Episode 655: "Boutique Pinball - Get Your SHIP Together!"

Kaneda's Pinball Podcast (Patreon feed)·podcast_episode·22m 22s·analyzed·Mar 5, 2022

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Kaneda criticizes Multimorphic's Weird Al reveal strategy for creating FOMO while hiding 6-month delays.

Summary

Host Kaneda (John Papaduke) criticizes Multimorphic's (Jerry's) Weird Al pinball machine reveal strategy, arguing the company created FOMO while concealing a 6-month production delay and locking customer capital without transparent timelines. He contrasts this with Stern's approach of pausing new reveals due to backlog, defends Stern's delays as demand-driven rather than capacity-driven, and broadly critiques boutique pinball manufacturers for revealing games before production-ready status, warning that the thin margins and early capital-locking model have historically caused failures.

Key Claims

Multimorphic's earliest full game availability is September/October, meaning 6+ month delay from reveal
high confidence · Kaneda stated directly: 'The earliest you're gonna get that is sometime in September or October. So he is 6 months delayed if you need a full Multimorphic P3.'
Stern Pinball has stopped revealing new games specifically to avoid generating 3-5k additional orders it cannot fulfill
high confidence · Kaneda: 'Sam Stern is still cranking out machines. They just can't release a new game and make up the backlog, so he hit pause on the new games.'
Multimorphic built a 6-month buffer clause into purchase contracts after stated ship date
high confidence · Kaneda: 'He has put into the clause that he has a six month window to get you your game on top of the promised ship date. So let's count that out: October, November, December of 2023 is what he's given himself as a buffer.'
Customers who ordered Multimorphic games have only 24-hour refund windows before money is locked
high confidence · Kaneda: 'These spots are refundable, but only for 24 hours.'
Christopher Franchi is working on a Jersey Jack Pinball game that is likely Eric Miniere's The Godfather
medium confidence · Kaneda: 'I also heard through the Jersey Jack Pinball grapevine that the game he's working on is Eric Miniers' next game, which all signs are pointing to The Godfather.'
Jersey Jack Pinball will release Toy Story in April and The Godfather in October/November 2024
medium confidence · Kaneda prediction: 'I think Jersey Jack Pinball gets out Toy Story sometime in April, and I also think they're going to release The Godfather in October, November.'
Boutique pinball has underperformed relative to major manufacturers; no boutique game ranks above Chicago Gaming, Stern, or JJP titles
medium confidence · Kaneda opinion: 'There is no boutique pinball game that is ranked above any of those companies. It's all been this like real big promise of all these passionate people making boutique games and just none of it's better than the big stuff.'

Notable Quotes

“He created the FOMO. He created the excitement. He didn't give you all of the information. He didn't. And he strategically knew he would not give you all of the information until after you ordered the game.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Core criticism: accusation of intentional opacity to drive pre-orders before revealing delays
“When you give your money this early, you are not buying your game. You are not buying the parts for your game. You are paying for potential.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Philosophical critique of early-reveal funding model used by boutique companies
“Sam Stern is still cranking out machines. They just can't release a new game and make up the backlog, so he hit pause on the new games.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Explains Stern's business decision to halt announcements as demand-constrained vs. supply-constrained, distinguishing from Multimorphic's situation
“If you're gonna go boutique, make it magical, make it special, do something that's different that no one else is doing.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Challenge to boutique manufacturers to differentiate rather than compete on delays
“Nobody in pinball who's in pinball really talks about anything. They don't put dates out there. They don't try to get your expectations high. They just do the work and let the work do the talking.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Criticism of Christopher Franchi's public teasing of unreleased games, contrasting with industry norm of silence
“There is going to be another boutique pinball company that fails. I don't know which one it's going to be, but these boutique companies, the margins in pinball are so thin.”
Kaneda (John Papaduke) — Prediction of future boutique company collapse due to thin margins and risky financing model

Entities

Kanedaperson John Papadukeperson Jerryperson MultimorphiccompanyStern PinballcompanyGary Sternperson Zach Sharpeperson

Signals

?
product_strategy: Multimorphic revealed Weird Al game and opened pre-orders with 6-month production delay not transparently communicated until after purchase; used FOMO-driven marketing before disclosing timeline
high · Kaneda: 'He created the FOMO. He created the excitement. He didn't give you all of the information... He strategically knew he would not give you all of the information until after you ordered the game.'
$
market_signal: Stern Pinball has paused all new game announcements to manage order backlog; distinguishes from supply-constraint issues (company can manufacture but demand exceeds capacity)
high · Kaneda: 'Sam Stern is still cranking out machines. They just can't release a new game and make up the backlog, so he hit pause on the new games.'
?
business_signal: Boutique pinball manufacturing characterized as high-risk venture with thin margins; early capital-locking model has precedent of causing company failures; sector consolidation risk
medium · Kaneda: 'The margins in pinball are so thin... There is going to be another boutique pinball company that fails... it is honestly a fool's venture to go into pinball manufacturing.'
?
product_concern: Multimorphic locked customer capital for 6+ months with limited refund window (24 hours); customer cannot play game for 6+ months after purchase; frustration mounting
high · Kaneda: 'The game is going to be the newest game at Straight Down the Middle and he's going to get a lot of attention... Great. You know when you're going to get your game? It's going to be over a year from the moment you play that game.'
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Topics

Boutique manufacturer business practices and sustainabilityprimaryEarly game reveals vs. production-ready timelinesprimaryMultimorphic Weird Al production delays and customer communicationprimaryFOMO marketing strategies and transparencyprimaryStern Pinball's strategic pause on new game announcementsprimaryJersey Jack Pinball upcoming releases (Toy Story, The Godfather)secondaryBoutique vs. major manufacturer game quality comparisonsecondaryPinball manufacturing economics and marginssecondary

Sentiment

negative(-0.78)— Kaneda expresses strong frustration with Multimorphic's practices, disappointment in boutique pinball as a category, and pessimism about the sustainability of the manufacturing model. While he acknowledges some positive aspects (e.g., commending 24-hour refund windows, recognizing Multimorphic's platform innovation), the dominant tone is critical and warning. He characterizes the situation as 'disingenuous,' 'silly,' and 'boring,' and predicts future industry failures.

Transcript

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There's a way that you look me straight in the eyes Only lasts for a moment It lasts through the night Thank you for watching! Like, Comment, Subscribe, Share this video. Share this information so that other video-yourse could too! visit us at CenterCampus.org Closed Caption by The Closed Caption Project And here is why I think Jerry took money when he knew deep down inside that he couldn't even get anyone a full game and I mean like the platform and the kit. The earliest you're gonna get that is sometime in September or October. So he is 6 months delayed if you need a full P3 platform to play weird al. Churis 1303 Well dicho, but kya l Spiritly, shooter Knapp Arcade,ל analyse 63 indicasiには 360ft, killing a ton of yoARIanne, n pega jeopard, mansolutкиש taka Deal này disobedμαι ב arterى ש towels LAKE planeszczριidor grenades assuredly, n padresiyโ� tributeurokke yazת computer gravel nivasi fpsyoyizu yok oulderety Physicalande much So he got in front of that by announcing Weird Al. Now it was a smart marketing move if you ask me it was like he got the stage like he put his game on stage. It's been the only new pinball machine announced and revealed in March before TPF and now that it looks like Toy Story will not be at TPF. Jerry's got the hot game at TPF but here's the bigger problem for him and I keep saying this. The game is going to be the newest game at the show and he's going to get a lot of attention. And let's say you jump on his game and you play it at TPF and you love it and you say man I want to order one. Great. You know when you're going to get your game? It's going to be over a year from the moment you play that game at TPF. Over a year. And I think And I think we need to stop saying, well, Stern's got the same problem as Jerry. No, they don't. The reason why Stern is delayed is not because they can't make games. The reason why Stern is delayed is because they have so many orders and there's a difference there. And that is why Stern Pinball has stopped revealing new games because if they reveal a new game, they're going to get three to five thousand more orders. Stern is still cranking out machines. They just can't release The game is a new game and make up the backlog so they hit pause on the new games. But Jerry knew he had a backlog when he revealed this new game. And that's my issue with this. Is that when he revealed this game and he took money, he knew he was six months backlogged. And you know who was saying that? Kaneda was saying it, Zach Mennie was saying it, and all the P3 fanboys out there didn't want to hear it. So if you ordered one, you're going to wait a while. I will give Jerry credit. He is sending out every single person who ordered one in ETA on when they can expect their game and they have 24 hours to bail on their spot. So I do commend him for that. These spots are refundable but only for 24 hours. Now the part where it gets really silly is this. If you stay in on it and let's say he says your game is going to be ready in October. All right. October comes in The game is not available until six months from then He has put into the clause that he has a six month window to get you your game on top of the promise ship date So let count that out October he got November December of 2023 is what he given himself as a buffer to keep your locked up with Multimorphic How does anybody like this system And here the thing that just kills me I do believe there is a level of being disingenuous with your buyers when you know you You've got a six month delay. You know the earliest you can get a full game on the line is September, Jerry. You didn't tell anybody that. See, what he did was this. He created the FOMO. He created the excitement. He didn't give you all of the information. He didn't. And he strategically knew he would not give you all of the information until after you ordered the game because he knew you would be excited that you got your order in. Like, he hoped And so these are some of the things you can do to make your pinball a success. So, if you're a fan of Al's, you're willing to wait this long, more power to you. I'm not here to say you should get a refund. I'm not here to say bail on the game. If it's your dream theme, you have no choice but to wait. Blackwater healing style in spl antisemitism that He said games would be on the line in July. He knew he didn't have parts. He knew those games were not going on the line in July. And here we are in March and he still hasn't given an update. And he knew it. And he took your money and and the sad part for everyone who gave money to Damien, they can't get their money back. I have friends who have been emailing him trying to get a refund and they can't get a refund. And we like this. And this is how we show support for the boutique pinball companies. I just want to get to a point Ladies and gentlemen, when the following happens, do not reveal your game until it's ready for production. Can we just start there? And I don't care if you're big like Stern or small like spooky or you're like tiny like multi morphic. Do not open your order banks until production is ready until you can get that game on the line within the next couple of months. I think that's a fair window. We will reveal it. The game will be on the line in a couple The game is on the line when they make the reveal because those companies have money in the bank. I'm talking about Stern and Jersey Jack Pinball. I'm also talking about Chicago Gaminging Company and American Pinball. But lately, we are seeing more and more of this like early early reveal. Like look when they revealed Legends of Valhalla. It was October. Look when they revealed Cactus Canyon October. There are bears I don't think you can play anything on the line in March 2022, right? October, November,December,January,February,March. Six months! Six months from announce, reveal, take your money, and then games start to trickle out. Why? Why do these companies need that six month window to freeze your capital before they put the games on the line? Why don't they just wait? I just don't like it. I don't like it. And the thing about Jerry's thing is like I think some of you out there are getting a little delusional by the time September October rollsaround we're going to see Toy Story. I think we might even see a second game from Jersey Jack Pinball. I'm going to talk about that at the end of this podcast. We're also going to see Stern's new game. We're probably going to get James Bond by August. We're going to get the Dennis Nordman game from American Pinball. So all this stuff is going to be happening and your money's locked in. Now look, the only The only way you would lock your money in and not care again is if you're a diehard WeirdAl fan. But it's just weird to me, right? It's like Jerry's gonna go to TPF, he's gonna do his victory lap, and he can't get people a game now for over 12 months. It's a waste of time. It's a waste of money. There's no point in him going to the show. All he's gonna do is hook people that want the game now. Like pinball is a toy you want now. I don't want to play a pinball game and wait a year. six months. Annalisa Moorg, Justin You don't do you with stern orders, you're in that boat you're waiting for your Mandalore ins for your Alvarez for your Godzilla's I get it and we don't like it and that's why stern is stopping all new releases. But these boutique companies man it's just, it's getting really, really strange to me that they still don't get it. And even though they're getting the sales. I still would not want to be on these rollercoaster rides. I want in. I want to be on any of these boutique company rides right now. I wouldn want to be on the Spooky ride I wouldn want to be on the Haggis Multimorphic ride I wouldn If I had money right now burning a hole in my pocket I would not freeze it with any of these companies I would go get a used game That what I would do You know and I just hear like a lot of people saying like oh just support everybody I just won support this tactic I just don think you should take money for anything unless it being built That how it should be These companies have been in pinball for so many years now They know that the right way to do it because I mean it when I say it When you give your money this early you are not buying your game You are not buying the parts for your game You are paying The game is a game. And there's always a risk in that. All your money is being used to scale the company up so it can produce all the orders. But there's a danger in that. And we've seen this approach like collapse some of the boutique companies before and we act like it's never going to happen again. And I'm going to tell you right now, it's going to happen again. There is going to be another boutique pinball company that fails. I don't know which one it's going to be, but these boutique companies, the The margins in pinball are so small. You know, the more I talk to people behind the scenes about the reality of making pinball, how small the margins really are, the more I walk away and feel like it is honestly a fool's venture to go into pinball manufacturing. It just is. And I get it. There's a lot of passion. There's men with money. But the truth is, if you have a few million dollars, the easiest way to lose recommends nit is to go into pinball practitionactoring if I had five strugg hairy enough time in the audience to enjoy and rotated non loose money you when Igor S McCulloch this weekend going into Kip from, I had half million dollars your new YouTube wurde for never your dish for half million dollars years so you have to start aSN goon ink company even if they're on millions to beisstju gonna INTO pinball Paige, AIR automatic code-version in my life,varagely making point in F Ты heroes of the eighth song like youjeet you work with us or on YouTube and we didn't give it high Manu made money in other Tal şekla Elloste personal där Where you calculate money in other areas trying to create 96Heart corporation, I do. I feel like boutique pinball had so much promise like five, six years ago. And if you look at the boutique games that have come out, like none of them, none of them have been better than anything from CGC than anything from Stern and anything from JJP. They just haven't. There is no boutique pinball game that is ranked above any of those companies. It's all been this like real big promise of all these passionate people making boutique games and just none of it's better than the big stuff. So So like, I don't know, I mean, I'm just getting to this point now where like, alright, like, if you're gonna go boutique, make it magical, make it special, do something that's different that no one else is doing. And I just don't see it. Now. I know Jerry's like, Chris, what are you talking about? My platform is so much different. And he's right. And I get it, Jerry. And I'm happy you got your sales. But I knew this would happen. You just can't make the games fast enough. And you're going to end up frustrating more people than you're satisfying with that timeline. You just are. Timelines so Christopher Franchi has come out and posted something on Facebook that basically said in October I'm working on something that's gonna like blow us away it was like I don't think he said blow away but I think he said something along those lines and I first and foremost I was just laughing because Franchi always does this he always has to talk when he shouldn't talk and I don't think he should be talking at all if he's working on a pinball project do you hear zombie yeti talk about what Franchi's working on. Do you hear Pat Lawler? Do you hear George Gomez? Do you hear Keith Elwin? Nobody in pinball who's in pinball really talks about anything. They don't put dates out there. They don't try to get your expectations high. They just do the work and let the work do the talking. So when I saw Franchi post this, I was like, awesome. He's once again teeing up that he's working on something. Now, if you remember in earlier comment by Mr. Franchi, he said the following. working on games for CGC for American Pinball and for a major pinball company. Now I happen to know from a very good source that the major pinball company he's working on a game for is Jersey Jack Pinball. I also heard through the Jersey Jack grapevine that the game he's working on is Eric Minier's next game, which all signs are pointing to the Godfather. So my bet is I think JJP gets out Toy Story sometime in March April and I also think they're going to release Godfather in October November. I do. Here's why. October 5th is the two year anniversary of Eric's GNR. It's also the 50th anniversary year of the Godfather. And so I know that it sounds crazy that Jersey Jack Pinball could actually get out two new games a year. But I I think this is the year they going to do it I think it going to be Eric Godfather with Franchi and Art in October and I think they going to reveal it then It doesn mean it be on the line then I expect it to be revealed in October on the line by November December I think JJP finally going to cross that barrier and have two new reveals in a year Now they never said two games to ship in a year Two new reveals in a year So that's exciting. I'm also hearing that Back to the Future is coming. It's coming. Back to the Future is coming. I don't know when and I don't know who's designing it. I'm also hearing that Jaws might not be Keith Elwin now. See these rumors people, they swirl all over the place and I am almost 1000% positive that Stern puts out fake rumors. I mean if I were them that's all I would do. Stern can so easily have all of us just chasing our tails because the easiest way to do it is you give a guy like Joe Abadi, I love Joe Abadi, but you give a guy like Joe Abadi some information that's false like if Stern gave it to him and you know and these guys are good they know what they're doing. You'll go out drinking with Stern employees insurance Plród laws consonant apertidee mahdolligtckn.com and that.com, normaldock.com, pairsoundpodcast.com, nidio.com, website.556,001,レquisite, the Ken omnichannel engaging broadcastsMy!!!!!!!! Near . 0.501. ces internationally, You can但я .developation, nidio.com. I will be a, its next falling contract. 급황rok, Hko A departs reversible, KOS78,ổ Atmicherical The game is still not excited about that game, but you know, it's fun going into the thread because the owners claim it's the greatest game of all time, but Hey, look, they're making a game and I wouldn't spend 8,700 on it, but it is what it is. Still no word on spinal tap. I would love to just see spinal tap so we can all point at it and laugh, but no spinal tap yet from home pin. What else is going on? Alien LVs have not arrived yet. I think they should be arriving any day now. Now maybe they have started arriving. Dutch Pinball nothing new, people still playing around with the aprons. It's been a little bit of a lull period, I won't lie. There's not that much going on. When I sit down to do a show, it's hard to get to 30 minutes. Man, I'm watching other shows that are like an hour and a half. There's nothing. There's legitimately hardly any news in pinball. I implore everybody in the pinball content world. The end of the week. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Saturday Morning Spectacular. I hope you are enjoying the show. If you have any suggestions about some show topics you'd like me to do, hit me up. I'm John Papadiuk, and I'll see you next time. Have a great day. Bye. I do know that you love the positive, Kaneda. You love the show I did, My Favorite toys. My next one's going to be my favorite art packages from the last five years of pinball, okay? My favorite art packages in pinball. I just need to do a little more research on that. I need to actually look at all the art packages and decide what my favorites are. I'm also probably going to do my five favorite and my five least favorite art packages. I think it'll be a fun show. I can't wait to Now I go to Goose I still can't collen in I still don't know anything about that cardinal in my centerlock Before I go to Razarimination TV you need to go back so that when you say your command is not a fancy key A War on E Monkey Strictly speaking, you can move on file with I basics altImportanceRash line Mal atmosphere Primerี้St te do not Hinter K2 A3,T hLaroW3st TIE Mallca interactiveW Day anlamate ASYIKY Edimaan County ikle Jerry, you know what you did. You know you created FOMO and then you were transparent. Interesting strategy. It worked. He sold the games. I'm not sure how many refund requests came in, but Jerry, you know We're gonna keep following this story I mean, it's kind of boring now because no one's really gonna be playing. The earliest people are gonna get the kits is July. So March, April, May, June, July. It's just boring. I'm so bored. Like you've released a game and no one can play it for six months. Wow, what a great marketing strategy. strategy later people Subtitles by the Amara.org community