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Hardy LIVE! w/George Gomez from Stern Pinball

Cary Hardy YouTube Live Streams·video·2h 4m·analyzed·Dec 10, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

George Gomez defends Spike 3 cabinet redesign to bolted assembly with HDF material.

Summary

George Gomez from Stern Pinball appears on Carrie Hardy's live stream to address community concerns about changes to the Spike 3 cabinet design, particularly the shift from traditional glued/stapled joinery to bolted assembly with HDF (high-density fiberboard) sandwich construction. Gomez explains his engineering rationale: eliminating invisible joint integrity issues, improving dimensional stability against moisture and wood movement, enabling quality control through torque verification, and simplifying manufacturing and shipping. The conversation covers material specifications, structural testing, and design philosophy while troubleshooting persistent camera issues.

Key Claims

  • Stern has used the same core material (18mm plywood with HDF sandwich) since 2018, not newly introduced with Spike 3

    high confidence · George Gomez directly states the material composition and timeline, with reference to earlier Deadpool machines using the same approach

  • The new cabinet uses 16-gauge steel brackets in four locations as primary structural support, replacing traditional glued miter joints

    high confidence · Gomez details the bracket design, demonstrates them on camera, and discusses durability/drop testing results

  • Edge banding replaces painting on most cabinet edges, improving moisture protection by sealing wood edges

    high confidence · Gomez explicitly shows edge-banded vs. painted edges on a Deadpool cabinet and explains the moisture absorption rationale

  • The old glued/stapled miter joint construction made it impossible to verify joint integrity without destructive testing

    high confidence · Gomez describes the structural invisibility problem and references past issues with inconsistent glue application and cabinet seams separating

  • Walking Dead Remastered cabinets (first production units with new design) have received positive feedback from owners regarding sturdiness and solidity

    medium confidence · Carrie Hardy reports feedback from owners; Gomez does not independently verify but acknowledges the reports

  • Gomez has designed more coin-operated game cabinets than pinball machines—at least 20+ pinball machines and approximately twice that many arcade cabinets

    high confidence · Gomez provides direct testimony of his cabinet design experience, including specific examples (Tron, Battletech, Hawk Avenger)

  • The bolted assembly technique allows for modular side panel replacement if a cabinet is damaged

    high confidence · Gomez directly answers Carrie's question about modularity due to the bolted/screwed construction

  • First prototypes of the new Spike 3 cabinet were built in early 2023 and have been durability tested extensively

Notable Quotes

  • “Designing pinball cabinets is a lot like designing Jeeps. If when you're done, the audience doesn't recognize it as a Jeep, then you've failed.”

    George Gomez@ 12:28 — Articulates Gomez's design philosophy: evolutionary rather than revolutionary—maintaining brand continuity while improving engineering. Explains why Spike 3 looks familiar despite internal redesign.

  • “I can't tell if the guy building it put enough glue in the cabinet. The only way I can tell is destructive testing... that joint is structurally invisible to me.”

    George Gomez@ 30:30 — Core engineering problem driving the redesign: traditional joinery lacks verifiability, creating quality control risk. Justifies shift to inspectable bolted assembly.

  • “Now I'm shipping flat panels. I can store them. I can do anything with them. The panel itself is way more stable structurally.”

    George Gomez@ 36:00 — Business/manufacturing advantage: flat-pack design reduces shipping damage risk, storage complexity, and exposure to environmental stress during transit.

  • “The bolts have a lock washer and a nylon patch, and those bolts are what hold the entire cabinet together... I can put a torque wrench on them and say... I can check it.”

    George Gomez@ 26:50 — Quality control mechanism: bolted assembly enables verifiable torque specification (60 inch-pounds) vs. invisible glue joint application in traditional construction.

  • “We took the fastener and we abused it. We basically torqued it until we sheared the head off. And you know what happened? The body of the fastener stayed in the panel and did not compromise the structure of the cabinet.”

    George Gomez@ 34:07 — Demonstrates durability testing and fail-safe design: fastener remains seated even under failure, preserving cabinet integrity.

Entities

George GomezpersonCarrie HardypersonStern PinballcompanySpike 3productKevin PaynepersonRob BlakemanpersonTom CoperapersonMark Gruberperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Historical quality control failures (cabinet seams separating, tight-glass issues from wood movement/inconsistent glue application) driving structural redesign to eliminate root causes

    high · Gomez explicitly references past problems: 'some years ago we had a problem... cabinet seams coming apart,' tight-glass issues from wood expansion; new design eliminates these failure modes

  • ?

    community_signal: Community backlash against Spike 3 redesign with concerns about 'cheapening' (MDF confusion, moisture sensitivity, unannounced change) and comparison to 'Ikea of pinball'

    high · Carrie Hardy references widespread community messaging received 'like wildfire,' mentions Ikea comparison, notes Gomez did not inform enthusiasts of change in advance

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Gomez articulates conservative design evolution philosophy ('like designing Jeeps'): radical aesthetic redesigns rejected in favor of maintaining recognizable form while improving engineering underneath

    high · Direct quote: 'Designing pinball cabinets is a lot like designing Jeeps. If when you're done, the audience doesn't recognize it as a Jeep, then you've failed.'

  • $

    market_signal: Flat-pack manufacturing and shipping efficiency: new cabinet design enables flat-panel storage, reduced shipping damage exposure, simplified logistics vs. bulky pre-assembled cabinets

    medium · Gomez states 'I'm shipping flat panels. I can store them. I can do anything with them' and references reduction in exposure to weather/transport stress

  • ?

    industry_signal: Community confusion about MDF vs. HDF impact on moisture sensitivity; Gomez clarifies material is 18mm plywood core with HDF (not MDF) sandwich, with melamine and edge banding for moisture protection

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.373

0:30
Thank you. That's when you get the negative feedback, because you don't agree with how they think. turns out stern was like gotcha bitch i just i'm trying to wrap my head around this maybe they've learned something from every game and this time it'll be different i gotta show everybody my wiener I mean it's basically a Led Zeppelin jukebox with flippers The game is going to sell He just did a mic drop And then walked the hell out of the room That's big dick energy if I've ever seen it It's pinball It shouldn't be too serious I mean if you take pinball to a serious level You get the godfather Lie back down I know I'm going to get some hate from those of you out there that are probably doing it, but that's what it is. The backlash says Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles right there at the top and four inches up. If that, the title's there again. That makes no sense. And I mean, what's concerning to me is that through the whole build process, no one brought it up that, hey, maybe we should make this a little bit better. No one mentioned it. We believe this idea to be the best course of action for us and for you, but mainly because it's going to cost us nothing. You need to find out what these suckers will pay you for a crappy product that your toddler drew for us. She draws on a first grade level. And the thing is, I know one of the people over social media has informed me that a lot of the times, at least as of three years ago, majority of the things that I would post or say to them was in blocks. Why are you promoting and asking for deposits on a game that's still six months out? And we are live, ladies and jelly spoons. Welcome to the channel where I talk and do everything pinball. And it's a special evening, and I have a special guest, and we're just going to jump right into it. The man that technically doesn't need an introduction, but I'm going to kind of give him one anyways. He's designed a multitude of games that are obviously your favorites. He's the main guy you think of whenever you do talk and play pinball in general when it comes to Stern games in particular. But he's designed a bunch of other games from the early days before Stern that a lot of you love. And another thing I have here is George Gomez. George, welcome here to the channel. Hey, everybody. Hey. So, I'm sorry. If I sound funny, I'm recovering from a horrible cold last week. So I'm a little bit nasally and still congested, but happy to be here.

high confidence · Gomez states the timeline and mentions prolonged testing, though does not specify exact duration or all test methodologies

  • “It's pinball. It shouldn't be too serious. I mean if you take pinball to a serious level, you get the Godfather.”

    Carrie Hardy@ 3:34 — Commentary on community tone: suggests pinball should remain fun/accessible rather than overly critical. References Godfather as cautionary tale of over-seriousness.

  • “I invented the new expression light system... I did all of the work to fit the 18.5 display and the new audio system.”

    George Gomez@ 12:15 — Gomez claims ownership of Spike 3 improvements beyond cabinet structural redesign: lighting, display integration, audio systems—comprehensive platform evolution.

    • Walking Dead Remastered
    product
    Deadpoolproduct
    Godzillaproduct
    Pinsideorganization
    Loser Kid Pinballorganization
    Tron cabinetproduct
    Battletech Centersorganization
    Hawk Avengerproduct

    high · Carrie raises specific concern: 'people were concerned about it being MDF because people know that MDF does not do well against moisture.' Gomez clarifies and demonstrates actual material samples

  • ?

    personnel_signal: First Stern Pinball designer (George Gomez) appearing on Carrie Hardy's YouTube channel for in-depth interview about product engineering; significant community engagement moment

    high · Carrie states: 'You are, I think, the first anyone that works at Stern Pinball that I've actually had on the channel, honestly'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Spike 3 cabinet improvements beyond joinery: new expression light system, 18.5 display integration, new audio system, improved melamine surface for decal consistency, edge banding for moisture protection

    high · Gomez lists multiple engineering improvements and shows edge-banding vs. painted edges on physical cabinet; discusses decal application consistency improvements

  • ?

    product_concern: Gomez emphasizes manufacturing verifiability and quality control improvement: bolted assembly allows torque-wrench verification vs. invisible glue joint integrity in traditional construction

    high · Gomez repeatedly explains inability to verify glue application in old design, contrasts with measurable 60 inch-pound bolt torque specification in new design

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern moving toward modular/repairable cabinet design: bolted assembly allows individual side panels to be swapped out if damaged, improving serviceability

    high · Gomez confirms modularity: 'Sure. You could. You absolutely could. Because it's basically all screwed together and bolted together.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern Pinball shifting Spike 3 cabinet from traditional glued/stapled miter joinery to bolted steel-bracket assembly with HDF-sandwich plywood; represents major manufacturing process change

    high · George Gomez provides detailed engineering explanation of the transition, including material specifications, bracket placement, torque specifications, and durability testing results

    • 6:01
    I've never been on your show, but you and I have talked many times over the years, right? Back and forth a little bit. Well, not conversation-wise. It's been a bit of just a hit-and-miss type of thing.
    6:13
    But never an in-depth conversation. You are, I think, the first anyone that works at Storm Pinball that I've actually had on the channel, honestly. and so I didn't even start like at a designer or anything like that it's like no I'm going straight to fucking top over here I'm going to George Gomez himself kind of thing but uh no so but I'm not saying you like you have to watch your language or anything by all means say what you want to uh I don't I don't anticipate you dropping a bunch of f-bombs or anything but those for you that are watching on here if you have kids I might especially because I'm also having something to drink as well because I've just got off work, literally got off work, came here to get things set up. I don't even have a fancy thumbnail in this video, guys, or the stream. For those that are watching, we've got 162 of you guys here already, ready to chime in. And seriously, the 15 minutes that I've had, George, here, it hasn't been like, hey, this is what we're going to do. This is what we want to talk about. It's been me trying to make his microphone better. So all this time, guys, all these interviews that he's done sitting in his chair right now, he has been on the wrong frigging microphone. And I'm like, George, I really need you to sound better. There's got to be. I mean, you said you had a microphone. I was willing to buy him one. I was like, I will buy you a damn microphone. He's like, I got one. So he holds it up, and I'm like talking to that, and I'm not getting anything. And I'm like, no, you're using the wrong microphone. But anyways, a bunch of trial and tribulations, and we finally got it. He's on the correct microphone. So for Loser Kids, the next time you interview George Gomez, it's going to sound a lot better, I hope. He's going to be right up there. You are welcome, Josh and Scott, over there.
    7:55
    This is actually the first time I've used this microphone in this office. This is a microphone that I've used for podcasts from home. And I do remember you saying, you know, hey, do you have a good microphone? And I know the challenge has been the microphone on my webcam, right? And today our challenge was figuring out how to turn off the webcam microphone and transfer over to this one.
    8:21
    Let's do an audio check. Everybody, can you hear George good? Everything good audio-wise on me? Video-wise, I'm sorry. I can't look as good as I would like to. This is the face I'm born with. I have resting bitch face. I've just kind of learned to deal with it. The wife has dealt with it.
    8:38
    She's married me anyways. All right. Everything's good? I believe we're good. So, I mean, I want to say we'll just get right into it. I think the catalyst of this whole conversation and discussion is obviously you have made some changes to your Spike 3 cabinet. And those others in the hobby and the enthusiasts, the people that are very passionate about what you do, were not informed about this change. So it definitely caught a lot of us by surprise.
    9:05
    And mainly for me, it was curiosity. Because it was like 10-something at night. I'm getting messages and I'm getting images and so I started hitting my people up on Patreon I'm like hey I know some of you had this game is this just a one off what's going on here I just need more info I need to know why this is going on the big old question of why and of course now it's starting to spread like wildfire today people are saying all kinds of things and I'll just hit a couple of them right here people are wondering if you're turning into the Ikea of pinball And you can definitely touch base on that. I mean, but I'm definitely kind of curious on that front, too. So it's like I guess the first question I have to ask is, why are you making your machines worse, George? And that's what people were kind of curious, and that's what you are, in fact, doing, because that's what people are thinking when they see this. They're like, you're cheapening your product by putting MDF on there. What is why?
    10:02
    Educate me, please. Great. So let's start from the beginning. How's that? I know. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what you're going to learn a lot about engineering today, and you're going to learn a lot of just the whys and hows of things. And then we're going to do a little show and tell. All right. So we're here in my office at Stern Pinball. Am I going to get you working late? Oh, I figured you'd be at home. Oh, man.
    10:38
    Oh, no, no. Here. I mean, you guys are going to get the, you know, and I've trashed my office by bringing in some show and tell,
    10:49
    which I'm going to try to extend the camera to when the time comes to show you things, et cetera. So let's talk about the cabinet. So I designed the cabinet. and when I say I designed the cabinet, it doesn't mean that I styled the cabinet. It doesn't mean that I told someone how to design the cabinet. It means that I did the design engineering work on the cabinet. That means material and process selections, creating all the CAD, fitting everything together. I proposed the assembly technique. I worked closely with the vendors to optimize the design to meet their tooling and their processes. the vendors suggested materials we tested a whole bunch of different approaches I invented the new expression light system I specified the fasteners I designed it to preserve as many of the old functional features as all the good stuff I tried to keep I also paid a lot of attention to the transition in the factory from one design to the other because for a while they will coexist since we need to support back catalog games. So what does that mean? It means like new back boxes fit old cabinets and vice versa. Just a lot of the common parts that worked well, I kept. I did all of the work to fit the 18.5 display and the new audio system.
    12:21
    And it's, you know, honestly, I have to say, it's hard to introduce radically new things to you guys. Designing pinball cabinets is a lot like designing Jeeps. If when you're done, the audience doesn't recognize it as a Jeep, then you've failed. So at some point in time, I'm going to share some of my wild designs for a pinball cabinet.
    12:45
    But honestly, I just, like, I sketched for a long time and then killed most of it because I said, these guys are going to hate it. They want it to look like the pinball machine they know. they're in some ways very afraid to try very different things. So I said, okay, I'm going to do it, but I'm going to improve a bunch of the things that I think need to be improved. And I'm going to walk into a lot of those details.
    13:10
    I started working on this in 2022. The very first prototypes were built back in 23 by my old friend, Tom Copera, who's over at JJP now. and the mechanical engineering team here verified all my work, specifically, you know, Kevin Payne is my director of mechanical engineering and Rob Blakeman. I did design reviews with Kevin on a regular basis. They advised me on all kinds of things along the way. We did durability and drop testing. Of course, we did a lot of play testing. So the weight distribution of a Stern pinball machine has a very specific feel. and when you think about string pinball, the thing you guys may not realize is but it's the largest modern footprint of games in the world so when, you know, they're getting played by a lot of people in a lot of places and people sort of subconsciously have a feeling for what it feels like, you know, how you nudge a game, what it feels like to flip it, etc, all that stuff we have a very distinct feel and so we spend a lot of time making sure that OK, don't break that. So there's only one person currently working that I know of that has designed more coin operated game cabinets than I have. His name is Mark Gruber. He worked at Atari back in the day. He's the designer that to this day still works on some of those giant, amazing raw thrills cabinets. Right. So I started designing cabinets for games. It was almost like my first job at a school. Cabinets and controls is all they would let me do at Midway before I actually got to get into game design.
    14:54
    And so I've designed, you know, I've designed more coin operative game cabinets than I've designed pinball machines. I think my number of pinball machines is about to hit 20. Maybe I'm off a game or two. I can't remember. But I've done at least that many, at least twice that many coin-operated game cabinets, including some famous ones, right, like the Tron cabinets, both the regular, upright, and the environmental. I've done some really wild ones. Have you ever seen a Hawk Avenger, which is one of my novelty games with the helicopter?
    15:27
    You know, try to find that. That's a weird cabinet. I even did things like the cockpits at the Battletech centers way back in the day. I don't know if you've ever been to a Battletech Center. So let's talk about, let's get right into the material.
    15:44
    So material is the same material we've been using since, like, 2018. It's not MDF. It's 18-millimeter plywood core with what's called an HDF sandwich, high density, not medium density. The sandwich is on the outside of the plywood. And the reason the sandwich is there is because you cannot apply melamine to plywood. It always has to go directly on MDF or particle board or some substrate that is, like, perfectly smooth and flat, and plywood is not, even when you sandwich. I've got a picture on screen so people can have a visual of what you're talking about here when it comes to the sandwiching. Let me see here. Right, right. So there you have it. And if you take, I'm about to show you, I'm going to go to my den and show you that that material's been around since back then, right? So I'm going to walk away over there. Okay. You guys will see it, hopefully. I'll take my... I mean, just first off, before you walk away, because I know you can't hear me when you walk away, I was like, that has been the main issue is that people were concerned about it being MDF versus HDF. So, I mean... No, but even then, the plywood is the key. Yeah, I get the plywood is the key, but I think the concern was MDF because people know that MDF does not do well against moisture, and there was concerns in regards to that. And sometimes it's a little more sensitive than plywood as well. So there's a possibility, let's just say, for instance, when you're at a location, people spill drinks all the time, and you have a beer seal. So I'm sure that operators are going to have concern if that gets on the MDF slash now HDF. HDF is their draws for concern versus what you had before, which was just strictly plywood.
    17:28
    Right. So, well, before strictly plywood is a long, long time ago. Like I said, we've used this material since 2018. Okay.
    17:39
    Okay. So, like, every Godzilla in the world is built with this material. and the new version of this material is strictly the fact that I pushed them to give me a melamine surface that was smoother for decal application because in the previous one, we got a lot of inconsistency. So when I say I improved the material, that's mostly what I did.
    18:06
    And so that's what the vendor, you know, I worked with the vendor on it, and that's what it is. So now on a Deadpool, some Deadpools, the early run of Deadpools is strictly plywood. No, it's not the sandwich. But the latest Deadpools, like probably going back to 2018, 2019, those are the sandwich. As a matter of fact, the one in my office, which is probably about two years old now, is the sandwich. And that's what I was going to show you to prove to everybody that, hey, this is for real the same stuff. All right, Sean, help it out. On Deadpool, the single biggest thing is that those cabinets were, those edges were all painted.
    18:52
    And the new ones, the only, that front edge on the new one is one of the few edges that's not painted. All the other edges have edge banding on them because I thought it was important to finish them. That's what the edge banding is for. So I'm going to take off my headphones. I won't be able to hear you. We can catch up after I show you, all right?
    19:12
    All right, guys, just so you're watching, I see your questions, but I'm going to save the public questions for later. Let's get all the details and information from him right now. We're taking care of the catalyst of this whole conversation and everything first. I'm not ignoring you. Thank you very much for the super chats. I appreciate it very much. Love you a long time, guys. And George probably doesn't know that he unplugged his camera.
    19:38
    All right, I'm going to pull out my trusty Swiss Army knife. Before, hold on. He can't hear me. He doesn't know that he's probably unplugged his camera and disabled it. Let me send him a text. You see this? No, George, I don't see anything.
    19:57
    You disabled your camera. H-E-F Flywood. Bellamy. Listen, I texted him. We'll see if he gets it.
    20:15
    Either he unplugged it or he disabled it, one of the two. Did you see that? No, you unplugged your camera or you disabled it. All I see is the G.
    20:28
    Give me some quarters, baby. Oh, you're kidding. No, I'm not kidding. That's why I was like, that's why I just sent you a text message. I was like, you disabled your camera or unplugged it, one of the two. It's like as you moved it over, I think it came unplugged or something.
    20:47
    After all of this. Well, you can see me. No, I can't. All I see is the letter G. So if you jostled the plug enough on the back of that camera enough, there's a chance that you may have to enable and disable the camera, possibly even leave and then come back for it to reinitialize if I was the betting man. Or you have it disabled at the bottom of the meets down there.
    21:23
    We went through all the audio troubleshooting, and here we are with video now. Sorry about that. This is fine, George. It's fine. I'm like, I'm going to have a drink. I'm enjoying the company. There we go. I got you. You're back. All right. So I'm going to walk back over there.
    21:45
    Just before you walk away from the computer, just make sure you can see it on the monitor. That way you know for sure that we're seeing what you're seeing.
    22:03
    Dance for me. I'll dance for you, Russell. I'll dance for you. For those that are curious, I am taking it easy to not by drinking a Sheridan's Coffee layered liqueur. All right. So you can see stuff now, right? Yes.
    22:33
    Got that Deadpool premium right there. All right. We'll see how good the quality comes through on what you're going to show us. It's just plywood, right? Deadpool.
    22:56
    This is melamine. Does that make sense? Your camera was pointed more at the apron than it was at the wood.
    23:08
    Did that work? Not really, because your camera was pointed more at the apron than the actual wood that you're talking about. Does that work? No. You were talking more about your camera was pointed at the apron more than the actual wood. All right. Let's try that again.
    23:27
    Can you see the cabinet? Yeah, we're good now. Good now. Let me get a thumbs up, yeah. HDF. Why would HDF, melamine, melamine?
    23:44
    All right. Good on that one. All right, how about that? That was good. We got you there. But I think you made a lot of people cringe, including myself, by damaging your cabinet. even though no one's ever going to see it, but you took a, took a, okay, you probably didn't hear me. You made a lot of people cringe, including myself, by scraping your cabinet like that. I know it's a pinball machine. No one's ever going to see it but yourself. And I know you get a lot of people that are just like, no, no, no.
    24:15
    My game. Do what you want with it. It's my game. You unplugged your camera, Ian. Yeah. sensitive. How's that? There we go. You're back. All right. This is my trusty Swiss Army knife. Oh, man.
    24:42
    I'm trying to think if I still have one. Give me some orders, baby. I don't have a Swiss one, but I do always have my knife on me for just in case purposes.
    24:49
    All right. Sorry about all of that. And I, you know, I threw this together at the last minute and said, oh, you know, I want to show them. I put the screen together in the last minute, so we're both on the same page here when it comes to last minute stuff right here. Nothing was really planned out. It's basically kind of like a white Russian there, Junior. Yeah, when I'm drinking.
    25:06
    George is over here having water, but he's at work, technically. So, let's talk about, all right, so I don't know. I mean, there shouldn't be any doubt about the material at this point. I've shown you it's the same.
    25:24
    The new one's not painted. Most of the edges have edge molding on them, and I can show you some of that. I'm going to try that again without breaking anything.
    25:40
    You see that? Edge molding? Right? Edge molding? edge molding there, there's edge molding down here right edge molding, so wherever most of the places where I have where I used to paint the material, I now have edge molding I didn't realize I was on mute, I would have stopped you while you had your finger on that cabinet, there is something that is different that is visible opposed to your spike 2 down there, it looks like some sort of plastic hole of some sort on the lower end of the leg. Yeah. Okay, so that's just something that I think visually, just by standing back even five feet, that's something that's different about that. So what is that?
    26:32
    That? Right there. Right, that's what you're looking at. Correct. Yeah. That is this. This is one of the new threaded inserts that holds everything together, right? So that threaded insert goes into a quarter-twenty bolt. The bolt has a lock washer, and it has a nylon patch, and those bolts are what hold the entire cabinet together, in addition to some molded pins out of a tough nylon alloy that go along the sides, but the entire cabinet is screwed together using these steel brackets. Right? So let's go look at this so you understand it.
    27:29
    All right. So you see the brackets? Yep. And you see the bolts, right? Yep. You see that? Yes, sir. All right. And that bracket is everywhere. It's the same bracket. There goes your camera again.
    27:49
    It's underneath there also. Your camera's gone again. You got a loose connection on that camera. But I've got some pictures. I'll make it easier. I've got pictures of the inside of the cabin that shows the braces and everything while you get your camera figured out again. But let me bring these pictures over here for people to see on screen. Hold on. So here's a brace that's at the back of the cabinet towards the rear end that you're talking about, one of your steel braces. Yeah. So that brace is an identical brace four places in the cabinet.
    28:33
    And it was one of my design challenges. It was like designing a puzzle because the load conditions at all four places in the cabinet are very different. In addition to that, I had to make all of the fasteners work regardless of, that's not it, that's the front molding. Yeah, and I'm just showing everybody, so here's the middle one.
    28:54
    Right. So there's, right, so that's all, there's the middle one right there, right? So the entire thing is screwed together. There's four of these in the cabinet, and they are the primary structural support across the cabinet. It's 16-gauge steel, and it passed all the drop tests and all the ship tests, all the drag tests, all the stuff. So it's really not a big deal. It's not at all like the home edition cabinet, which people are trying to compare it to. The home edition cabinet uses traditional furniture toggle bolts. That's not the case here. Okay, so So out of curiosity, with the way the cabinet is built now, I mean, this is just going by word of mouth here, so I want to confirm. Let's just say, for instance, a side of the cabinet did get damaged. Would someone be able to swap out the side of their cabinet now with this kind of build?
    29:52
    Sure. You could. You absolutely could. Because, I mean, it's basically all screwed together and bolted together. So let's talk about why did I do this? Yeah. Why did I do this, right? Yeah. Okay. So there's a bunch of different... There is. There is. When you look at the old cabinet with what's called a modified locked miter joint, where the two pieces come together and they get glued together and stapled, and there's a series of glue blocks around it, right? I can't tell, once that cabinet is assembled and painted, I can't tell if the guy building it put enough glue in the cabinet.
    30:40
    The only way I can tell is destructive testing. And I'm happy to do destructive testing, but that is a statistical guess as to, I don't know, was he talking to his buddy and he did, you know, he missed that side but not this side? so that joint is structurally invisible to me The integrity of that joint is absolutely invisible to me There's another thing which you mentioned earlier, the notion of the environment that the cabinet is in, right? If the cabinet is in a moist environment, it absorbs moisture. If it's in a dry environment, it dries out. The locked miter joint, when they do get it right, that thing doesn't want to move. but the wood wants to move, the wood wants to expand, the wood wants to contract, and the wood will go where the wood will go. And so what happens is, you remember the tight glass condition that we had with cabinets some time ago, where people couldn't get the glass out of their games? Yes.
    31:46
    Not going to happen on this cabinet, right? Because the dimensional control, the stability of the material itself is so much greater, right? So a combination of the assembly technique and the material choice. The material choice, by the way, that melamine really helps. The melamine and the HDF really help in terms of moisture absorption because the only place you're absorbing moisture is on exposed edges. And on top of that, there aren't that many exposed edges because I sealed most of them with the edge banding, right? So now you have a cabinet that is where the material substrate is more dimensionally stable than the old one, and the construction technique is such that you don't have these natural stresses at the joints, which are going to hold and force the wood to do whatever the wood does. And in the case of wood expanding, it's going to be stronger. It's going to do what it wants regardless of that glue joint, right? And, again, that joint is some years ago we had a problem with, and everyone in the world knows it, where our cabinet seems coming apart and me losing my mind going, what, you know, I mean, I haven't changed the design of that cabinet, but the guy at the cabinet house isn't consistently putting glue in it. So the other good thing about this is now these cabinets are assembled here. I control the assembly. We control the assembly. We control the torque, you know, 60-inch pounds on each of these bolts. I can check it. I can go out there and check the tools.
    33:29
    And, you know, I can't do that with a stapled and glued joint. It may have three inches of glue. It may have six inches of glue. I don't know. I can't tell. You've eliminated basically a variety of, like, variable, like, analog pieces that are in your whole cabinet by basically making it to where it's, like, pretty much a guarantee just by visual inspection that it should be solid type of thing. Yeah, and tool inspection. I can put a torque wrench on them, right? I can put a torque wrench on them and say, and there's another really cool thing about this fastener that I found, right? We took the fastener and we abused it. we basically torqued it until we sheared the head off. And you know what happened? The body of the fastener stayed in the panel and did not compromise the structure of the cabinet, even though we sheared the head off. Now, I don't recommend that you do that, but we did do that. I would say that the people that I do know that own the latest release in regards to this cabinet, at the Walking Dead remastered, from every feedback that I've gotten so far, the common feedback is that the cabinet does feel very sturdy. It does feel very solid. So there is no complaints about how it feels. I think at this point it's a major question of longevity, and I don't even know if you have a answer for that either. I mean, because you don't have the ability to say, oh, it's going to last for this long, because you kind of technically don't know why. Well, I don't know what the life of it will be, but I'll tell you this. I'll tell you that the very first prototypes got screwed together in early 2023,
    35:11
    and we've been beating on this thing for a long time. So I really don't have any – I mean, I think that just the fact that the material is, you know, it's way more stable, the integrity of the joints that, you know, which used to be invisible is no longer invisible. I mean, it's a huge thing. not to mention the fact that before, I mean, this is just a manufacturing thing. It doesn't mean anything to you guys, but we're shipping a lot of air, right? We're bringing huge boxes from, you know, from the cabinet house to Stern. They're going on trucks. They're getting exposed to weather. Even if they're inside and they're covered up, but still, you're leaving a dock in the winter and you're coming to another dock and you're driving many miles with this, right? Now I'm shipping flat panels. I can store them. I can do anything with them. The panel itself is way more stable structurally. So I don't think you're going to see any of the warping, you know, glass-tight issues or any of that stuff. I think that's all gone.
    36:19
    Let's talk about the leg bolts because there's a lot of misinformation about that. Okay. All right. So let's see if I can do this again. There goes the camera.
    36:36
    So, there's somebody out there that's saying that there's no holes when the leg is installed. Your camera. Right? When the leg is installed, there are no holes. George, your camera.
    36:48
    He can't hear me when he's gone. Oh, man. Every time I move, every time I move this thing. I know. It's just so flaky.
    37:01
    All right. Crazy. There it goes again. Crazy, crazy, crazy. Am I still on? No, you're not, George. Man, that's hard.
    37:27
    I cannot get this done. I think I do have pictures. I could bring up pictures if that makes it easier, but I want to say that pictures were recently posted on Pinside in regards to the holes that are definitely different. But when you put legs on, they are covered.
    37:42
    Okay, he can't hear me yet. Hold on. Okay, so in regards to that, I do have images of the cabinet in regards to the holes that you're talking about. Because if you look at the images without legs, it does look like you have, like, some larger holes. And what do these do? Why are they there? I do. If you put legs on, you don't see them. But can you explain to me why the holes look the way they do? Yeah. Yep, I can.
    38:06
    Let's share screen. Select the tab to share. Share the tab that says upcoming projects. All right, here we go. Sure.
    38:28
    All right, can you guys see this? Yep. All right, so this is the cabinet. This is my CAD. And you can see that's the nut. That's not the hole you're talking about, right?
    38:47
    And when you have the leg on, you can't see that hole you're talking about, right? So I'm going to make, I'm going to turn the leg off. and now you can see the hole, right? See that hole right there? Yep.
    39:02
    All right, let's find out. Why is that hole there? All right, so this panel, this is a cabinet side panel. This panel has a huge advantage. The entire panel is machined from one side. in a single operation that all that happens is that the machine, the CNC machine, automatically changes the cutters, the speed of the cut, all that kind of thing. But the panel is never, there are no secondary operations. That means the panel is never taken from this machine and moved to another machine for some other operation. And the advantage to that is accuracy. Right. So whenever you take a setup and you break it and you move it to another location, even if you index it and you're very careful and you have great pictures and everything else, you are still introducing an element of, you know, of inaccuracy inherent to the fact that you move the panel. Right. So this panel. In order to in the old cabinet, I'm going to go back to the – in the old cabinet, I'm going to turn off the bolts.
    40:24
    Turn off the bolts and turn off the washers. By the way, you know what this plastic thing does, right? It protects the cabinet. What it does is it prevents the decals from wrinkling. Yeah. I invented – These are the old ones for whatever I'm doing, restorations and everything. But, yeah, are those metal or are they plastic? So I invented these. When I first made them, they were metal. And then we basically made them out of plastic because they don't really need to be metal. They're just a spacer. So now everybody's knocked me off. But I invented these back in 2014, back when everybody had those big, giant, molded plastic things, like protectors. And they didn't really do anything. They just transferred the load to a different part of the decal. Anyway, so what happens here is that you can... You can see the bracket behind there, right? And so in the old cabinet, there was a drill fixture that once the cabinet is screwed together, glued together, that drill fixture drilled a hole through the corner of the cabinet in order for the leg bolt to go through, right? And that fixture indexed to the cabinet, but again, accuracy problem, not only in indexing the fixture, but in the operator with the drill. So, gone away, right? Because the accuracy comes from the CNC machine, and the way to get it was to do those slots. And that's all it is. So, they're invisible. So, because they're invisible, they didn't bother me at all. They're covered up by the leg.
    42:03
    Here's the other one. I'm going to take, there's the other one, right? And that's in the four places in the cabinet.
    42:10
    This bracket on the other side is brand new. and it has these really cool studs which transfer load this way to the cabinet. So way stronger than the old ones and also very accurate. Those look proprietary compared to the ones that I use. Right. So here's a panel, right, and it slides into those holes, and then we run the wood screws, And once this entire thing is clamped together and the cabinet is up, it's rigid. It's not going anywhere. It's a much nicer, much stronger joint than anything in your current cabinets.
    42:55
    All right. So now I've been waiting for this. Here's the mic drop moment. Okay. You want to hear the mic drop moment?
    43:04
    Don't drop the camera out of there. It might go out. What do you think, what do you think, what do you think, Nate? Like, in the history of pinball, who made the best cabinets in the world? Williams. Yeah? Okay. Let me show you something.
    43:19
    This is Mr. Elwin's Congo cabinet. Okay, brought it to my office. Hold on, you got your camera off again. Oh, man.
    43:26
    This is so annoying. All right. Are we there? Yep. This is Mr. Elwin's Congo cabinet. What do you see? I see a lot of things that he needs to get fixed, but that's beside the point.
    43:50
    From a restoration point of view, but I know it doesn't matter. The entire, in this entire Congo cabinet, there are two plywood panels. The entire rest of the cabinet is MDF. Well, I just realized that you're still sharing the screen, so they can't really see that in full screen. I'm sorry, guys. Oh, man. Okay. All right. I just realized it was off camera. All right. Okay.
    44:17
    Let's get you to stop sharing so you can see that again. I'm sharing. All right. Okay. All right. There's Mr. Owen's cabinet, William's cabinet, Congo. Can you see that? Yep. the entire cabinet, with the exception of the coin door panel at the front of the cabinet.
    44:35
    Am I still on camera? You're still on camera for some reason, yeah. Surprisingly. With the exception of that panel and the one that's underneath the back box, everything else in this cabinet is MDF. That's MDF.
    44:58
    Yeah, I know back boxes were typically the very back panel was MDF. So, I guess... Did you guys see that? We saw it. I mean, I guess the main concern and question that a lot of people have on their minds is that It seems like you're doing this from a cost-cutting standpoint. It seems like you're trying to cut corners and make things appear to us from, I haven't had the game in front of me. That was my main point, is that I haven't played it. It could be sturdy. It could hold up just fine. We don't know. But when all we've got pictures is to go by, it does look like you're cutting corners or trying to cheapen the cabinet, and that's why the whole IKEA thing comes into place. Yeah, but, I mean, I hope I just proved to you that that's hardly the case. I think for a pinball, it's going to be a hands-on experience. I mean, people are going to have to see it and believe it and actually handle it. Well, I don't, I mean, I don't.
    46:00
    Watch this. So I'm going to remove the side armor on this so you can see how easy it is to install expression lighting on this cabinet, on this new cabinet, right? Okay. So I have, I've removed, I've basically removed these fasteners right here. Can you see them? Yes.
    46:24
    Then I've taken them out just to save time. And now I'm going to show you how to take this off, right? So this entire thing, this entire thing comes off, right? Your expression lighting system is loaded into this, and now you just light it back on, and four screws later, and one connector, you're operational.
    46:58
    Okay. I've never had to install it. Me personally haven't installed an expression light system, but I'm curious for those that have installed an expression light system, if that sounds like it's an easier, better version of what you're going to be doing in the future. The other thing about this is that now you can get expression lights both on the inside and the outside, right? Like you saw on the Walking Dead cabinets. Yeah, I'm curious about the lights on the outside, about that in regards to the lighting on the outside of the rails. The first time that a lot of us saw that type of engineering or thing on a pinball machine was, like, Dutch DPX's Alice in Wonderland. And it was under my impression that that was actually a patent. So I'm kind of curious where that's at on that, if you have a comment on that. Okay.
    47:45
    Yeah, that's our knowledge. Okay. So the other thing that you'll notice is that there's these little tiny, let's see, these filler pieces. These are little molded cups because I didn't like seeing the wood on the side of the cabinet, right? so try this again. You see right here, can you see that? So that's this guy and you can see what it looks like without it. Right, that little cup goes right in here and the screw goes through it.
    48:38
    But it's like I have no doubts that, you know, one of the main reasons why you're doing this is obviously to eliminate uncontrollable variables and make the manufacturing much more streamlined. And so that helps in a number of reasons and everything. And I do not doubt the fact that this does save you money somewhere along the lines in regards to manufacturing, because I think you're doing all this inside in the house now, right?
    49:12
    So if you think about this, right, like, if you had to design a new cabinet, why wouldn't you pursue efficiencies everywhere?
    49:23
    Right? I mean, do we, you know, why would we engineer less than the best? if I could make any I made these choices right I made these choices everyone here validated them but I made them and my feeling is I have to do a new cabinet and I want to fix the inconsistent quality and I had inconsistent quality in the last cabinet so I want a better material that has better dimensional stability that I can control the machining operations with more precision that I can assemble, and when I'm done assembling it, I know what I have, I can check it, I could have a guy in final running around with a torque wrench and saying, you know, make sure all these bolts are where they're supposed to be.
    50:13
    I can see visually, is it correct, is it not, right? So, I mean, from my perspective, I mean, you guys, I don't know why you guys constantly go to the cheapening out thing, There's like so much, you know, there's like so much. There's the constant feedback that we get and we see things, and it always seems like you've got to look out. Obviously, you're a business, but you've got to have your margins. I think with the way pinball is now, it's not the way it was back whenever you had COVID going, and then you now brought yourself into a much larger facility. So now it's a matter of this is basically me telling you the mindset of those enthusiasts out there is that now that you've got a larger facility and you're not able to pump out or we're not pumping out as many games as you were during COVID, you have to compensate. So I'll tell you that we are pumping out as many games as we were during COVID because during COVID we were in a smaller facility and we were stretched to capacity, right? So we have much more control of what we make. Now, the scale of our business is a lot different than the scale of all the other businesses in pinball. So, you know, I mean, you know, come on. In a day's production, we might do what somebody else does in two weeks. Yeah. Okay? I mean, I don't know another way to tell it, and I'm not showing off. I'm just telling you the reality. Well, people are well aware that you guys win when it comes to quantity without a doubt. No question of that at all kind of thing. Yeah, and if you truly judge quality, we don't make refrigerators. We make entertainment product. And if you judge quality based on the longevity of our games, our back catalog is essentially the proof in the pudding, right? We just put Deadpool in the vault. I introduced it in 2018. We made it consistently year in and year out, right? Godzilla is, at some moment in time, in the not-too-far-distant future, Godzilla is going to break the record for how many pinball machines have been produced. That's a little question I was going to ask you next, because the rumor was that you had already passed the Addams Family, so I was kind of curious to that. We haven't. Okay. No, we haven't, but there's going to come a day. And so, you know, when you look at just, I don't, look, I don't, I understand. You guys, you know, you're absolutely welcome to your opinions.
    52:55
    And, you know, we can agree to disagree or whatever. But I think that, I think we make the best longevity, the most fun games, and the games that 10 years from now you're still going to be talking about. and I haven't seen a lot of that elsewhere.
    53:16
    So, no, I'm the guy responsible for the show, so you hear my side of it. I mean, the perception, you know, at one point in time, pinball was considered a machine to get out there and make money and then buy the next one and rotate that out of arcades. That was the perception. It was basically like a throwaway thing, and the arcade owners, the operators, would use them, abuse them, and move on to the next thing. And so I guess the concern is that the direction that you're going now is turning it into a machine to get out there, earn some money, and then throw away and work your way to the next one type of thing. Well, 70% of our games go into the consumer. Collectors, yes. Yeah, we're paying more attention to the consumer market. Not necessarily collectors. Collectors is a piece of consumer, right? We have a lot of – Star Wars has a huge number of first-time buyers, right? And by the way, we released the Star Wars fix. I don't know if you've seen it, a Death Star fix today. I opened up that entrance, and it's available. People just reach out to tech support, and they'll send you the part. Okay. That's good to know. But, yeah, so – but, no, I mean, I think that – I think we have – look, we haven't raised prices in a long time, right? and we're trying to add value to the games, right? If you buy a walking dead, you're getting, you know, you're getting this new expression lighting system. You're getting the new cabinet. The new cabinet is awash with the cost of the old cabinet. The efficiencies are in my ability to improve quality and control the process. They're not in, like, everybody, you guys have some vision that this material costs. It's the same material as I proved with the Deadpool, right? So for 2018, we've been using, since 2018, we've been using the same 18-millimeter HDF sandwich, plywood core, you know, and, yeah, it's not painted like it was. And, you know, maybe the next iteration of cabinets you'll see, I'll put a piece of edge molding there just so, you know, so you don't worry about it. I think it's all for people questioning due to the fact that you're able to take off panels or remove them, that people are going to eventually be able to, like, store or at least travel with a pinball machine in the back of their Ford Taurus or whatever kind of thing. It depends if they all come off and just, like, stay in the back. Yeah, it's hard. I mean, it's hard. There's still a lot there. But it is way more modular. The other thing about modularity, and let's touch on this.
    55:51
    So when we introduced Spike 2, and one of the big successes to Spike 2 is the modularity and scalability of the system. The fact that the very same system that drives the most compact game, the home edition, also drives the most expensive game, a limited edition with all the toys, the topper, all that stuff, right? So that's a scalable system. But beyond that, the modularity, the thing that the modularity does, those nodes allow us, when we don't have a node to do something, we create it. So, when we put a display on the play field in Star Wars, you know, whatever it was six years ago, we had to figure out a way to do that. We created that node. That node is in the inventory. That node now has been used numerous times, right? So, the same thing with, you know, the Batman little TV, whatever.
    56:49
    You know, when I added the QR readers to the games, that became a node, right? That ability to expand the system to fit the need without totally re-architecting something is one of the big successes of Spike 2. And so with Spike 3, we continued it, by the way. All those Spike 2 node boards work with the new CPU and the new, you know, all of that stuff. And, of course, we're trying to look. We're giving you the 18.5 display, higher resolution, the better sound system. If you haven't heard the sound system, you really need to. Speaking of the sound system, I'm going to give you a preview of something nobody's seen. Uh-oh. And again, sorry. I'm going to lose some of your guys. He's going to lose the temper proud of you. Let's see.
    57:37
    Am I still on camera? He's in chorus, baby. All right. So this is, did you just see me open this? Can you see this? I see you drop down, yeah. All right. This is the enclosure that's going to come on all of the LEs, which get the cool, you know, two-speaker array. And when you buy the upgrade to update your pro or your premium, you're getting that enclosure. That enclosure was designed by the sound engineers at the speaker house. In other words, a lot of attention went into what the volume was, should we port it, Should we not port it? How is that crossover designed?
    58:21
    Another thing that you haven't seen yet is the new expression light system for speakers is so easy to install. Again, trying to eliminate the hassle of installing the old system. Right now, it's a board. It drops in. You run a couple of bolts, and you put a connector in it, and you're there.
    58:40
    So a lot of those quality-of-life things is what this is about. I think it's what the issue is for, you know, and I'm throwing myself in this, you know, a lot of us don't like change. And the thing is, I think change is kind of, and I even made it, the one post that I did make is that a lot of people are not even going to notice these changes. It's those that actually, like, are really hardcore enthusiasts, the veterans that are going to, like, dig down, open things up, and really dig in there to see these differences. And I think it's the unknown of longevity. When people buy a Spy 2, if someone buys a Deadpool right now, chances are that you've got a history, a pedigree of knowing what they're going to get and how long it's going to last because they have a history.
    59:22
    I guarantee you, I guarantee you that this will last as long as anything you've seen before. Guaranteed. All right, there you go, guys. Call me out on it. Call me out on it when it's ready. You know, did you also notice that the bolts are gone from the side of the cabinet? Oh, yeah, for the holes to play in. Oh, yeah, it's going to be like those. That's right, yeah. Oh, I did not notice that, actually. Yeah, the arc team threw a party, right? Because they were always trying to work around those three bolts. And, you know, you always hit a bolt that landed on somebody's face. Yeah. And a lot of times, you know, we literally, and you look at your games out there, you'll find games that have, like, two black bolts and a silver one, or one side has three blacks and the other has two silvers because we're trying to hide them in the artwork. So that's all gone. See, it's things like that where even people like myself would look at that and go, well, they're just grabbing from the bottom of the barrel and grabbing whatever hardware they could fucking find and putting it on this cabinet to get it out the door instead of it being from an artistic standpoint like you're talking about. Yeah. I mean, the amount of care that went into this, And, of course, I mean, look, I guess I totally appreciate the opportunity to tell my side of it and sort of explain it to you. I'm sorry for this goofy camera setup. I called the IT guys today, and I said, can you guys get me a longer extension cable for my camera because I want to walk around the office and show all this cool stuff. and they gave me a cable, but good God, that USB connection is like horrid. Every time I move the cable, it's like the thing resets.
    61:13
    All right. I think we're right there at an hour mark in regards to the main catalyst of the discussion, but I think there's a lot of people in chat that had questions for you. I know I've got a good deal amount of questions from my patrons that I wanted to at least kind of throw them in here.
    61:28
    Do it. Now, without a doubt, some of these questions, I wouldn't consider them questions. Some of them are insults with a question mark at the end of them. So I kind of don't want to read all of them. But, like, give me a second here. Let me scroll up and see what we've got here in regards to questions. And then, by all means, I know that you're all up with the hard-hitting questions here. Yeah, yeah. Let's do it.
    61:53
    Okay. I know one of the questions, for sure, while I look up other ones, is in regards to, and you just discussed this earlier. is that 70 of your clientele is the home buyers And then you have the arcade operators and then you have that portion of collectors the ones that get every LE And now due to I say within this last 12 months it seems like and this doesn help with, you know, shit from me, but like, you know, in regards to the LEs, there are concerns about, you know, are we going to see more things in the LE that makes it stand out and much more, I guess, valuable or hold, you know, value or go up? It makes it to where the LEs are, like, more sought after than the last few titles, at least, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. We're talking about all kinds of different things to do that. We understand the concern, by the way. And so, you know, you'll see things like, look, I mean, we snuck a lot of stuff in, and we don't get any credit for it, right? You know, we snuck in speaker lights. We snuck in expression lighting. You know, we're thinking about other things that we can give you, even so far as to think about, okay, maybe we should give you a unique play feature. Maybe we should do stuff that, you know, that you can only get if you have this, the Ali. We have also, you know, we've explored and we are exploring a bunch of different upgraded materials for things like decorative things, like finish things and stuff. And we've done some of this before, like you've seen, sparkle on play fields and all that kind of stuff. But we are absolutely 100% aware that people want the alleys to be unique and valuable, and we want to do everything we can to preserve the value.
    63:35
    You know, you talk about the split between the 70% and the 30%. Do you know why the 30% is important? I mean, you can guess. You get new people to come in and play a game and go, you know, I'd like to have one of these in my house. That's right. And, you know, when you're 20-something, you can't afford a $13,000 pinball machine. You know, most 20-somethings can't. And so the street is, you know, the locations, it's super important to us. But that doesn't take away from the fact that we know, and we've heard it a lot in this last year, because everybody wants to talk about, you know, the value of the LEs, et cetera. And so we are very aware of it. We hear it. We listen to it. We're not deaf. We're not tone deaf. And we want the business to thrive. We want everybody's business to thrive. You know, we're not aware of it or unaware of it, I should say. This is coming from someone who visits a multitude of all manufacturers and speaks to every other manufacturer in regards to everything. but every manufacturer that I visit does not wish harm or failure on Stern at all if anything they want you guys to keep playing a great game you're making the whole industry thrive you guys are the guys that shoot arrows at me I don't like I said you're glad to get this out on the stream I'm also glad on it because you know chances are I would have had a few more drinks and then made a fucking video, and it would have blown up and been ridiculous, the whole John Wick thing, all over again. And I'm like, no. So I was all up to see if we can get this done today, to nip this in the bud. So here we have another question. I have a few questions, and I know that these are not going to be some that you can answer, but they still said these are my patrons, so I'm still going to cater to them. So what's George Gomez and Jack Danger's actual involvement in the next machine? Are they like 50-50?
    65:44
    Well, so we are co-designing. And what does that mean? It means that Jack did a lot of the early work, and then, you know, his responsibilities. We decided he was, you know, his personality, his history with the community is such that he was the natural choice, and we felt we needed a person in that slot. He did a lot of the early conceptual work. I've done a lot of the finished work. I've taken it home. I'm bringing it home. So we're both going to sign the LE. You know, Jack said to me, you want me to sign it? Yeah, I want you to sign it. Of course.
    66:26
    And, you know, look, you're going to see some of his magic, and hopefully you'll see some of my stuff in the game. And, you know, I'm excited about it. And so, you know, yeah. Yeah, well, without a doubt, I think there's no argument that Jack does great behind the camera, especially as a head figure, like, you know, someone that can reach out to Stern Pinball and he's the guy. I think that that's something that should have been used in regards to this new cabinet. I can just picture Jack Danger doing a video like, hey, Internet, this is Jack Danger here at Stern Pinball. I want to give you a tour of our new Spike 3 cabinet. and the camera does all the things. You're going to see it soon. Okay. Because, you know, this was very impromptu, but we're going to do it for real, and so that we can put it out in the media and everybody can see it and I can talk about it without, like, you know, have my camera breaking every two seconds.
    67:25
    So, yeah, you're going to see it soon. Yeah. All right. So I'm skipping past a couple of these questions. B, if you're watching, I'm not ignoring your questions. I can ask them, but I know I'm not going to get an answer. So just for example. Well, ask them. Ask them. I don't care. All right, fine. Your next game, is it Transformers or Pokemon?
    67:43
    It's one of those two. Oh, all right. There we go. It's one of those two. All right. There you go, B. You're welcome. All right. So is the next remaster end of 2026, or could they announce it much sooner?
    67:59
    End of 2026. End of 26 is probably a possibility, but I'm not sure yet. It's early in that remaster, and, you know, remasters are all, they've proven to be very different, you know, and so meaning, what does that mean? It means that the cooperation, the hoops we have to jump through in terms of licensing, in terms of getting stuff approved, in terms of revisiting technology from a long time ago and improving the games and all that kind of stuff, you know, it's proven to be 70%, just so you know.
    68:46
    My executive producer, Mark Wehner, tells me that the effort that we put into remasters is easily 70% of a from-scratch effort, which you wouldn't imagine it, right? Because you think, oh, no, what do you mean? It's all designed. It's already done. All the rules work. All the fireworks have been done. Yeah, it's already done.
    69:04
    So here's something right here. I mean, this is coming from me. I mean, I'm curious in regards to, and I know you've answered this question many a time. They get asked to you all the time. And I'm sure you're tired of hearing it, but a lot of people are wanting two titles in particular. And I bet you can give me the name of those two titles that people are asking you about if you're going to do those. What are the top two titles that you hear the most that you're going to remaster or redo? Lord of the Rings and Tron bam you got it so I mean like are those off the table or is it just like hold on guys we're trying yeah hold on guys we're trying alright hold on guys we're trying yeah hold on guys we're trying there you go give them something out there give them hope you gotta give them a little bit of my earliest professional success was the original Tron video game from 1982 to, right? I was a young man. I worked on that game. It was the first time that I did anything of note in the business. And so I have a passionate love affair with the franchise from that perspective.
    70:10
    I would love nothing more than for that to happen. And then, of course, the other one is also something that, you know, looms large in my portfolio. So I would love to do it. And, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, sit tight. Maybe it'll happen. Yeah, because I was even at Spooky just recently. They got a Lord of the Rings in their lineup right there, and I was playing the hell out of Lord of the Rings right there kind of thing, you know. So there's a lot of appreciation for titles like that, and I think a lot of people would love to see it revisited or remastered, rather. So another question here is, how much of your work in Pinball 2000 transfers over to your leadership and vision for what became Spike 2-3 at Stern? Did it inspire the move to the included LCD from the D&B display, or was the evolution happening already?
    70:59
    Yeah. No, I mean, look, I've said this many times. I'm lucky to be in the seat that I'm in, and I couldn't do the work I do where you see me touching all this different stuff. I mean, this cabinet, I probably could have done this cabinet in six months if all I had to do in my life was this cabinet. But I didn't. I have I have to run the studio. I touch every product. I've you know, I'm involved in a lot of things, Insider Connected, etc. But that said, I could not be doing what I do had I not been all the places I've been. Right. I broke into the business with coin operated arcade games. I moved on. I was a toy inventor at a consulting firm. From there, I designed novelty games for some number of years, eventually landed at Williams Electronics and designed pinball machines, came out of Williams Electronics and worked on Xbox and PlayStation stuff for nine years of my life. On the side, during those nine years of my life is when I did games like Batman the Dark Knight and Sopranos and Lord of the Rings and Playboy. That stuff happened in that time. That sort of set out my relationship with the company. Right? That's why when the company was coming back from the ashes of 08, and Gary needed somebody to run product development, he came to me and says, come and run product development. It was my previous experience designing those games that sort of opened that door for me. I think that Pinball 2000 will still go down as one of the most epic development efforts that I've ever participated in. And, yeah, you can, you know, look, everything you do in your career influences the rest of your path, right? So I have things like I was running an Xbox PlayStation team when Xbox Live and PlayStation Network were born. So I had to take my game and put it on there. That's where the idea for how to do a similar network for pinball, Insider Connected, came from, right? Like I said, I don't want to just download code. I want to create a community of interactive play with the machines.
    73:16
    You know, it's been one of the most transformational things to pinball. And I kid with some of the guys, and I was like, when this is all said and done, the most impactful thing I will have done is Insider Connected. And yet, I'm a game designer, you know. But the thing that, you know, we have literally hundreds of thousands of users on Insider Connected. And, I mean, that's transforming how people interact with pinball machines. So, you know, and, of course, I'm very happy that it has. But all of those, long-winded way of saying, yeah, absolutely, every experience influences the stuff you do, right? Yeah. So, out of curiosity, at the scale that Stern produces products, will we ever see more sculpts begin to replace the flat plastics on your play skills? Give me some quarters, baby. Oh, possibly. You know, we, so, we, how we have gotten here, and, you know, you've got to remember this. When I walked in the door, there were nine people in product development. There were 35 people in the factory.
    74:26
    A lot of the discipline to do the things you have to do to grow your business are the things that allow you to look at the value equation of a game, the cost of the game, the ability for you to produce it, the length of the development cycle, how much the company can afford to fund. Those are the realities of life that no one wants to hear them, but that's how it is that we got to the point where I have 55 people in the product development studio, 30 consultants on the outside helping us design the games, 500 people in the factory, 150 people in the front office. That's how we got here. It was that discipline. So, you know, you want to hang your hat on the flat plastics, I'd love to give it to you, but I'm all about we have to preserve the stuff that matters, which is the stuff on the play field. And that means that when you beat me up about, did I take, you know, am I cheapening out the cabinet? I'm not cheapening out the cabinet. I want to do the things I want to do. I want to keep the cabinet cost where it was. We haven't raised prices, and I got an 18.5 display that you didn't have before. I got a more powerful CPU. I've got a higher-end speaker system. so I want to keep the money on the play field but yet I realize that the platform also has to evolve so flat plastics yeah I mean you know every game is different some of it is designer choice right I don't you know it's like John said these are toys I want in Star Wars Keith said these are toys I want in Kong you know I mean it's like look at a game like Deadpool I mean, that should speak to you about the purity of good design in terms of entertainment, right? It's a very entertaining game. I don't have the kitchen sink in it. I didn't do what I normally do, which is like, you know, the Batman turntable with a ball lock, a TV, 16 ways into the thing, you know, all this kind of stuff, right? A crane that moves around. So I've done it both ways. I tell my guys bring me five amazing things not 18 mediocre ones bring me five amazing things let's focus on making super cool stuff that you can then expand on to get to a place so let's say hypothetically you get teleported 20 years into the future and you have a row of pinball machines in front of you, a variety of things a theme doesn't matter could you pinpoint which game you designed by merely looking at how the game is? Is there a signature that you have that you would be, this is something I designed? Sure. Yeah. I mean, you guys, I mean, look, one day we should do a show where we bring up all my games, and I show you similarities. I show you thinking similarities and execution similarities. and now when a designer starts designing, you're going to have to make a lot of games before you have a style. Style is about experience just like it is in writing, just like it is in painting, just like it is in music, right? You don't develop a style three games in. You don't. You don't have it. Your style, your signature comes from lots of iteration about the thing you do. So, I mean, look at all of the significant designers through time of pinball machines. They have signature styles. And so I think at this point I have one, and, you know, you'll see some of it in the next game, I think.
    78:17
    I try not to repeat myself. I try really hard not to repeat myself, right? I work really hard to, okay, I know what to do, but I want to give it a new face. I want to try different things. So I don't always get it right. You know, I don't always pull it off. You know, sometimes I'm my harshest critic, by the way. I critique my stuff way harder than you guys. You don't even know it. I'm the same way on my stuff. I read comments and I'm like, you can't harm me as much as I harm myself kind of thing. I'm harder on me than anybody else is. I've got some other questions right here. I'm not going to lie, George. These are a little rough. Bring it. All right. Bring it. Yeah. All right, so this is not to pinpoint anybody else. I'm just reading here, and they've even tied me with data points, and I'll show you the graph. Okay. All right. Okay, well, ask him why Seth Davis is ruining Stern by bringing in a bunch of people from outside the industry who allegedly know widgets but have no idea about pinball specifically. CFO, parts and accessories manager, new director of sales, all generics that have no knowledge of pinball. The result is not impressive.
    79:28
    Any comments on that? Well, so I don't, you know, first of all, most of those people haven't been here very long, so it's really hard to gauge how impressive or not they are. If you bring in someone to run the parts department, you know, I don't know, you know, it's like, I think that person needs to be a good, you know, good business guy with the credentials, you know, to back that up. I mean, he can learn. I mean, he's not making decisions about what products he's selling. You know, I mean, you know, the product development department in this organization drives so much of what you see because we are you in a lot of ways. We buy the games. We play the games. We collect them. We mod them. We compete. So all of us differently, just like you guys, right? So it's like, you know, I'm not a competition player, but God knows I got some on my staff, right? And, you know, I've got people that mod. I've got people that collect. So we drive a lot of it. So the people you're talking about, you know, I mean, the CFO needs to be a great financial guy.
    80:40
    He doesn't necessarily need to know something about pinball. He can absolutely learn. The guy that runs parts and accessories has been here a few minutes. You know, he's learning all along. I think that every position, you also can't run the company with old thinking, right? So you have to run the company with a combination of we're not a garage shop anymore. And our hope is that we continue to grow, that we continue to expand the business. And so we make decisions based on the company we are, not the company we were, right? So I think, I mean, you know, and it's a natural evolution of a business that you need more sophisticated skills in certain areas of the company. And you want to, of course, you want to retain the skills, you know, in my shop. I mean, you know, it's a very specific thing. But, look, I hire new grad engineers. Many of them have never touched a pinball machine. They don't know from a pinball machine. Now, they think they're cool, and they want to know from a pinball machine, and they get passionate real quick. But you've got to come in here and bring them in, and you've got to go, you know, the stuff you did in automotive isn't necessarily going to work in pinball. And, you know, this is what a ball trap is. and, you know, most important thing, most important part of a pinball machine, it's got to take money. Next most important part, it's got to start. Next most important part, the flippers have to work. Okay, everything up play field, you know, that's secondary, right? So it's kind of like, you know, we teach it. We teach it. We live it. We breathe it. These guys come in here and they hang out with some of the best in the world and they learn from them. And so I don't know that, you know, it's like I hope that answers the question. I don't, you know, the other thing is, like, you know, Seth, we kid all the time because he's a great guy and we have a great relationship, and he consults me a lot, and he consults all the people in the business a lot. He's down in the studio interacting with stuff, learning about the games, talking to the game designers. I mean, you guys need a boogeyman and you know, it's like you know it's like you know, it's like but I don't think, I think if you were here, walking around the hall and seeing what I see I think you'd have a different perspective about and trust me, over my years and visiting other manufacturers and everything, George trust me, there's a lot of things that have I've been educated upon in regards to this, in regards to what goes through manufacturing, what goes through the licensing portion of it. I'm learning along the way as well, and it's people like yourself that take the time to educate and to form us that makes, hopefully, the content that I provide better kind of thing, at least more accurate from that standpoint. So here's another question. How can competitors offer more mech-packed games with top licenses and real wood cabinets, that's just part of the question, for $2,000 or more less money.
    84:06
    So this is a real wood cabinet, by the way. Let's get that straight. That's why it is part of the question. I know we already answered that. Yeah, real wood cabinet.
    84:16
    So I don't know about competitors' businesses, and I would say that competitors, from what I see, the licensing thing is like, you know, it's who was there, And who chose to pay that money? Not necessarily, you know, we make business decisions. So, you know, there are limits to what, if I cannot make money on the product, I'm not going to do it.
    84:47
    You know, she's not going to do it. If we can't, that's like, you know, somebody wants to charge us $10 million for a license. I'm sorry, we're out. It doesn't make sense for us. I would ask you to, I mean, I don't want anyone to go out of business, but I'd say if competitors don't apply discipline to their businesses, if they don't pay attention to their margins, if they don't pay attention to the things that they need to do, they're not going to have much of a business. You know, some competitors exist strictly to, you know, to get by. That's not us. You know, we're a business.
    85:30
    All right. One more question from this guy. And like I said, he's put the data in. And I'll show you the graph here. Yeah. Okay. While you have Gomez, ask him why times to get code to 1.0 have exploded in the last four years under Seth Davis' direction. I don't know. There's a correlation. Maybe you can respond to this. There isn't. Time to 1.0 has more than doubled under him from 187 days to 390 days average after he took over. That's interesting. So let me show you. Let me bring it up here.
    86:05
    And like I said, this is not my data, so. Yeah, yeah. I'm not seeing it. I put it on the, oh, I shared it on, you might see it on the stream. I'm not screen sharing, so if you could see it on the stream right there. Oh, I see it. I see it. Yeah, okay, I got it.
    86:25
    Interesting. Let's see here. What is he showing? So, yeah, let's talk about this for a second. I'll let you look at it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
    86:43
    So, first of all, it's got nothing. I mean, he's made a correlation that it's got something to do with Seth. Seth doesn't have control of that. I mean, you know, my product development resources are allocated by me.
    86:58
    And so if you have a – and so, like, for example, Bond was a huge licensing nightmare. And can you bring that back up? Oh, yeah, sure. Let me bring it back up. I just want to be able to look at it so I can speak to it. All right, no problem.
    87:21
    Right, so Bond was a huge licensing nightmare, so, you know, it should be known. I mean, that shouldn't be any kind of an indicator.
    87:33
    Things like, for example, John Wick. Well, you know, the developer left in the middle of the project or towards the end of the project, so, you know, other people had to take it on.
    87:46
    Jaws, well, that, you know, that team is pretty standalone, So they're working on King Kong while finishing Jaws, right?
    87:58
    And the same thing with, and a game like Dungeons & Dragons is a game that has a ton of stuff in it. I mean, it's just got a lot of stuff in it. Games like Uncanny X-Men, you know, we had to do a reset on Uncanny X-Men. I mean, it's no surprise that I wasn't happy with where it was, and so I changed the direction of it. And so when you do that, when you change the direction on something, you know, you're just adding time to the development cycle. I guarantee you it's got nothing to do with Seth. I mean, he doesn't, you know, like, so you got, let's see, you got Foo Fighters. Foo Fighters, Tanya, you know, was working on Insider Connected and Foo Fighters. I'm guessing you could say that.
    88:51
    Let's see, Jaws. Yeah, I mean, the Jaws team is working on King Kong at the same time that they're finishing Jaws.
    89:01
    I don't, I mean, you know, go back five years and take a look at, you know, how long it took us to finish games then. I will make another point. These games have way more than games have ever had. So the content in these games is incomparable to content even as recently as Black Knight, right? Munsters, Black Knight, you know, TMNT, just not that level of content. Out of curiosity, I mean, true or false, are games being released with earlier codes than typical over the last 12 months? I mean, it seems like Walking Dead is in the... Probably, yeah.
    89:51
    Yeah. Well, Walking Dead has got some licensing challenges, right? So you've seen, you know, I mean, you've seen the messaging on the screen, right? This is the first time we've seen a game review in regards to something like that with license approval being in the way, though. Not the first time, but it's the first time you remember. Yeah, it's been a while, I guess. Yeah, it's the first time you remember Bond had almost nothing in it, and it had messaging like that. So, I don't, you know, so there's an interesting philosophy about 1.0, right? Like, I don't, I personally do not believe that we should ship, when games ship, they should be at 1.0. And the reason I say that is because so much of what we see when you guys start playing the games gets modified, tuned, tweaked, and finished. And sometimes things get completely added that didn't even exist. Bond is a perfect example of a game that, you know, you guys love it today but, you know, probably 20% of that stuff didn't exist in the original design in terms of, you know, and then as we got into the game and we got into the development, we said, hey wouldn't it be fun if, right, and we just kept adding stuff so I don't know that games I think games should go out at a solid 8 dot something, or dot 8, I should say, dot 8 and dot 85 or something, and then a legitimate dot 85, you know, legitimate. And let's talk about legitimate. So I've been adamant that the numbers reflect reality. and so you know when you see it when you see us ship 7-2 or something then that's because I believe it's 7-2 and I look at the stuff that's yet to be done and by the way no game you know a game is like a battle plan nothing survives first contact with the enemy and you guys you know the first time you guys get your hands on it and you start talking about what you like and what you don't like That affects what we're doing with the game.
    92:16
    So, you know, I mean, you want me to strip your 1.0 and say, okay, I'm moving the team on to the next thing, I'm never touching this game, that's probably not in your best interest. Because I know that you're gathering a lot of data from Insider Connected, basically crowdsourcing essentially from the public on feedback on what they want to see or what they don't like to see or what they would like to see more of.
    92:37
    Yeah, that's true. Very true. All right. I think I want to take some questions. I know I've already got – you're still at work, George. I'm well aware of how long you're still at work. That's all right. But I know we have people in chat and on YouTube that would like to get some questions in. So by all means – Let's do it. Let's – Let's do it. We've already discussed George's Wood enough, and we talked about a bunch of other things. But by the way before we get into questions from the crowd definitely a big thank you to all the ones that have been doing the Super Chats I have been seeing them but I just a lot of the time just want to hear George talk It one of those like there a very few people on podcasts that I could just keep listening to It's him and Roger Sharp, and I'm like, just keep talking. I want to get all the information and just listen to be informed kind of thing. So I don't want to interrupt him and say, hey, thanks, you know, Russell, for the $20 or whatever kind of thing. It's just like I'm just basically kind of taking it in, and that's what I've been doing. So I'm not ignoring you guys. So we'll see what we've got going on in the chat right now. Can George talk about the state of clear on current play fields?
    93:45
    Clear on current play fields. I mean, from our perspective, nothing's changed, meaning that, you know, we haven't changed the material. We haven't changed the process. We haven't changed pretty much anything for a long time. and you know I mean my feeling on this is the games like you know I got a house full of willy games with clear coat from the 90's and you know it's not pretty it's got a lot of stuff on it and I think we should play them I don't I'm not you know I mean I've gone into this many times on many podcasts to help you guys understand the notion of, you know, the hardest piece of material in the pinball machine is the ball. The softer materials will always yield. That's where dents come from, right?
    94:42
    That's where, you know, I mean, like we haven't, yeah, I mean, I don't know what, does he perceive that something is different? I'm guessing there's still a thing on there. I know it's been an ongoing thing. I thought it died down after the first, after the last couple of years. I think clear on your end dimples, I think a lot of people have just, you know, come to accept that, you know, the ball is the hardest part of it, you know, over clear versus wood kind of thing. But here's one that I'm even kind of curious about, and I'm sure a lot of people are too. Why are toppers so frigging expensive, George?
    95:12
    Yeah. Well, for one thing, we pay a license on them. There's a licensing fee on those things, and the licensing fee, there's two things. licensing fee, and we don't sell them direct very often or very much. Our dealers need to make a margin, right? So, you have, and that's what, like, that's one of the biggest differences when, like, when you buy an online garage shop topper from some guy making them, you know, 3D printing stuff in his garage, he's sidestepping a license and he doesn't have a dealer, right? And so, you know, So that's really honestly the two biggest contributors. Every time I look at those costs and I go, man, the cost of materials is this, and we're going to sell it for that? And so I understand, okay, dealer's got to make some money.
    96:07
    The licensing guy, the licensor is charging us for that. I can't sell anything that has the licensor IP without paying for it. If you look at, you know, I mean, you'll also notice that, like, some toppers have a lot of stuff in them, some toppers don't. Again, we don't, you know, a lot of that is sort of designer's choice, right? Just like, you know, how many toys are you going to put on the play field? If the designer designs that and he says that's his topper, you know, that's what he wants. That's what he's seeing in his game. and some of them are more complex than others, right? Well, I mean, will we ever get to a point to where we can see a game launch with accessories at the same time? Yeah, I'm trying really hard. I'm trying, we are trying really hard to do that. We understand, we understand the value of that and so you're going to, you know, hopefully you'll see it very soon. Yeah, I think that's definitely something that you could capitalize on. I'm not trying to, you know, give you as much advice as I can, but a lot of people, when they get a game, they want everything right then and there. So if there's the option to add to all these accessories, add to cart, purchase now, I think that would be beneficial for both parties. You know, there's another thing that happens with toppers, and that is, you know, they have a licensing problem too, meaning that you have a lot of times, you have a situation where the licensing team at the licensor has moved on to other products, and because we weren't done, we're having a hell of a time getting their attention back on this particular thing and getting it approved. Sometimes we're so slow that the people dealing with us change. You know, like they moved on to other parts of the company, they're working on a different business, whatever, and now I've got new people and we're having to teach them all over again, okay, this is what this is. So there's some licensing challenges too.
    98:07
    Let's see here. So now I'm getting submitted questions via text message here. Why did Stern Let's see Let me make sure I read this before I start saying it I don't know if there's curse words or not Okay, why did Stern think it was acceptable To discount titles for Black Friday Without discussions and or approval From Stern Distros I, you know, I honestly I don't even know what he's talking about Meaning, not my side of the house So I can honestly tell you I don't know, but I think that the way they do that, when you say, I don't know, distros didn't know, I don't even know where to begin with that. I don't know whether it has to do with somebody having product inventory or not. I don't know. I really don't know. Okay. I honestly can't tell you. And this kind of segues into when it comes to inventory. Are there any comments from you in regards to what we're hearing about this warehouse? somewhere in Chicago with, like, 15,000 pinball machines stacked up waiting to be drop shipped somewhere. I can tell you that's nonsense.
    99:21
    That's nonsense. We'd be out of business. No. Yeah, that doesn't exist. There's a, you know, we have, like, you know, we have games in storage, but not, like, stuff like that. Yeah. For example, like the company stores my games, right? I own 30-some-odd pinball machines. There's a bunch of us here that do. I have room for seven of them in my house. You know, there's a bunch of games stored, but, I mean, it's like, what, 15,000 games?
    99:56
    No, no, totally untrue. So, like, let's just describe your own personal pinball hell. What if, like, you could only play one machine for the rest of, like, eternity? What machine would be the one that you're like, man, why am I forced to play this game?
    100:17
    Oh, my God. Like, you should talk about a game. I'm putting you all out here. You don't have to listen to anything current, but it could go all the way back to whatever. It could be Motor Dome. I know Todd from TNT does not like Motor Dome, but, like, if there's a machine that you're just like, I would play something else. I mean I don't think I don't hate any games I'm entertained I go to a show and I try to play stuff that I haven't seen that I don't know but I don't there's just not too much that I can tell you I hate that game All right, here's something I guess, let's see here. Is there a particular your own favorite game that you have designed, one that you feel like holds a special place in your heart?
    101:12
    Well, you know, a lot of them do, and they take, like, games, they take so much of you, right? You have to live them when you're working on them. They consume you. If you do them right, they consume you. That's why you can't, you know, that's why, you know, we talk about, you know, not being able to do multiple jobs while you do it. I'm a guy that's done multiple jobs while I do it, right? I ran product development while I designed James Bond. I ran product development while I designed Deadpool. Damn near killed me, right? Game design consumes you. I'm working on this game with Jack, and it has consumed me, right? And so I have, I'm really fortunate, right? I have a great staff. Like, my direct reports are very capable people, and they know their shit. And so I can have a meeting with these guys and say, you know, I'm thinking this, I'm thinking that, and they go execute on stuff relative to the studio or the games in progress or whatever, and I only step in if there's a fire, and then I can focus on the thing. but I might you know look I have a soft spot in my heart for Monster Bash I have a soft spot in my heart for uh Deadpool I have a soft spot in my heart for Pinball 2000 right so there's different games a game is a snapshot in time in your life and so I can tell you what music I was listening to what girl was in my life what things were going on I can tell you what dramas and challenges I faced in making that game. I can tell you what fights I had with the guys I worked with.
    103:02
    And I can also tell you what fun I had with the guys I worked with. So there's snapshots in time. It's hard to pick favorites. I love it when people resurrect something from my past that I haven't thought about for a long time. Like there seems to be this Johnny Mnemonic movement, you know. and it was my restoration that's why I got into this ride people were like man I gotta get this game Kerry redid this game it looks amazing it's like this story of heart movement I was like I'm like where's this coming from I think that's one of your signatures honestly and correct me if I'm wrong is your ramps and like the ramps in particular on Johnny Mnemonic those turnarounds if you don't have that shield over those ramps that ball will go fucking flying and it's like it's the speed yeah it's a bit so Yeah, hard to pick favorites. Like picking your favorite child, right? We all have our favorite. We just say we don't have one.
    103:58
    So I'm definitely kind of curious now in regards to Insider Connected, and this is something that I've been speculating on ever since its inception onto the public, is in regards to DLC or microtransactions. I mean, is that something that potentially that we're going to be seeing in the upcoming future? No, because if you think about it, microtransactions make sense when you have 100 million people in your audience. They don't make sense when you have the scale of our audience. Even though our audience is growing every day, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of people, like how much money could I collect from hundreds of thousands of people in what quantity in any significant way that it would make any sense at all, right? So it's like I think that – I think this is way overblown. I think that, you know, you talk about the cost of all access is all about covering server costs because server costs are going to go through the roof as more people start putting this in their house, right? That's, you know, so it's like I want to cover server costs. I'd love to figure out a way to monetize it, but it's not going to be the way you imagine it, I don't think. So what I'm hearing is that you're not going to do it until you get a surplus amount of more people on board.
    105:21
    I just say, like, I mean, think about, just think about the scale of this. Like, how many people do I need to have to be able to charge you what? What would I charge you? Like, if I put it in the scale of the video games, it's like, what would I charge you? Well, here's something, and I hate to give you guys ideas, but, you know, whatever. This is what we're going to do. So I see that just most recently at Expo you guys announced that, you know, you've got home leaderboards. And if you do a home leaderboard, you spend $80 for the year annual thing. And you're like, hey, now your name is in gold. And it's like I look at that and I'm like, okay, if I go to some location, I see someone's name is in gold. I look at that and go, okay, so they paid money and they got their name in gold. What would be cool? And this is where it comes into a really good thing, is if there are certain things that make you stand out by earning them. So let's say, for instance, you know that someone saw my name on the board and they saw that my background was Foo Fighters related or whatever. That means that I legitimately at a standard location earn certain objectives or achievements legitimately, and therefore I have officially earned the right to stand out versus those that just go, here's your money, make me stand out. Well, you just described my verified concept relative to achievements, right? Correct, yeah. Right? So verified versus non-verified. I don't have any issue with that, but if you think about this, though, on the leaderboard, you know, the most impressive thing you can earn is that score to some extent, right? Got you on that. So I don't – that's not a bad idea. You know, do I need to charge you for that? I don't – you know. No, I'm just saying, like, for those that are like, you still want the ability. You still have to have that free option out there for people to go, you know what? I still want to go to this location and work on getting a particular perk that makes me stand out. Yeah. That's not from being a badass player. I mean, there's some people out there. Yeah. Yeah, we talk, I mean, look, we talk about all kinds of things. And, you know, it's not to say that, you know, yeah, I mean, that's a good idea. It's not a bad idea. It's just a question. Every time that everybody talks about microtransactions, what you have to imagine is, like, I've got to have, like, you know, literally millions and millions of people in order for that to make any significant impact to my business, right?
    107:43
    And, I mean, look, I don't want to underplay it. IC is growing exponentially. We have hundreds of thousands of people. and in the not too distant future it's going to be a million the lights in my office just went off there we go alright this brought me back to the reason why I even thought about that is because there's a point in my life where I spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft a big nerd on that you had certain things that you could get by merely accomplishing things in the game that were difficult to do And when people saw you riding a particular mount, they're like, I know what that is. Did you get that? Versus the guy that spent $25 to ride a two-headed drifter. Listen, I, you know, I spend plenty of time in that world. I know what you're talking about.
    108:37
    Yeah, I can really, you know, look, I've bought car packs. I've bought all kinds of things, you know, car packs for driving games. I've bought all kinds of stuff, right? So, yeah, so I get it. I, look, I, yeah, I mean, there's, I don't, you know, here we are, you know, whatever, it's been four years since I see, and, you know, I think you guys, you guys know what we're about. I know, you know, a lot of those guys were, like, just attacking me when we announced it. Like I said, it's the change. It's something different. When I saw it, I didn't blow up like I did with Wick, but I was definitely curious of, like, what is going on here and what's going on. So I think definitely when it gets out there to more people and people get to, like, see it, feel it hands-on, and after time, once it builds up a pedigree, then it will eventually be accepted. But as of right now, it's much more of a what is this, we don't trust it, we don't know it, we like to. I don't. So I think, you know, if I could show you those numbers, I can't show you those numbers, but you'd be surprised.
    109:51
    There's, you know, there's so many people that, I mean, I hear from location owners all the time, you know, they're always after me to make sure that, you know, we give them notifications that the game's down because people literally walked away because it didn't, you know, The game was up, but Insider was not. You know, some people won't play without Insider, right? And so, yeah, I mean, if I could show you those numbers, you'd be duly impressed. Yeah, I think... You know, the impact... Give me some quarters, baby. On pinball. I think in the future, definitely, use Jack. He's there at your disposal. So in the future, like you said, you've got stuff coming up here pretty soon. and be like, hey, before you guys start blowing up, not in these words, but, like, here's what you're about to see in our next five, three cabins. Yeah, I think that I'm happy to do it. I guess I always give you guys the benefit of the doubt. Like, I think that if my heart's in the right place, other people's hearts are going to be in the same place. I didn't expect people, like, inventing that the cabinet was MDF. I'm just like, what? The cabinet's not MDF. And not only that, I mean, it's like if you took the front molding off, you can see that the cabinet's not MDF, you know. So I understand someone not understanding the difference. Like there was a guy, there's a guy out there that posted, I'm never buying this again. The cabinet is melamine. I'm like, well, have you bought anything since 2018? Because they've been melamine. You know, they've been melamine faces. So it's like, now, clearly he doesn't, I don't think he understands, right? or either he doesn't understand or he just wants to make a statement or I don't know. I just, but I think, that's why I said to you, I said, you know, we went to Melamine in 2018.
    111:46
    We've had basically the same core material for ever since then. And, you know what, you want to ask me, you know, do we make anything that is a particle board? Yeah, the home edition. You know, the Home Edition is not. That's what people are absurd about, is that you guys are just transitioning to building more bigger Home Editions kind of thing. But the Home Edition is a super cost-challenged product. I mean, all you have to do is look at it. And by the way, that said, it's been a huge success. Right? Costco just ordered more Star Wars, which we're trying to figure out how to build.
    112:27
    This is something that I've been sitting here in relation to Costco. I can't remember which podcast, forgive me, but I want to say you mentioned that I guess the upcoming next home edition is going to be something different, opposed to the layout and wise.
    112:41
    Is that still both? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Any idea when we have? Expect to see a new home edition?
    112:46
    I think where you're going to see, probably towards the fall. Okay. You know, probably towards the fall. Because, you know, both products do super well for the holidays, right? So the Costco conversation is all about get it here so that, you know, everyone can touch it, feel it, play it. And then, you know, come the holidays, people are buying it and giving it away and bring it home for the kids and all that stuff. And so that's really their magic. So probably towards then, what you may see is you may see a lot of similarities between the, you know, the, you know, in other words, it'll be like a step down from the core product. You may see that, right? So, like, you see a pro, and then you see, like, something that's very similar but different. You know, it's got even less stuff, and, you know, it's still going to have that cabinet, that display, et cetera. that's a super cost-challenged product, right? That's like, again, everybody's got to make their money, and yet we're trying really hard to hold the line on price. Yeah. I mean, there's a concern that you guys are, like, you're building too much. Maybe you guys need to slow down. I mean, and what's your rebuttal to something like that? Maybe build less games and have them a little more fully cooked on their release. We don't. Yeah, we don't. Like, you're talking about different titles a year. Three or four titles a year. Like, how many titles do you release? Maybe, like, cut it back a game, and that way they have more time. Yeah, so we won't – I don't – I think we tried two titles a year during COVID, and that wasn't a great idea. So we had shortages. We had – you know, we actually had distros asking for product, et cetera. I think you can safely say the three cornerstones are solid.
    114:51
    Remasters are not a guaranteed thing. You may see a year without a remaster. You might see some specials, right? Like Jaws 50th has been hugely successful. They're on the line today. I was out there, when I was out there today to steal parts for the show and tell,
    115:08
    there's Jaws 50s out there cranking away. So, Joss 50th and the beginnings of Walking Dead, right? So, I think that, you know, so you've got three cornerstones. The specials are, you know, I can't plan when there's going to be an anniversary. So, there's going to be sort of, you know, sort of tied to that. Remasters, same thing. Not, you know, we have to fit them in depending on how much work they are, right? Because you look at a game like Lord of the Rings Remaster or even Tron Remaster is going to be even more work because they're on such old technology. We have to, you know, like, you know, White Star and Sam are, you know, you know, it's not that it's not doable. It's just and then you think about Lord of the Rings, right? Could I give you a Lord of the Rings without a bunch of video assets to go with it? Could I give you a Tron without a bunch of video assets? I couldn't. So that's it. I have another video real quick. Be like, what the end of the day?
    116:14
    Right, right. So that's an effort. That's a huge effort, right? So, yeah. So, I mean, I want to wrap this up because I've had you here for a little over two hours now. George, I don't want to take up all your time. You're still at work. I still feel for you right here. So I'll wrap this up, and I'll give you a final question that I tend to ask all my guests and everything. And by all means, again, thank you for coming on. I mean, I guess this is not my final question. This is a question before my final question. How many people that you work with told you not to come on my show tonight?
    116:48
    No one. Not a word. No one. I would like to. No, I, you know, I told everybody, and nobody said boo. It was like, what do you need? I said, oh, drag, I want Elwyn's Congo, because I want to, you know, my mic drop moment is going to be that that cabinet is MDS, and I'm going to wait for Kerry to tell me that Williams made the best cabinet ever.
    117:19
    So that's going to be my mic drop. And so I told him, I said, get me a Walking Dead that doesn't have a play field in it so I can walk around and show off the camera. And then he said, do you want a spike, too? And I said, no, I'm going to. Give me some orange, baby. I'm going to scar up my Deadpool.
    117:36
    So, I mean, I guess I'm going to end this on a note of, like, you know, I would love to have you on again at some point in time. I'm so thankful and glad that you decided to come on here and get this first, all this information and give us a bunch more knowledge in regards to, you know, the decisions that have been made. It's, you know, I'm all about getting the accurate and education and everything from someone like yourself. So, out of curiosity, and God forbid something happens to you, George, what do you want to be remembered for?
    118:12
    That's a tough one. What do I want to be remembered for? I want to be remembered for, hmm, I guess, you know, I play the games. I buy the games. I want the games to be amazing.
    118:28
    I guess I want to be remembered for giving it everything I had because I have. It's one of those things where I don't think I've met anybody that doesn't like you, George. And like I said, you're one of the few that I have a high amount of respect for. I was ecstatic when I had Roger Sharp on here, and so I'm ecstatic again to have you on here. and it's just great because I know that your head is just full of a shit ton of knowledge and information about the industry and how you've been in it and everything. And it's just like I could listen to you talk for hours, like just keep going, kind of pull that cord and just keep on talking. And I know that you're one of the main, I don't want to use the word victims, but the main subject to a lot of my videos. I've done a lot, I'm sure you're aware, a lot of my skits and everything in regards to, I'm wearing a fucking shirt right now, exactly. It basically has your DM logo. But when you're the biggest fish in the pond and you are constantly bringing things out, it's just like, like you said, we have to write to our opinions, and sometimes mine are definitely a little louder than others.
    119:43
    You know, I respect everybody's opinion. I tell people all the time, you know, buy what you like, really. Buy what you like. Play the games. Buy what you like. If you like the other guy's game, I'm okay. I'm good. I, you know, plenty of people like mine, too. And so, you know, I think, did you see this TV show thing? Did you see this TV show? So last night on Dr. Watson, you know that TV show on CBS? No.
    120:18
    Oh, my God. I got to send you the slip. I can't believe, I thought you were going to ask me about it. there's a scene where this little kid is designing a pinball machine, and he said he wants to design it like his favorite game designer, George Gomez. Oh, shit. And then he says something like, Keith, I wouldn't say it's very popular right now, but I like George Gomez.
    120:45
    I'm not kidding. We had nothing to do with it. So the writer on the show must be a pinhead because we, I mean, like my phone started blowing up at like 9 o'clock last night. And I was like, what are you guys talking about? I'll send you the clip as soon as we hang up. All right, cool. Yeah, I think it's, I know you are ecstatic and you love your current role at Stern. And you don't make any regrets on moving this transition. but there's so many people out there that would love to have a Gomez game every couple of years or something, you know, to go, hey, guys, just so you know, I can still do this. You're getting one. You know, you're getting one very shortly. I mean, clearly, clearly, clearly Jack, you know, co-designed it with me. But, I mean, you know, you're going to see a lot of me. Okay, so I guess that answers the question. to say very shortly, then the next Cornerstone is going to be yours slash Jack's game. What?
    121:47
    Yeah, but we don't know which title, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. It's one or the other. You said it. I mean, it's one of those. But it's definitely in January. And I know that you guys get pump-out games really quick, but I'm assuming that one of the places that people will get to play it first is at Pinball at the Beach. I'm assuming that you're going to that as well?
    122:07
    Yeah, I will be at Pinball at the Beach. Hell yeah. And it is very, very likely that it will be at Pimba on the beach. Yes. All right, guys. All right, I think we're going to wrap it up right there. And by all means, I think, you know, like I said, God forbid something does happen to you, George, you will be remembered graciously in our hearts for everything that you have done for pinball and then, you know, things that you're currently still doing. Thank you. It's important. Basically, a very big shout-out to all of those that have thrown in the super chats. That'd be Frank Mack just recently right there with a 50. Thank you very much, man. now uh how are you getting my game you know what i'm talking about but like everybody else that chipped in thank you for being here everyone by all means uh thank you for joining we had over 300 and some odd people here uh there's a very very apologies for the apologies for the the camera snafus we're gonna get it hooked up george we're gonna get it to where you're gonna have the best 4k camera you're gonna have that microphone with that so again those that like have listened to your podcast, that love listening to you educate all of us, the main complaint has always been, God, can you not get a microphone? They make some of the most popular games in the world. Do you think that they would have the hardware to give this guy the proper representation for his kind of work? Actually, you know, yeah, I really should have talked to the guys at NOAA, right? I should have talked to Jack. I said, Jack, come in here. Come here and hook me up, brother. I'm definitely jealous of Jack, and I got Jeff at Dirty Pool Pinball. Those are the couple of people that they're talking, and I don't see their microphone, but it sounds like it's right in front of them, and I'm like, I want that. I'm like, what am I doing wrong kind of thing?
    123:44
    So, but again, guys, thank you for joining. We're going to end the stream. Love you all a long time. Thanks for joining in. Thank you very much, George, for joining the stream. I'll talk to you guys later. Take it sleazy.
    124:01
    Thank you.