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Bonus PINcast: In-depth interview with Robert Mueller of Deeproot Pinball

Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincast·podcast_episode·2h 24m·analyzed·Dec 10, 2020
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TL;DR

Robert Mueller on Deep Root Pinball launch, supply chains, and touchscreen-driven platform strategy.

Summary

Robert Mueller of Deep Root Pinball discusses the company's long-delayed first title, Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland (RAZA), which officially launched pre-orders in December 2020 after years of setbacks. He addresses supply chain challenges, the transition from R&D to manufacturing, the two-tiered product strategy (Arcade and Extra editions), the innovative touchscreen 'pin bar' interface, and design philosophy rooted in classic Williams/Bally games. The interview reveals production timelines (4-6 weeks to ship), platform strategy for future titles, and customer payment handling.

Key Claims

  • Deep Root originally planned to launch at TPF 2019 (approximately two years before this interview), not three years ago.

    high confidence · Robert Mueller directly corrects host's timeline statement: 'originally our goal was to launch a TPF 2019, which is a little under two years ago.'

  • Supply chain issues in 2020 caused 20-50% of their vendor relationships to fail or drop off.

    high confidence · Mueller states: 'I don't know what the percentage is, but it was definitely, it wasn't as much as 50, but it was definitely more than, you know, 20, 25 percent of our vendors just dropped off the face of the earth.'

  • The XE edition was dropped because it offered minimal differentiation from the Arcade edition beyond the floating backbox design.

    high confidence · Mueller: 'The XE is the one that we dropped. That was basically the same as the arcade, but with the floating backbox design...it did not make sense anymore to offer the XE model...when really two will fit 95%, 99% of pinball enthusiasts.'

  • Deep Root Pinball cabinet platform will remain standardized for 5-7 years, with 60-80% of components shared across future titles.

    high confidence · Mueller: 'We really would like to have a five, maybe seven-year cycle on a lot of this platform...I don't know what the exact percentage is but 60, 70, 80% of what goes into Raza will be the same thing that will go into future games.'

  • Customer deposits are being held in a separate account and are not being used for operational expenses or parts procurement.

    high confidence · Mueller: 'Any money that is coming in from customers right now in full-payment deposits is being held in an account. It's not being used to buy parts. It's not being used to pay payroll, et cetera.'

  • A leaked image from one of six invited guests to a September showcase forced Deep Root to accelerate their public reveal.

    high confidence · Mueller: 'the cat is out of the bag because one of the, you know, six guests leaked information illegally.'

  • Deep Root spent 3.5 months ripping out the pinball and redesigning it for a November show about one year prior to this interview.

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm tired of setting deadlines and not meeting them, right?”

    Robert Mueller @ ~14:30 — Explains the motivation to launch website and begin orders despite imperfect readiness—a shift from previous communication patterns of delays.

  • “It's time to walk the walk. It's time to execute.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~22:15 — Core philosophy driving the accelerated launch; signals commitment to action over promises.

  • “When you're a new manufacturer and you're working with vendors that you haven't had, you know, real good solid orders, you know, like full production orders, you tend to go down on the priority list for a lot of these vendors.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~11:45 — Reveals a structural disadvantage for startups in supplier relationships during supply chain crises.

  • “Pinball, you should be able to walk up, and it should be inviting, right?”

    Robert Mueller @ ~1:02:00 — Core design philosophy prioritizing accessibility over complexity; differentiates Deep Root from modern complex rule sets.

  • “The first is physical. Where do you put it, right? How does it look? Are you just going to lose just a little rinky-dinky screen like you see on some back bars of some pinball machines?”

    Robert Mueller @ ~1:18:30 — Explains the engineering challenges and design thinking behind the large touchscreen implementation.

  • “We've tried to have the best of both worlds in creating a beautiful canvas to add all of these extra features and abilities into the pinball machine, but not distract and take away from what pinball really should be.”

    Robert Mueller @ ~1:35:00 — Articulates the balance Deep Root seeks between innovation and preserving traditional pinball appeal.

Entities

Robert MuellerpersonJonathan HoustonpersonMartin A.personDeep Root PinballcompanyRetro Atomic Zombie AdventurelandgameStern PinballcompanyWilliamscompanyHarry Williamscompany

Signals

  • ?

    product_launch: Deep Root opened pre-orders for RAZA on December 8, 2020, with a narrow three-week ordering window (Dec 8-30, 2020) to establish market demand and parts ordering parameters.

    high · Mueller: 'we are now taking orders' and 'limited it to a period of time...December to the 30th. So what's that? Just three weeks.'

  • ?

    supply_chain_signal: 20-50% of Deep Root's vendor relationships failed during 2020 pandemic supply chain crisis; new manufacturer status put them lower on vendor priority lists.

    high · Mueller detailed months-long vendor replacement, testing, and negotiation required; 'one purchasing guy' handling hundreds of items.

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Deep Root projecting 4-6 weeks from order date to first unit shipments, with slow ramp-up during quality assurance phase.

    high · Mueller: 'it's going to take us four to six weeks as we ramp up these lines and we really QA and have a machine really look it over.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Deep Root's 'pin bar'—ultra-wide touchscreen interface integrated into pinball backbox—allows dynamic rule modification, shot guidance, virtual buttons, and interactive gameplay elements without requiring manual rule reading.

    high · Mueller extensively describes five-panel UI layout, thumbable virtual buttons, shot log, and 'what's next' guidance system designed to enhance without distracting from playfield.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Deep Root prioritizes accessibility and intuitive playfield design over rule complexity; targets casual players who can understand a game at a glance, inspired by Williams/Bally golden age.

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.434

0:00
In-depth interview with Robert Mueller of Deep Root Pinball. Hi, my name is Jonathan Houston. I'm the editor of Pinball Magazine and I'm joined here with... I'm Martin A. and I'm the editor of Pinball News. And we've joined up for a special bonus podcast where we're going to do a really in-depth interview with the head of Deep Root Pinball, Robert Mueller, just after the company has begun taking orders for their very first title. Yes, they launched their website, and like Martin says, they are now taking orders, and production will probably begin early next year.
0:49
Yes, we will ask Robert about that. Yes, we asked Robert about that, and basically, without further ado, let's listen to this very lengthy two-and-a-half-hour interview.
1:01
That's how in-depth it is. That's how in-depth it is, and I think there's not many topics that we didn't discuss.
1:08
And I think it's fair to say it's exclusive news about various aspects of Rasa and how it's going to be made and sold. which I don't think anybody has announced before. So definitely worth listening to if we do say so ourselves. So we're joined here with Robert Mueller, the founder of Deep Root Pinball, a company that has had quite a rocky start, I would say. Originally, they planned to launch, I think it was almost like three years ago.
1:43
Apparently, there were some setbacks. obviously the coronavirus didn't help either but the good news is their first game is officially being revealed, Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland and we're talking to the man who made it all possible, Robert Mueller from Deep Blue Pinball, welcome Robert Thank you, I appreciate it it's nice to be here with you Jonathan and Martin can't wait to answer your questions and fill in some blanks for y'all well thank you very much Robert, we're looking forward to finding out more about Raza and the plans of Deep Root so the website launched just the other day and you are now officially taking orders for your very first title why after several years in building the company, building the design base and starting on your first series of games, why go to the website and start taking orders for games right now just before the holiday season, and when you're not actually able to sell games directly to the public,

high confidence · Mueller: 'It took us three and a half months last year to rip out the pin bar. That's how core the pin bar was...We also lost over four months of development time.'

  • Mueller personally prefers accessible game design and has never completed Wizard or Super Modes on his collection of Williams/Bally machines.

    high confidence · Mueller: 'I've never gotten to the Wizard or Super Modes or finished or beat any of my Williams games or even close on some...I like to walk up to a pinball machine, and I like to understand...what to do.'

    • Houston Arcade Expo
    event
    TPF 2019event
    West Springsvenue
    Pinball News & Pinball Magazine Pincastorganization

    high · Mueller: 'I like to walk up to a pinball machine, and I like to understand...what to do' and criticizes modern games requiring manual reading; emphasizes 'inviting feel.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Deep Root plans to use a common cabinet platform for 5-7 years with 60-80% parts commonality; will vary backbox styles and features by game title rather than redesigning cabinets.

    high · Mueller: 'five, maybe seven-year cycle...60, 70, 80% of what goes into Raza will be the same thing that will go into future games.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Deep Root experienced multiple delays from original TPF 2019 target, March 2020 planned launch event, and September 2020 showcase (which had assembly/quality issues). Public frustration evident in Mueller's statement about 'tired of setting deadlines.'

    high · Hosts noted 'rocky start' and Mueller confirmed planned TPF 2019 launch didn't happen; September 2020 event had to be reworked for 2.5 months.

  • ?

    leak_detection: One of six invited guests to a September 2020 Deep Root event leaked information about RAZA; Mueller used this as rationale for accelerating public reveal.

    high · Mueller: 'the cat is out of the bag because one of the, you know, six guests leaked information illegally. You know, it is what it is at this point.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Deep Root collecting deposits/full payment for RAZA orders but storing them separately; not using customer money for operational expenses or parts purchasing.

    high · Mueller: 'Any money that is coming in from customers right now in full-payment deposits is being held in an account. It's not being used to buy parts.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Deep Root eliminated the mid-tier XE edition (Arcade with floating backbox) to simplify product line and messaging; will use different cabinet styles for different future game titles rather than offering multiple variants per game.

    high · Mueller: 'The XE is the one that we dropped...it did not make sense anymore to offer...when really two will fit 95%, 99% of pinball enthusiasts.'

  • ?

    venue_signal: Deep Root manufactures from San Antonio, Texas rather than Chicago area; sourced most vendors regionally or nationally rather than relying on Chicago-area pinball parts suppliers.

    high · Mueller: 'You know, we really had a very good list of vendors...Very few of our orders are really from any vendors in Chicago.'

    • 2:55
    what is now a particular important point for you to launch the website and start taking orders? Yeah, that's a good question. Just to kind of correct something that Jonathan said is that originally our goal was to launch a TPF 2019, which is a little under two years ago. So, you know, a lot of effort went in now that you, and we'll talk about that today, now that you see more or less what our package is, it became very clear to us that the level of the package wasn't there at TPF 2019 that we wanted it to be. We ended up, you know, spending a couple of months about a year ago to get at least a non-pin bar version, but with a lot of the other circuitry out for Raza at the Houston Arcade Expo, I can't remember the exact name, but it was the event in Houston. And then as we were getting ready to have everyone, I believe including both of you, to come over for our launch back in March and then TPF, you know, the pandemic hit. And the number one problem that we've had this year, and I know a lot of other manufacturers, not only at Pinball but in all industries, are dealing with vendors. I mean, vendors are facing the same problems a lot of us are facing. They're going to their core business and what they know.
    4:19
    You know, lead times, hitting quotes. It usually takes months to get a vendor online and stuff, and we've had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to try to shore up a supply chain. And when you're a new manufacturer and you're working with vendors that you haven't had, you know, real good solid orders, you know, like full production orders, you tend to go down on the priority list for a lot of these vendors. And so dealing with that this year as a new manufacturer has been very difficult. But you know what? If we can do this during the pandemic and get it to work at the end of the day, then as things start riding, the ship starts riding itself next year, we should have some very, very solid vendor relationships and some very quality parts that we're able to throw into these machines. So that brings back to the question that you had of why now.
    5:11
    The big reason is I'm tired of setting deadlines and not meeting them, right? And so September was a big blow to all of us, and primarily supply changes killed us. Parts didn't arrive on time. Parts arrived bad. Rushing to get things done. There were some mistakes in the assembly of the games that we wanted to really show off to the six guests that came. and, you know, the good news is it wasn't, you know, as many companies would be, it would have been an ending or death knell to them. We were able to go back.
    5:43
    Everything was done. There were those things that were suggested and definitely things that we had to fix and stuff, and we've spent, you know, two, two and a half months fixing those. And so at this point, you know, a couple weeks ago, right before Thanksgiving, we were like, you know what, we're 99.9% done, and let's get it out there. let's show it off a little bit. You know, the cat is out of the bag because one of the, you know, six guests leaked information illegally. You know, it is what it is at this point. And so we have to give the rest of the information and then we want to show it. We showed it. And then now, I mean,
    6:21
    at some point you have to start a real company, right? From an R&D to an actual manufacturing company. We've got our website up and going. you know a lot of our parts that we don't already have in stock are on their way and we're looking forward to fulfilling orders at this point making roses and shipping them out okay I'm just sort of trying to wonder why it seemed like it was almost like a rushed decision to launch at this point and to open the website to orders because I would expect it to do us that kind of advanced publicity maybe or I would even say some kind of a countdown to the launch of the website, any promotions, anything stand out. We didn't know anything about this, we didn't know the website was going to launch until it launched in essence, so we could have given it some kind of boost and brought more people to it. I'm not sure how many people even know now that you can order a Ruzzer game through your website, through deeproofkinball.com, Because you have set yourself a very narrow window, really, an ordering window from the 8th of December to the 30th. So what's that? Just three weeks in which people can order the game. Which includes the holidays.
    7:40
    Indeed, yeah. When, I guess, well, it's e-commerce, so I guess people can order stuff all the time anyway. But why did you limit it to those three weeks? And what happens after those three weeks? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All good points. You know, I think at the end of the day, as I said before, I think the pinball community shares my feeling that I'm tired of countdowns at this point.
    8:09
    It's time to walk the walk. It's time to execute. And so for us, and I make the comments very clearly, you know, after what happened in September is that when we're ready, we're just going to do it. and so there's no other way to do it than just flip on the switch, right?
    8:27
    You know, we completely understand. Well, first, pinball sales are pretty good all year long, so the holiday season, from what I understand from past releases and stuff, is actually a really good time to get a pinball machine out there. I said before with Raza that we didn't want to, you know, spend all of 2021 trying to fulfill Raza orders. Raza is a special game it's a more limited game rather than limit it to a specific number of games what we decided to do instead is just limit it to a period of time and you know I think that word will get out over the next few weeks it doesn't cost a lot to get a deposit down and as we fulfill those orders in the first couple over the next three to four months we want to definitely get all Raza's done well before four months so we can move on to other titles as well, right? But it's better now than never. And so as a result, you know, what we're doing at this point is executing, right? That's what everyone's expected us to do, and that's what we're going to do, and that's what every other manufacturer does.
    9:39
    Okay. While I'm making notes, I do have a question where I briefly want to get back to the supply chain issue that you mentioned earlier.
    9:52
    Obviously, you're located in San Antonio, Texas, which is not the Chicago area, which is sort of the pinball capital of the world. And that's partly because a lot of vendors that are actually providing materials to build pinball machines, assemblies, switches, inserts, all that kind of stuff, are in the Chicago area.
    10:20
    Does that put you in a more difficult position to run your manufacturing from San Antonio? No. I mean, in fact, there's nothing novel about what goes into a pinball machine.
    10:36
    Most of the things that go into pinball machines go into just about any other product. So very few of our orders are really from any vendors in Chicago. You know, we really had a very good list of vendors, you know, going into March earlier this year. And, you know, I don't know what the percentage is, but it was definitely, it wasn't as much as 50, but it was definitely more than, you know, 20, 25 percent of our vendors just dropped off the face of the earth, whether they were overseas or whether they were here in the U.S. and so re-getting a new vendor in, negotiating volume price, getting samples testing out that, getting lead times, all of that takes months usually with a vendor on any particular item and when you're talking about hundreds of items that make up a pinball machine and we have one purchasing guy it was all hands on deck and has been all year to really get that side of our business shored up so we have good quality parts in a reasonable amount of time and to keep prices where we want to keep them. So it sounds very easy for a lot of armchair quarterbacks out there, but I can tell you it's very difficult as we're moving now into and have moved into the manufacturing stage is to make sure that supply chain is a very strong one and we can rely on our vendors to deliver what we need when we need them. Right. Okay. Okay, so let's go to what you actually are offering and what you have to say at the moment. When you first started, you said your intention was to have just a single model of each title available. Then when Raza came out, you had an arcade edition, an X edition, and an extra edition. And on the website, you seem to have the two editions now, the arcade and the extra. What happened to the middle, the X edition?
    12:31
    Yeah, great question. So each one of the additions has a different, you know, demographic and selling point. We always wanted sort of a budget to what we call the arcade, very similar to, you know, what other manufacturers use as well. However, we wanted to offer a lot more customization, which I know several of the manufacturers are starting to do as well. I think it just benefits the consumer. They want, you know, almost everything, but not quite everything that's locked into a more fixed price for a higher unit. They can go lower at the budget and then add what they want. So it was a nice option. The XE is the one that we dropped. That was basically the same as the arcade, but with the floating back box design that I created, rather than the more blocky traditional back box on the arcade edition. We just felt after what happened in September and over the last two months that it did not make sense anymore to offer the XE model, which is essentially the arcade but just with the floating back box when we already had the extra available. That's the fixed price, everything in it, sort of limited run machine. So what we tried to do is still offer everything we wanted to offer to consumers, but it just didn't make any sense anymore for us internally or for consumers to be confused by a third model here when really two will fit 95%, 99% of pinball enthusiasts. Right, but you didn't consider adding the floating back box as an option to the arcade edition as well to effectively build it up to the XE.
    14:17
    Correct. But what we tried to do is do the best we could from, you know, sourcing parts and BOM, et cetera, but also merging that with essentially messaging and marketing, you know, making sure things are simpler. What we're trying to do with RAS is, you know, these are our build apps. What we're trying to do with RAS is see what people like and get feedback, you know, from people as we go through the many, many games that are going to come out in the future and trying to, you know, offer what we will. For instance, our second game will not have a floating back box. It will only be the arcade, more traditional style with our stainless Cylon type grill. And so we want to test around and see what people like. And we also want to be different on every release. We want every release that comes out, you know, past Raza to be unique and have its own unique look, but still, you know, be a deep root machine on the same platform. So does that mean that right now with Rasa you have two models available, but for future games it not necessarily means that it's limited to those two models, or it could be just one model, or you might expand on models. What we're currently seeing with Rasa is just applying to Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland and not to future games.
    15:39
    Yep, absolutely correct. We want to keep it very flexible, and we want to try to tie each of the different titles that we have, which are all unique, right? They're going to come in at different bomb levels and be sold at different prices, right? And so we want to basically start now with letting everyone know, here's what's going to be the choose from for Raza. And then as we get to the next few games, we'll adjust as we need to, to market conditions. Does that mean that, for example, I mean in the case of mass manufacturing, it is highly desirable to have, for example, a cabinet design which is applicable to multiple game titles. It will be very, what's the word, uneconomical, I suppose, even. Inefficient. Well, inefficient also to have different cabinet models.
    16:39
    And, okay, now there's the change with the back box, but obviously there's more things you can change to the cabinet. So is the cabinet that DeepRoot is going to use more or less standardized, or are we going to see changes from title to title possibly also there?
    16:58
    No, the platform itself, including, you know, the arcade look and the design of the cabinet and then the floating back box look, those are pretty locked in. You know, we really would like to have a five, maybe seven-year cycle on a lot of this platform. and so I don't know what the exact percentage is but 60, 70, 80% of what goes into Raza will be the same thing that will go into future games. We just might choose just to offer more of the arcade design or platform for this title or the next one might just offer the floating and not offer the arcade at all. But all of those designs we've taken, that's why we've taken so long and it's taken that long is to get the engineering right, get the platforms right. So then we have a foundation that we just put for whatever the title is. We just change those add-ons for that title, and it allows us to simplify things behind the scenes.
    18:04
    Okay. And you're absolutely happy now that you've got the basic platform on which you can build the next series of titles.
    18:13
    Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it took us three and a half months last year to rip out the pin bar. That's how core the pin bar was and how long it took it to take it out for that November show a little over a year ago.
    18:31
    And so it was, you know, while the show was important and there were a lot of benefits that we got from that, We also lost over four months of development time in having to do that to test some other things and not show up the pin bar sooner than when we wanted to show it. But really, the pin bar is the core crux, the blank canvas, the touchscreen interface that really binds our platform together and allows the user to interact with the pinball machine.
    19:05
    Okay. One of the other things you said earlier on was that you wouldn't be taking pre-orders and would only take full payment up front when the game was ready. Yet you're now taking pre-orders and asking for deposits and or full payment. Why the change of heart?
    19:22
    I don't know if it's a change of heart. I probably said that a long, long time ago when things were very different and I had a very probably more bullish idea of how things would get here. Any money that is coming in from customers right now in full-payment deposits is being held in an account. It's not being used to buy parts. It's not being used to pay payroll, et cetera, right? So, you know, I've spent years taking care of investors and advisors and broker-dealers and, you know, employees and stuff like that. I've got this down, right? I know how to take care of customers, and we're going to continue to do that as we start this process. And all I expect is that we're held to the same standard that many other pinball manufacturers have been held to in years past because they got started as well. And I think that that's a very fair thing. I don't consider what we're doing now a pre-order. A pre-order is, hey, give me the money because I can't go out and I can't buy the parts and I can't do anything without that money. And so definitely we haven't called this a preorder, and it isn't a preorder. What it means is that, you know, for some parts we have for thousands of games, some parts we have for hundreds of games, and some parts we only have for a few games. And getting those parts in as quick as possible and getting games out is the number one focus, and that's why, as you'll see, not only on the, you know, where you can shop for the machines on the machine page, but also during the order process, we're very clear and transparent. Probably one of the most transparent messages a manufacturer in pinball has ever given. And we're very clear is that, look, it's going to take us four to six weeks as we ramp up these lines and we really QA and have a machine really look it over and make sure things are where we need it to be before it hits a customer's house or in our location and make sure each one is right. So it's going to be very slow at first. But four to six weeks from when? Go ahead. I'm sorry, four to six weeks from when? Four to six weeks from, well, essentially right now, when we started taking orders.
    21:34
    Right, okay. So by the 13th of December, you'll know, I guess, how many parts you need to order for, certainly for the limited edition, and you'll get a good idea for the limited extra edition, but also you'll have a good idea of the number of parts in need for the arcade version as well.
    21:54
    Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you're bringing up a very important part that a lot of people in pinball forget is that when we run a business, we want to, of course, make a profit. That's what keeps us in business. And especially on a more limited run like Raza, as you brought up before and as I brought up before,
    22:10
    it becomes very difficult to understand what the order needs are. And when you have a wide range with vendors, I mean, there's some pretty expensive parts. I mean, you could have, you know, a part that could increase 100% to 200% depending upon, you know, 100% or 200% that you're ordering. And so from a business standpoint, being able the next four to six weeks to make sure that our QA and our machines are where they need to be and getting early customer feedback that have unboxed it, but also dealing with the business side of it behind the curtain, and making sure we're hitting our expenses and bond where we need it, and our pricing is right where we expected it to be. I mean, those are things that we have to still take into consideration.
    23:00
    Right, okay. As you mentioned earlier, your website launched earlier this week. on the website is the story of why you started Deep Root Pinball. Part of that, what I read was that you didn't grow up with pinball, you sort of discovered it through the pinball arcade and then bought a bunch of games, mostly Bally Williams titles from the golden decade of pinball being the late 80s to the late 90s. These are obviously favored by many, as by you. Does that mean that you're not that fond of what has been developed after that?
    23:55
    You know, that's a tough question because I like to judge each title and machine. on its own. And I think that there are some that have, you know, come out that have, you know, hit it out of the park and some that definitely haven't. For me, I mean, it's like your top ten list, right? My top ten list for anything from ice cream to favorite rock band or whatever is going to be different than yours. And it doesn't mean either one of us is wrong. It's just a different preference. And so when you come to pinball, you know, titles and games, There's a wide range and variety that I'm going to like that is my preference, right? So in my collection, I love the Williams Valley approach. And so when we started designing not only our platform, but also our game layouts, our role sets and stuff like that, And that simple but very, very fun and engaging Williams Valley kind of approach is what we started with. It doesn't mean that we always ended with something that was exactly like what you would see. I think code was pretty shallow back then, but still fun and engaging. And to be honest with you, I've never gotten to the Wizard or Super Modes or finished or beat any of my Williams Valley games or even close on some. So there's still a lot of challenge there. But we wanted to create those exciting moments, that interacting of the ball and the play field, that expected package from one title to another that you would get with Williams or Bally, etc.
    25:36
    Would you say that you think that some of the more modern games have over-complicated rules and are not necessarily accessible to most players? I mean, that is my... Look, I'm not a tournament player. I probably will never be a tournament player. Some of the things I see Steve, or even John Norris, do are just... I'm just in awe. Like, how is that possible, right? But I'm a decent player. And so I likely would not buy a title that has a rule set that I have to think about and actually learn. I like to walk up to a pinball machine, and I like to understand, you know, generally by looking at the inserts in the play field and, you know, the little card, what to do. And so I think a lot of the stuff that we put into the pin bar to help people kind of figure it out, how we're going back to the Williams Valley days of really using the play field arts and inserts to direct people what to do, I think those are important to me. I mean, you know, recently at West Springs, I've got a lot of, you know, more recent Stern games and stuff like that. And, you know, it's nice. I get on there, and I'm like, I don't know what to hit, and I don't want to go read a manual trying to figure out what to hit. You know, pinball, you should be able to walk up, and it should be inviting, right? And so what I've wanted to do with our Deep Root games is have that inviting feel. When you walk up to a Raza, you have a pretty good idea about what to hit very quickly. and then you could build from there over time as you're playing over and over and over again.
    27:18
    Right. So I did watch some of the video that is on the Deep Proof Symbol website. I must say I am impressed, I would say, with the use of the pin bar during gameplay where basically the ball is being trapped and tickets that have been earned during the game can be actually used to move along or benefit the player during gameplay at that time. That's something I don't think we've ever seen in pinball before, and I think the possibility of that could be used, especially in a home environment. So can you tell us a little bit more about the whole thought behind that process?
    28:12
    I don't know who came up with it and how you plan to further develop that. Yeah, so let me talk about the pin bar generally, and then I'll talk about why we've chosen certain directions we've chosen. So it's a great question. So when the iPhone came out, the world changed.
    28:34
    And all they really did, Apple really did, was put a Blake Havis touchscreen and took a bunch of other tech and just threw it in one, you know, simple, easy-to-use device.
    28:48
    And, you know, for the September show I was going to go through, or launch, I was going to go through a lot of, you know, statistics and other things about why we chose to put a touchscreen on a pinball machine, because if you do, you're stuck now, right? And you have to make it work right the first time. And so just like with, you know, our smartphones today, which we can't live without, and, you know, over half of web traffic is now mobile, and the amount of video on demand and other things consumed through a touchscreen device, whether it's an iPad or other tablet or whatever, phone, there's a reason for that. Touchscreens are all around us. They are complete blank canvas that allow us to interact with endless possibilities, infinite worlds, especially when you're talking about mobile gaming on a tablet or phone. And so adding that to a pinball machine is really difficult. The first is physical. Where do you put it, right? How does it look? Are you just going to lose just a little rinky-dinky screen like you see on some back bars of some pinball machines? Are you going to do something that's different?
    29:52
    Then it comes to the engineering. How do you get it on there? How do you keep it, you know, protected from breaking or cracking? How do you make sure that it's easily, you know, serviceable? And then you get to, I think, your question is what's sort of the user experience and user interface going to look like, the UX and UI? And we spent years poring over UX, UI concepts to really try to get something that makes sense for pinball that adds to the experience and allows for infinite possibilities, things that people who play pinball have really never thought of before, but once they start using them, they're like, oh, wow, this is awesome, right? This allows me now to do this or do this. Now the rule set can offer new ways to do things, or we can change that virtual button very quickly and easily to not do a magnet save. Maybe it's a diverter, or maybe it flips, you know, some other component to interact with the ball, you know. So there's a lot more possibilities that happen, you know, with the pin bar there. So we chose the ultra-wide screen pin bar that matches the aspect ratio of the back bar so we can reuse video back and forth, which is an important component of our layout. We wanted just enough space there for just, you know, the edges of the palms to rest gently. and then we wanted to, the thumbs, which really are not being used during pinball much at all, to be able to touch things on the screen.
    31:24
    Then we have our layout, and our layout allows on the left side, it's a five-panel layout, but you don't have to have all the panels up. So it can be a very neat, clean interface, or you can muddy it up with all the windows that you want. So you have your settings very quickly on the left. Then you have a shot log. Then you have a copy of your main screen, but you can touch it on and off. It gives you basic information like your X multiplier or the number of balls you have or other information. Then to the right of that, you have a what's next deck to try to steer you to do things on the play fields, especially if you don't know what to do next. And then on the very right, you have your virtual button, which is easily clicked by a thumb without even looking at the pin bar. so you can keep your attention where it's supposed to be and that is on the play field. But it also allows you to look down very quickly, which is much easier to focus on your eyes than to look at the back screen or back bar and then back down. So we've tried to take all of this into consideration. So if someone wants to walk up and hit start, right, and play, they really don't even need to look at the pin bar again. They can completely ignore it. But if they're a power player or used to using the features on the pin bar, they can spend most of their time utilizing it during play. So we've tried to have the best of both worlds in creating a beautiful canvas to add all of these extra features and abilities into the pinball machine, but not distract and take away from what pinball really should be. And that's bashing a bunch of crap with the silver ball and having fun doing it. Great. I mean, when I saw the pinball for the first time, there were a whole bunch of possibilities left out of me, things you could do with it. Obviously, starting, adding players. I think you've implemented the vast majority of the things that came to mind for me. One thing which I haven't seen implemented there, and maybe that's something which is coming, or maybe you can talk about it, maybe you can't.
    33:33
    One of the major problems we've had at the moment is cash handling. you know these days everybody is using contactless payments nobody wants to put money in within coin slots nobody carries money around here anyway so i thought um do you have a like an nfc reader built into the pin bar so that people can just take their phone and swipe it or their card and swipe it on the pin bar and buy some credits that way and um is that if not is that something which you think could be added because um if i walk up to that machine i'm gonna i'm gonna go i haven't got any quarters, how am I going to play this game? Do I need to download an app? Obviously you have an app. We'll come to that later. Or to buy credits? Or can I just use the same payment system I use with every other vendor in the world? Is that something which you could put in?
    34:27
    So, very interesting question, yes. We've already developed that behind the scenes, and we have lots of stuff that we've developed that we're not showing on Rasa, and hopefully it will come out with future titles and stuff. But the thing about on-location play, whether it's in like an arcade or a barcade or something like that, is that many times they already have their own technology to deal with payment credits. So there's nothing in our system that doesn't restrict those establishments from doing it how they're doing it, whether they charge a fee just to play or it's on free play or whether it's tokens or whatever. However, through the app, we will, and it's already, you know, been designed. It's just been left out of the code on the current app version for the PINXS app. But we do have the ability to actually pay through that for on-location situations if they wanted some other way to be able to generate revenue without using coins or without putting in an expensive and, you know, other type of system. In fact, IT group Turner Logic actually created a self-pay snack system called SnackDot before they started on Pinball.
    35:48
    And it's a very neat, very simple interface for like a work environment for to do it like an honor snack area. And so what you do is you basically just go up, you scan the barcode on the sign on your phone, You pick what you took and it either debits the credits that the employer put in your account or it charges you whatever the price is So it a very simple easy grab And so we already have that technology built into the system. So if a location provider wanted to request using that system from us, then anyone could go with their mobile phone using PIN access, scan the QR code on the pinball machine, and then they would be debited whatever the credit is, and it would go to the location or establishment. So that's already in there. The pin bar allows us a lot of interactivity with that to deal with those types of situations. So really, again, it's the blank canvas we need to do all of this future stuff that would really help.
    36:54
    Okay, so if people wanted to buy this game, at the moment. Is it only available through the DeepRoot Pinball website or do you have any distributors yet that people can order through?
    37:07
    So we originally had just under 50 distributors that were interested in DeepRoot. We basically have tried to stay in touch with all of them. Probably beginning of, well, the end of last week, definitely over the last few days, we've been working with a portion of those who have already started looking for customers. They signed the distribution agreement, which will be only for Rasa.
    37:43
    And so that process is ongoing. As we've told them, and we're not making it a secret at all, is that we really would like to see what the difference is between direct sales and working with distributors. Some customers like to have a local source for help, you know, or just put their YouTube. And we don't want to turn away those types of customers. But we also have a lot of other people that have no problem going to the website and directly buying from us. So we're trying to have, you know, our cake and eat it to the best of both worlds, however you want to look at it. And I think, you know, over the next few weeks with Raza, we're going to see, you know, what's working and what isn't working. and then we're going to keep adjusting to what customers, how they want to buy and get help for maintaining their machines.
    38:30
    And will people get their game earlier or later if they buy direct or through a distributor, or does it make no difference? There's no difference. Okay, so one question that comes to mind to me, one of the reasons the pinball industry uses a distributor network is because like you mentioned if there are technical issues if you bought a game online from a company in San Antonio and you're based in Seattle, Washington and you have a technical issue it would be far more easier for your local distributor to come by and fix your game than for someone from San Antonio to fly over to Seattle.
    39:21
    Well, I'm not saying to release a stuck ball, but in case you have a fried board or something like that, you know.
    39:30
    That's why the pinball industry uses local distributors. So if someone buys the game on the website and they have a technical issue, how is that going to be solved?
    39:44
    Yeah, that's a great question. So we would love to handle those issues directly from G3, whether we do some sort of a video chat to walk people through it or, you know, the documentation and videos that we're going to have and have already started on that will grow with time as we get more and more requests and we'll find what requests are pretty common and then throw them up. We use Zendesk on the Zendesk, you know, wiki or whatever.
    40:15
    So another point I want to make in your comment is that we have spent years trying to take my frustration in maintaining Williams-Bally machines and even how many other machines are made today and simplifying them. You won't find soldering done just about anywhere on the pinball machine. Almost everything can be either used or removed or maintained using typical tools that any person would have at home.
    40:48
    And with Molex connectors, you know, I'm just trying to go through the gamut of things. Things that people could do on their own or if they're walk-through, you know, over the phone or a video chat could do pretty easily and replaced. Some things are going to be harder to get done than others just because that's how pinball machines are built. But we've tried to make most of the simpler things like changing a board out, changing an insert lead board, changing rings, fiddling with something, adding a mod on the play field, changing a mech out on the underside. Those types of things we've tried to make as easy as possible for people to do on their own or with a small amount of assistance. It's taken a lot of time and money for us to simplify a lot of that, to make it more consumer-oriented rather than, you know, some guy who works for a local establishment who knows how to, you know, do everything with a pinball machine. so it was a very different approach in how we approach support Okay, well we spent quite a lot of time talking about how the game is going to be how people will be able to buy it but one question which comes up every time we ask any questions about Deep Red Pinball and Razor in particular is where and how is this game actually going to be made because that's one thing you showed us an awful lot from behind the scenes but one thing you haven't shown us is any manufacturing facilities, and people are questioning how and where and who is going to make this game. So is there anything you can tell us about that?
    42:36
    Yeah, so we're in San Antonio, Texas. That is where the manufacturing facility is. And, you know, the six guests who were here back in September saw the areas that were partially set up but not fully making any gains at that point when they came in September.
    42:59
    That sense has changed. So we have places, like every other manufacturing company, we have a place for inventory and prep work and packages that will be given to the quads. We have a place to create the cabinet and populate it, a place in the quads for the assembly of the play fields. and then we have the mirroring and the shipping and receiving. So all of those same areas that any other manufacturer would have in pinball we have.
    43:32
    The quads themselves are very different in how we get the playfields populated, but the rest of the areas are pretty similar. We've decided not to show pictures, especially of what we're doing. those are things that I know as much as people have laughed about quads it's a trade secret and we don't want to let out all the different unique things that we've innovated in how to get these pinball machines together and QA stuff and so we haven't shown that we were not planning to show it when the six guests came here other than them seeing it and being able to describe it so you know, that's basically we're doing the same thing that I've been talking about for years and we've been designing for years in a natural format, you know, using Kanban systems and every other, you know, manufacturing process that every other manufacturer uses. So, that's very interesting because obviously there was a lot of speculation about whether you'd be making it in-house, whether you'd be contract manufacturing it, whether you would have a separate facility because obviously Deeproot has, you know, various facilities. We have Deep Root Studios in Utah and we have other places where various assets can be made. But it's all happening in the same design building where the rest of the work is going on, is it? Yeah, absolutely. So there's actually two separate buildings. One is more of what we call dirty space. That's more heavy manufacturing. That's T&C, laser, sanding, spraying, all that kind of stuff. And then we have more of the light manufacturing and assembly in the main building here.
    45:23
    Right. And you're manufacturing the cabinets and play fields yourself? We have vendors for some of it, of course, stuff that we're not doing in-house. And there are portions of it we do in-house. And the reason is, honestly, it has little to do with cost and everything to do with quality and control over the process.
    45:46
    Right. Okay. One of the terms you coined, I would say, and that was probably already over a year ago, was the terminology of octo-manufacturing. People have been wondering what that is. And can you... So optomanufacturing was a joke I did in an interview as if we were taking quad manufacturing and we're going to make it even better.
    46:16
    So I'm glad people are still taking it as a joke. But quad manufacturing is, as I said before, is basically just a flex space. We can take a quad, that is where we assemble the plate build, and we can move it anywhere. You know, we could choose air tools, power tools. We can choose electrical power tools or, you know, battery-powered tools. All we need is a defined space, which I'm not going to talk about what that space dimension is, and the components, and we can throttle quads as many or as few as we need, depending upon, you know, our volume and orders. You know, if we have a large set of orders and we need to throttle it, we can take another space, fill it with quads in a day or two, each, you know, just costing, you know, $1,500 to $2,000 each, and we can start popping out, you know, playfield assemblies. So it's that agile and flexible manufacturing to reduce waste but be able to throttle volume with the same amount of quality. That's what we're going for with a quad. Okay. Thanks for sharing. So when you actually do start manufacturing, you say hopefully four to six weeks after orders have closed and you're in a better position to know numbers of parts, are you going to start making both the models, the arcade and the extra, at the same time, or is one getting made first before the other?
    47:54
    Great question. And so what we've tried to do, and this is why I think we've been more transparent than any other pinball manufacturer in how we're going to deal with Raza orders. Future games, probably very different, but for Raza, we want to make sure that our first title out is done right and that we avoid a lot of situations and technical issues as it leads. So we have a very simple system. We prioritize full payment over deposits. we prioritize the extra over the arcade edition. And right now, because CE labs are so backlogged, and that is why our international orders are basically expected to be after all the domestic, and I include U.S. and Canada domestic. And that's just because the problem with CE, while it's pretty much universal around the world and that the core CE requirements are there for all different countries from the EU to UK to Asia to Australia, et cetera. Each of those countries, even in the EU, have their own specific requirements for electronic devices being sold or used by consumers there. And so what typically you have to do is you have to look at sort of the country or region that has the strictest requirements for CE and then build to that and get tested and certified for that, then everything else just kind of falls in, you know, in most cases, but not all. So UL has definitely been an eye-opener in what it's taken to get UL done and get the entire machine UL certified rather than just, you know, going off the UL of the power supply, which I know is done, but we want the whole machine done and certified. And so UL took us a while to get in line and queue and, you know, into, you know, the labs. And C is, from the last I heard, is pretty backlogged right now for the types of tests that we need. So we know that's going to take a little time. And so we want to be very honest with international customers and say, hey, look, we're not putting you to the back of the line on purpose. We're putting you to the back of the line because we want to fulfill the legal requirements we need to make sure that what we deliver you is what's expected by the law and your jurisdiction.
    50:17
    Right. And the hardware system, the computer and the electrical system that you're using in Rasa, is that the same system that you intend to use over the next batch of titles which you've announced, or is that something which is going to vary according to the features and demands of each title? I have a question. I'm going to separate them. So the computer itself, we're using basically, you know, similar to what several other manufacturers are using to drive, you know, multiple high-res screens to run the Unity game engine, which a lot of our front ends is running. It needs more power than, you know, basic, you know, single processor boards, right, or development, you know, Raspberry Pi and all that. So we have, I don't know if it's a mini or micro ATX board with a normal processor or graphics card and all that. That can be throttled. If some games are going to need more power in the Unity engine, then we can throttle that. But the actual electrical system itself, that's our unique and custom-made power supplies, driving of the rails, you know, that are needed for all the components, the boards, the electrical system for the solenoids, lamps, switches, motors, all of that. All of that is pretty much set for a five- to seven-year period. Right. Okay.
    51:51
    So since you mentioned the graphics in the game and how they're being controlled, And that sort of makes me jump to Deepwood Studios in Utah.
    52:11
    Can you explain how Deepwood Studios is related to Deepwood Pinball and how they interact with each other and what the thought behind those two different companies is and having them collaborate? Great.
    52:31
    So there's endless amounts of studios out there that do art and animation. The problem is pinball is very unique in the development of art and animation.
    52:42
    From the art side, a lot of it is driven between, you know, 2D prints on, you know, printed media versus being able to do either 2D or 3D work for the actual animation. And the problem we were having is getting studios to understand the unique requirements of pinball on what type of screen it would be, what the interaction would be, and what the deliverables would have to be. And so not only that, it was very expensive. But definitely studios charge a crazy amount of overhead whenever you contract with them. And so it just became very clear, as we already had a lot of people who were very good artists and animators in Utah area, it just made sense to create just our own studio. And that studio has taken on different, you know, projects and directions over the years that it's been open. And the core of it has always been pinball. And so not only do we have 2D work, and Raza is very unique because a lot of the basis for the artwork came from Matt and Jeremy. So we didn't create any of that, you know, the impetus for it. We just had to take what was already given to us and then create the rest of it around that. So that's why, you know, Jeremy got upset with me when I called Raza artwork sort of a hack job. I wasn't talking about his work. His work is great. What I was talking about is us getting the rest of the artwork for Raza finalized and getting the art and animation built out is a hack job because it's really taking some that he did, some that Mac did, stuff that we've done and trying to get it together into one cohesive art and animation package. And I think we've done a great job at the end of the day. If I didn't tell you that, you probably wouldn't have even guessed. But it is what it is. Now, all of our future titles, with the exception of maybe Magic Girl and Alice in Wonderland, all of the other titles have been done from scratch in-house. And so getting artists to understand, you know, what pinball enthusiasts expect in a printed art package and then working out two different pipelines in the studios, one for 2D work and one for 3D, it took a lot of time and it took a lot of money and it took a lot of effort to try to work through those pipelines, get them set up, understand what the final deliverables would be in a pinball package. And I think over the years, I'm glad that we set up the studios and I'm grateful for everyone who's been a part of the studios because it's been its own journey, right? And they should be very proud of the deliverables in Rasa. And as you see future titles come out, they should be very proud of the work they've done creating all of this from scratch and redefining sort of how art and animation are used in a pinball machine.
    55:57
    Right. Was the studio also involved in the development of the graphics for the pin bars sort of system menus and sort of the underlying operation of the game rather than the actual game-specific artwork? Yes. Or was that done? They did that? Mm-hmm. It was a mix. We have some creative people here in Texas, too. We had our Unity programmers in Utah for a long period of time, and it just wasn't working with trying to remotely collaborate. and so we have moved all the Unity development here with a lot of our creative and design.
    56:40
    Right, okay. I was going to ask you about how it was or how it was working across different buildings and different locations, but I think you just answered that one. Yeah, I'll just sum it up for you. It was a disaster. and it's something, you know, there's a lot of things you don't expect when you start, you know, a new business. And in our case, trying to collaborate remotely, well before the pandemic, of course,
    57:15
    proved to be a huge, huge obstacle. And we've had to be flexible and we've had to try things and we've had to continue working on collaborating from a distance.
    57:29
    And the one thing that we did have is that most of the people who come here, nearly all of them, have not been from the pinball world. And while that's a good thing in many ways because it brings fresh insights, it brings new approaches, it brings talent into pinball, right, that can be then used for pinball purposes, is one of the problems is that a lot of the things that pinball enthusiasts take for granted,
    57:59
    you know, people who are coming in don't. Like, I think trying to explain to them what a bonus sequence was, you know, at the end of a ball drain, trying to explain what that was and why it's there, I think was very surprising to a lot of people. You know, the game match at the very end after you drain your last ball was also, you know, a concept that was very foreign to a lot of them. And so we take for granted because we play a lot, we know these things, we were used to seeing these things and experiencing these things when we play. Actually designing on the other end of the table, it becomes a lot more difficult if you have a lot of people that have to learn organically what these simple concepts are for pinball enthusiasts. And, you know, we've had to deal with that, I think we've done a very good job of giving everyone who comes in a really good primer.
    58:52
    Great. Okay. Can we look at basically what's being offered for potential buyers at this precise moment, as far as the two models go?
    59:06
    Now, one of the things that I haven't, well, there's another question I need to ask about this, and I'm sure Jonathan does too. but one of the key ones I suppose is going to be are there any differences in the gameplay between the arcade and the extra models or is it more cosmetic and as to what toys are on the play field and how they operate and things like lighting and is the game itself the same for those two models?
    59:36
    So one of the decisions we made as a core constraint in our creative design was to make sure that no matter what edition that you got, that the gameplay would be the same. Having to create different branches of code, especially with our code being as complicated, the most complicated, I think, you know, of any pinball machine ever,
    60:00
    it would just be overwhelming, right? And especially when we start bringing in new rule sets and new ways to play and challenges and all those things, you know, in the years to come. we don't want to get into a situation where we just kill ourselves with code etc. So anyway, to answer your question, what we've tried to do with that constraint is create the same gameplay experience whether you're getting the arcade, the XC or the extra. The only difference will be perhaps additional features on next for the extra for instance, the extra for Raza has a shaking motor net, whereas the arcade has a stationary net. So that would be the only difference you would see in our additions is where we sort of add something that just enhances the gameplay but doesn't change the ruleset or the gameplay at all. Interacting with the ball. Just asking whether you have a topper or you don't have a topper.
    61:01
    Right. Now Goonies, I will say this, right now, and this could change, but Goonies will not have anything that's interacting with the ball, but the difference between the budget and the extra on Goonies will have the feature and very prominent mech will be different, but it's not anything that's interacting with the ball. And so I don't know how you really define, you know, gameplay differences, you know, between editions, But what we're trying to do is, whether you have the budget edition or whether you have the high-end edition, is to make sure that the rule set and the gameplay is the same. There might be some other mix or other features that might do something else to enhance it, make it a little nicer, a little bit more pizzazz, but the gameplay itself will not be different. Right. So I think we've just had official confirmation that Deepwood is working on Goonies. Can you also reveal who is the designer for that game?
    62:09
    The designer for Goonies? Yes Yeah, I'll split Okay, that's very interesting Obviously Barry is a veteran pinball designer So he should know his way around a theme like that If I really let Barry go, he could create a game a month I mean, the dude's a workhorse And so we've had to dial him back and basically focused more on building out and enhancing what he's done on a lot of these games. And he's been a real champ. He's gotten better and better at it.
    62:44
    And you have someone on the other end of the spectrum like John, John Papaduke, who basically has the core design pretty much and then keeps fiddling with it forever, right? Right. And so you have two very good designers that have their own unique take on pinball design, but they're at different ends of the spectrum as far as how they approach a final version of their design.
    63:10
    Right. So now, since you mentioned Goonies, one of the things that I was wondering about in September, when after you had these 60 IPs coming over and eventually that resulted in a postponing of the planned reveal of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland.
    63:35
    Days after that, numerous upcoming titles for Z-Food Pinball were announced. Many original teams, a hint towards what has been confirmed as Goonies. Why announce all these games up front? Because it might take a year before some of those, or even longer, even go into production. Why announce them now already? Because that's very uncommon in the pinball industry. I don't like how the pinball industry is so dysfunctional in so many things. I mean, why not have a list of what's coming up?
    64:22
    Not only is it transparent, you're definitely going to get a lot of customers who are going to be excited about it, looking forward to it. And perhaps in a lot of the discussion about some of these upcoming titles, Maybe some of that chat or discussion, you know, is good for us to throw an idea or two that we didn't think about but someone else did that would be fun in there. There's no problem with allowing organic collaboration on a lot of these designs. I'm not saying that would ever happen.
    64:54
    But for us, that was one reason that I had decided quite some time ago that I just was going to list out, you know, the first slate of games. There's a lot more games that we're working on that work has been done on that we did not announce, including licenses, which we kept just to really two main licenses. There are others, but we're not going to talk about them at this point.
    65:19
    There will be perhaps surprises, perhaps not. But most importantly, I'm sick and tired of people leaking stuff in the industry. I mean, nothing, nothing is sacred. I can't tell Zidler customers something without someone leaking it. I can't have six people come in here as guests without someone leaking it. And that I was able to go for years and have very few, if any, leaks from the company. I have to be, you know, consider myself very blessed. But the second we started sharing information, allowing other people from the pinball community in, leaks just can't stop. And so what I'm just going to do, what I wanted to do is get stuff out there so we get ahead of any leaks that happen from the six guests that came in, but also future leaks. A lot of our studios people have posted a lot of artwork and animation that they've done on their personal social media and stuff for some future titles. And so all of these things go to is I'd rather control the message and get it out there rather than having to continue to try to trust people and them letting me down over and over again. And I will say, not just me. There are a lot of people here in the company that have been very, very much let down and very frustrated with not only ex-employees but other people we've trusted that didn't keep that trust. It definitely affects the whole team, and it's a serious issue that we take very seriously here at DeepRoot.
    66:58
    Right. Would you say that that experience has somewhat soured you and the rest of your team on interacting too closely with social media people and the press? Or is that something that you just realize you're going to have to deal with in the future and just handle it, really?
    67:25
    Yeah, so it's a balance. and I think that there's some people that I've burned a bridge with or burned a bridge with me.
    67:35
    There have been others that have been very honorable, and we're going to continue to strike that balance because we want to try to bend over backwards to have good relationships with not only the pinball press but also consumers. but it's going to be a long time and a lot of healing before we allow anyone else very deep into what we're doing here at Deep Root again.
    68:07
    And that's just, unfortunately, there's a few bad actors, you know, in every industry that kind of run it for everyone, and that's one that we're just having to deal with that balance of getting people excited and sharing, you know, things, but also not sharing too much, which goes back to one of your questions about why we didn't, you know, have any, like, heads up. You know, hey, we're going to pop a website up here in a couple days, and orders are going to start, right? We're just going to act like any other company does in any other industry. We're just going to do our thing.
    68:36
    And we're going to crank out some great games and keep working from title to title and creating something new with each title.
    68:46
    Okay. Well, one of the things you have been very upfront about, and it's been a hot topic recently for several companies in the pinball industry, is the problems that have existed with playfield manufacturing and clear coating in particular. And you've been, it was a while back when you were last talking about the pin armour playfield protection. You haven't really given us much detail about that. Maybe that is a trade secret that you don't want to reveal any more about, but can you tell us anything about how it's different from the standard clear coat that other manufacturers use? and those other manufacturers, or some of them, certainly have suffered effects from pooling and delamination of the coat and the artwork in the past. Is that something which you're confident and can guarantee won't happen to your playfields with the pin armor protection?
    69:46
    So it's often difficult. Whether there's old wood or new wood or whatever, you strike something with a steel ball, it's probably going to leave a mark.
    70:00
    And that you have a lot of older machines that have resisted it, you know, and a lot of newer ones that haven't have to do with just process. And it's taken us years to work through that process. The process that we had for when the sixth guest came to Texas, I mean, I have not posted the hammer test video. No. mics in the future. But let me tell you what. Lauren sat there and was smacking it. And I had to take the hammer away from her because I thought she was going to hurt herself. But anyway, I hope Lauren lasted that. It was a funny experience as she was just smacking the you-know-what out of the plate over the hand and didn't leave a mark. The problem, I think that a lot, and I don't think it's a problem. Personally, it's a tradeoff, right? But the problem that a lot of the six guests didn't like is that there were some raised surfaces from some of the artwork, and it was a little bit more orange peel, not like it's been dimpled, but just kind of wavy. And they felt that, you know, they'd rather have a dimpled gloss surface than that, and I completely disagree. So what we've done over the last two and a half months or so is we've been able to get, you know, a much more glossy surface on the Pen Arbor. And, you know, people who are at What's Brewing and all of those pictures of those machines are using that updated coating. And it's a strong coating. it resists a lot of the things that have been plaguing other manufacturers or vendors and we're pretty happy about it. I mean I don't like buying a very expensive whatever and then suddenly something you expected to be part of that experience is no longer there. I mean if we bought a car and the wind started putting dents in the outside of the car, we'd be like, well, it's probably a manufacturing defect there, et cetera, you know? And so it one of those things just that we having to balance you know the cost of offering that standard with the aesthetics that pinball enthusiasts kind of want And I think there will be differing opinions from different people with actually getting it out in homes and letting people see the sheer amount of work that went into getting that beautiful surface the way it was. right so it's something which you could carry on working on if you had forever really is it to try and find the the ideal combination of smooth surface and and hardness yeah i mean i i think the aesthetics of it is difficult because i think that um pinball machines uh especially you know this decade uh or should i say last decade and continuing into this decade The surface sheen has gotten more glossy. The problem is when you get glossy, it shows everything. There's no hiding anything, really.
    73:18
    And that's why the dimple problem and maybe some of the other pooling problems are a lot more evident. If you had more of a controlled and aesthetically pleasing Warns Peel like what we had when we showed the success, I think that you'd have a lot more ability to still have a beautiful surface from, you know, where you normally stand rather than looking really close at it. And you'd be able to basically make it a lot stronger. So the problem is the sheen and the gloss. And so what we've tried to do with our recipe is try to have the gloss there, right? So it's almost indiscernible. but still try to keep the protection and the light reflection that's there to try to avoid any imperfections in that clear coating. Mm-hmm. I see.
    74:14
    Right. Jonathan's got another question he wants to ask. Yeah, but it's not related to clear coat. So I'm not sure whether... Can we close off that topic? then one of the other hot topics in pinball, and a never-ending topic it seems to be, is the status of code.
    74:35
    Can you indicate how far the software for Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland is finished, or when do you expect it to be finished? And I also noticed on the website that there is a subscription form to receive software updates after purchasing a game. Can you elaborate on that as well?
    75:03
    Yeah. So, you know, it's difficult to understand with some of the other manufacturers. That's who we're going to be compared to. So you have to have some comment about the comparison. and it's often difficult to understand what their versioning model is, right? When is something really final? And I know that a lot of them are still updating their code years later, right? And I'm not just talking about adding new things, but, you know, updating bug fixes and stuff like that. So what we want to do and what our goal has been for code is when the game ships with what we call final code, right, it is what it is. It's code that is intended, if we were to stop making any changes to the code, it's intended to be code that would last a user or take them through the whole game, right? Right. Now, we know that most people, you know, when they're playing their game, expect updates for bug fixes and perhaps some spilling out of the rule set with some additional modes and stuff like that, although that's included in the price of the game, right? for one year after the game is released or you purchase it, whichever is later. That's, I think, what pinball consumers are getting from other pinball manufacturers for the most part and what they expect, right?
    76:34
    When we talk about downloadable content or subscriptions and stuff like that, which I know are very taboo in pinball but are used very, very well and efficiently, and I think ethically in a lot of other gaming industries, what we're talking about is things that are beyond what you would normally expect with a pinball.
    76:56
    You know, more rule sets, right? Instead of the normal rule set that you bought it with, maybe Steve creates one where it's a time challenge, right? Or he creates a whole new rule set that switches up how you get multiballs and what you do when you hit certain switches or lanes or ramps or whatever. Those types of things, in addition to what we intend to be challenges where you can play against anyone else's rule set,
    77:21
    those types of things, perhaps additional media, those things are extra. And so it costs money, especially when we have a complex system like what we have. It costs a lot of money to develop that extra add-on content. And so what we've tried to do is create a very price-conscious value option for users. And as we get more Deep Root Games out there, it covers all Deep Root Games, not just a specific game, is to create a way for them to get all of this extra content at a value proposition that also makes sense for us in developing all that extra content. And so while there are going to be a lot of people that are going to be up in arms, most of them are never going to buy our games anyway.
    78:07
    or they haven't yet seen what we intend to offer, and until they do, they're just guessing about anything. So those are types of situations that we'll just deal with when we announce what the terms of the subscription or DLC is going to be, and we want to wait until there are several deeper machines out there so it's actually a value proposition that makes sense to a consumer. Right. It seems that one of the problems you have there then is that, not so much you, but a potential buyer of the game, would be, what is the game I'm buying? What is it going to be when it's completed? Is it going to include X, but not include Y, because Y is going to be an additional little bit of DLC I'm going to have to pay extra for? Or is that going to be included? You know, are you able to put in front of a buyer, this is the offer, this is the game, it's going to have all this stuff in it, and that's what we guarantee you'll get if you buy it now.
    79:16
    Yeah, so two responses. First, I would never want a consumer worried about having to download or buy extra content just to play their game. That's not what we're referring to. We're referring to optional, completely optional content that enhances the game. I mean, how many times have I played Circus Voltaire and I've never beaten it and probably haven't even gotten close, et cetera, over hundreds and hundreds of plays, right? But would it also be fun, even though I haven't beaten it, to go on and play Circus Voltaire in a completely different way, using the same, you know, fixed physical play field? Yeah, I'd probably pay money for that. And I know for Circus World Tour, that's why I'm bringing it up, is, you know, some home ROMs were released years ago that allow you to change up some of the rules. And so what I'm saying is because software is more dynamic, it can be updated with our machine, you know, on demand or at a moment's notice. It doesn't make sense to continue to do what the pinball manufacturers continue to do, is they say, hey, you can only play this one way, and we're going to take years to really get you full code,
    80:31
    and not that you ever wanted full code, and you know what? It sucks to be you. And so we think that there's a completely different way to approach this, and while it isn't even known yet, I think that people are up in arms, and over time I think it will become a lot more clear.
    80:50
    And I think the way I described it to Steve There's a second way to answer this. When he was designing the rule set, it's probably the best way I'll describe it here. And that is to say, look, 99% of users should not be able to finish the rule set we ship with. Right?
    81:09
    And that's sort of, you know, while it's definitely not objective, it's more of a subjective standard,
    81:18
    it's really what our goal is. if 80, 90, 95, 99% of players couldn't get through a rule set when we launch, then I think it's a win.
    81:30
    And over a year after each of these titles come out and we continue to add more modes at no cost to users, I think that's a fair bargain, especially at the prices that we're offering for much better interactivity and software and code and content with our machine than really what we feel any other pinball machine. So definitely this is a point of competition. There might be some other competitors that use that to their advantage to basically say, hey, we're not like DeepRoot and not going to make you pay for more content. Well, that's deceptive, right?
    82:04
    And if they want to take on that extra content and those expenses that it's going to take to develop that content out of their original purchase price, then that's their business decision. we felt that we wanted to have a cost sharing with our consumers where not everyone wants the optional, you know, extra stuff and wants to pay extra for it. And so what we've tried to do is take that balanced approach and say, hey, look, here's what you get with every other pinball machine from every other competitor. We're going to provide that the same. But we're going to do something additional. We're going to create some additional content for those who want it, and that content is going to enhance the gameplay for years to come. And so that optional and enhanced proposition is sort of how we're looking at a subscription and or DLC kind of approach. Okay. The natural kind of extension to that would be what happens if I buy your game and I think, oh, I think I could write a better rule set for this. So I come to you and say I would like to be able to write my own rules and for them to be able to be downloaded and sold. as DLC.
    83:17
    Is that possible? Are you going to open this up to third parties to develop for your games, or is it strictly in-house only?
    83:26
    So all of our tools could be used by any third party. We spend a lot of time making our core game engine and creating GUIs and other easy ways to create these rule sets.
    83:40
    And so the answer is yes, but I don't want to talk about that because I don't want to tip our hat to what we're going to be offering in the future regarding that. Right. And if you allow me to chime in on this subject, there's a subscription model that would include certain software updates. What if a year from now somebody has decided to sell their Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland game to someone else? the original buyer never had a subscription model, so he missed out on all the other stuff, but the new owner of the game is like, oh, yeah, sure. Does that mean that once he gets a subscription, he can download everything that has been developed in the meantime and then cancel the subscription because he's got all the updates that he wants and that's it? Or how does it work for someone who buys a used Deep Root game to dive into that pool of extra software if it's not already on that game?
    84:50
    So that's a very good question. The first thing I would say basically is that our policy, which comes directly from legal counsel, and it's like this for most electronics products you buy with code with it, is that our support and our warranty only applies to the original purchaser. It does not apply to any other party that the game is later resold to. The second thing I would say is that, of course, every company has dealt with customer service scenarios like this on a regular basis. and we, like every other company, want to make sure that we treat each case on a case-by-case basis to make sure that we try to take care of the people, whether they gave us the original money or not, for the game. The next thing is, more directly to your question, is I don't know if I or anyone else here has basically decided with any definity whether or not we're going to extend beyond a year when we get to a year from Raza development or whether someone who buys the game and the person who originally owned it didn't upgrade with all the code and stuff, whether we're going to continue to allow that to be downloaded, the last version that ended at that year whenever we stop the development. I would say that it would be very easy for us to do that. I mean, there's no reason for us not to do it. The money that's been spent on that has already been spent. The purchase has already been made. So allowing the last final code after we stop development, whether it's a year or a year and a half or whatever it is, for anyone to download that has the game, it doesn't cost us anything. So while I haven't put it in writing and I haven't created a policy, a keeper, there's no reason why we wouldn't allow that to happen because there's no cost, really, for us providing final code when it comes to the final version of code at the end of development for any particular game. One of the big problems is that while the platform is the same, maintaining a very, very complex set of branches of code is very difficult. And the longer you go from a game, it's going to be a lot more costly for developers here to go back and get re-educated or familiar with that code again. And so it's that much more if I have someone say, hey, look, three years from Rasa, hey, guys, go back and add a couple things or fix these things in the code. It doesn't make a lot of financial sense for the company to do that because it's going to cost tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars to really go back, relearn the code without breaking something, and to update stuff. So at some point, there's going to be an end of life, as there is for every hardware and software out there. there's going to be some in-the-life point that we're going to start development on each title, especially as we get more and more and more titles and our code becomes that much more complex.
    88:12
    Yeah, makes sense. Now, all this code update, of course, relies on having Internet connectivity in order to download it, along with it under the DLC.
    88:24
    Now, you all touched a little bit about the wireless connectivity of your games. It's a PC-based system, but you say it's running with a dual Wi-Fi internet-enabled PIN OS. What's the dual Wi-Fi bit about? And also, tell us about this worldwide omni-channel access, which you've been promoting, but I haven't really heard anything much about it other than the fact it allows you to access games when they are in an off state, a boggled, I assume you mean standby state. Can you tell us about the wireless access to your games?
    89:00
    Yeah, so we have double or dual or triple dongle access. And the reason is, believe me, it was very difficult to try to understand if we're going to throw Wi-Fi or Internet connectivity onto a machine, then we have to think through all the scenarios that a user or a machine would be in order to allow it to happen. And it's not as easy as one would think. It's actually quite complicated. And we ran into a lot of issues in implementing them. That's why you haven't seen a lot of Internet connectivity amongst other manufacturers for many years after it was potentially available. It's not just a plug-and-play kind of situation. and so now that we have the pin bar and we can deal with Wi-Fi and other connection issues with the touchscreen, the problem became getting a streamless and very efficient customer user experience and then trying to figure out what's going to happen when the machine is connected. If the machine is not connected, does the person using a pin access app with a phone that's connected to Wi-Fi or the Internet or not? All of those different combinations were very complicated to kind of go through. So to answer your question about the dual Wi-Fi dongle, what we found is that the user experience for a single Wi-Fi dongle was very poor. There was a lot of waiting for the connecting, especially if the machine wasn't connected to the Internet through the phone app and stuff like that, trying to get data back to force. So what we found is the easiest way is just to have two Wi-Fi dongles. It doesn't cost us a lot more to do that. Some of the machines have three, and there's a specific technological reason for that. I'm not going to disclose.
    91:03
    That helps increase the ability for the user to log in or for the machine to update or do anything that requires Internet connectivity. As far as your second question, and really that's, you know, fancy, you know, marketing slang versus reality. And what we're trying to convey is very simple, is that no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have a machine connected to the Internet or you have a phone that's connected to the Internet, you can not only load your preferences on the machine, but you're able to save your scores and participate in the pin access, you know, deep roots pin access community. And so that's what we mean by that. And really, that's it. You know, if the machine isn't connected to the Internet and you don't have a phone with pin access on it connected to the Internet, then you're just playing pinball the normal way, right? You're not going to be able to save your score, and you're not going to be able to save your or look through your game log, shot log or whatever, and you're not going to be able to update your machine. So it's really up to each consumer or operator that buys these machines, how they want their machine set up and what they want to allow. And we want to make sure that they can make the most out of it that they choose to. And the game would normally be permanently powered, would it? And when you turn it off, you don't turn it off. You put it into sleep mode. But it's in such a state that it can wake up and update itself overnight or at an appropriate time.
    92:37
    Yeah, so you have a couple options. First, you can turn on and off your machines. Since it is a micro or mini, whatever it is, ATX with a normal processor, you want to be careful, just like you are with any computer, not to cycle something as quick as you would an old, like, Williams Valley game that was solid state.
    92:56
    So that's, of course, the first thing there. The second thing is that, you know, as you're basically going through the process of setting up your machine and maintaining your machine, you have the options to decide when do you want it to sleep, if you want it to keep it on. And, you know, many of our games are just left running. You know, from time to time, the fan noise does. You can start hearing a little bit as, you know, heat might build up in there. and, you know, as much as we deal with, you know, heat channeling and stuff, heat's still going to build up. There's a lot of components and a lot of things generating heat there. And so it might cycle on or off. So that would be the only downside to kind of leaving it on is you might hear just a slight hum, just like you would with any other computer, right? If you leave it on for a long time and there's some heat buildup there. But otherwise, there's really, it's up to them, the user, whether they turn it off manually with the on-off switch or they just leave it on and it goes to sleep after a while.
    94:00
    Right. Okay. And just one thing you mentioned there about the PIN access app. Everything I've seen so far indicated it was an iOS-only app. Is that correct, or is there an Android version as well? So it's iOS-only, and that's because of the direction we wanted to take at first in discussing with Turner Logic, the team that designed and built it out. We want to make sure that before we start spending a lot of money, and I know people are going to be yelling at their phones or whatever they're listening to, hey, there's lots of software packages that do both at the same time, and we know. But we decided to stick with one at first to make sure everything went very smoothly, and then eventually we'll get a Google or Google Play or whatever it is package out. I can't tell you when. It's basically just going to have to come with priority down the road.
    95:01
    It seems odd to bring it out on the second most popular OS rather than the most popular OS. I think at the end of the day, the team has definitely done a lot of iOS apps And so it was a situation of using developers that were much more comfortable one way than the other.
    95:23
    But at the end of the day, it's what we chose to do. And, you know, we completely understand there might be some other options that people will need. And we'll work on them when we get the highest priority stuff kind of moved down the list. Okay. Right. So, speaking of things down the road, in September you announced a number of titles, upcoming titles for Deep Root. Can you already announce which is coming, what titles we can expect right after Retro Atomic, some of the adventure land? then I know a lot of people are looking forward to Goonies I believe it's the 35th anniversary is in June sometime so it would be really nice to be able to get Goonies out around or before next June and so that would be kind of cool but we'll see how things go It appears to me, maybe it was just on my side, but it appeared to me that you were dropping away for... We lost you. We lost you for a second, so I... Oh, I'm sorry. I missed the first part of your answer, so...
    96:50
    Yeah, we came back to the... The blue truck is next. Ah, okay. And since Raza has a limited time frame, Does that mean that's going to be announced already in January, or that ordering for Food Truck starts in January, or is that yet to be decided on?
    97:15
    I don't know when Food Truck will be announced. It really depends on our load for orders for Rasa. and while most of the animations and the play field, et cetera, are pretty final for Food Truck and the art is pretty final, there's definitely some small things that we want to touch up and complete and get the Unity work finalized before we're ready to start building the finals that we want to show off. So there's going to be some time there to get that done. and right now our goal is to focus on Rasa. We want to get these Rasa's out as quick as possible and we want to get the line efficient, up and running, throwing out quality stuff the first time and not having to deal with a lot of QA issues. So that's our goal right now. Food truck will come when food truck comes and we'll be sure to let everyone know. Okay. Okay, thanks. And going back to Rasa, as opposed to we are, on the website as you said you can customize your game quite extensively if it's the arcade version if you buy the extra with all the bells and whistles already in it then there's not a lot of customization to be done other than how it is shipped pretty much but on the arcade version there are a lot of options which you can add not all of which are explained as to exactly what they are and how they what effect they have on the game I'll go through a few of those with you now. One of them, for instance, would be, it says that there is GI lighting as available as an option. Now, GI lighting is kind of something that people take for granted as being part of the game. So is this regular pay-for-the-lighting, or is it some additional LED strips, sort of like the pin stadium system or something similar, which people would buy? Yeah, it's the latter. So definitely Penn Stadium offers some good products, so we don't want to get into a naming match. And I think we just called it GI lighting or general illumination in a very generic sense, but I can understand the point you're making, as GI typically is lighting on the top of the plate field as well. Yeah, with the spring shorts. It sounds like we do need a little description there, and I'll get IT and see if they can throw something on there. That's a pretty good point. But really, it's the three-sided overhead LED lights that attach to the glass frame. Right. Yeah, okay, that's good. The standard pin-kicked care package, what does that give a buyer?
    100:02
    What's actually included in that standard care package? Yeah, this is a really good point as well. In all the iterations and revisions of the website, especially in the last few weeks, some things kind of unfortunately get left out of translation, and some of the tool tips here definitely didn't make it. So the standard pen kit care packages, we basically give a couple of the components directly to consumers, as well as, you know, some cleaners and stuff like that. So, like, you know, a couple lead chips, some wiring and stuff like that, things that would likely, you know, wear out over time. Right, okay. where we're out quickly, basically are in that package. And as a part of the purchase price, they can just get a, you know, they basically get what it is. So it's basically a discount off of, you know, wear and tear items would be the best way to kind of explain that. Gotcha. Okay. And then you have two sort of extensions, which you can buy. You can buy an enhanced support and an extended warranty. Now, again, how extended and how enhanced are those? What does the enhanced support give you that you don't get as standard? And how extended is the warranty?
    101:25
    Yeah, so basically it depends on whether you're U.S. or whether you're international. And actually when you go through the checkout process, this is all explained during the checkout process itself. and it was basically a decision from legal not to place it directly on the website outside of the checkout process. So we'll see if we get any questions or not, but when you go through the checkout process, it is listed out.
    101:53
    And basically the difference is enhanced support basically is more or less of a priority queue in getting things done and it provides video support for the life of your machine rather than just for a period of time with the standard one. Right. I see. And is this all going to be exactly the same if you buy it through a dealer or if you buy it direct?
    102:22
    So if you buy it through a dealer, there's really no difference in the price. So if a dealer is offering anything, then they're offering it for whatever commission or just to keep the customer well. So, again, most of our support and warranty stuff is meant for us, Deep Root, to be dealing with a lot of these issues and support requests. And so that's why we've offered these two packages. Look, if a customer buys something, buys a package, and then later doesn't feel like they need it anymore, we're going to work with that customer. If a customer buys a machine, they realize that later, hey, you know what, you know, support or warranty package probably would have been nice. We're going to work with that customer, et cetera. So, you know, it's one of those things like every company has to deal with, you know, these very unique things that happen where, you know, buyers, you know, the buyer at the point of sale might have a different situation or expectation down the road. And those are customer service opportunities for us to work with those customers to make sure that they're taken care of. Great. Okay. One final question about something which is an option which can be purchased with both models, I think, is the pin bar screen protector. Now, what is that, and why would people want to add that to their game? So that's basically just, I mean, it's exactly, almost exactly what you would put on, you know, your iPhone or your Google phone or your tablet to basically provide extra impact protection. Right. And so, you know, we've, and it didn't make the cut, but we have taken our pin bar screen and we've taken one of our glass bottles here filled with some water and, you know, hit it with it. And, you know, that's what, you know, touchscreen glass is typically meant for is direct impact. Now, it's not impact proof. You hit it hard enough with anything, you're going to crack it. But what we've tried to do with basically the overlay there is provide, if someone is really interested in getting extra protection, is provide that. Because you can't just go to, like, you know, any company that sells these and get the right size and stuff like that. It's going to have to be a custom order that we're going to have to make.
    104:48
    And to be honest with you, I don't think we've actually made the order yet because we're still trying to figure out which vendor we want to go through to actually cut these. There's two types. There's ones that use the water width, and then there's ones that are basically static, just like what you would have with any other smartphone or tablet. And so we haven't really decided yet. We have prices, so we know what pricing is probably going to be. but we haven't decided on the vendor yet, but I'm hoping we're going to get it done here very quickly, as when orders start shipping, we want to be able to put that on at factory so it's there when it gets to the customer.
    105:29
    Okay, thanks for that. I have one other question, if I might just cut in. On the extra model, you've got the two additional mid-range speakers on the front of the cabinet. Now, do these provide additional surround sound type effects which you don't get on the 2.1 arcade model? And if so, do you have different sound mixes for those two models? Does it handle the sounds differently? Or is it more as an extension of what's provided on the back box speakers?
    106:02
    So for Rasa, it will probably be an additional add-on. I'm not saying additional cost, but additional add-on later on. For future games, it will likely be built in. There will be a microphone basically built in to the machine, and that microphone is detecting the ambient noise in the room. Most people play in a noisy, loud environment and don't wear headphones. And so the goal of those speakers that use the body as a natural channel or sound is to mix more of the SFX, which pinball users don't realize how much they use to understand what's going on in the play field, right?
    106:45
    As in the business and all of that, and the dings. So the mixing for that that David's done a great job on, David Teel, we'll throttle that in a very loud environment, more through those speakers to get that to the ears, and then throttle more of the music to the front-rearing speakers that usually gets lost in the dissonance. I mean, even at my house, you know, you get more than two pinball machines on in my game room, and it starts to get pretty dissonant and loud really quick, let alone going, as all of us have done, going to an event and hearing what happens at an event. You can basically, unless it's cranked up all the way, you can barely hear anything. And a lot of people at Vince don't want to carry around Bluetooth headphones and all that or jack headphones to deal with it. So what we tried to do is create a balance, right? Look, if there's nothing close to the ear, like a headphone or AirPods or something like that, to hear the sound, what we tried to do is get more sound directly to the user using those bottom speakers. Now, there's directional speakers on the market. The problem is the quality of the sound. And so over the years to come, as those directional speakers become better and better in quality and come down in price, those are obviously going to be the next upgrade in audio for pinball machines. But right now those two speakers up speakers using the body are the best that we have to really create a much more rich audio experience in loud environments Right Okay Obviously you don want it too directional because you could well have people standing around the machine wanting to hear what going on in it as well who are spectating and not actually playing at the time, so they won't be able to hear the sounds. Right. So, if I may jump on that for just a brief second. since your game is already has Wi-Fi connectivity and Bluetooth connectivity and what have you if you want the at a show the player to have a good audio experience would it not be possible for them to sort of through Bluetooth connect their phone to the game so that they can listen to their own on their own phone and their ear set to the audio of the game. Would that be possible, or is that just an idea that I come up with and that you have to look into?
    109:26
    It is a feature not turned on, and one of the biggest problems is it's a hardware and software issue in how we've dealt with the mixing of the sound, and getting that mixed to the one Bluetooth channel or one jack channel proved to be, through experimentation, a difficult thing to do when it sounds like it would be really easy. So that feature has been turned off for now.
    109:56
    It might be turned on in the future. I think the goal that we have is people who want to use headphones and stuff like that, while they are important, it isn't the priority that we wanted to highlight in our platform. Okay. That makes sense. We already talked about some of the upcoming games. What I actually want to address is many of the upcoming games are original themes for which you are creating the intellectual property, all the characters and such. Are there plans to do more with those characters other than use them on the pinball machine? Yes. Can you elaborate on that? I think that Quinn and a lot of the other creatives here and myself have tried to create worlds on their own. I mean, the great thing about buying the license is someone else has created that world for you, right? Right. And you connected with that world or those characters, and you want to experience that world of characters with pinball. though I can tell you how many times I'm disappointed every time I play a licensed game that I'm not able to connect with the world or characters the way I would have done it. And so it becomes more of a frustrating situation, right? You're basically playing someone else's interpretation.
    111:23
    And so that's what I love about the Williams Valley, who took a lot of the creative license on a lot of licensed things and made it their own narrative. Now, we're even going beyond that. We're creating our own worlds and our own characters, our own narratives ourselves. And while they might not be beloved by everyone through a movie, for instance, or, you know, a band, we're basically creating the worlds ourselves no differently. And so the ability to create TV shows, in fact, we had a TV show, we had several episodes of a TV show for Rosamate that was basically, you know, thrown on the editing floor. and I don't know if it will ever see the light of day, but things like Yukon Yeti would easily make an animated short down the road.
    112:13
    So there are cross-branding opportunities that we would have. I believe Food Truck at one point was made into like a board game. So all of these things that we've done over the years as we've been working on all of these projects and these narratives, you're just seeing basically the pinball version of that but in the future, yeah, if it makes sense to bring out some of these cross-branded things that we've been working on, then great but if it doesn't, then it was fun that we had internally doing something different with these beautiful worlds and narratives and stuff like that Right, but just in theory, it could be that the characters from Food Truck end up in an animated show on Comedy Central or Cartoon Network or something like that if it catches on.
    113:09
    Sure. I mean, there's studios around the world that put out great content that's, you know, it's either, you know, you have your, you know, cult favorites and stuff like that. And so very few things make it big. most things that studios put out in the world the vast majority of it is put out no one ever really notices until some point where maybe it is noticed down the road and so for us to throw any of this out there to explore these characters or worlds wouldn't be a big deal even if they never catch on, right? Right.
    113:45
    We're not Disney. Disney, anything they put out just about makes a billion dollars, right? But there's a lot of other great content out there that isn't worth as much. It's still great content that's put out by studios. You put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into a story or characters that they love, and it just becomes more and more content out there that people sit through and it connects with some people and some people it doesn't connect with.
    114:14
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this was always the intention, wasn't it, when you started Deep Root Studios, that they would be able to produce or create all these brands, characters, worlds, and then market them in various different ways, pinball being one of them, TV series, cartoons, board games, any other type of outlet that they could attach it to. That's what I read about, yeah. Right.
    114:43
    Now, getting back to how you got into pinball yourself, as I read on the Deep Root pinball website basically it started for you with the pinball arcade is there a chance of Deep Root going sort of full circle that Deep Root games would actually become virtual pinball games that you can play on your phone like the pinball arcade I would probably say no if we ever wanted to do that we would probably approach was it Zen Studios who does the pinball arcade to do it for us? It doesn't make any, I mean, the pipeline that you have to get together to do something like that and do it right is pretty costly. And it would not make a lot of sense for us, since we're not geared for that, to do it in-house.
    115:41
    And so if there were an opportunity to work with another partner who could much easier, and for reasonable cost take some of our licensed IT that we've created, our own licenses, and do something with it digitally, then we're all ears. But, you know, right now we're focused on what we started with and what we want to do for many years to come, and that is, you know, innovating and elevating the traditional pinball experience, you know, with our pinball, et cetera.
    116:17
    Okay. Can I just ask one more question about the hardware on Rasa? Because one of the things that stands out very obviously in the extra model, the illuminated side panels will really make the artwork pop. Now I was wondering, just from a curious technical point of view, how those are illuminated. Are they electro-luminescent panels, EL panels with the artwork on top, or are they sort of side-lit or edge-lit perspex or acrylic sheets with the artwork on? And how do they work?
    116:54
    You're talking about the backlit side panels on the extra, right? Yes, that's right, yes. So, you know, I don't know if I'm technologically, you know, know the slogan, et cetera, but they're just simple custom panels that you would use in an advertising cut to the dimensions that, you know, we wanted them for a pinball using side-lit leds.
    117:19
    So I don't know if that answers your question or not. It does. It absolutely does, yes. I was wondering whether they were edge-lit in the same way that LCD panels are, or whether they're using big, less-than-listened panels, which would be very exciting. I know that other pinball manufacturers have had their, you know, ways of doing it. But it is not easy to get a backlit side panel on there and engineer it so it's pretty rugged. It looks good and, you know, is usable. And so it took a lot of work. In fact, I had a lot of engineers internally asking me and begging me to not have this ready for Rasa and to give them more time with it. And, you know, I think we reached a compromise where we came up at the end of the day with a really good design still that's really rugged, and it's consistent and repeatable and durable and reliable. And so I have to call it a win, you know, because let me tell you what. There's a lot of things we got compliments on from, you know, what's brewing. But I can tell you the number one by far compliment was how the side panel makes the game pop. And pictures don't do it justice. You put this at, you know, a TPF or a Chicago Expo with a bunch of other games, it is definitely going to stand out. And it's going to light up the room. And that's what's going to make it amazing. Even if you have a lot of games pushed together in your basement or game room, et cetera, it's still going to be an eye-catcher.
    118:59
    Right. And these side panels, that's just the left and the right side. It's not around the front, around the coin door, correct? No. Trying to, because the coin door is an internal square, it got very complicated. trying to figure out how we were going to have the seam between the side and the front panel. What was that seam going to be? And then getting it evenly lit with that interior square. So we just were like, no, we're not going to do it. We're just going to do the side panels, make it look really good.
    119:34
    And that's what we've done. So the front is still vinyl around the coin door. Right. Okay. Now, since we're discussing sort of innovations in this case, on side art and so on.
    119:52
    The one thing that's definitely clear if you look at the videos on the Deep Roots Pinball website, you come across, when you started in this hobby and industry, you came across a lot of elements that are part of pinball that you figured could be innovated and which you actually did, resulting in a lot of hardware changes, I would say, to the pinball cabinets, the outside of the game. How much has the game itself been innovated compared to all the innovations that have been applied to the exterior, the cabinet, and so on?
    120:46
    Are you referring to the play field? Yeah, and gameplay and such. Yeah. So Raza was the person, and I know a lot of people are like, well, why did she leave the Goonies, right? I know that another podcaster kept asking me this in several interviews. And I basically tell them, go get your own pinball company, and then you can decide all the great marketing things that you want to do that are only right because you thought of them, right? and so look, Raza's the perfect game Raza's been out there for so long everyone knows what to expect with Raza it was the perfect first game for us to get our platform done to start building a good solid quality manufacturing line and for people to finally play a J-pop game that works, right? And that can work.
    121:48
    And so there was a lot of reasons, there were more reasons, good reasons, to put out Raza first than there were cons. And so while Raza is very unique, Raza was never meant to have a game-changing layout. Because at some point, you've seen all the layouts you're ever going to see, right? There's only so many ways you can interact with the ball, right? There's so many things that have happened over the decades and decades, you know, or perhaps a century of pinball. There's only so much you can do.
    122:22
    And so, as a result, Raza's not going to be a groundbreaking play field, as a lot of people have kind of complained about. There's a lot on it, believe me. There is a lot on it. If you don't think there's a lot on Raza, then maybe we should talk about what you think the bomb, you know, is really, because I can tell you, I know what the bomb is, and it's an expensive playoff versus most other pinball games out there, and there's a lot to shoot, there's a lot to hit. It is definitely not the easiest shooter in the world, but it's challenging, and that's what we want. We want someone to be challenged by a game we put out.
    122:58
    Every other game that we're going to put out after Raza, which we've designed and which really has not been shown publicly,
    123:07
    We've tried to make at least one thing, and sometimes there's more than one, but we've tried to make at least one thing that's on the play field that's either new or it's either a new technology, new way to interact with the ball, something that's never been put on a play field, something like that. And I can tell you that through all the games that we've announced, I could very easily, if I wanted to, and let's talk a year or so from now and we can review that, but each one has something new on it, right? Roz is something that's pretty much the core J-pop design that's been there from 2011 or 2012, wherever his first designs came up. So, unless you're not going to see as much innovation on the play field, even though there's a lot of innovation under the play field, et cetera. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you.
    124:11
    Although your main focus of sales is going to be North America, you will obviously want to be sending games to Europe as well. And I guess you're aware of this 25% tariff that's been imposed on pinball machines and parts from America to Europe. Do you think that's going to hit your sales there? And do you think that's going to change the focus of where you market your games more towards other parts of the world, including North America?
    124:46
    So I don't know the latest results. but just a little over 24 hours, maybe a little under 24 hours at the time we're doing this podcast from when we opened up orders, I believe that at least half of the orders are from the EU thus far.
    125:05
    And we've had a great response and showing there. And so it doesn't appear, at least with our orders thus far, one day in, that the EU tariff or duty or whatever it is has affected sales for us. Now, it might for others. The good news is, and after having my attorneys kind of pour over the language, it doesn't appear that it applies until the game is in transit. So as a result, since the international units will likely be toward the end or at the end of our run, there is a very good chance with, you know, depending on a new administration coming here in the U.S., that that tariff or duty might not be there at the time the games actually ship. So I don't know how – there's nothing anybody's going to be able to do. Look, it's, you know, it's a bunch of politicians, you know, just being cute, right? and at the end of the day, you know, we either elected them or they were elected from however they were elected. They chose what they were going to choose and we just have to follow along.
    126:19
    You know, pinball wasn't the only thing that had, you know, the duty or tariff slapped on it. So what we're going to do is we're going to abide by the law. We're going to try to do our best to take care of our customers. and if the duty or tariff is there, there's nothing we're going to be able to do for it about it because at this point, both of these RASA models are very aggressively priced.
    126:45
    And so there's not a lot of cream that we're going to be able to do for, unfortunately, those who live in the EU to try to compensate for a duty or a tariff. I wish there was, but it is what it is. Okay. That's interesting about the worldwide distribution of orders so far.
    127:09
    Right. So, Martin, did you have a question? No, I think all the things I wanted to ask you, really, I think you've answered or we've addressed very well. Thank you. Right. Yeah, no problem. I have to say I was very, well, impressed is not the word, but I figured I have to compliment you on the way that you are making it very easy to put a topper on top of a game with basically four screws and it just plugs in without having to worry about wiring and what have you. that's a very long overdue feature in Pitbull any chance that you'd patented that or is that like hey we came up with it and if everybody wants to use it go ahead so we had a long list of patents that you know on a lot of stuff that we've done and we kind of dialed that back over time to really focus on those things that makes most of these cars kind of controlled and so I can't really discuss that because of legal reasons. Sure. But, you know, look, we don't want, we want to enhance the community, you know, through our products and stuff and, you know, we try to not be overly legal in trying to, you know, lock up everything that we could possibly do just because no one else has or, you know, we were the first court or whatever. So we really tried to pick and choose to the core things that we're bringing to the table, and those are the things we're going to focus on, you know, patent filings.
    128:56
    Okay. I suppose I probably have one final question that I'd like to ask, and that goes back to when you started all this, you said that you didn't think that, or you were, critical is probably too strong a word, but you didn't agree with those people who said that making pinball is hard. Would you like to revise that opinion now?
    129:23
    Look, I don't think pinball, I think pinball being hard was an excuse that was often used. And I think the reason why originally years ago, the reason why I originally said that was to make fun and jab a little bit at those who claimed pinball was hard as the excuse for this or that or whatever, right? And now with the pandemic this year, everyone's using the pandemic as an excuse. So pinball, you know, being easy or hard really doesn't really matter anymore. But to be honest, the things that go into making a pinball machine are complex. But to do what we've done, and that is R&Ding, you know, behind the scenes without a lot of real-world testing along the way, keeping it secret and doing a lot of very complex things that have never been done in pinball before that create then, you know, dominoes that you have to change this, you have to change that. And that type of engineering has really, really taken a toll on a lot of us and how difficult it ended up being and how long it ended up taking. So at the end of the day, you know, I put it on the website, enter my story. Pinball is hard, especially when you deliver a package like we're delivering and will continue to deliver. Whether or not if we had just popped out a simple game, pinball being hard years ago, we can all debate about this. I think it's so taboo. People just want to hear me say pinball is hard because that makes their day or whatever. But look, I've taken years off my life with this project. So I think that speaks for itself. so is there anything you would like to address that we haven't touched on or that you feel like okay something that you feel like people should know or maybe something nobody noticed yet and you figured like why has nobody noticed this or that or I don't know I appreciate it I think we've covered a lot of varied topics. I think you all had some great questions in a lot of different areas.
    131:37
    You had some great answers, too. Yeah. Thank you. I think that, you know, when you're behind the scenes here and you see this on a regular basis for years, and especially over the last few months getting, you know, stuff ready for the website and, you know, things that you've seen, things that, you know, you've yet to see, it all kind of comes together. so it's hard for me to kind of point at anything I really want to kind of focus on that we haven't talked about already, and that's why I'm appreciative that your comments were kind of, or questions were all over the place, so at least we hit a little bit of everything, so much appreciation to you guys. Right, okay. Thank you very much, Robert. One thing that does come to mind, in the past you have been teasing the five days of Deep Root. are there still is there going to be a five days of Deep Root event tying in with a future edition of the Texas Fimble Festival or is that something that was only upon launch of the first game and it's not going to be reconsidered for future titles or something like that yeah so look I I've learned a lot of lessons the hard way with some things that were in my control and some things that were not in my control and, you know, very clearly the 5G-50 group has gone and gone. It's sailed. And what we've tried to do is focus on now just walking the walk in implementing and we don't need to use, you know, any sort of launch or, you know, intro marketing kind of concepts or catchphrases like that anymore. my focus now is manufacturing getting pinball machines out there and dealing with customers and providing them a great customer experience So when it's time to launch game two, Food Truck how do you think you'll do that? Will that just be it's on the website, you can order it now or are you going to do a big launch for that title? Yeah, it really depends on how the pandemic continues to go. I think, you know, if our health, people we look to for health advice don't seem to know we can't get it right over and over again, it's really difficult to kind of understand when we can really get back to a point of getting, you know, a new machine to a place that a lot of people can come play it and really get excited about it. And so, we're still in unknown territory for how we deal and try to disseminate pinball experiences to a large mass of people other than virtually. And it might be a long time before we're really able to kind of get back to normal worldwide and try to, you know, have a more traditional type of, you know, hands-on launch event. It's certainly possible to do a big launch event virtually, or even if there are a few machines around the country or around the world which people can stream.
    134:52
    And I'm just looking at how some other manufacturers have launched titles recently in the pandemic age, and they seem to have done quite a successful marketing push by getting lots of material to everybody, lots of videos, lots of buy-in from people involved in the design and creation of the game. So that would be something which could happen. And even if it's not at a show or at a launch event, a physical launch event, there's still lots that could be done.
    135:27
    Yeah, I mean, I think that as a new pinball company, you know, we're often looked at to a higher standard. and definitely some of the next steps we've had haven't helped at all in doing a virtual event and stuff like that. And I think there's, at the end of the day, a lot of negative people in pinball who have a lot of very loud megaphones. And so doing virtual events and virtual stuff on unlicensed games is a very different approach than I think that you would do on a licensed game that the people, you have a large consumer base already kind of set in stone. But, yeah, you're right. There have been a couple of virtual launches here over the last few months that were done very well, and there was very strong sales. And so, you know, our focus, again, is on, you know, making Raza the best limited run that we can make it. And for those that are excited about Raza, getting them their games as fast as they can. Yeah, I think my takeaway really was don't sneak out the titles under the wire shout about them loud and be proud of them and make a big fuss and a major promotion when you do release them Yeah, I agree I don't know when we're going to announce really what's going to happen with the next title or the next several titles, and we're just going to have to see what the circumstances are, and we have no problem shouting them out at that point. Right. So we'll interview you at that time again. Right. Or maybe sooner. I have one final question, and then I suggest to wrap this up. If we look at the pinball industry landscape, for the past, I'd say, 20 years, Well, Stern Pinball has been for sure the number one manufacturer. Ten years ago, Jersey Jack came to the scene, followed by a number of smaller companies. It took Jersey Jack ten years to announce a game and be able to ship games on the day the game was announced. would you dare to make an estimate when you expect people to be into the position if they desire to announce a game and have units ready to ship the day the game is announced? Or is that something that's currently not something that you want to be kept on in the future in case you don't make whatever estimate you're projecting?
    138:31
    Yeah, so that's a good question. I think it would be title-specific. For Raza, it was never our intention to have games ready to ship when we started orders, and especially to have a lot of them. It would have been completely stupid for a stupid business decision to even try to be so vain that we could build a bunch of games and there weren't some reasonably large issues with them and the first batches that go out as a new manufacturer, pinball being as complex as it is, right? Right. And so for Raza, it's a very unique situation. I think, you know, as the steward of the company and having to take care of not only the company but our employees and as well as customers and stuff like that, the best I can do as a steward is make a good business decision that makes sense for everyone, right, a good balance. And I think that our next game, with our platform well tested by then, it would not be unheard of for us to have games ready to go and ship when we announced it, and that's the goal. So whether or not that will be that case or continue on for other titles, I have no clue. It really depends on the circumstances for each of them.
    139:56
    You know, it's always nice, but traditionally, and I mentioned this on our website, traditionally all pinball manufacturers typically take four to six weeks to have the first game out or more. and it hasn't been until very recently where that's been sort of the expectation and change has really taken place. But especially for the last decade, nearly all launches took that long or more. And in many cases, it took months and sometimes years for manufacturers to get the entire run out, even if the run wasn't very much. And so, you know, all that we're expecting is for our consumers to understand that and not to hold us to any different standards than they held to these other companies before. And especially as a new manufacturer, we owe it to our customers to make sure that their games are well built and designed and manufactured to the expectations that they're expecting. and they arrive and they're in the condition and playable that they expect and we're going to make the right decisions internally to make sure that happens. Okay. Makes sense.
    141:12
    Well, in that case, unless you have anything else to ask, Johnson, I think we can thank Robert for taking a considerable amount of time out of his day and answering our questions here and giving us some very interesting answers and revealing, I think, some information that hasn't been revealed before. So thank you, Robert. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
    141:33
    You're welcome. We had a great discussion. It did go for a while, so I'll let you all decide what's going to be on the editing floor or what's going to get published. But I appreciate the opportunity to start talking with you all. And after, you know, trying and kind of not getting our schedules together before and not being the right time, but hopefully we'll do it again soon. Okay. I think it's been great. Thank you. Thank you, and looking forward for that already. We wish you all the best with the production of Rasa, and best of luck with Deep Root Pinball, of course. Yes, and congratulations getting to the stage where you can actually start setting the game.
    142:11
    Thank you very much. It is a good place to be. So thank you. We'll talk to you all soon. Okay. Thank you very much. And that wraps it up, our two-and-a-half-hour interview with Robert Mueller of Deep Root Pinball. I hope you enjoyed this Well I think that's an understatement Well As deep as you can go As we said at the very start Of this bonus podcast There's some very interesting information There about how the game is going to be made What's going to be in the game, how it's going to be sold And upcoming titles And basically deep root Pimple strategy going forward And I think we got some good, valuable information from Robert. So thank you, huge thank you to Robert for taking so long out of his very busy schedule to talk to us all. Yeah, no, we appreciate it very, very much. So it's definitely worth doing this bonus podcast. We did say at the end of our look back on November that we'd be back in January with our next podcast, barring any unforeseen occurrences. And, well, this was unforeseen, exactly when this interview was going to take place. But fortunately it has, so we will wrap this up now, and we will look forward to seeing you in January for a look back on all the people we'll use in December 2020. Unless, in the meantime, another company decides to roll out a new title as well, which is certainly not unheard of. No, barring that, we wish you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and we will see you in 2021. you want. Yeah, same from me. And, well, happy holidays, and we'll talk to each other early next year. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Bye.
    144:19
    Thank you.