Interview with Bug from Spooky Pinball

Don's Pinball Podcast (patreon feed)·podcast_episode·28m 24s·analyzed·Jul 20, 2024

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Bug details Spooky's production, sales, and expansion plans; hints at future licensed titles.

Summary

Bug from Spooky Pinball discusses production updates, game design philosophy, and market strategy at Southern Fright Gaming Expo. Looney Tunes is outselling Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3:1, both games continue receiving code updates, and Spooky is expanding to a new facility in Benton. Bug addresses pricing strategy, butter cabinet manufacturing complexity, international distribution (particularly Europe via RS Pinball), and teases future projects while fielding rapid-fire community questions.

Key Claims

Looney Tunes is being built at a 3:1 ratio compared to TCM and is still ahead in orders
high confidence · Bug, direct statement about current production ratios
Texas Chainsaw Massacre is unexpectedly popular in Europe, particularly France
high confidence · Bug discussing overseas market performance
Spooky's mid-tier edition offers similar features to competitors' top-end editions for $2,500-$3,000 less
high confidence · Bug and host discussing pricing and value proposition during seminar context
Looney Tunes has received at least three major code updates, potentially more than three
high confidence · Bug acknowledging Luke Peters' ongoing mode development
Spooky is moving to a new facility in Benton within the next couple of months
high confidence · Bug direct statement about relocation timeline
If ordering today (July), new Looney Tunes delivery would be expected around mid-to-late January
high confidence · Bug providing current lead time estimates
Looney Tunes limited to 888 units production run
high confidence · Bug answering rapid-fire question about production numbers
Butter cabinet process takes approximately one month from intake to completion due to printing, curing, and assembly
high confidence · Bug explaining manufacturing complexity of butter cabinet option
Spooky has one primary European distributor (Stephan of RS Pinball) who is their second-biggest distributor overall
high confidence · Bug discussing distribution network in Europe
Australian market expansion requires tens of thousands of dollars in electrical approval processes
medium confidence · Bug discussing regulatory barriers to expansion into Australia

Notable Quotes

“You're still trying to keep the price under 10K, and to load them up with Invisiglass at this point, you'd have to eclipse that.”
Bug @ mid-show — Illustrates pricing constraints limiting feature additions despite customer demand
“It takes basically a solid month to get a butter cabinet to actually exist... you're talking weeks and weeks of time there and also it's super easy to mess it up because it's a super high end luxury cabinet.”
Bug @ mid-show — Explains production complexity and cost justification for premium cabinet option
“For every title you release, you've got to have a team behind it, the team writing code, and that's a lot of resources to put behind it.”
Bug @ late-show — Addresses community pressure for more frequent releases; explains resource constraints
“I will confidently say if there's a company out there to do Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors, it should be us.”
Bug @ mid-show — Strong positioning for potential future licensed title; connects to design philosophy
“There's always a mixture of, well maybe we're already working on it and it's going to be added and of course we wanted that. There was a reason we could not do it.”
Bug @ late-show — Addresses licensing constraints and hidden development pipeline; manages customer expectations
“It was craziest time in pinball history, I think. I mean, just absolutely nuts.”
Bug @ late-show — Reflects on Halloween day-one sellout and COVID-era production surge
“By the time the next one comes out, there's a possibility we can be building a Scooby Doo, a TCM, a Looney Tunes, and whatever the next one is, all on the same production line, which is going to be colorful.”
Bug @ late-show — Demonstrates production flexibility and hints at upcoming title

Entities

Bug (Corwin L. Emery)personSpooky PinballcompanyLooney Tunesgame Texas Chainsaw Massacregame Scooby-Doogame Halloweengame Rick and Mortygame

Signals

?
product_strategy: Looney Tunes being produced at 3:1 ratio vs TCM; indicates strong market demand differentiation despite both games in simultaneous production
high · Bug: 'We're building it at like a 3 to 1 ratio right now, I think, of Looney Tunes to TCM.'
$
market_signal: Texas Chainsaw Massacre unexpectedly performing well in European market, particularly France; challenges conventional market assumptions
high · Bug: 'Very popular overseas, oddly enough' and 'France is really picking up. France has been huge the last couple years.'
?
manufacturing_signal: Spooky achieving smooth production flow with consistent daily output after months of optimization; new facility expected to improve processes further
high · Bug: 'It's been running incredibly smooth for months now. I mean, just a healthy stream of games going out the door every single day.'
?
product_launch: Current delivery window for new Looney Tunes orders is mid-to-late January (approximately 6 months out from July); lead time will decrease as production ramps
high · Bug: 'If you ordered today, you'd be looking around January, you know, late mid, like midwinter.'
?
product_strategy: Spooky maintaining sub-$10K pricing despite customer demand for additional features (Invisiglass, accessories); cost-benefit analysis limiting premium add-ons
high · Bug: 'To load them up with Invisiglass at this point, you'd have to eclipse that [10K pricing]' and 'to keep the game under 10k, it's getting pretty tough if we add much more to it.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.085

0:00

Oh man, once again I'm sitting down with the bugmeister, the bugaboo, the boo of my heart, the bug from Spooky Pinball at the Southern Fright Gaming Expo. What's going on, sir? I knew bugaboo was going to become a thing after that seminar. That seminar was fantastic and although I think it was filmed, I'm not sure if it's streaming anywhere, so I thought why not just get you on the record here and we can go over a lot of the same material. We're going to just try to recreate it exactly word for word. Spaceman MTX Yeah, pretty packed today. Steady lines again at Looney Tunes, at TCM, barely a machine empty. I showed up yesterday, one of the Looney Tunes was already sold. There's a couple more still available. Yep. Scooby sold today, and then you even have a standard edition of Halloween there on the floor. Yeah, we've been dragging that around. That's always... I always want to bring as many of the games as possible now, because it's just cool to see, you know, all the games that we've been up to in the last handful of years here. So, yeah, bringing Halloween's always really cool. Sometimes we even bring Ultraman. Dude, that's awesome. Yeah, and I like how, you know, the way that you're set up, you know, you can pivot between titles based on demand for anything that's still, you know, listing unsold. You know, so you can keep multiple titles in production. You know, I think that's kind of what separates Stern from a lot of the other people. You know, they're not just kind of, you know, burning through one build and then they have to get to that end to release something else. Right, right. Yeah, and so that we still see other games pop up. And, I always commend you guys on this, but even this late in the game, like, you still do not abandon your old games that are out there. I can't believe you even did that. Yeah, and what are they, like a 300 altogether? Yeah, 300 altogether and it was made over 10 years ago now. That's awesome. And you're showing no signs that you are slowing, to quote Wonka there. Yeah. And I love the Looney Tunes has had like at least three major updates since I've had it, and each one has come with more episodes? Yeah, it's probably been more than three updates too. I feel like every other week I come into the office that Luke Peters has a new mode that he's like, alright, come check this one out, tell me what we need to do. I love it, I love it. I think there's almost parody with TCM now, code-wise. Yeah, it's probably close to caught up, you know. Now that you mention it, I didn't even think about that. I gotta go count them, see where we're at. But that's awesome. Yeah, tons of good feedback here. Now this is a, like, just a gaming in general expo that we're having here. It's not strictly pinball like TPF or Expo is. So there's tabletop gamers here, cosplayers, and even them are coming by saying like, you know, I'm just getting into pinball now. I had no idea who's doing this. I've seen people squinting up close to the back glass like who's made who built this was it does it spooky is that what it says it's like hell yeah Yeah, it's always really cool at these ones because uh you know Midwest Gaming Classic is very similar in that way where it's not all Pinballs you're getting a lot of people who have no idea who you are or what you make or that pinball was still around Yeah, so you know you'd think someday. We'll get to the point where Everybody knows that pinball is like back and doing a lot of things But you know every single year there still seems to be people out there who just haven't quite heard yet Yeah, I mean I was talking to a guy yesterday who like just got in this year and he's like looking to get in his first game and like looking for something cheap and used but like to build up to the process and so I just gave him the rundown on like well here's the companies that are producing right now here's what they got you know here's you know price wise what you get for it and like it was fun during the seminar when that was brought up like that you guys put so much more in your top end editions for like the the mid-level entry price from some other competitors yeah and like you just stopped listing things because there are so many features in your game that aren't in the other ones. I've got a marketing video planned that I'm going to do when I get back that is related to all the items that go into a collector's edition of ours, including the screaming baby in the background. Yeah. Not to say like, you know, I mean, each company's top-end edition is pretty rewarding, but like the price that you're paying for it, I mean, you're coming in like several thousand dollars less. Yeah. To make your, not to call anybody out specifically, to make your like mid-tier option at many of these other companies have as much as a spooky game does, You would have to spend an additional probably $2,500, maybe $3,000. And we get you that for under 10K. Yeah, I love that. I know we were talking during the seminar yesterday. You guys used to do a la carte builds, like with Rick and Morty. You could decide if you wanted like powder coat, if you wanted a shaker, if you wanted this or that. And then it became a headache when it come to assembly because each build was so individual that you could just get lost in the sauce. Truthfully, it's just too much to keep up with. But I know people have been asking for things like what about invisiglass? We wouldn't mind seeing that and other accoutrements and such. And toppers, additional accessories. I know we talked about maybe if Looney Tunes had some accessories at launch, maybe that would be worthwhile a topper, maybe that idea is still kicking around. But I thought of, you're still trying to keep the price under 10K, and to load them up with Invisiglass at this point, you'd have to eclipse that. Yeah. But what about having just a general accessory bundle that could launch in parallel with the game? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, without saying too much, we've talked about some things like that, like a spooky super bundle of sorts that you could get to add on to your game. And you know, maybe it'll slowly build up to enough items that something like that would make sense for us. Because, yeah, I mean, there's still... our games are as decked out as you could possibly get it. But yeah, then you still have things like, oh, the invisiglass though, and it's like, ah, yeah. Including that would be pretty great. But yeah, to keep the game under 10k, it's getting pretty tough if we add much more to it. So, you know, we'll see where we can land with that for everybody. 9- claim builder blockbuster 2 whole men public How it takes basically a solid month to get a butter cabinet to actually exist when you compare it to, for like we get the cabinet in, we have to print directly onto the cabinet. The cabinet has to get sent back out, it has to get the clear coat process, it has to cure, it has to come back to our factory and then get assembled. I mean you're talking weeks and weeks of time there and also it's super easy to mess it up because it's a super high end luxury cabinet. And you compare that to grab the cabinet side and put the decal down. Right And then like of course all those processes you have to pay for too so I mean the butter price really is what it is because of how long it takes and it expensive for us to do it But like I said it an expensive add you don need But for whatever reason whenever I say that it just sells more butter cabinets It's like I don't need it, but I still kind of want it though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm an owner of a butter cabinet on my Scooby Doo. I love that art and the color spectrum that was used on it. So I thought, I mean, it's the closest thing to Alice Cooper that I've seen you guys come out with, like the blues and greens. So I thought that was definitely, you know, the way to go there. etc série When your cabinets come in, do they come in disassembled for all of them and you assemble all the cabinets? Yeah, they all get assembled in-house. So they come in special containers and stacks. So to butter up a cabinet, you've got to then take it, print the graphics on it, package it back up, ship it out to a clearcoater. Where, you know, clearcoat's not something you just spray on and send back. Yeah, no, it's not that simple. You've got to apply it, it's got to cure, it's got to off-gas, and then come back. Otherwise, there'll be dimples and things all over it. And then you've got to carefully assemble that thing without messing it up. That would drive me crazy. This is a game that sits on the production line for two weeks of quality control. Nice. And then it gets put into a box. And all along that way, no one has to scratch it. Well, that's fantastic. I mean, as a point of difference, you know, everybody really appreciates it. Yeah. All right. So how's the build going for the two here? I know it seemed like initially Looney Tunes was gaining as far as order numbers on TCM. Has that kind of caught up now? No, it's still ahead. It's still ahead, but we're building it at like a 3 to 1 ratio right now, I think, of Looney Tunes to TCM. So it's definitely gained a little bit of traction, but TCM just randomly will catch back up out of nowhere. Very popular overseas, oddly enough, which is where I thought TCM would not be more popular, but yeah, it's doing really well overseas. Okay, overseas, like where in specific? Just Europe? Are we talking Europe, Australia? Yeah, Europe. Okay. How big's your penetration into Australia? Man, how many do we have in Australia by now? I'm not sure, honestly, off the top of my head. I'm so curious about that market. It seems like an area that's just like prime for growth, you know, when I'm kind of like looking surveying. I know France is really picking up. France has been huge the last couple years. They have really latched on to it. It's been great. Now, do you have a distributor network in Europe or do you sell direct or you do both? So in Europe, we have one distributor in Europe, Stephan of RS Pinball, and he sells all over that entire part of the world for us, basically. He's one of our biggest distributors, probably our second biggest distributor. Oh wow. That's spooky. And he sells a lot of games over there. He does a really great job. Perfect, perfect. So, you gotta get the, like, what we are equivalent of UL listing in order to get the games over there. If you go to Australia, is there other like electrical approval processes you have to get to get it certified? Yeah, there's um, I'm drawing a blank on what it's called right now. It's been a long show, I'm pretty tired. Oh, sure. But um, there is special checks and approvals we have to do on the games that we have to David Van Es, Knapp Arcade, Wally Williams, Bally Williams, Straight Down the Middle, Knapp Arcade, Wally Williams, It's not as simple as just putting in a separate power supply and just shipping it around the world. I mean, it's like a multiple tens of thousands of dollars approval process, right? Yeah. And that you have to go through just to get them out there. So yeah, it's kind of like trying to see like what markets would be worth it. And you know, the European Union for sure. And I think Australia also would be so. Yeah, definitely. All right, we're gonna get you Aussies out there. I gotta get out there in December too. I'll spread the good word. We'll stick with the country. Okay, so production going well now? You guys should be hitting your stride. Oh, yeah. It's been running incredibly smooth for months now. I mean, just a healthy stream of games going out the door every single day. Quality has been really fantastic on them. We've been hitting the code updates. We're getting ready to move into our new building in the next couple months here, where we're going to make our process even better on the production line, but I mean, it's been so smooth. I'm excited, yeah. Now, I've got a Looney Tunes at TCM, which at the time I thought might have been a bit of a bonkers idea, but even today I'm still playing them so much and they play so differently that I'm still not looking to list one of them. I figured by now I would have kept the one I was playing the most and sold the other, but like I still don't know which one I like better. Yeah, I was gonna make a point to thank you at this show for not selling one of the two yet, because like I understand if you do, like you have both, you don't really per se need both, so I really appreciate that you've held on to both of them, it's so cool. Every time there's a code update there's even more in there, you know, and I'm still trying to find out like where I can put a mod in these things. Yeah, you'll come up with something, I'm looking at your mods in front of me right now. I got a prototype John Wick shooter rod. My chicken buckets have been hilarious. You can do a chicken bucket in TCM. That would work. Okay, perfect. Makes sense. I'll just have like a leg hanging out, like a human leg coming out of the chicken. Alright, perfect. We'll make that. Order now.

12:20

So, okay. If I want one of these games today, let's say, and I don't want to come down here to the expo and take one off the show floor, and I ordered, and I emailed Squirrel or however the process is, or my local distributor, or jeffatmadpinball.com and said, Hey, give me a Looney Tunes. When can I reasonably expect it to show up at the door via FedEx freight? Right now, I'm pretty sure if you ordered today, you'd be looking around January, you know, late mid, like midwinter. Okay. Is where you would be right now. Yeah, it'd definitely be around there, but you know, the more games we sell, the sooner you will get it, because we will keep increasing our production to get it to you sooner, so. Very good, very good. Now, that's about six months out, and that's if you waited, you know, this far into production. I mean, this game was released... December. December was still December. I know that's right around when Scooby Doo came out in December Yep, we're trying to that's kind of our area of launch that we would like to claim Oh man, and it's hot right now here in July in Atlanta But I know like once fall hits and the the pumpkin spice is in the air We're only gonna be a few short months away from launch window season for spooky pinball again It's crazy how fast it comes So I get the sense and you mentioned this in the seminar yesterday that you have about like five titles that are locked in committed They are doing a lot of great stuff and I thought I wanted you guys here to see the first half of the season. What are you thinking? Do you think that being here is a good song? If there's any part of your health that you're kind of wieaning then if it is what you would like then I might want one in the beginning. Last year I needed music once and I never wanted one until this year and I am excited to be back so music is that's cool. Director tochewsfeld says. My думаю po wzn. No space derwe absoluto. We'll see. We've got a lot going on right now. It's hard to even consider throwing in another game into the mix. It gotta be hard for you guys to nail that release number because you have to kind of like use your crystal ball and look in the future as to what the next year will hold Like should this be a game that we run 2 of them or should we only you know do 500 If we do 500, we'll be kicking ourselves if we could have got 1,000, you know? Yeah, yeah. But like a couple of us were whispering on the floor because, you know, we want to see a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror themed machine. You know, the Simpsons machine came out so long ago and the Simpsons has changed so much and had so much lore between then and now That revisiting licenses from these cartoon shows like Family Guy or South Park or even Futurama or Simpsons, you could have so much more in there, especially with the modern code we have now compared to what was back there before. The LCD screen has changed everything. And I was just thinking, The Simpsons is known for that Halloween episode they do every year. And so just like a spooky themed Simpsons machine, how amazing would that be, especially if there was only like 555 made? You know, I mean the demand... It would be $666,000. You're crazy. Yeah, yeah, okay. So the demand would probably handle like $1500, I would guess. Oh, on that one I bet you could get... But if you could get one of those $666,000 machines, you would have something that forever would be worth more than you paid for it. Oh, yeah. Easily. Yeah, and that's hard to find in the market today. Yeah. So I'm just gonna push my finger in the soil and put that seed down there. You do what you want to do with it. I will confidently say if there's a company out there to do Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors, it should be us. Okay, yeah, perfect. That would make, yeah, we want to do that one. But could you see that like doing maybe, you know, smaller run numbers just to keep that demand really high for those games, you know? I think in the right circumstances, yeah, smaller run numbers to increase that demand. And protect the customer value is, you know, a very good idea. You know, we do care about protecting the value of the game for the customer. I think that's a pretty important part of it at this point, so. This is selfish for me because I just want to see more games coming out. I love playing new games. More! For every title you release, you've got to have a team behind it, the team writing code, and that's a lot of resources to put behind it. So, you know, otherwise you could have five releases a year and just have like a hundred of each one, right? Just crank them out. Yeah. Oh, dude, perfect. Let's see, was there anything else you wanted to hit that we haven't talked about? I don't want to tie you up too much here. Oh, well... But I will. Do you want to do your rapid fire Facebook questions? Oh, shoot, yeah. Since not everybody in the seminar... Let me bring them back up. I was going to go through on my comments last night and answer all of them, but I thought it would sound like too dry and... I was actually, I was doing it live when... you already posted a picture of me, that's funny. I was doing it live while you were in there, I was trying to update all the answers. Oh, I can even get to that inappropriate one from... from What's His Face from the Twip deal.

21:48

Please Subscribe U.S. Ellis Up here for more VAR차 Images subject to LORD Commentary, empathy and Posture For Yuleta and other fans! The plastic gear ones on Halloween were the only ones that we had issues with. Yeah, and it seems like servos are really made for things like RC airplanes where they're just going to wear out and they're cheap to replace and everything. Yeah. But in a pinball machine, especially if they can be hard to get to, yeah, just paying a little bit more for the metal ones seemed to be a good way to go. Yeah, and we still have some tricks up our sleeve in the future here for what we can do to make those even more robust. But they allow you to do so much with like movement on a topper, you know? Yeah, movement in anything. Mike-H já skmeňŭť tájkčí, tájeţeilŭŭŜŠŽŦŽŉŠŋŠťţŠţŭŨŠšŽŰżŬŭũŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭŭ ropheŽ� 81. It opens up a lot of possibilities to get cool features into a game, which people, you gotta put the cool features into the game. It opens up some doors, well I guess it's technically a bookcase, but yeah. So funny. Alright, so possible on that, can we get Speedy Gonzales cartoon? You'll have to ask Warner Brothers about that. Yeah, talk to Papa Warner. Oh, I love this point that you made yesterday, and it's like, people will come up to you and say, Spooky Pinball, you guys are stupid, why didn't you think of this thing, or this obvious thing for a game? We're all here for a game and you're like most of the time, yes we have thought of that and actually it's actively in development and we can't talk about it yet. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, there's always a mixture of, um, you know, well maybe we're already working on it and it's going to be added and of course we wanted that. There was a reason we could not do it. Yeah, yeah, so it's not just like they're like, oh, it never occurred to us that we should put Peppa Le Pew in as a mode or something. Right, exactly. It's like, it's like, no, there's just no way that we could do that, you know, playing with somebody else's assets, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was a good point to make because you know at first you know superficially you might think like now come on these guys are what clever they should have thought of this it's like no no we did and we actually had a better idea than the one you just thought of but we can't do it like it's just it's unobtainable all right we're just looking all right last one uh when's the black and white looney tunes coming out it can come out any minute now it's very much on brand you did say like yeah if you're able if you're willing to order one you could just because you print your own art right yeah yeah yeah we could just i could make that happen now is that something that would have to go back to Did you get to the licensor for approval? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, okay. Definitely. They have final say on absolutely everything you do, so. So if somebody wanted to do something stupid, like, oh my God, look at this hamburger guy behind us, it's awesome. Rubble, rubble. Oh my God, it is, wow. All kinds of celebrities are here, we should get them on stream. That's perfect, man. So, yeah, the Benton expansion, I've seen this new place. Yeah, I'm excited to see you guys get in there, because you won't be running, you know, Playfields upstairs, populate them, run it back downstairs. Yeah, that drives me crazy. I'm going to have to pull a playfield halfway out to put art blades in, let alone huck it up and down stairs. We build big shoulders at Spooky. People are carrying playfields up and down stairs. How have you not built a dumbwaiter yet that you can just put it on? We tried that for a little bit of time. There's a door that opens up to the wiring area upstairs. We used to have a playfield cart that we'd forklift up there. They would load it and then we would bring it back down. But that was during Halloween when we were doing 10 games a day. Oh geez. So we had to make something happen to get it down because they had 10 playfields up and down stairs every day. You'll start looking like The Rock. Yeah. Did you smell? Yeah, back in those days that was coming hot off the heels of Rick and Morty. It was right in like that COVID period and then you had day one sellout of Halloween. Yeah, yeah. It was craziest time in pinball history, I think. I mean, just absolutely nuts. I remember when, um, yeah, I'd heard about Rick and Morty and I was a little bit late to the party there. And then I saw the announcement for Halloween and you had to be a, uh, what is it, the Bug Scrotum Club member? No, uh, Fang Club member to get like an extra week, um, you know, of purchasing or something. And so I was like, well, I'm not gonna pay money to join a club just to buy a game. I'll just wait a week or so and then boom, they were gone. Yup. So I've been a Scrotum Club member since then. Yeah. Scrotum Club. I'm changing that when we get back. Oh, the merch is going to be great. Yeah, am I supposed to be getting something in the mail? When do those go out? Are you still doing those? Yeah, we still do fan club packages. They usually go out in August, I think. I'm trying to remember. Morgan actually is the head honcho of the fan club department at Spooky Pinball. She's very much a honcho, yeah. Yes. I remember back in the day I had some work boots I got from Walmart that were called honchos, and they were amazing. And this is completely irrelevant here. Alright, well cool, so we're in the middle of summer right now, we're heading into fall, it's going to be spooky season for real pretty soon. Halloween events will be starting, we'll be murdering people with pencils, and then all eyes will be on Benton to see clues of the next game dropping. What the hell are they going to do next? Oh man, the cool thing is, you guys don't have to wait until you completely sell out of what you're building now to go ahead and transition to something else. Yeah, correct. Our production line is going to look pretty cool. I mean, by the time the next one comes out, there's a possibility we can be building a Scooby Doo, a TCM, a Looney Tunes, And whatever the next one is, all on the same production line, which is going to be colorful. I love it, I love it. Well, thanks so much for coming back on. I just hit your table with your pencil, I'm so sorry. I love it, it's okay, it's pretty much numb now to me.