this they said no it's not really a conflict of interest and I go Gary I so put me in the schedule because these things will be done when they're done but so I did I did playboy The Sopranos Lord of the Rings Batman The Dark Knight all of them I made something maybe I did something else I camera all as an outside consultant - to serve people while I was running the NBA ballers team so it was it was a busy time of my life it's more more shots for NBA ballers and then this is the portfolio of games of pinball pinball designs that you don't before so these are all the games that I've designed notice the little supreme logo at the bottom there is yes I did did the supreme layout and I also did the Spider Man home again there are two pinball machines that are not up here that I did I that I was a designer on and that was the home version of transformers and a home version of of Avengers but all of these other ones you know and it all started with a Corvette it's only in sequence if you looked at the far left side of the screen that's Corvette in the far right side of the screen it's 10 min 66 which is the last thing that I've done I know it's rumored that I have another one coming out at the end of the summer I'm here to tell you the rumors true so so in sequence if sorry just so you guys of it lost somewhere because I don't remember as I just heard 63 so I'm really old I'm a really old guy and my memories started off support about was the first that was that I went to work at Williams electronics in I want to say it was August May August of 1993 and and a year later in 1994 my Corvette came out I bought Corvette up with Johnny mnemonic and then and be a fast break and then monster bash and then revenge from Mars my first game for Gary service consultant was playboy it was it would be the third iteration of Playboy and it was fun I got you know I got the proverbial trip to the Playboy Mansion and all that stuff and and it was really cool he had in the little game room off in the woods everybody called it the guest house Paul I can't remember game house thank you and so he had all the games and he had all three versions of the game in there notice that that was really fun so I think I think I didn't Playboy followed by Sopranos followed by Lord of the Rings log by The Dark Knight I may have one of those slips but I can't remember and then I did transformers as I was beginning to do my current job as you know had a product development I had started transformers as a consultant for the company and so I finished it once I came in by the way it's really hard to do my full-time job and design a game you're not that's why I don't I'm not in the regular cycle with the rest of my designers and while I love to do it it's just really a really really difficult thing so it takes me longer and it's just uh you know I live there and it's it's bad but um and remember the games today are substantially more complicated because we're creating a pro model a premium edition and a little bit of addition and and there's all of these other things that go with that and so it's a lot of work so much for the you know the lead-in to Sir pinball and now you notice the slides all changed and they have a stern bug at the bottom on the right and then because now now we're an official stern land so step involved leading a renaissance of pinball create a global lifestyle brand that's I mean you guys think of us as a pinball company but the executive team at CERN we think of ourselves as in those terms you know we say we're bringing people back that's what we're about we're all about all things too involved we want to occupy the entire space of pinball in terms of we want to have a footprint in lots of different places and you see you've seen us battle with someone you're going to see more of it and so we think of ourselves as creating a global lifestyle brand that's based on pinball we were you know we we think that part of what we're doing is enabling a generation of people that grew up with virtual games to discover the coolness of our game you know our game is a much more visceral game much more physical thing and it's much harder to duplicate our products in all of those other mediums it doesn't mean that we won't have a footprint in those mediums because you know we do but but our heart and our soul lives around that inch and a 16 you know seer right and and flippers and most of the time I tell my designers that the only you know the only thing that's sacred is the ball in the flippers they can do a lot of other things but the game really is beneath the glass for us and certainly on my watch that's that's what I want so you guys a part of this you guys are every one of you is here because you're part of this global community that's casual players collectors and term employers and that's you know we thank you you allowed me to to go to work to do something I really love and I thank you we work with really strong licensing partners it's not that we don't it's not that we don't we don't want to do original stuff we do we we and you'll see some original stuff from us but we get a lot of traction from the strength of our partners you sauce through the Mustang game Ford was a tremendous partner you know those are see those tempo machines they're lined up at the Chicago Auto Show the Chicago Auto Show this is the biggest art show in the world we had um you know prime real estate on the floor of the show with those pinball machines they were all on free plate they were there to introduce whatever it was you know fifty thousand people that walk through that show to pinball and of course part of our you know part of our our licenses our partners that are into the thing making and so you know that's James Hetfield with his turbo machine and and Stevens signing somebody simple machine right so you know I think that that it's it's this it's this diversity in interests and the crossover of all of these different areas that makes us that helps us in our in our quest to become a global lifestyle brand the games that you know go all over the world right so a large part of our market is still overseas and so I love I love going out there and and looking at the labels this happens these are old labels because I especially do this when my games are on the line so when my games are on the line I go to the back of the line I take pictures of all of the strange places that my games go so I've had you know I got games in Dubai and you know the Czech Republic and Denmark and all these other places and it's kind of fun and so a lot of times sometimes you guys look at stuff and you don't understand why things are the way they are and some of the things that that some of the reasons that things are the way they are is because we are serving a global market and so some of the compromises that we have to make in product in one part of the world is because of demands from another part of the world we have a hundred and ten thousand square feet in Elk Grove Village and if you're ever and in the Chicago area you're welcome to come out it doesn't take much to line up a tour we've got a pre play arcade that you can certainly stop by and play all of our stuff we also in addition to that you know that we're a big part of the Chicago the execute ball Expo tour how many people here have been to the factory okay so the rest of you with nothing to the factory please come to the factory we'd love to show you're on we're very proud of what we do we're perfect we screw stuff up all the time we make a lot of games we replicate our mistakes sometimes and but but I can tell you that we do everything we can to make it right and and and we we continue to we continue to believe in that it's a philosophical thing to try to improve to the point where your games are great when you get them and they don't need anything it's something that we are not there yet I don't know if we'll ever be there but I know that we try every day and so there's there's been a lot of influences last year or a lot of effort this past year into hiring more professional mass production manufacturing guys guys that are bringing in technology and techniques that are new to pinball we have the beginnings of a Six Sigma program the beginnings of a lot of quality traditional quality things that are happening but these things take time they don't happen overnight it takes a while and they're very involved but we're going there so you're gonna see one of the coolest things is that we make games as long as there's demand for them so if you look closely this guy's testing one of the home transformers but next to limits of star star trek and and over behind the museum of evil madness right because we made those for Chicago gaming so so there's there's we we make a lot of different product I'm just gonna snap through some shots of from the factory these are just random shots when you walk around in fact you're taking pictures lots of cable lots of Sparky's that these guys can be scary at night when you're leaving and again think closely and you'll see three different versions of the walking dead you'll see a Transformers consumer game in the background I believe you'll see a Star Trek in there so we have two lines and at any given point in time there are different games running on the line and it's not uncommon for game titles to switch from week to week which if you think about it it's an amazing thing that means that the workstations that the work cells that that build the sub assemblies get completely repopulated with another game's content and all those people get get a quick overview of you know okay here's the new stuff and you know last week we were building you know made even Star Trek next week it's going to be something else two other games so very flexible we have we have footprint in the accessories business which we've done very well with sometimes I know there's maybe some guys in the audience and ask me about the r2d2 topic for Star Wars let me beat you to the punch it's all done it's been all done the folks at Lucas are very particular about their colors and their finishes and things and so as soon as we get full approval you guys will have it we want to get it to you soon as you can we're very close we're very very close I've only specified reflex flew about sixty five different times okay so this is a play field um we're test you ever seen this so we really do test our stuff we test the crap out of it we test it to destruction most of the time when you get our stuff and it breaks it's not because we do tested its because we designed the wrong test or something's happening that we don't anticipate happen or some or our vendor has replaced something has essentially you know changed the material and component etc it doesn't make us fall as we still screw stuff up but we do test it we test the crap out of stuff so we test all kinds of things like for example um hard coats get tested and sometimes they get cleaned and sometimes they don't get cleaned and sometimes they get cleaned with the wrong stuff because people are gonna do that and so we we really do try to figure out what's going on in addition to that the other thing to know is that sometimes we see we see things in our own games right because every one of the guys in my department : and play our own games right so when when when I take a game home and I think about my home and it does something wrong I go back and I try to fix it and I can't fix everything that's already going out the door but I try to make sure that the next time they build it I'm gonna try to revise it and if it's necessary I'll do a service bulletin and it's necessary we'll do a kit to send out to you so everybody loves a hero right there's all this conversation about designers and and lead software guys and etc by the way that's that's Lyman and i signing batman playfields over on the far right that's me with the Batmobile when I was working on the Dark Knight they shot it in Chicago in LaSalle Street and that's that's on the set of the Dark Knight the reality is that these games are made by teams by development teams very very complex development teams with lots of different talent it's not just two guys and and all of those guys bring a specialty to it and all those specialties crossover so when you look at every everything you see up there a game designer a software developer Mehcad linear sometimes there's multiples of those so multiple software developers one lead developer the one that you guys always see talk about or or hear about but behind him there's a bunch of guys helping him execute on the product others for T and Lonnie working on something okay so I can't stress enough the impact the contribution that the teams make right this couldn't happen without the teams the teams are into the games and they play the games every day they when we're about three or four months out from shipping a game the teams start they do a thing we call dailies they start every day at 10 o'clock the entire team gathers around that game and we talk about what needs to be done that day that week and that's how we drive a game to finish all the way through and a lot of times we have to put games in a box that are not ready to go in a box because of business reasons we have every intent to finish anything we didn't finish you've seen a hole spur of code come on from us I promise you guys whatever was six months ago or something that we were going to be doing this and and it's been happening before this summers out you'll see a kiss update before the summer's out you see an Aerosmith update you're gonna see continuous you'll probably see another maiden update very shortly with some bug fixes and a couple of improvements you're going to see it Batman probably will get to one item relatively soon we will finish a lot of stuff that we've got in the works so I don't know how many has everybody seen the iron Bay movie okay so I'll play it I'll play that my name is Keith Owen I'm a game designer here at Stern pinball and this is my game I are we now you hear a Keith Elwin if you got into playing pinball you would hear that hey there's this player who's won you know stepping world pinball championships keep like for cause I want flipper let me play pathology oh there we go is is completely in control I'm sorry I played in tournaments when I was 20 years old I thought I did really well we're doing turn the person I've always stuck with it and then I have opportunity to make it and I said yeah okay he's done everything there is to do in competitive pinball and now he's taking what he knows is he was bringing it to designing paintball machines this is my first game I was hired to do this design and it was morning we have some mechanical designer named Saracen so this was his first professional pinball design and we got on the Doros on the ground runnin we're gonna project on our software engineer Rick maple he was brought out to kind of handle programming all the rules that I come up with for this game I'm the technical muscle for four piece em all knowledge everybody let that perspectively for some reason you kind of stick I know that I'm talking about so there's great you know working in the shadow of some Giants here at Sun so they're really able to make a splash I'm a Christian so rookies [Music] you know that it was iron maybe game until my first day I said listen and then when I was really young probably younger than I should have been sort of hit the jackpot is something I'd let the work on it's definitely a dream thing with I really like this design we have another four clipper game and probably 15 years this game brings that back but I think that's gonna be unique to offer the player with the 4 foot where it's the upper tooth look very loud as you play more the paintball machine than just a bottom higher I think when you get stuck in the bottom part for too long the back looks very distant and then when you have that flipper up there it feels like okay I'm up there I have the control of the upper part of the play field usually the ramps are some of your who easiest shots in the game keep up the ramp something outside of the game and Spears and some loose ability and I think those the big shots and they grab some tough shots what it actually wants a building is a more flowing man because the ball is always near a clipper and that flipper are always effective this is the mechanism for the center which ramp premium and LB models so you collect enough any letters for wrinkle rays to reveal this underworld scoop the player can shoot into the scoop Clemente hole close to another presentation and then the rank will be raised under the ball bhagava Claire I would approach Harrison to my David Hankin scribbling and then he would ask for a CAD file he would turn it into a solid while and maybe prototype it sure enough it would work and then we move on to the next device one of the big main features that Keith wanted at every model of our table ten people that the segment is broken up into three sections so you outer ring a middle ring and the center bullet target so it's all independently control a switch on the back and then our software can determine which one was the highest value that you hit [Applause] [Music] the premium offers more kinetic satisfaction because they have devices no more interactive it's a keepsake thing during the development this game was to make sure that he was kinetically satisfied and for the longest time I had affair with that Matt turns out even if it's a successful hit it has to feel like you actually hit it so the new Newton moment custom tries to bring a captive all experience without actually having to take up the room of a captive also it's a 360 degree omnidirectional sensing target kinetic satisfaction fools are good at it sounds good your artwork stunning so that that's going to drive new players and artist extraordinaire zombie yetis they made him famine Gina he was all excited about it yeah it takes over here from cat files to that she didn't film I think the whole time I was just Alison actually gonna be like this is on the line so we've left at that point I don't think I really have time to like just inhale them take the venom I thought I've been able to be of just kind of a dream that's okay there it is and it's very cool to walk online and see something you don't and getting shipped off the village I mean all these other places they're doing right now [Music] those guys those guys are part of an effort to bring in some fresh blood you know me to my group I've got a bunch of new young guys some that you'll meet soon you haven't met them yet like these guys you know because we're all kind of getting mom in the tube and so I think at some point we have to you know we have to replicate ourselves so I'm going to show you I'm just going to trade some random stuff out of my portfolio that just I thought you might find interesting this is some of my learned to run a lot more of the ring stuff I'll just talk about some of the process kind of things that we do so you know I I start this way not everybody does I sketch a lot and I I do a lot of sort of what I call visual thinking where I'm kind of talking myself through or out of things before I start building things so you can see this is a very early Lord of the Rings sketch there are some similarities so play field you know but there's also some stuff that you've never seen before lots of it you know I mean I just go back and forth I talk I talk myself in and out of things I use these sketches all the time to communicate with my design teams it's a way to get everybody on the same page it's also a way to start a dialogue which improves the design some interesting stuff you guys always like to see things you haven't seen look at the bottoms and those playfields I think one of those bottoms you've never seen before right sometimes it's a different game but it's it's more of the same kind of stuff at some point the modeling goes you know the sketching becomes modeling what you see here is you see you're seeing the teeter-totter ramp on the dark and you're seeing my phone cords up in the right corner there you're seeing my sketch of how it would go how would be built together I I don't you know I have a lot of respect on Mechanical Engineers to the point that I like to I do not like to throw stuff over the fence and so I kind of like the the more you leave something to someone else's execution the less it will be the thing you envisioned so in order and call that call me a control freak but I like to control my designs and so I work very very closely with the engineer to get what I want there's some of my Hulk stuff the CG model Hulk and you know some of the early sketches of how it would work this is the thing I did for my friend Steve Ritchie right the dragon on Game of Thrones you know those guys were really busy with what they were doing and so I came up with the device that lacked the wings on the dragon we do almost all of our sculpting is not done the old fashioned way anymore almost all of it is happening in the computer we've got a bunch of digital sculptors that we work with and it's inside and outside and we we stall digitally and then we you know we've rapid prototyper that's a that's a print of the dragon that you see there that white thing and then those are the CG models of the dragon have you ever seen what code looks like that's a code looks like you guys talk about it all the time in the forums but nobody ever that's what it looks like that's telling you to fail with software engineers working away white sullivan working on the game of Charles Whitewood he fills his Whitewood with concepts and then sits down to execute at some point but you know that this is too deep at where we still have there are certain things like we let we do quick layouts in 2d CAD but we're then we quickly go to 3d CAD and so we have we use we use both tools is faster for us to do a quick quick shot layout in 2d CAD and MN and then transition in 3d and so we transition in 3d CAD as you saw in Pete's movie you saw his to be shot layup and then you saw the SolidWorks on three 3d CAD this is some of the early stuff on the on the Batman crane which you can see my foam core at one point the top of the crane was a ramp it was a ramp that would divert the ball and then of course the actual mechanism you can see the foam core there and you can see the real execution this is this is a sample thing that this is a Commerce City I know this looks like a sketch and it is but it's a conversation this is a conversation between the artists or myself and the programmer about colors and communicating the ideas of the rules of the game so you'll see these a lot laying around the studio and if you look at if you read the things on here you can see that these instructions are both about rules and they're about art and they're about colors and how to communicate to a player what is you wanting to do this is in the factory when we were getting ready to do a view on the Batman games I'm very proud of a bad signal that was that was kind of really fun fun touch by the way if you haven't ordered a bad signal because you're concerned about the fuzzies on the outside of the of the of the bat that's that the lens is a lens that we we purchased and we added the bat to it so we had very little control of what the manufacturer of the projector did with the projector and that's why we had all those complaints about the fuzzies on the outside but we actually came up with a fix so if you've been holding back on ordering a bat signal because you don't like the fuzzies currently bat signals have no fuzzies there's mr. West and I at the expo it was really really kind of fun to meet him and and and get to know while I still could and then at the end of the day this is you know this is really what it's all about I said they're not refrigerators they're they're primo machines they're you know they're for playing there for fun they're for joining they're not for polishing or storing or preserving and you preserve away but please display them and that's that's my presentations some people complain that you know so there are a beach yeah on the image on the perimeter of the image right it's it's you know the further you are the less obvious they are but but the thing that you can't control is like I'm this on this ceiling they were probably look fine but when a guy when a guy has a game right here and he points it at that wall and the wall is like two feet away from it yeah it's like you know you're gonna see every little thing can we expect tomorrow yeah so we're gonna do so the games we should have fun with any luck we should have them online later in the year so I'm not entirely sure what game it's going to take you on and work but yeah we are working on it and it's it's a lot of stuff we have I think I've talked about this before but we have three we have three initiatives and in terms of steps along the way to to getting you what you want the very first thing that we're working on though is is the ability to allow you to download a code just like you do for your for anything you know an update for your computer or whatever so that's probably the first thing you'll see from us and then there's a whole stream of features that will come after that - to assert to to a certain point yeah in other words it not gonna be backward compatible for everything but it's going to be back compatible for some games thank you for all you do I have lowered the Raney's I love the vengers I know but I love that the new games have these whiteboards and many of us like to fix can't fix this place yeah we have to buy the board now working on that right now actually very soon you're going to see not only a very detailed manual on on spike how it works what it does we understand it's a black box to you but it's taken us some time that actually ran a manual that you know a lot of people can use so they'll see the manual first you'll also see a series of training sessions available both online then and at events like this to teach people how to handle and work with the system yeah how much is the software part of your team grown over the past couple years so my entire team is grown so I have more software engineers more mechanical engineers you saw you know I have so the four game designers right now not coming myself because I don't call myself in that but Steve Ritchie and John Borg John's here somewhere and Brian Eddy isn't there to us and you'll see a game from Brian about a year and and of course teeth and so those of the game designers Harrison Drake is a new mechanical engineer Eliot Ison in the mechanical engineering Coast Buster's is a fairly new guy as a matter of fact those two guys coach or robotics team together a High School Robotics team together and that's how I got I hired Eliot and then shortly after we you know maybe a year later I hired ripoff Harrison because I think it said I hate my buddy you know it's really good he wants to so so there's all of my all my teams are on my computer graphics team has grown some so yes we as as the company does better as the hobby grows then you know I can expand my resources robotics a lot of the robotics competition so around this how many how many different kinds of ways you get designs because you've got the studio system they're not quite sure is that yeah is that something you approve or do you someone just come with a deal ready you make it for them as possible right so okay so I refer to the studio as my product of Alma team right my entire product level team and within my development within within my studio I have four development teams and so the four teams are driven by the four game designers and then there are there are lead software engineers guys like Lyman F. Sheats Jr. emoni rock Dwight Sullivan and and they pair up with a game designer and then there's you typically there's a project engineer somebody like Harrison Drake there's a bunch of other guys that you know Rob Lakeman genre and all these guys been around for a long time and so so that's the core of a team and then there's all these other guys that backfill them and help them out and so so dumb there's a there are some people that rotate with the team you know and I'm sorry some people that rotate from team to team so when a team the teams are staggered right the schedules are staggered so we introduced three what we call cornerstone titles a year that's three main games that we get a pro prima Minnelli with and so each of those teams is staggered the schedules are somewhere between 13 14 months and and so in a development cycle depending and so when the support guys moved from game to game and as a team oceans they'll they'll go on to start the next game but I was also asking about the outside studios so the outside studios the only real outside studio that we've had that has actually like provided you know of like a working concept was Gregg furs and and Dennis Nordman when they did that came to us you guys have seen whoa Nellie you guessed it Seymour Nellie but but most of you must hit the outside studio work so far most of it has actually done inside so it's it's been maybe it's been branded you know it's a know branded co-branded but in the case of Batman Kapow on Joe chemical was instrumental in helping us get the Batman license and so um you know that's why the Kapow branding is on the game we have so let's not confuse studios with other like for example private label games okay so private label games are developed inside like supreme was a private label game a private label game is when someone comes to us like Pabst Blue Ribbon and they say can you guys make us a password pin ma machine and if there's a business case for this then we'll figure out a way to do that that's how we did the PBR can crusher right and and Supreme that's how we did supreme supreme came to us and said hey guys we want to do a pinball machine and and we said okay you know we figured out how to do it for them within a platform that we had right we it was if you look at supreme game it's actually a hybrid it's not it's not pure consumer Spidey it's it's mostly the consumer Spidey playfield with some evolution I made some changes because it was sort of an opportunity to evolve it so I did I had a different display so we did some different things with the rules and some of the presentation elements it's got a it's in a pro cabinet with a modern backbox in an old display so it's truly a hybrid you know that that particular game was truly a hybrid so we do to clarify it so we do three corner subtitles a year each quarter so we'll always get a pro premium internally right in addition to that we do what we call private label games like supreme or press Blue Ribbon etc we do vaults evolved is something that you guys love that we're bringing back out of the stern balls and usually vaults the nice thing about vaults is that they're somewhat improved because we've seen them in the field for a while and so we get enough we get the biggest things that we didn't get right the first time so we didn't you know like you saw a Spider Man balls and you saw us but an Iron Man balls both of those are really really nice games so those are different from like just remaking Star Trek because when we remain Star Trek more often than not it's just like Star Trek unless it's all evolved it's not really you know games have to be dormant for some amount of time before we you know consider them evolve is it also a matter of the void system which which Boyd said which board yes to some extent although you know soon what we all out and you know will have to be in a new board set so like you know if I want them if I want the vault board Lord of the Rings right I would have to almost port it to a modern hardware because that hardware is just you know we can't even make it anymore so those parts of end-of-life okay so good all we have Paul so you know it's - yes we have understood on all sites to be a cornerstones and private label manufacturing if you ever had any spare time yes yes yes you could tell why I'm kind of busy okay music so licenses are you know licenses are very complex because in some cases a band almonds all of its music but in some cases it doesn't or the music is split across several publishers that so some and and a lot of times the the licensure will tell us what music we can or can't have so in some cases the band will tell us what music we can or can't have right like Metallica was proactive and telling us what music we could have and the saying I think I think maybe was also you know and so it's like everybody says you know I want this mating song well if I can't get it I can't you can't have it so licensing is a very complex thing it's a very complex because every license or is different every license or brings with it different approval set you know different approval requirements different constraints it's one of the most difficult things that we do is bring a title on you know with up with a license to market because because getting approvals from this guy are very different from getting prose from that guy in some cases you get certain things in some cases you don't you know in the case of like for example guardians you know we get we got very little in the way of participation video participate and from the actors speech those kinds of things you know walking dead we got none so you know it's it's like everybody says you know how come you didn't do this because we couldn't would you rather work with the music industry or the movie industry it's hard to say I mean I we made you know we've had some partners that have been very easy to work with and some partners that have been a little bit more challenging but a partner that you remember it's being really anchored on Metallica you know how it was you know they were into the game when they put when they put our pin machine on their website you know their website has you know 30 million people on it right so when you put a certain function on the Metallica website it crashed our website our website is down for a week and a half didn't know what to do we probably have more questions yeah question I you know that patents expire right so much my parents are dead right I have like in the people mm I have a patent on the coincidence between a virtual object and a real object right so you know the notion of sensing that the ball has hit a video marching right but I think that I've had said over 17 years old it's probably expired I remember so I think there's a patent on the copy you know the of connect you know unlocking a feature in a videogame because of a peripheral that's my pen so yeah there's a lot of stuff like that so when you're showing all those emotions that are sipping all over the world well the simplest example is that things have to work in both places so a lot of times a theme that might be very popular for you guys might not be very popular in Western Europe or vice-versa there's things that you know we didn't know how well maybe we do maybe was gonna do really well in Europe we didn't know how well it was going to be received here we were uncertain you know we thought you know so there there are some technical restrictions you know there's there's different approval bodies you know you lf-cc see different things and so a lot of times you might find you know you might find some like some device on your machine you don't understand why it's there it's it's a regulatory okay you know this is a weird question do you personally have like a dream pinball theme well I'll tell you um I've had a lot of dream pinball things because every time I start one of those things for some amount of time it's it's it's pretty cool you know it's like I get you know I can do anything I want so I have some that I you know I have more affinity for than others and so I am Not sure that I'm not sure I'm done making pinball machines and I think sometimes I think maybe that's kind of a retirement sort of thing that like you know like someday many many years from now you know just after I haven't made any pinball machines for a long time go into the garage and come up with something do you have a work from home Ryan Policky for software engineers well you know we give my guys get a lot of latitude but but the reality is that the chemistry of a team is really important and I think you can see the chemistry of a team coming through with those three guys that you saw the movie and that's real that wasn't you know there were more than three guys er but what I'm saying is that the chemistry of a team is really vital to what the game becomes and is and and teams are dynamic things you know I mean I've seen and I've been a part of it you know that the project's you can't sometimes the stars align and you do something you know I mean the stars I've been very fortunate stars have aligned for me some number of times you know you know the stars align for me on Monster Mash the stars align for me on Lord of the Rings you know it's like you get the right chemistry between people and you can you put something together that's that's pretty cool and and so you can't plant it every time we step up to the bat we're trying to hit a homerun you know and and we're never trying to screw one up you know I tell people I work just as hard on the ones that you don't like as on the ones that you love I didn't work any less you know we have a Lord of the Rings in my office awesome ok so I think I in a roundabout way I answered the question right you need to be together they need to be playing they need to be staying around the game talking about what they like and they don't like yelling at the other guy you know everybody raises the bar and everybody else right you know software guy says I don't like that shop designers can go back and fix it designer says that rule is fun intelligible to me you know software skank you gotta kind of think about it you know yeah it's a you know it's collaborative would you ever be willing to have a semi office in New Robert Englunds you know I love Boston I love Boston I you know I'm gonna be I've got I'm coming to a I'm comin MIT for a week at the end of July I'm doing a seminar on participating I'm a student in a seminar on additive manufacturing and so I'm looking forward to that ok let's haul and mark your calendars for June 27th through 30th 2019 we'll have another round of seminars just as good as this will get people from cern we have people from those other smaller factories so come back again but right now with cenk George for giving us [Applause]