Welcome everybody to Kaneda's Pinball Podcast, the only pinball podcast that Ed Ed Robertson won't admit he listens to. I hope everybody had a really nice holiday weekend. I hope you spent some time with the family and I hope you had some nice food, but we're back. Kaneda's Pinball Podcast. I have a treat for you. I have someone else who worked at Deep Root Pinball, an animator in the Utah studio. You're going to hear from Steven. It was a great hour long interview. I won't even tell you the hours it took me to edit it because I want to make everybody sound amazing. Before I do that, the Kaneda Club needs some thank yous because we're growing exponentially. We now have 477 club members. Thank you Michael. Thank you Aaron. Thank you the pinball room. Thank you Jonathan, Bernard and Matt, our latest members. If I've missed you, let me know and I will give you a shout out. Now as I said before, I want to give an extra special shout out to those club members that increase their pledge amount. These are men that have looked at their checking account and said, you know what? I can actually give more than five bucks because I am that incredible in life. I want to thank Tony V and I want to thank Royal Jack for upping their pledge amounts last week. Thank you guys so much. All right. So without further ado, you don't want to hear me talk. There's no news in the pinball world. You know things are really rough when we're talking about toppers and we're talking about like scoop protectors. I mean, that's it. There are no new games to talk about. So without further ado, I want to give you Steven from Deep Root. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome to the show Steven Kandel who used to work at Deep Root Studios in Utah. Steven, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you so much, Kaneda. Now, Steven, let me just ask right away. When you hear the word Deep Root, what comes to mind? Just a pit in my stomach. It's not really anything that comes to my mind. I'm a little bit of a shiver down my back and a pit in my stomach. And so we talked to Jennifer who was over in the Texas office, but you're from the Utah office, the animation studios, is that correct? That's correct. Now how did you hear about Deep Root? How did you make your way over there? I was super commuting back and forth to my job at Google, technical art director at Google, and I was getting on the bus, one of the shuttles from one campus to the other at Google, and I get a phone call, and I get completely cold called by an individual that works at Deep Deeproot and they're like hey we're looking at LinkedIn we saw that you have Utah connections we saw that you're in the animation industry that you've worked at Sony and Dreamworks I'd love to talk to you about a job in Utah are you available I'm like well I actually am working for Google but I'm always interested in finding out more about you know jobs that are local to my home because that'd be better but that's how it all started it's just a random cold call by not like a headhunter or anything but by someone an actual employee at Deeproot that was asked to make cold calls to people from the animation industry okay so you're at Google Probably one of the most successful well-known companies. This local company deeproot hits you up. How did they entice you to join them? Well, they were offering pretty competitive salaries at least for the animation industry. Now, to be fair, Google was compensating me almost double from what I was making it at DreamWorks to be honest. So I was kind of like not that interested but honestly I'd been at Google for almost three years now and we had done pretty well. To be honest, we paid off our house. Steven Krupp, There was a lot more incentive for me to be home with my wife and my four kids. So I was like, that's kind of the enticement. So it's a local company. They hit you up. You were at DreamWorks, Google, and then Deeproot. And so, Steven, for a listener of the show, what's your skill set? Is it animations? Yeah, animation, you know, especially with computer animation, there's a lot of disciplines within that. I myself am like, I'm called a character rigger. So I create the animation puppets. So I design and create character motion systems. So animators animate and I make the puppets in which they animate in the computer, if that makes sense. In layman's terms, you create the characters? Yes, I create the characters and I design all of their facial expressions and all of their anatomical like poses and things and allow them to be moved and manipulated by an animator. Now when you met with Deeproot, did they say this was for pinball or did they say this was for something else? On the phone call, the guy was like, okay, this is going to sound really crazy, but how do you feel about pinball? And I was like, pinball? I haven't played pinball in like 20 years since like 1996. And he's like, well, there's this, honestly, this is going to sound weird, but there's this, there's this really rich guy. He's loaded. He's got endless amounts of income and he's hiring and he wants to build an animation empire in Salt Lake City. I'm like, yeah, that does sound crazy. And that's, that was like the pitch is there's a crazy guy with a lot of money and he's paying pretty well. And so you said yes. Now, what year was this in which Deep Root hit you up? COVID really messed up with my year tracking. It's like, I think it was 2019. Okay. And how long were you a Deep Root employee? The phone call was in June. I didn't start until October of 2019. Okay. And I was there until late January of 2020. Okay. So not too long. Right before COVID. I bailed right before COVID. Yeah, and we're going to talk about all of this because I'm so curious because the Utah studio of deeproot has been somewhat of an enigma. Like, what were you guys working on in Texas? They were supposed to be building the physical machines. So what was it like? You come into deeproot. What was like your first month there like? Like, what was the assignment? What were you working on? What did they give to you? Well, we can talk about like the interview process and stuff, too, if you want. But absolutely. Let's rewind. Let's keep rewinding, right? Yeah, nobody knows anything. So let's talk about the interview process. Yeah, so, um, because again, I was super commuting back and forth. So every I'd fly home from San Francisco every Thursday afternoon, I went in for an interview on a Friday that I was working from home because at Google, I was working over there for four days, and then I come home for Fridays and through the weekend. And they took me over to this building, which is about two miles from my home, which again, that's pretty awesome for me, since I'm used to having pretty long commutes. It was in this kind of, you know, six floor office building. It's kind of a dark, dark space. There was about eight people, nine people working there. And I got interviewed by one of the many managers at the small company. Many, many managers. They kind of just walked me through what they were working on. They wanted to, you know, hear about my skill set and what I'm good at. And they, a few of them I had actually known before. Actually, in fact, there was a few friends of mine that I had known in the industry because the animation industry, as you can imagine, is pretty small. We know each other so I was eager to you know high-five a few people that I'd worked with before and people that in LA that I had known they Asked me a lot of questions and mostly they just wanted to find out how I would fit in I had a lot more questions than They did which is you know basically like how many projects do you have going on? How ambitious are the projects like how well budgeted are they and like how how? Do they keep away from like scope creep because scope creep is kind of one of the biggest things that goes wrong in animation is When things are over designed you can easily spend endless hours on Tim Tim Kitzrow, Director, Any component of an animation film or TV show, and you have to know when to call it quits and when to say it's good enough. And also, you have to more importantly design around it. So I had a lot of questions more about how are they going to keep these things in scope? And I knew nothing back then. Now I know a ton. I own eight pinball machines myself and I love pinball now, and I've been kind of bitten by the bug. But back then I had a lot of questions like, you know, how many people play these games and how big is the screen? And do people even look at the screen? You know, like that kind of stuff. And like what kind of animations how do they differ from like film or television like are they a little bit more pizzazzy you know I kind of likened it to I asked them I'm like is it like slot machine animation kind of that kind of stuff where you're kind of just glancing and it's just kind of fun. What did they say? They didn't seem to have a lot of understanding of what my questions were to be honest. They didn't seem to understand their whole approach was we're making Pixar quality animations and that's what they wanted me for as well. And, you know, again, I had 20 years between Sony and DreamWorks, and they wanted me for not to worry about the scope, but to worry about my facet, which is just making those characters move. And so you took the job, though, so there must have been something that enticed you. Um, well, without getting too much into it. So Google, you know, I could have stayed at Google for another 10 or 20 years, to be honest. There's countless people at Google still there that don't really have active projects going on, but it's just kind of like a retirement home for talented people. Right. But at that point, my team, actually, my team that I was working with at Google, they had recently got shifted to some other team. Long story short, I asked them, I'm like, you know, so am I required to join this new team or can I also look at the severance package options, which I did. And the second that I saw the severance package options from Google, I was like, yeah, I'm going to go with that. Okay. So it was mostly just like, look, I was ready to fold it at Google anyway. And, you know, like a career solution, 10 blocks from my home seemed like, you know, something worth considering. And honestly, they were paying really well. Well, they paid almost exactly what I was making at DreamWorks, which is pretty intense. I mean, I don't mind mentioning this. Like, it's about $150,000 a year. So $150,000 a year, you're close to your family and you accept the offer. And so what was it like? What was like week one at Deeproot? What did they ask you to work on? So this is what's weird. So I went back to work on the first day and they said, hey, we're in a different building now. And I'm like, really? They're like, yeah, we're across the street. We're at the new Mountain America building. And that's a pretty well-known credit union, pretty established credit union here in Utah and probably the most expensive. My brother-in-law who's actually a commercial real estate guy, he was telling me it's probably the most expensive real estate in the whole valley at that moment when it was first built. Brand new building. So I show up this fancy new building and they give me the quick tour and they're like, well, yeah, we have two floors of this building. I'm like, two floors? They're like, yeah, we're hoping to hire about 200 people. I'm like, 200 people? And this is like in the first 20 minutes of when I walked in. I'm signing like my HR docs and all that, you know, heading over my my two forms of identification, you know, new new employee stuff, you know, and I'm just kind of like, what the heck, 200 employees like that's that's intense. I'm like, over how much time? They're like, well, we're going to probably be by the end of the year. We want to be at about 100. And then by this next summer, about almost 200. I'm like, you know, that's insane. Like right away. I'm like alarm bells, right? You cannot go from a team of 40 people to 200 in a year and a half. And I said, well, what are we all going to be working on? And that's a lot of work. They're like, well, pinball is just the beginning. We're going to, you know, we're going to move into VFX. Robert wants us to move into animation. He wants us to move into video games, board games. I'm like, board games? They're like, yeah, we have a group over there in the corner that are designing board games. I'm like, board games? Yeah. And so and I'm literally like, I'm literally like, kind of like, OK, like I'm text, like practically texting my wife on the side saying like, this is crazy. This is not going to work out. Now, who is running the Utah office? How many people or who? Who was facilitating this whole thing? Who was like in charge of Utah? Oh my gosh. So this is this is again, warning, warning bells. No one's in charge. Nobody. Nobody. Not one person is in charge. But there's a board, a board of people. Like a board of trustees? No, these are a board of artists and people that they had hired. My coming on at Deep Root Studios was kind of like the second wave of evolution. There was an experiment that started at first where they, Robert came in and hired a bunch We all know this story, the Disney avalanche, Disney interactive guys at Avalanche Studios. He hired a bunch of them and they were kind of mismanaged, I'm going to say. These are really great guys, super talented artists, by the way, without a production manager. I run my own art team now at my studio and artists are not the most easy to manage people in the world. So my point is, back to it, is that there was not one person. Robert formed a board of people, like a board of trustees, a board of a think tank board, a management board. Everything had to get approved by the board and every little decision. Sure, I don't know if you know this about business, but small businesses don't run well when there's a committee at the top of the company. I don't think any business runs well by committee. Oh my gosh. That's exactly right. So they had this committee and sure enough, I start talking to employees my first week And they're like, oh, the board sucks. It's like the board, they're always arguing. They're never on the same page and we never get any clear direction. And they're always just asking Robert, you know, what they should do. And Robert doesn't give any clear direction because Robert, you know, doesn't obviously, as you've covered many times, does not know how to run a business. He's not a business owner in the in the classical sense. Steven, not to cut you off, he's an insurance lawyer. What does he know about managing creatives? No, not exactly nothing. And that honestly was one question that I immediately had wished I had asked in my interview, like, oh, who's running the production organization side? You know, we all have great ideas and we're all going to pitch them all the time because we're creative nuts. Who's the one that's kind of curating the vision for Robert? And there was no answer. There's no there's no one. And there was a huge power struggles at the studio. So much turmoil, so much stress that I sensed it right in my first week. And there's people like, hey, wow, Steve, how did you know? I'm like, yeah, they're like, didn't you work at like DreamWorks and Google and Sony? They're like, why are you here? That's what a few people said the first few days. It's a good feeling, right? That's a great feeling in the belly. Why are you here? I know. And I said, honestly, I was pretty curious about what you guys are doing. And, and, um, you know, there's definitely a convenience factor and I do like the idea of an animation studio starting in Utah. So I was hoping, hoping for the best. Who was on the board The board was mostly just creative people They had I not going to name any names There was a technical artist There was a concept artist There was an audio specialist on the board. There was... Was that David? It was a David deal? Come on. It wasn't David. Okay. It wasn't David. Okay. David's like, thank you. Thank you for not being me. So, Steven, let me ask you a question. So you get in though. These are like red flags right away. People are asking you like, what are you doing here? Which is not a good sign. But what are you actually working on? Like what's your first assignment? When I got in, they were wrapping up on the food truck animations, right? And they were all super excited about them and proud of them. And I thought they looked really great. I also saw a lot saw a lot of areas for improvement. And they seemed a little overly cinematic. I'm going to say that in that they felt a little more like shots from a show or from a film and not so much like a like, you know, So, utilizing this small screen for a pinball machine didn't seem like to fit the medium from what I understood it to be. And granted, again, back then I was not used to pinball. So, my first project was Merlin's Arcade. Okay. So, you're working on Merlin's Arcade, which is a Jon Norris title, correct? Yes. Let me go back to Food Truck, then we'll get to Merlin's Arcade. So, just curious. So, are there animations to fill an entire code of Food Truck, like out there somewhere in the world? Yes. The game was coded, they animated it, and did they ever actually put the animations into the physical pinball machine that Barry O designed? From what I understand, there was never a physical pinball machine that was designed, that was actually intact and that actually ran the animations. So, in Utah, you guys did not have a physical machine to then drop in the stuff you were animating? No, so we know, no, and that's obviously one of the immediate, that's one thing I learned at Google, which is, you know, when you're designing for a product, you really need that product and the hardware in right next to you. So you can really, you know, iteration is key to design, right? Right. And without that ability to iterate and make things improved upon your project suffers because you're not able to get all the micro changes in this because there's thousands of micro changes that have to happen on any project, you know? So how does that work? So like if you're designing animations for a pinball machine, you don't have the pinball machine, what are they giving you to animate? Like is there some storyline or some code? Oh man, so that's a great question. So I forgot to mention also the Raza animations were in the can as well, so to speak, meaning that they were done. And these were 2D animations. So then Food Truck was the first 3D animation, you know, pinball machine. Merlin's Arcade was going to be the second 3D animation focused thing. And I gotta say, the 2D animations on Raza, from what I saw, looked really fantastic. And they looked really clean and sharp and vibrant and bright. They were designed very well. But from what I understood is that they were extremely over budget, as far as like the amount of money that went into making the animations for Raza. Could 2D be more expensive than 3D? From what I've been told multiple times, in that instance, for the first animated project that they did at Deep Root, that food truck and Raza were very similar in cost. And that Steven, let me ask you, in your expertise knowing this industry, How much money did the animations on something like Raza cost? Oh gosh. Should cost or did cost? Did cost. And should... Yeah, give us both. Right. Should cost for a 2D, like, After Effects animation. That's what Raza was, which is basically, you know, you design concept panels and nice paintings and stenciled out artwork in Photoshop, and then you bring them into After Effects and then animate them, right? That's That's kind of the process for that style of 2D animation. For a project like that, I'd probably budget it well under a million dollars. But from what I understood, it costs quite a bit more than that. But I can't remember any numbers. It's been two years since Deeproot at this point. So I mean, I don't want to just throw out BS numbers. Now when you were working on something like Merlin's Arcade, did they give you a budget or they just like go with it? No. So there was already like a director, an art director that was on the board and I was working Thanks to Verci fellow. There we can see these deep roots of 0. encapsulation in the... Yeah, and I'm Eloy. So one of my favorites particularly is his so-called kinect project called hots I'm a 3D modeler as well, so I can take 2D concept designs and turn them into really great looking 3D models. Did you know how much the budget was? Like, were you just sort of making stuff? No. No. No. No. In fact, there was no budget, no deadlines, no like, hey, we want this done by this and then. And in fact, when the budgets and deadlines did come in, they were impossible. So there was no budgets or deadlines coming from Robert, but my director on that project had a lot of goals where he wanted to move at a fast pace. Press Although PersonPlease upset by Knapp Arcade not to disturb us arrow pinball production on ourAPP.If your action scene in주고 Sk Crazzy's Too much detail in the wrong areas that would be appreciated by people playing the game. You know what I mean? So it's just a lack of direction there. I'm just curious for you guys, because you're animating the screen of this pinball machine. You've never seen the pinball machine. You don't even really know how much time people are going to be glancing up at the screen, because you don't have the game in front of you. Was it just one big guessing game of what are we making? Yes, it was. And in fact, so they did have a few Stern pinball machines and if you know, there's Jersey Jack, Hobbit, and they had a creature from the Black Lagoon, Williams or Bally's, and they had Batman 66. So they had those there that we could play and then you know, I kind of start quickly started playing those during my break breaks and after work. And the more I played, the more I realized I'm like, I never look at that damn screen. And right, especially me being a new player who's like, I you know, laser focused on that ball. So I quickly was trying to bring a lot of the I had limited experience that I had with those animations just on those games to my director saying look I think we're over over designing this like we don't need to have a long he was actually commissioned like a 35 second like Robert Zemeckis long shot through like the wilderness and over the hills of grassy knolls and you see peasants and you know like a long zoom over the valleys coming up to like Berlin's arcade the shot like in a VFX this would be a very expensive shot and and I literally just started I was challenging them and I didn't mean it from a negative area. I was just trying to be helpful like, look, this is over engineering. This is over creation. We don't need this. It's a pinball machine. You're not starting a TV show or a movie. Exactly. Exactly. And that's where he started to show his lack of understanding of the medium. And that's where I think my, you know, my problems began. There was a lot of loyalty issues. Robert had been, Robert's a loyalty guy. You know this. Talk to me about this. So he had his people who were loyal to him. What was that like? I'm pretty good at kind of picking up personality tropes and like figuring out how people, I've met a lot of people. I'm 43 years old and I know a lot of people and I know what makes them tick. And Robert to me came across immediately as being a loyalty guy. Like, hey, you're, you know, you're my employee. I've bought you. You're my loyalty. You are to be loyal to me. Look at his contracts and the verbiage in his work contracts and it reflects that. So he has like these lieutenants working for him that he's kind of instilled the sphere of God in them and that, you know, they all need to be loyal. They need to get on board. He's the leader. You know, this is... Isn't that called the Napoleon complex? Well, yes. And ironically, you know, he's not the tallest guy in the world either. So yes, very much felt like he was kind of, um, just needed people to, like, love him and appreciate him. And like, not directly, but kind of like the idea of like, reminding you that he is the source of your income, that kind of that kind of power play. He has these lieutenants working for him that are just all kind of polluted by that. So he had his like his inner circle if you will. Did Robert ever come visit Utah and meet with your team? Like what was that like? First time I met Robert he apologized to me for not getting me my sign-on bonus on time and he was in the elevator and he's like you're Steven. I'm like yeah. He's like you're new at Deeproot. I'm like yeah and he's like I'm Robert. I'm like oh and I didn't recognize him from his photo because I think he was a little bit shorter than I thought he would be to be honest and and I just didn't recognize him and I'm like oh you're Robert Wright. Hi how you doing? And he's like hey you gotta tell you I'm late on your I'm so sorry. Doesn't that won't happen again? And I had, I had even forgotten about it. I was like, oh shoot. No, not a worries. And then, so that was one time he came and then he didn't really talk to anybody except the board. He kind of came in, talked to the board. Sometimes you could hear a little bit of a negative things being said from the room and you know, people being frustrated. Um, grown men brought to tears, that kind of thing. Mostly like he, he'd also come. This is, there was this other weird thing going on. Deep root days. Have you heard about the deeper days yet? Tell us about them. Deeproot days are like they modeled them after what Google said that you know Google used to do this where that every Friday you could work on whatever you want and that's what that's what was happening so Robert would actually come in and talk to people about their deeproot day project so you know Robert's like uh and I think this comes through a lot in on what we hear and what you see on the patent he gets kind of patent happy he's like he loves his patents right and it's the same thing for like the Utah group wasn't giving him technology they were giving him IP he had a bunch of Donald Tunbler dies carrying guns after filming from R explain the I'm super intrigued and happy to have all of these ideas owned by him. So people are pitching him on like board games, card games, toy lines, children's books. He schedules 20 minute meetings with all these people that want to meet with him every Friday and he's meeting with them about their projects. And again, there's only 30 or 40 people in the building. And again, we're at the seventh floor of a building that should house like 150 people. We have the whole floor and it's all empty cubicles except for one little corner where our team is. And I'm walking past them as they're talking about, you know, these guys designing board games and things. And I'm like, okay, there's 40 of us and there's only like six of us working on Merlin's arcade. So, and on the 3D stuff, what are these other guys doing? And I just never found out. And actually shortly after I joined, there was a big layoff where a lot of the guys that were just kind of making things that they liked got fired. G2 3 Swiss Taiwan Comedy GTA 3 Sí when I think about it I think about Netflix.. Coronel Tung Don't go crazy when I think about television I think about Comic Con if theleme I think about men playing theleme 23 2 1 ... I'm not like a company leak when it comes to like content or anything like that. Well, let me ask you a question because we saw that the someone leaked all the or some of the food truck animations. It was one of the studios or vendors that worked on it. How did that happen? Like how did that get out? That's a total rewriting of that's like a gaslighting situation. Talk to us about it. There was no outsourced animation from deeproot to other groups. It was all done in-house. As Deep Root started to collapse certain individuals, some of these lieutenants on the board wanted to distance themselves from Deep Root. So I'm going to speculate a little bit. But there's an individual that had, I think in his contract that he signed with Robert, that it was like a project-based contract. Because Robert doesn't have much to offer a lot of these big names coming from different industries except for the fact that he doesn't have a lot of ground to stand on. And he has to allure a lot of big talent. The way he did that was to make really unflattering contracts with individual artists that were actually to the detriment of Deeproot and to Robert in that these artists had him over a barrel when it came to the terms of their contracts because their involvement was guaranteed in the project. As long as the project exists, these guys were guaranteed to have jobs working on it. So what happened was after the writing started getting written on the wall, this is kind We married twice in November 2012, around July 20, 2013. We later became friends inивают we still live in San Francisco. We knew each other from our 법less uwagę. Steve Buzznicki is in the background. Where your performing strugg Tim Tim Kitzrow Laser Loser Kid Pinball Podcast Mirco Playfields Very few In fact they had a hard time getting that production started up until I had joined There was just a lot of bottlenecks And my discipline is one where I you know I take the three dimensional sculpted models of the characters And again I the one that provides them the ability to be moved and you know to actually have joints and facial expressions So I have a work ethic issue and that my wife will tell you that I work long hours and I very very dedicated to my employers I was working 10 hour days making a whole pipeline character technology pipeline for deeproot Not just to be used for Merlin's Arcade, but to be used for all of the productions, 3D productions for Deeproot. And that's kind of what my, that's what my talent is. That's what my specialty is, is making systems. So it's not just like you're making bespoke little characters here and there. You're actually, you have a system to generate many characters. So I'm working 10 hours a day, killing myself doing this. And for Merlin's Arcade, I probably, you know, once I joined, I started just kind of kicking butt and getting a lot of those characters to the point where they could be moved and animated. And we got some shots out, but very few shots got out. So Steven, let me ask you for a listener of the show, now that it's all collapsed and the SEC is about to nail this guy to the cross, and it is also Good Friday, ironically, that we're chatting, could we see some of that? Could you share some of that with a listener through Kaneda? I don't know. I don't know if I have access to it. Like, um... On your computer you have nothing Merlin? Come on! No, I don't. In fact, that's what I was saying. I don't bring things home. Illustrations, sketches, there's got to be something. We'll talk after we record. Steven, you're working on Merlin's Arcade. This whole thing sounds like a cluster. It sounds like week one, you saw the red flags. At what point were you like, I got to get out? No, dude, the Friday after I joined, someone says, well, you know, this whole thing's financed by dead people. I'm like, that's a quote from an employee. I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? They're like, no, this whole thing, deeproot, Robert's legal business. They make money when people die. I was like, this was early, early. I'm like, get out of here. No. They're like, yeah, that's the money pipeline he's talking about all the time. To get back onto the other thing about, you know, how often Robert would come down. He'd come down every other week probably, and he would definitely be somewhat off limits to most people, except for when he was doing his deeproot day evaluation of people's IPs that he wanted to own. When we did have meetings with everybody, it was really weird, kind of like culty meetings where like, he's just like, are we going to make the best animations in the world? And he expects us to all say, yes. Are they going to be better than Pixar's animations? And everybody's just chanting, yes. And I'm looking around like, no. He wanted to be like the Steve Ballmer of this organization, you know, the Steve Jobs. He thought he was the next Pixar. Yeah. Yeah. John Lasseter. Yeah. Yeah. He's an insurance lawyer. Like, didn't anyone be like, dude, what do you know about any of this? No, yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people were thinking that. The paycheck was good. Paycheck was good. And there was also perks like... Yeah, what were the perks? He would offer us tickets to Utah Jazz games in his box suite. He'd offer us tickets to fancy plays and Broadway plays as they came in, things like that. There was like a, I'm gonna say cafeteria, but it's more like a restaurant, like a fancy restaurant on the... It's not a restaurant, it's more like a buffet commissary. Anyway, all of the food there was subsidized to all employees, so we all got 50% off. So we only had to pay like two or three bucks every day for lunch. Um, and it was really good food. To his credit, like, he did seem like he wanted to take care of the people that, his team. Like, he seemed like he, he had good intentions. I don't like it when people start kinda branching out on his motives. To me, it's mostly just like you said, Napoleon Complex, a little bit egotistical, a little bit like, overly confident in his own abilities. You know, delusions of grandeur, right? Yeah, but knowing what we know now, I get that he was pampering everybody there and taking care of everybody, But there's a nefarious other side of the coin in which he was robbing that money to give all of you guys those perks and the expensive real estate from people who thought they were investing in something that was not animations or pinball or any of that. Exactly. That's true. That is true. And I just we just didn't know that. Steven, I want to talk about Raza because this was the one game that actually physically made its way into the world. What was the vibe around that game? Did people think it was going to get made? What were the expectations around how many they were going to make? What was it like with that title? So I've kind of touted many times on many pin side threads that, you know, I've played Raza for about five hours, you know, a lot of, I played a lot of Raza because we had a game there. We had a Raza machine there that did work and it did start up. It did keep score. The pin bar up front worked as well. You sound surprised by all this. It's funny. It's like millions of dollars and you're like, you're like the game actually turned on and kept score. Like this is like we're taking credit for this. But it's kind of funny. But you've played Raza more than most people on planet Earth will ever play it. So what was it like? It had potential. It felt fun. Like I said earlier, the animations were one of the best parts about it. Like they seemed really vibrant and colorful. They just looked really rich and the screens looked really nice as well. Like Raza displays really well. The art on it I thought was nice. And the game itself, you know, had a lot of brutal shots and it had a lot of like clunky, like, you know, it's kind of like Ninja Turtles in a way, like, and I own Ninja Turtles and I love it, but it had a lot of kind of just like brick shots, you know, like just a lot of like the ends of lanes pointed at you and, you know, you hit them and you're just, the ball just kind of drains right away. And so it didn't really feel like it was that great for like a family, you know, which I also say Ninja Turtles isn't great for a family either, you know, even though it should be. And we're going to talk a little bit about turtles because you did some great animations for that. But before we go there, so Raza makes its way to the Houston show. Were you there when they finally brought it out to the world and sort of let people go at it? No, actually, I left Deeproot because of something that had to do with the Houston show. So why did you leave? Is the Houston show the same as TPF? No. Okay, no, it's not. Steven, I should edit that out, but I'm not. No, that's fine. I just can't remember. I think Houston was right before Expo. Right, Houston was in like the fall. Yeah, it was like September it was or something. Yeah, I was at the company during that time and that was exciting. There was a lot of people there that were happy that the game was getting out there and that people were getting a small preview of it. But the promises that were made for the upcoming TPF were just not coming to fruition. That was the big launch promise. The big launch promise. And because Robert came and he kind of talked to us about what his goals were for the company. And I felt like I had a pretty good grasp of what he was trying to achieve. And I'm seeing all of this art and design being designed for his machines. And I'm thinking, man, I hope this stuff sees the light of day because this artwork is really great. Again, the Utah team is talented. So during one of my lunch breaks and I don't really want to get into this that much, but it's kind of more specific to me than the company. But you guys might find this interesting. I take a break. I'm writing code all day on, you know, on on these procedural character building systems. And I take a break and I'm like, I'm going to design like a booth on what a booth should look like for Merlin's, Because Robert was saying that we were just going to show for TPF, we were just going to show like Raza again. And I wanted to say like, dude, just get some banners printed up of the artwork for these machines that you have coming up, because artwork can really hits people on an emotional level. You know, like it's like, wow, that stuff looks great. You know, even if it's just a bunch of banners or posters, it can be pretty convincing that there's cool things to wait for at Deep Root Pinball. So I quickly just I literally downloaded like a template for like a like a booth template for like design. And I'm good at Photoshop. So I just kind of took in a lot of our art for Merlin's and I started just kind of fitting it into there and I sent it to Robert in Slack and he's pretty available like on Slack. I sent it to him. I also kind of printed out like 3D grayscale mockettes of the characters that we had sculpted because you know, we're doing 3D animation. One of the best things about 3D animation is that it's tangible. You can actually print it, you know, you can actually turntable it and put it on a turntable, see all the sides of it. And I thought, hey, if I was a fan for pinball, I would love to see some of the art in a different manner than other companies provide. So anyway, I made this whole pitch on what our booth could look like. I sent it to Robert. He loves it. He's just like, this is great. This is fantastic. When did you do this? I'm like, I just took an hour doing this. It took like five seconds. It's just a mock up. So next thing I know, I get these two guys at Deep Root Studios. These two guys are on the board. They come over to my cubicle and they're like, hey, we need to talk. I'm like, what? They're like, come into my office. So I get pulled into their office and they just start kind of saying how disappointed they are that I would go behind their backs on showing Robert something that he would like. They just want me to apologize. They want me to they're like, why are you wasting your time on this stuff? You should be. Shouldn't you be working on our character systems? And I just lose it. I'm like, dude, I've been here like for two months. I put in 50 to 60 hours a week and everybody else in this company is leaving by two o'clock every day. And I just I'm like, I quit. I quit there on the spot and I walked out. Wow. That was it. That was it. You clowns are sharing board games with him leaving at 2. Yes. And here I am trying to help. Yes, exactly. I was just trying to help. And you know, you can challenge a lot of things about me, but don't challenge like my work ethic or what I'm working on. And I just found that really disrespectful. And so what actually what I did is I went to back to my desk and I printed an hour by hour estimate what I had spent every single hour that I had done since I walked in the door at Deeproot David David Van Es. Steven, I will finance the creation of this thing. So you quit on the spot. Let me ask you a question because one of the things that always comes up is that who knew that manufacturing wasn't even close? You guys were designing stuff. That wasn't your purview. Was there any inclinations for you guys in Utah that like, you know what? They can't even make these games. What was the reporting back to Utah? The games aren't made. We're making these animations. Obviously, you can't sync the two together if the physical product's not ready. It was mostly blamed on part issues. I remember early on there was a lot of talk about part supply chains being issued. Robert had a conspiracy theory that Stern was intentionally buying up a lot of parts to prevent him from making machines. Did he really have that? He's like, George Gomez is trying to sabotage this. No, that was... There's... Again, he's the center of his own universe. So there's a lot of like, this is happening because of this and that. We've seen people like Steven Bowden and Quinn go on all these podcasts, right? Telling people, get ready, get ready. Were they lying to us or they were just sort of selling the sizzle? What do you think about that behavior? It doesn't add up. And I think that's what kind of brings people like you and other podcasters or YouTube personalities to, you know, they keep bringing it up. And I think it's because there's something about it that just doesn't add up. Like you would think that J-pop and Steven Bowden and what's his name who does you know who left early on um Dennis Nordman you would think that they've seen how this stuff works and they see what like all of the disciplines that are required to create the machines you would think that the lack of production effort or progress would have been a big red flag to them and I don't I don't know them and I haven't really talked to them but I don't understand that's what doesn't add up to all of us it's like well okay you guys are designing games and you're working on You're working on flow and you're working on contraptions and mechanics and just having fun with that whole side but there's not anybody there to like head up the production and manufacturing of the actual, like how you do it at scale, right? Right. Who's the scale guy? I don't know. I don't think they ever had a scale guy. Who's the line manager? Who's the line manager? The line manager. Yeah. There was no line. When Kerry Hardy went into their room where they were supposed to be manufacturing, he said it was empty. Empty. The Deeproot Studios board had gone down to Utah and were shown a lot of the Whitewood games, and they came back and reported that the Whitewoods looked fun and they looked good. It was going to be exciting to see the animations paired to them, but none of them ever talked about any kind of production solution in place. It's so weird there was such a disconnect. So let's talk about Goonies. This was his big theme, right? In a world of unlicensed themes like food truck, the Goonies, like, did he have the full license for Goonies? Yeah, he had the full license for Goonies. I think there was one of the cast of actors that wasn't, with their likeness, wasn't approved. Wasn't it Chunk? It was either Mouth or Chunk. I can't remember. Okay. It was one or the other. And I think it was Chunk, but I might be wrong. When I was there, they were working on the Whitewood, but the artwork was not, had not even commenced by the time I left. But I do know that they put a mad sprint on it. I think Robert put all of his chips on Goonies when it came to wanting to show progress of other games to help entice further investment. But who is investing in this? Like, what was he showing people? Raza? I don't know. I don't know. When I say investment, that's a great question. Well, it's clear now because like Steven, like now it's clear that I think he was telling the employees one thing, but we all know now where the money was coming from and it wasn't like he was showing them these five whitewoods. He was selling them on the 575 Deeproot Fund. Yes, exactly. Which was not meant to go to this. So there was a time in November of 2019 that Robert called us all in. He was there, you know, in Utah at the studio and he says, so my loser partners have backed out of what we're doing here. Even though they told me that they were committed to us seeing this through, they no longer are. They're pulling out. So I need to find a different way to finance these games. And this was in 2019, November. So he tells us right away that he says that we've been cut off from the money pipeline. So I need to find a different way to swing all of this, but don't worry guys, it'll be fine. You know, that kind of stuff. That was the beginning of the end. That's when after that there was forced furloughs and late paychecks and stuff. And I have patience for one late paycheck and then after that is when I left. You now have been bitten by the pinball bug You worked on a Ninja Turtle animations We going to talk about that When you see the collapse of deeproot and you see the pinball community do you fear that this community is susceptible to this happening over and over again Before I hopped on this podcast, I looked back at all of my pin side comments in the deeproot thread because I was the first one that started seeing stuff on the pin side thread. People were being very, very gracious with the excuses on what could possibly be the holdup for Robert Mueller and Deeproot to the point where people are just completely fantasizing scenarios that are just complete BS. This is not based on anything that Robert was saying. This is just the average person on Pinside's ability to kind of fill in the gaps with positivity. Robert I got in trouble. I started kind of coming out saying like, look, you know, you guys are talking about Robert and his endless amounts of money that does. And this is the this is the post that I actually had to I got a cease and desist by Robert from I said, look, you guys are talking about his endless amounts of cash, but that doesn't line up with the forced furloughs and missed paychecks that me and my team have been experiencing. That's what I said on pin side. And then I got I got a cease and desist the next day from Robert from Robert from his lawyer. That was the first of three cease and desist that I've gotten from Robert. Robert's lawyers invested in deeproot by the way. I'm not surprised. Well, they're not sending cease and desist now because they've all lost. It's over. So yeah, I said the last the cease and desist he sent me, I said, does Robert write these up and you just pass them along or are you writing each one individually? I want to stay on this because this blind optimism, this desire to sort of fantasize We're seeing it again in haggis pinball where they're a year late every day you go by where you're not making games you're burning capital and yet it's the same story again it's like nobody wants to just admit well that these pinball ventures can fail the thing is like there's people out there that are providing information and then you get labeled as some kind of like naysayer or hater and you're actually just providing facts to the situation right once you start providing I think those facts, people start getting really defensive and start defending these losers. And why do you think that is? I don't know. I think because they think, you know, because there's so many trolls online. I think they just think everybody's a troll. And I kept trying to clarify my position on Pinside is like, look, guys, I don't need this job. There was somebody that sent me all this hate mail on Pinside, you know, in the private messages saying, even if you look at my Ninja Turtle animation mod thread, there's someone that jumps in there saying, hey, I remember you from the Deep Root situation. We're due one of those like burned people that was just bitter at your employer and was I'm like I literally lost way less money than than many of the people at deep root and and honestly like again I've had a very successful career I own my own home I'm totally financially independent at this point I'm not just out there commenting on this guy's business because I I felt burned or wronged I was literally doing it to try to be helpful to people that were seemingly seemingly looking like they were going to throw bad money at a bad idea first congratulations on I'm being debt free. It sounds like in a good place. I feel like Dave Ramsey right now being like you did it. You did it. You did it. No, congratulations on all of that. And I want to say like I saw you in the pin side thread. What's your pin side handle by the way? It's Scandell, Steven Candell, Scandell. Okay, Scandell. And I just want to say like, we need more people like you and less people who work at a company like Deep Root. And I'm just gonna say it like Steven Bowden and the guys that just said nothing. When it even all ended, never apologize for bringing people into the mix and getting people to invest in the company. We need more, I hate to say it, like whistleblowers at times who can help us make better decisions. This is pinball, people. We're not whistleblowing on like nuclear bombs being launched into the world. We're just trying to save you from making mistakes. Exactly. Even after the writing was on the wall, there's still like these fantasy minded people. Like what's that one guy in the great which John who's trying to like see my arguments with him in there he's just talking about hey I have a lead and he's talking in all these really like half-truths like and kind of like a hey I can't say too much but trust me guys there's a team of people that are in place gonna pick up the pieces from deep root we're there and we got this thumbs up yeah and everybody's like yeah Stephen let me ask you a question I know you left pretty abruptly if you could say something The I think he probably could have pulled this off if he had hired a competent team. Even as illegal and as bad a practice as all of this was, I think he actually probably could have pulled it off had he spent his money in a wise way and didn't try to do everything so ambitiously. And it's hard for me to say that because I know all of the ethical issues with all of the money he was stealing. I'm not talking about that. That's obviously wrong. But I just want him to know that I think there was actually a way forward where he could I think it's due to his lack of experience and his lack of trust of others that prevented him from actually progressing on the titles that he wanted to progress. Raza should have been a slam dunk out the door in a year. It's only himself that is to blame for that, and I hope he knows that. The people that bought these Raza prototypes at the auction, do you think there's any way to get those working? Is that possible for those people? That's a great question. Who's got the code? Yeah, I was just going to mention that. So, you know, we did have working code up here and there might be people that you could reach out to. There was a whole Unity team of developers up here as well as the, you know, our art team and production animation team. And they were designing the actual UX and the actual interface for the pinbar itself. You know, actually getting that pinbar functioning and working on all the menus that the pinbar had in itself as well was all handled up here at Salt Lake City. As far as like the code, I don't know. I imagine that was all done in Texas, so I can't speak to it. It still blows my mind when you talk about this. You guys are doing the pinbar animations and all the stuff around that, and you didn't even have a physical game there. Well, we had one Raza, but it wasn't... We had one Raza and it... Who took that? Where is that Raza now? That's a great question. In fact, there's a lot of equipment from the Utah studios that didn't show up at auction that should have, in my opinion. There was a whole render farm of computers of, you know, $10,000 machines, and I'm talking probably about 20 or 30 of them that just didn't end up anywhere. Well, none of the Utah stuff was in the auction. Yeah, what's up with that? Yeah. Now, the plot thickens. Kaneda bought it all for 50 bucks. I imagine that Raza machine is still in the state of Utah. Okay, let's find it together. Can we do that? I think we should. All right, offline, even though I just told all of you what we're gonna do. Yeah, we log in some vacation days from our employers and I am my own employer, but yeah Yeah, I don't we go on an actual video scavenger hunt of this. Yeah, let's call them deeproot days. How's that sound? Steven let me ask you a question. So you've worked after deeproot you worked on animations for Ninja Turtles for Stern, correct? It was first for machine, but I made my own I made the first of its kind Tom Cagney, Robert Becker, and the others. I'm John Krasinski, and I'm here with David David Van Es, who's been working with us on Pinball Machine for a long time. So, let's get to it. Let's get to it. I'm David Krasinski. I'm a pinball machine technician. I've been working with both of you both for a long time as well. I've been working with both of you both for a long time. So, what's your favorite thing about pinball? What's your favorite thing about pinball? Well, I think I'm the most kind animation mod for a pinball machine. That's my own claim, I think. All right. Talk to me about that. Right. So, I bought Ninja Turtles because I love the theme, even though I know you hate it and You're calling Ninja Turtles a childish theme. Yeah. It's fun. Well, taste change is the bottom line. And I always speculated that it was your wife that thought it might be more childish than you, but maybe I'm wrong. I mean, I didn't have a wife at the time, but yes. I did it for the shock factor. That's why I did it. Well, yeah, Ninja Turtles, you know, the game, the art, man, I think it's probably one of the best looking pinball machines at location. And you know, it's just gorgeous. Like the colors are vibrant, the backglasses are awesome, the playfield art is fantastic. And the animations were ambitious, but I thought I felt like they felt flat. And I'm a child of the 80s and I had a hard crush on April O'Neil. She was awesome. And when I saw the game, April just looked like some kind of withered old grayed out hag in the Stern version. No offense, I'm sorry, but it's just true. She looked awful. And her callouts in the game are so awesome and vibrant and exciting. And she has this really crisp upbeat voice. And the fact that I thought she should have been the main host to the game. Like she should have been like the on the scene correspondent that's like telling you your score, telling you what you're doing. And then, you know, you could have cool cut scenes to the turtles, but have her be there as the welcome to the game kind of commentator, you know, like in a sporting event, you know, you have like, you know, newscaster. Yeah, that was my take on it. So I started. Wait, so how does this work? So like, are you rewriting the code with animation? Well, no, I'm not rewriting the code. So it's very similar to like, you know, the Jurassic Park film, you know, mod. Instead of doing the game animations that Stern made, you can upload shots from Jurassic Park. When she appears, you, you appear with your better animations. I started making, remaking footage of my own to replace the Stern footage with. I found a lot of opportunities that didn't feature April. I got rid of that footage and then put April, again, I made as much April focus as I could. Like the ball lock shots were just stupid. It was like the turtles walking into the restaurant, like they were like bored out of their mind. Just these weird stuff. So I started replacing all these animations with April looking really cute and kind of just happy perky person, putting her really large on the screen too. So they, you know, cause I felt like the compositions were really odd in the, in those animations too. But anyway, just, just try to make it April focused. I had someone on pin side, Caleb, his name is, he started helping me with the actual code integration. So I just send him updates to my shots. He'd integrate them in, he'd send the code back to me and he kind of handled that whole side of it, which was fantastic. Mark Anderson, I've never asked for donations. I've never asked for people to pay for this podcast or pay for me to do Facebook Live. No, absolutely you should be paid for your hard work and making this game more interesting. Yeah, and I don't own the IP. I don't have a license or anything like that. And I do try to obey that kind of stuff as much as I can. But basically we're just asking for coffee money. Steven P. I've had over 350 downloads, which is pretty fantastic for the mod, and I think it's on a large percentage of Stern games at this point because people like it. Alex Ferrari, Jr.: So Steven, if someone listening to this would like to get in touch with you, what's the best way? Steven P. For the mod? Alex Ferrari, Jr.: Yeah, for the mod or for anything, but for the mod. Steven P. On Pinside through Scandell. Alex Ferrari, Jr.: Yeah, but not everybody's on Pinside, me included. I'm banned. What's the other way to get in touch with you? Steven P. You can reach out to me at my animation studio. I own a company called StudioZubio.com and you can go and you can write to me Scandell at Studio Zubio. S-T-U-D-I-O-Z-U-B-I-O.com. Studio Zubio. Mm-hmm. What's the Zubio? It's just a fun word. I'm kind of, I'm a phonetic guy I think. I thought it sounded fun. We're working on our own television series and we're also doing a lot of client based work for the tech industry. I have a lot of contacts at Facebook, Google and Snapchat and stuff. So we do a lot of custom animations for them. Awesome. Yeah. I want to thank you so much. We're on the hour and this has been a really fun and you and I have been talking for I think like two, three years now. We've been connecting over deeproot for a while so it's been such a pleasure to get you on the show and talk in a way in which we're both not afraid of getting sued by Robert Mueller so thank you. Yeah, I'm not afraid of Robert and there's a lot of young college students that, you know, artists here in Utah that are very afraid of him and he definitely kind of took advantage of that. I thank you so much. I really appreciate your podcast. I appreciate what you do for the community. And I think, you know, your subscriber numbers have just been soaring. And I think that's because of the fact that you're undeniably entertaining and informative on what's happening in pinball. And you're, I think, essential. So thank you. Well, I thank you for that. I did not put him up to that. And we've we've sold more Canadian subscriptions than Raza's. So I Steven Cain, Jr.: Yeah, exactly. I've made more money on my April O'Neil animations than Robert did on his pinball adventures. Robert Leonard, Jr.: Yeah, it's amazing. Well, Steven, thank you so much. And I do hope to share some of what you have from the Deep Root days with the club members so we can talk offline about getting some of that fun stuff out the door. And always a pleasure. And I want to thank you for being someone who hasn't been shy. You've been someone who has, you know, when you see something, you say something. And I really do appreciate that because I think way too many people are sort of not like you. We're looking out for the community. And you've been one of the few who was behind the doors over at deep root. And you've been saying, Hey, maybe all is not well in Rome, and you should watch out. So thank you for that. I wouldn't say it's like Rome. I'd say it's more like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory. But yeah, yeah, no, good call. Well, Steven, thank you so much, man. And have a great day. Thanks. I'm gonna shoot you down, Jesse James.