Hello everybody. Welcome to again I cannot believe I am saying this. This is episode five of the Dirty Pool podcast, the Dirty Poo Cast or the Dirty Pool Pinball Podcast as we have been jokingly constantly referring to changing the name. Uh today is a special day, man. This really is a landmark podcast for me as an individual, as someone who didn't expect to start a podcast. Uh this podcast has existed for two or three weeks and I am joined today by the CEO of Barrels of Fun and uh I could not be happier to introduce him. This is David Van Es. Welcome. Thank you for having me and I tend to rather go by mischief maker because I don't do things practical but you know I like to have fun. So I'm going to turn this on you. So, um, what made you want to start streaming and, uh, jump in this this hole of the pinball collecting? Oh, man. It is it is a it is a dirty pool first. We're flipping We're flipping the seats. Uh, that's a fair question. Uh, I started the stream to so I could show off my Twilight Zone because I'm a sound designer and a composer. I've worked in the industry for over two decades. And I was like, you know what? I kind of want to redo the music. And I had put a pin soundboard in my Twilight Zone. And uh as much as I like Golden Earring, I was like, man, this is not on theme with the 50s show and I want to do something dark and cinematic. So I spent four and a half days and did 150 sound effects, 13 soundtrack or 13 music cues and was like, [ __ ] it. Here we go. We're done. And uh then I was like, man, recording this with a camera really sucks. There's got to be a better way. And then, you know, obviously thought back to to Bowen Papa years over a decade ago, Jack Danger, who's obviously a huge influence, uh and was like, screw it. I'm going to start streaming. And then I was like, well, [ __ ] What else can I do? What else can I do? What else can I do? And here we are. That sounds like anyone that has a a career in film and TV, it's like, well, what else can I do? Like you like people go, how do you end up I mean my my, you know, fallen into the film and TV industry was not traditional in sense. It was literally like I wanted to make films. How can I do that? Well, there were no film schools in my hometown, Adelaide, my home city. So, we saw an a friend of mine that I was talking about making films with was like, "Well, there's a stunt academy just opened up down the uh in another state. You want to go and do that cuz we're going to have stunts in our film." I'm like, "That sounds logical." So, I went to the stunt academy and be, you know, learned to become a stunty. And uh so, I was actually learning to become an armor and a stunty. And then a film school opened up in Adelaide. So like once I graduated from that I diverted into because obviously I wanted to get into direct well not obviously but I wanted to be directing and producing. So I was like okay well now I go to the actual school to learn that. So it was like how could I make these ideas and movies in my head a reality and how can what is the most efficient way of doing that? So obviously you think of education. So the stunt school, the film school and once I was going through film school you know the very first day my lecturer stood in front of like 52 of us and said two of you people will work in this industry for the rest of your life. The rest of you will not make it. So I was like well I've got to be the part of the two that make it. So and in Australia the film industry is very small. Um and there's not always a constant job. So you have to pick up jobs wherever you can. So I ended up working like so again I wanted to keep working in the industry so I can make these independent films. Sure. And it was like it was like okay I'm going to go work on sports shows and news shows just because I wanted a earn money so I can have a living and and do fun stuff but also fund the things I actually wanted to do. So, it's just like from working on the Lemons in 2000, then working on a pilot episode for ABC and then like some music video, some $99 commercial that we're doing for hot tub, blow up hot tubs, you know, anything to pay the bills so we can create things that we want. And everything in my life from that point is like, is there an opportunity? I'm I'm curious to how to do that. And then I just go down that path. So, for people that don't know about how long you have been in the post-production world, like I feel like uh and that's this is the best part about doing the podcast is digging into people's personal lives. You've spent almost two decades working in post-prouction on either as a as a post supervisor, line producer, as an editor. Uh, and I'm happy to if anybody has any questions about what those are, please fire away. One thing that I do find that's really funny is that David David and I both work in post-production. And uh the engine and ladder that you have to climb up through that is identical for every possible production. Whether it's a short film, whether it's a commercial, whether it's a featurelength film, all of the little pieces are the same for all of these productions. They just have different amount of people working in them and sometimes just one person doing a lot of it. Uh but I want to dive into how this has led you into the world of pinball. And people may not know that you worked at Spooky for almost eight years, nine years. Everything from Rob Zombie all the way up to Halloween I was there for. So Pinsside has you credited as an animator, but it also it seems with doing some digging that you were also marketing manager, IP collector, like there's a lot of different hats that it seemed like you wear. Can you can you talk a little bit about what you did at Spooky? Oh, absolutely. And it's it's no different than what Spooky does now. Everyone is carrying a lot of stuff. Everyone's wearing multiple caps. Everyone's doing the best of their ability. and wherever that you can jump in to help, that's what you do. Which is why I think the pinball manufacturing has appealed to me cuz it's very much like a film making uh opportunity where you're dealing with a mechan you're dealing with creative, mechanical, electrical, and all comes together in one place where the pinball machines you have the creative, you have the IP, the creative, then you have the production of it and then you have the post and then you release it to the the world. I mean you would know this when you are working on a film or any you know film or TV project it's never ever truly finished. It's literally they take it away from your hands. It's like okay that's the drop dead you're like we're taking it away from you as a filmmaker. You just want to keep making it better and better. Totally the creative process you just want to iterate constantly. We talked to Ian and this is not just with uh film and TV. Ian was on the podcast from Nudge magazine and I asked him like what does it feel like when you finish an audition and send it off and he was like he gets depressed because the you know it's it's finalized at that point. You cannot change it anymore especially as a print magazine. I'm pretty fascinating. Well and and that's the thing is they take it away from you and that's why a lot of people don't like watching their work. Um mainly because you see all the little things that you could have if you had those 15 minutes more with or half a day or a day I could have done this or this this and this to it. Um so like my role at Spooky was purely display work at the beginning. Um Ben Heck didn't want to do any of the display work on Rob Zombie. He was pretty much burnt out on America's Most Haunted. Um, and I was moonlighting with John Popadiuk and Skit-B just doing display work because what got me interested into pinball again. I I mean I had a background with routing and playing pinball as a teenager, but I left that all behind to go and work in film and TV. Um, not the glamorous stuff. I was doing like Billy Blank's boot camp from Taibbo era and the Magic Bull. I was doing infomercials and commercials and documentaries. Those are important productions. Don't Don't you dare talk bad about about Billy Tao. Um, so, you know, it's one of those things of halfway from doing well in the industry, like making a living. I wanted to get those machines back in my life. So, and Becca, my wife, she had no idea that I was into pinball. So, just random. She goes, I said, I found this towers in the crypt on Craigslist. Let's go and, you know, chase one of those down. She goes, "Oh, that's interesting." and she had no idea of really my background with pinball. And um so I got into collecting pinball machines, fixing them up um just mainly because you know like in post-production I mean you're doing keyboard work but you're not physically making stuff. So that was kind of my outlet to just de-stress from the day-to-day life of things. And when Jersey Jack announced he was doing an LCD because of my background on post, I was like, "Oh, I can contribute to something I really like to do." So, I just started cold calling people and offering my service as a consultant because I had a day job at night. I had I had 8:30 to 2:00 in the morning free for me to do after my wife went to bed with the kids. I was free to do whatever I I want to do. Um, so I just started offering my services. And when you're offering your services for free, you tend to get a lot of people wanting to take it, which I was happy to do. So that's true. And And a lot of the times it was like, I'll do the work if I get a game type situation. So I never got a Predator. I never got a Magic Girl or Adventure Land or anything like that. Um, by the way, these are these are the John Papadiuk Deeproot asset games that were never produced for those who aren't aware of the kind of the pinball drama that turned into asset fever over at uh Turner and and other companies as that whole thing dissolved. Yep. And so Ben was tired of that. He started to see the stuff I was doing. Um, I like genre genre type of things, so it was kind of a perfect fit. Ben was like, "Hey, why don't you come and help out on Rob Zombie?" And I was like, "Absolutely willing to do that." And met Charlie at TPF. And I think I was wearing I don't know what horror shirt I was wearing. He saw that and goes like, "Yeah, we got to, you know, we need to talk. We need to communicate." And uh so I came on to do the display work for Rob Zombie. And then from that point because I worked so closely with Ben and David Fawzma on rules that I started contributing more to the rules with the whole team at Spooky and uh because also because I have a film background I've dealt with licenses and studios I got brought into the IP acquisition for licensing and that's how I got more involved in the development process of games in general. So again from display work which I always did there and then just because there was an opportunity for me to grow into or I was hungry to learn it I just jumped into it. That's like a lot of people David how did you get to meet X Y and Z's? Well I either cold called them emailed them or just walked up to them. And for anybody that thinks no for sure for anybody who thinks this is easy, I just want to point out that based on your LinkedIn, you have an eight-year overlay of still working your day job in post-production while helping Spooky out. That's that is that's got to be a lot of work. Yeah, it it does. It was interesting. I mean, I there were days that I would drive to Wisconsin from Texas in one day. It's 18 and 1 half hours, but I like road trips, so it is what it is. It's good. You can listen to podcasts by, you know, the Dirty Pool podcast if you happen to be driving someplace and also it takes me away from emails so I don't get kind of caught up in the world of just, you know, constant data. For sure. Um, all right. So then let's let's exit Spooky and jump into the most important part. Uh, what kind of insane person goes from like, well, I've been doing free services for bits and bobs on another company. I'm going to just start my own pinball company. What? It really was. It It wasn't uh it wasn't as simple as that. Um co changed a lot of the world and how things were going on. I had some personal things in our family that happened at the same time or just prior to that and it was a moment of just stepping back and just reassessing what do I really want to do? Um and also if the is the world crumbling um so just stepping back and just trying to figure out what I can do and I still doing postwork and here and there. I would still get calls from licensers or even pinball friends asking for help. Um, and I would just point them to different companies because I, again, if a licenser called me up and says, I want to do X, I want to see that product exist. So, I would pass it on to another pinball company. And a good friend of mine who I sold a do a prototype Doctor Who to, who is now my partner, Brian Savage, um, was like, why don't you do this yourself? And I'm like, because it's stupid. It's hard and it's just like it's just ridiculous. And after about 6 months of constantly, you know, kind of asking me, "Why aren't you doing this?" Because every time I'd get a new license, I would talk to I would say to him, "Hey, guess what just came across my door?" And he was like, "Why aren't you doing it?" And again, my constant answer, it's stupid, it's expensive, and it's really, really hard. Like, it's it's hard. And I finally got to a point where I was kind of tired of it. And I said, "You know what? I'm going to do a business plan. I'm going to show you how not easy it's going to be. And the numbers on the uh the numbers looked good. They looked okay. I mean, you know, sometimes they're good, sometimes they're bad, depending what environment you're in. But overall, it looked like a good idea. So, at that point, it was like, why not do it? And that's just how it started. Like, why not? And here and here we are. So you mentioned also I I did want to reel it back real quick because you had mentioned talking about how film production is is similar to p pinball and that movies are similar to pinball in terms of the experience. It's funny you say that because when someone who is like not involved in pinball at all comes over to my place and like I you know I have I have a lot of games and they're like well you know for the first question is like why do you have so many pinball machines? And I I try to dodge that because I'm I don't want to get into like well if you like a thing you get it more of it. Like that's pretty obvious. But the the second question is like, well, how do you know a pinball machine is good? And the comparison I always make is I'm like, well, it's like a movie. I'm like, there's so many different parts in it. There's There's the music, there's the art direction, there's the costumeuming, there's the color grading that goes into it, there's the score. I mean, like, there are so many pieces that go into making it as a package that that's what makes it great. And just like you go to a movie, if you walk out of the movie and you're like, "That was a great movie, you can run that criteria." That's the same criteria you run in a pinball machine. Well, and it's the same if you ask what your favorite film is because if you ask me that it depends on the day, the environment, how I'm feeling because no, you know, there's no perfect movie and there's no bad movie. Like everyone say, "Oh, that movie sucks." Like, you don't know what it took to make that film cuz most films exist because of the mistakes that they had to suffer from. Like this is where I talk about like pinball and film being very similar. You come up with this idea for a film. You've got the world's your oyster. You've got no budget limitations. Like, I'm going to have this idea. And you're going to spend a month to two years writing this great script and everything else with all the best options, everything you can think of, right? Then all of a sudden, you get a couple of people saying, "Oh, that's a great idea. You should shop that around. You should figure out how you can make that happen." You're like, "Oh, maybe there's something to this." So now you start shopping around to figure out if I can get funding for it. And then you get a little bit of money. You don't get maybe the the full money you want, but now you start getting the limitations, right? So you start now you got a pinball idea or a film idea. Okay, well these are my restrictions. And you start willing it down. This is like the pre-production of a film. You're breaking it down to where you can do it, scheduling it out. This is how we can do it. We got eight for a pinball machine 18 months. This is how we're going to structure it out. and you start planning and then you hit on a film, you hit production and production within 30 minutes of hitting the first day of shoot, there are problems. We can't get this location. We've got this problem with strangers walking into shop. We got this actor didn't turn up from day one of a shoot to the the day 30, 15 or 2 months, however long your shoot is, it's a constant put out fires. It's not the creative process on production, which I do love, comes out of problem solving, purely pivoting on the day. Okay, we don't have this. Let's reschedule this. We don't need this scene anymore. Cut it out. And then the part I really like is post-prouction cuz now you get into the postroom and like this would be like the last couple of months of of a pinball machine. What have I got? And you look at it's like, well, I remember we shot this. No, we didn't. We got that cut because of this. Oh, okay. And then you start the re the next creative process which is re-editing and coloring and mixing things to make it more cohesive because that first thing that you went out to shoot is not the same thing you have in post-production because of all the problems and challenges you had in in front of you. So now you really be more creative and there's opportunity there's things that you never think about on a film. Jaws is a good example. Like they had to edit around all the mistakes and for that it made it a better film. And that's how I always see post-production. No matter how bad it is, there is a creative solution in front of you. You just got to put the parts together to figure it out. And you can almost look at your playfield as like a is the footage that was shot too because you cannot change the playfield really once you've hit a certain uh like landmark in production, I imagine. And then the fix it and post attitude no longer applies because now you're working on what you have as a as a raw material. And that's what's really important about like when we think about an IP or a license that we're going for or a story idea is like what is the common theme that what does this license or story make people feel? What are the moments? And that's why like we look at it and like with Labyrinth, I always challenge the teams that I'm working with. Think of five to 10 things that instantly come to your head when you think of this IP. Music, visual, textual, whatever. And I don't want you to go and watch the film or experience the content. I want you to just what comes to your mind straight away. And usually you'll find four to seven of those things will be universal between everyone. And that's what we use as the founding blocks because if it resonates with those people, it most likely is going to resonate with the people that are uber fans of that IP. So that's where we start the foundation of the playfield is like what are the moments and how do we connect the player to those and then we try to make those pinball satisfying shots. Sure. So, I want to bring up I'm going to bring up some labyrinth stuff in a second, but I in doing some research and digging around on the barrel site to to learn more about you and the company. I found something that I think's really important and I want people to take a look at this and I think it speaks a lot about you and as an individual and your character and about the company in its whole. So, here I have I don't know if you have the Twitch stream pulled up. Uh, if you don't, that's okay. But I have the I have the barrels website. You should definitely pull up the Twitch stream. By the way, hopefully everybody let me know if this sound sounds good. We were we we kind of rushed our intro, so we're doing this. We're doing it. [ __ ] it, we'll do it live kind of mentality. Um, anyways, it's okay if you don't have it pulled up. I have the Barrels of Fun website here. And I'm looking through the people, and it starts with the art director, and it goes down through marketing, it goes down through game rules, etc., etc., all the people that work here. And at the bottom is you. And I think that that's pretty awesome that when normally a company would just slap the CEO on top and these are the people that are underneath them, but you have the people that work for you on top and you're sense. I wouldn't exist if it wasn't for these people. like uh so a part of the reason why I did a lot of this is I've worked with so many talented people through my whole career in every facet of my life and there was a moment on a film set I had a really really difficult actor and there was probably 10 years into my career where I was the filmmaker that I had to be behind the scenes I had to be behind the camera writing helping with the lights and carrying it. Like I had to do everything, right? That typical indie filmmaker BS. Grip, key, grip, camera operator, the whole deal. You remember when you grow up doing stuff independent, you're used to lugging everything. Um, and then so like there was a moment I turned to all my key departments and said, I need you guys to do what you do while I deal with this person. Just do what you do. And that turned out to be one of the best products I ever made because I allowed the people I hired to do their job and not have me try and puppet them to doing what I wanted them to do. And it was the first time it's totally terrifying just letting go. But I saw these people excel. And from my film side and my pinball side, I've seen so many people do great things but never have an opportunity to work collectively in one group. And so again, a part of the reasons why like Brian was telling me, why aren't you doing this? And through that process, I started thinking about all the people I wanted to work with and the people I wanted to empower to do the best they can cuz I truly believe, and again, we're still very young. If we build the right product, the the money will follow and we won't have to work a day in our lives, you know. And that's just my philosophy. Sure. And I think that a lot of people when you think of the up and cominging pinball companies like you know Barrels of Fun is frequently talked about in the in in very positive terms as like the new up and cominging bigger company because of how much quality and how much you can tell that you love the games that you're making. And I think that that is so evident in the quality that goes into them, the package that you get when you buy a Barrels of Fun game. Um so let let's take a look. Also, I did notice there's no sound designer listed on your on your website. We should probably talk about that. Uh, but now we have Labyrinth. Let's talk about Labyrinth. This was your first game and boy oh boy, what a what an IP to dive into as a as a first game launch. And there's no shortage of mechanics on this. I, you know, you kind of pulled the JJP in the in the whole vein where it was like kitchen sink mentality into your first game production. What are some of the things that went into this game that you were just like, "Oh [ __ ] we might be in over our head here." the well when you start when you say let's start a bimbo company you're already in the whole [ __ ] what are we what are we doing here but the the idea was when we again when Brian was challenging me like why aren't you doing this it's like well what are we going to do that's different to everyone else and it's not like everyone else is doing it bad because I've got friends at every company I love everything what they do but me as a collector who buys pinball machines what am I missing? And one of the things I missed back in ' 07, like in the early 2000s, was, you know, the surprise of a reveal. Like nowadays, everyone knows what everyone's doing. And so when you see it, you've already built these expectations of what they're going to be. Yeah. So I wanted to bring the magic back. I mean, maybe that ties to when I was a kid and I wanted to be a magician, but I really wanted to surprise people again. Like I want people to talk about on forums like good and bad. like, "Oh, wow. Never thought this would exist. Why does this exist?" Like, that's something when I remember Tron coming out from Stern and I was on Wreck Pinball and Pinsside talking about, "Oh, it's down at Joysticks." And we went down to a tournament and we played it and we talked to pros and cons. Like that community aspect I got less and less as we got to know more what the licenses were coming out. Um, and then at the same time when I had to buy when I wanted to buy a game and I had a choice of a pro, premium or lle as a collector, even though I'm not wealthy, I always wanted the collector's edition. I want the best version of the IP that I want. So again, we saw an opportunity like we could do IPs that most people would not think about doing potentially, but would be great. Pinball Worlds offer one version that is the best value we can give you without ga gouging our customers. We want to give you the best collectible product that we can u within reason. Sure. I've been critical of Stern's three tier system in the past. I understand why it exists because they know that they have an operator market. It's what the pros are for, you know. Then they have the premium mark one because they want to have a game that has more bells and features for home use and 70% of their market is that. And then they have the Ellie version for people that they know that are going to just want the best of the best and have no problem dumping money into that. But you can't have that level of tears without somebody feeling like they're missing out on each level. And that sucks. It's like kind of an unsolvable solution. I'm not going to dive into Stern on this particular podcast. I'm sure we'll have the opportunity in the past, but suffice to say, I respect that you've chosen one market and one product, but I will ask you, what does that mean in terms of the complexity of the mechanics for an operator? Your games are complicated games and for someone who has them as an operated machine, that's a lot of risk for them to have to constantly maintenance it or constantly fix it. Not that they break a lot, just when you have a lot of moving parts, it's something that could happen. It's a pinball machine. It's going to break no matter what you do. You can move it. I have restored games to where I think they're the best of the best. I've literally moved them to the living room and something broke on it. I mean, that's just the inherent of pinball is. Sure. Solder doesn't like vibrations. Um, so as we approach and like the stern model works for them like in fact that fear of missing out has worked for them a lot. But how I designed Labyrinth and how we approached it was it was storytelling first. Like I mean there was the level of we had to keep in a certain budget but like everything was designed a to be replaceable um with William Valley parts or stuff like that or if we built something inhouse we want to make sure that's available either in a a 3D printing form or we can supply it directly to the customer. Um, knock on wood, like we've have a lot of operators that have labyrinth and they've seem to hold up very well. I will say our servos, the first batch of servos that we got did not hold up very well, but we've sent out replacements to anyone that asked for them. Um, and what was weird is like we tested those servos. We had nearly a million um turns on our servos when we tested them and then we fired off the order for them and that first batch that came in were just bad. Um and then we actually with the gearing we actually custom the gearing inside of it and ever since then they've been pretty rock solid. Um so Shane has one of the original labyrinths on Tilt. That's like our local spot if I'm sure you know Shane and uh it's never really had any issues. I think the the thing that most people that are have issues with their first experience on a barrel is a fun game is that the flippers feel different. And I was like, I think that this is in people's heads. And I talked to uh Johnny Johnny Crap about it and I was I'm sorry. I talked to Bow about it and I was just like I'm going to guess that these are all Williams and Ballet parts. And he was like, they are. And when I got my Dune, which we'll get into, I was like, yeah, the flippers do feel a little different. So, I just went into the menu and there's power tweaks for it and you can get them feeling just how you want. Go into the menu and tweak your tweak your game. So, many things and we work with fast on this like there are code things you can do to help increase the feel of them like you can make them feel a certain way. So there was a lot of fine tuning, but I can tell you right now I can't like you get someone like a Bowen or Phil or you see Carl D'Python Anghelo or any of you know Jack Danger like they can feel the differences. I could tell you like it was funny. We did some really tweaks halfway through the run and a feels 100 times better and I go up and shoot and I was like it feels the same. Like I can't I can't tell the difference. But if they telling me it feels a difference, it does feel different. I mean those those pinball I mean Carl sent me a photo of his dune and he blew through the eight harvesters on his first attempt. I have defined the game. But also a quick plug on my own thing. Carl will not be on the stream later unfortunately. He got sick. So Carl was going to be on the stream playing uh we were actually probably going to play Kong or Lord of the Rings. I guess I could spoil that now because Carl was going to help me get to Valinor. But suffice to say he's sick. He's not coming. But back back to Carl playing your game. Uh yes, he he had similar commentary, but again a few tweaks in the menu and you could adjust it how you want. Yeah. Yeah. And that's you know all the little things that we're learning like from Labyrinth we've learned like it's been a huge success but there's been so many learning curves of you know I completely forgot to put post out holes so you can you know adjust the outlanes. So, you know, I've notoriously been told I've made the worst outlanes in history, and you know, that's my badge of honor to wear. So, but these are things that when you're developing like, so Labyrinth is very different to Dune where Labyrinth was designed in my dining room, you know, worked up into my dining room with a very high level skill of people playing that game. And then we release that into the world. And then you realize the 90% of the people that are going to play this are nowhere near the level of the people that were play testing this. So all that DJ Huxley is asking literally just this question. So I want to squeeze this in. So as we do here with chat chat is involved in this. If you have any questions for David, please fire them off. But DJ Huckley says regarding the development, there is a meme out there that Labyrinth is too hard. Exactly what you're saying. And he's like is that feedback a surprise to you which you're literally talking about. And how did that affect developing Dune? Well, it it was a surprise, but you know, when you know that game, you got to you know, you want to set that at about seven and a half degree incline, you know, to get it to really be where you can control the ball and stuff like that. But these are things that when we're designing the game, we were setting it up perfectly. Like this is how we want it. This is how a game should be set up. And then the moment of realization for me um was there's actually two of them, but the first one the first one's movie related. This one was game related when we started getting calls from customers that have never bought a pinball machine before and they said why is it not on the legs like where are the legs and it just like like oh crap we've got a lot of customers that have never ever owned a pinball machine which is fantastic that means we've grown the market like sure nobody should be shamed for not knowing that you can't like pinball machines don't have legs to ship out like it's people need to learn about pinball and that you can't expect people just to know how it's you know how to had a ball unstuck or how to open the glass straight off. Yeah. And so when that happened, you realize they don't know how to set it up to 7 1/2° incline. Like they don't know how to set it up, right? So that all informed Dune because it's like, "All right, whatever you do, we got to modify the cabinet. So if they just screw the legs on, make them flat on each side, it has to be 6 1/2°." So if they just do the the basic bare minimum, it's going to be set up correctly, you know? So like we made sure when we were making this game everything was set as someone who was putting it together had no idea what they're doing and it should be a good playing experience from that point onwards. So those are the things that we started tweaking you know like how can this be a better experience. So that like hearing people's feedback, you know, good and bad, helps us to make a better code. Like the code where it is, like we had a foundation of that, but getting the feedback from owners and players help us change the rules to be a better experience for them because they're talking it from their experience. And no matter where you're playing the game, it's a completely different experience from one location to another location. You know, I think anybody that's played in tournaments knows that if you see your own game, you know, at a tournament, you're not going to walk up to it and just blow it up because the flippers are going to have different bouncy rubbers. They're going to be not as strong or their alignment's different. I mean, there's so many nuances that go into playing that you're not going to just GC any game just cuz you own it. Well, and that's what you're talking about competitions and tournaments. Like I can't I'm still boggled that Labyrinth is in tournaments. Like I love that it is. It's short playing. We need games that are like that. But like to see it in tournaments is like you don't see that very often. And uh to have our game featured in Pinberg and and things like that just shows you that we did make a world playing, you know, a world-class playing game. However, we had such a familyfriendly theme that when kids turn up to it, they're getting their ass kicked. Yeah. Well, that's all right. Kids need to get their ass kicked to learn about life. Anyways, uh uh Travis says, "Since Labyrinth is supposed to be at 7.5, what do you recommend for Dune?" He said 6 and a half. And I guess you know that's obviously the pretty international known uh angle for a game, but uh you know, not every game comes out with the exact same bent guides for every single uh you know, rail. Like your game may need a little bit of tweaking and a little bit of finessing. Uh, my Dune did need a few little things, but just, you know, if you're new to pinball, don't put it at 65 and expect everything to be perfect. Like Trevor says, this game was designed to, if the person just whacked it together, it should work fine. Like again, we took everything we heard on Labyrinth and we turned that into what Dune is. And then whatever we learned from Dune will now, you know, feed directly into game three and four and five. I think you've probably blown a lot of people's minds right now that Labyrinth is supposed to be at seven and a half. Is there anything in the documentation that states that or no? Ask Travis. He It's probably in the documentation. I guarantee it's in the It's not. It will be. It is now. It's going to be on pins. Reddit's making a post right now. How did Why did David do me wrong? It's seven and a half. You ruined my life, David. So, back to barrels. Uh, so Labyrinth, one of the things I really love about it is there's details all over it and both in the artwork and the sculpts. Uh, you I think Barrels has really separated itself from a lot of other pinball companies as my camera refocuses on something more interesting than me. Uh, that the sculpts really that world under glass, that threedimensional feel. I mean, you've got like the fiery that comes out just to taunt you. Like it functionally does nothing other than to be kind of a little accent on the game. And like that's awesome. So, what what went into that that you were like, "Hey, let's blow money on a mechanic that's just for fun." So, we already actually planned to have two of those in the back and we kind of ran out of space back there. And it was actually Brian Savage like we had the additional hands. What are we going to do with it? And he goes, "Why don't we stick it in the apron?" And it was like, "Why not?" and they just turned out to the funny thing is it's like when that bowl is going out that left out lane and people are so pissed off at the game but they see that come out it's they want to see it again like it's just one of those moments like I want to see it again you know many times you see people like putting their finger out like I want to kill you it's like it just makes you want to play it again it both it either comforts you or taunts you depending on how you want to take it nice you can choose how you want to be angry or not angry create your pinball machine and pinball should be about choice. Absolutely. Well, and again like every decision that we make, obviously there's money concerns and restrictions of what we can do, but it's like how can we entertain the player? Like again, I I approach films like an attraction poster. Like when you walk into a bar, you see a pinball machine, you see the poster, you see the back glass. That is your attraction poster, right? And that draws the person. Oh, that's an IP I recognize. I'm curious to see it. So when they come up to it and they look into it now, they see the world that you've created. And that world should be, you know, appetizing enough that you want to put money in it, you know, and I see someone I want with and uh actually I'll tell you a story kind of getting ahead of ourselves, but with Dune, like we had one distributor come in to see Dune before anyone else. and he was a little bit underwhelmed by it because he's like, "Oh, you got a sculpt there, you got the mountains there, you got the siege there, and like, oh, this doesn't seem to be much on it." And then he experienced, you know, desert power multiball. And he was just like, "Holy crap." You know, and then he wanted to play it again. You know, there's got to be those moments. And this actually directly relates to my first time playing pinball, which was the data east pinball Star Wars. And I think I was I don't know I I keep saying 12. I don't know the exact date. But when I was playing that game, I didn't know what I was doing. I was just bashing the ball around. But on that East Games back in the day on ball three, if you had not triggered multiball, it will be one shot to make the toy happen. So on that game, it was the Death Star, right? So on ball three, the death star uh drop target comes down and I shoot that death star accidentally and like it starts going off like the countdown. I was like holy [ __ ] I'm Luke [ __ ] Skywalker now like this is amazing and I immediately wanted to play it again and then I immediately wanted to my friends and that was me not because it was pinball but I was experiencing a moment of a movie that I love dearly and I was a part of it. So that's how we approach and I want to put people in power when we approach these licenses. What are these moments that going to make people go, "Holy cow, that is that world." So attraction post, the back glass, the enticement of playing that world, and how do we get them to connect to moments on the playfield in that way? And And Desert Power Multiball is awesome. And uh that is it is nice that it is easy to do on the on ball three with one shot. It seems I I usually can lock it multiple times before that, but I have noticed that when we play it is it's pretty much set up on ball three by design. Um I do we will get into Dune. I I want to get there and I want to talk about that. But we talked about you talked about Labyrinth as an IP and people as a family-friendly thing. I think the first time you and I talked, you were heading back from Texas, uh, from the IP kind of like whatever festival of of purchasing new IPs, probably buying the next IP for the next Barrels of Fun game or or future Barrels of Fun games. Um, can you can you talk about the process of acquiring an IP for people who are curious? So, it's it's an interesting world. Um, a lot of it is based on just relationships. um people that you I mean mainly going to this licensing show is not just about getting licenses but it was really meeting the people that I've met over the last 10 years um even people I've met from the film industry it's a moment of to catch up with their kids you know find out how their life is going but also talk about opportunities like oh we've got this thing coming up in 3 years do you think you could do something towards that it's basically kind of a synergy situation of hey there's an opportunity here that maybe we can benefit each other. Like when I approach business, it has to be a win-win for both parties. There's no I don't have to beat anyone up to get a win over them. It has to be mutual. And that's why I I take every meeting I get asked for at a licensing show because you have no idea what they're bringing to you or who they know that can get you something down the line that you want. Yeah, maybe I'm giving away my secrets here, but like I've met from people from um uh grocery products. I've met with people that have agent IP or just um a uh what are they called? I had a meeting with um a group of people from Japan where these avatars that sing. So, they're not real people, but they have people in mocap and they dance around and stuff and like that doesn't really translate to pinball, but I'm curious to hear their story, you know, because I don't know everything and maybe they can educate me on something and maybe I can educate them about the pinball industry, how a pinball machine is made. I get to talk to pinball 247 with these people and how it's done. Like, when I was starting this company, I was looking for new vendors here in Houston. I spent nearly four weeks with every new company because I would approach them and they almost 90% of their responses are they still make pinball and then I'd spend the next time of showing them the things that we do and how we make it and if they'll be interested in doing that you know it's like any time to basically talk about pinball I'm there to talk their ear off basically I hear you anytime I can talk about you ask my fans I just won't shut up about it on stream but you know hey man you log on that's kind of what you're in for you Uh chat's blowing up with some questions. I'm going to I'm going to ask one or two of these. Uh we'll get into Angry Alpac is asking if you regret releasing Dune when the code is so early. I think that is not a fair question and I think that you and I talked speaking of collaboration with uh IPs. You know, there are a bunch of modes ready for Dune and that is currently dealing with approval of the licenser and they are they have every right to take a look at what's going to be representing their brand as the game goes out. So they get a right to choose whether or not it is ready or you know it hits all their check boxes and everybody up the [ __ ] totem pole gets to check those boxes to approve it. So I feel like the game is a lot further ahead in code than is currently available to the people and uh I if you have if you'd like to address that Legendary has been a fantastic partner to work with and this is not me blowing smoke. They've been a true partnership of making sure they're not about just sticking IP on product. They are what they consider a fandom company. They want to they only do products that they feel like they can service the fandom of of a property. So they are way more involved in a product that I've ever been with. And you got to remember we're not dealing with one talent here. We're dealing with multiple talents that are probably at the highest caliber level of their careers right now and every one of those people get to touch what we're doing and there are things out of their control and even our control that we have to be patient on. And uh you know it's really exciting to hear from you know Dennis coming down saying why do you have clouds in the on the display? There's no water on the planet and he's 100% right. But we as an animator, as a background, my animators, we wanted to put clouds in the back because that gave motion. It made it feel like a real world. But he was 100% right and that got ripped out. And it's one of those things of there was some challenges that came up that we had to change in how we do things. Like normally everything's very scheduled out how you do it. Um, and being the licenser, they get to say how they want things done and that can change on a moment's notice. And at the end of the day, I believe in this relationship and I'm going to do my best to support them because they're doing the same for me. So, it's unfortunate what has previously happened, but look at Labyrinth Code and in 12 months time, even less, look at the code where Dune is, and I guarantee you, you're going to have one of the most cinematic pinball experiences coined by uh Colin Kinetic Kineticist. like we are this this game. The first time I stepped up with everything on the playfield except clear cut. It was just a direct a direct print playfield with the music with the light shows with the how lighting in it and I hit desert power multiball for the first time. Like I got goo like this is epic. Like I've like you got to remember we're playing on white. We're just seeing things happening and stuff like that. But when you have the music and the lighting all working together, it's just a moment where it's like it's working. Like the concert is working. That's why we upgraded the audio system, you know? It's all about what is that experience? Like it's I get goosebumps just thinking about all these. And that's not even talking about the harvester modes. Like it's just a simple little gimmick, but like when you hit a Harkinon and you hit the omnicopter and then you hit the harvester and it all blows up like it's just like yeah, the halo lighting with the big blue laser is a nice touch too. I mean there's like somebody was asking like when mine's going to get shipped to me. I already have it. I've had it for about a week now. A week and a half I think. Uh thank you David as well for fasttracking that to me. Uh but you know it's it's a lot of fun and the cinematic experience that you talk about is absolutely there. I hate that buzz term by the way from the video game industry. I just they cannot stand it. But I don't know what else to call it at this point either. Um the big speakers definitely help too cuz we didn't have a word for it. But like when Colin was sitting there he goes when he was playing and watching other people was like there's it was just he couldn't put his word on that's like after about an hour he came back and he he used those words and I mean I hate to say it he was on the money like it really is like watching the movie. Right. Uh Joe's asking, he said, he's been bugging me to ask you about auto updates for the code. Uh which I'm assuming is coming at some point just because that seems to be new standard for games. Um do you have a timeline on that or is that not? So I I don't know if Eric is in chat or anything like that, but if you turn on the Wi-Fi in the game, it will autom if you go in there, you can check updates and if the updates are in the right folder, it will automatically find it on the server and pull them down. Um, but that may not be turned on yet, but it' be it'd be very shortly if that's the case. Yeah, I think Joe means more of like without having to just do downloading the background when the game starts up. But, uh, Joe asked if licensing limits mode stacking. Well, when I talked to Bowen about this, I think it was more about the dayight and the division of how those modes work is what was his philosophy for the the no lack of mode stacking. For people that don't know, you cannot carry multiball into a Dune mode. Uh it just it currently that's not something that happens in the game. Um so I guess Joe's question is does licensing have anything to do with that decision? Uh licensing can have um feedback and choices on those type of things. But we again we have different types of players in our development cycle in in our development period. So there are people that love to stack a lot of things on top of each other to make it happen. And we actually had that happening in this game. And to me, I was losing the excitement for it because I got really frustrated. So, for example, you were able to start the uh the Fedin multiball when you were doing um Harvester or um yeah, Harvester was a big one and Harvester has so much pressure for you to make certain shots and when you get two balls on that playfield, you just lost all the energy. It got frustrating. So like I the moments to me are more am I are we given the right experience is what's more important. So if I feel frustrated or I feel like it's taken away from the moment I'm going to pull back on that but it's more of a team situation. But for Dyken multiple turned into more of an addable. So you actually if you're a certain mode you can actually use fodken to bring more FMAN into a mode. So you can actually increase certain people. But again I'm not the rules person. I like my post, my editing world, I rule by feeling like if it doesn't feel right, then we have to change it and they will fight me on it and I you know if they are very strong and there's a group of them telling me I'm wrong, I will listen to it and yield to it. Well, you're you're on record for saying that someone on your team that wasn't part of the design team had an idea for something and at the round table discussion and it was just such a good idea that you were like, "Okay, we have to put this in the game." So, I think that that's a good one for Labyrinth. So, the spinner on Labyrinth, uh, there was never a spinner on that. And, uh, Phil came in, he was playing the game, and he was like, man, it's like, it has everything on it, but it doesn't have a spinner. It should have a spinner. And I went over the prototype trolley and spinners are amazing. And he's like, we put it in multiple places and it didn't sit right. And then it we put it behind the fork and we just screwed it in. We shot it. And he just looked at me, he's like, dude, that feels amazing. And obviously now that's transitioned into Dune. We made it. Yeah, there's three spinners on Dune. That's a magnet between the fork and a spinner. Yeah, which is amazing. Uh, okay. Uh, Angry Alpaca is frustrated that his question about code is is not is a fair question and it is. We'll talk about code a bit a bit later, but I want to let's launch from Labyrinth and and get into Dune. Uh, the last labyrinth question I'll ask you is is Travis is asking if the code is considered finished for Labyrinth. And uh we talked about this with Bowen and Bowen asked a very good question. What more do you want to see in Labyrinth? So road mapapwise it is definitely feature complete. So like you every mode is in there. We even put in you know Williams tea party on the side. Like there are little side quests that we put in there. But I mean if there is more stuff we Arrow ball was an an addition but like we have a great relationship with our licenses and we still have a active contract with Henson and if there is more stuff that people can think of to add into it like I mean honestly they're the more straightforward company that we can do that with. So if there is suggestions of things that we're missing um I'm sure one of them will be you got to put Sarah into the game. Well this is not Sarah's journey this is your journey. Um, but if there's mode ideas, love to hear them. I know Eric, my cod, is gonna go, "Shut up, David." Like, I'm working on Dune right now. Um, but yeah, if there's other ideas, we're totally open to seeing if it's a viable opportunity. Sure. Amazing. No, Alpaca, I was just fooling around. I don't think you're actually mad. Uh, all right. So, let's let's launch into Dune. Um, so when the Dune when Dune was announced, right, there was a lot of mixed response as there is whenever a new pinball machine is launched. And I don't mean this targeting at you or barrels. It's just that people are just like, "Why wasn't my favorite IP there?" All the people that wanted Dune like me were like, "Oh, awesome. It's Dune." And all everyone else that wanted or was hoping for something else like GI Joe or some other particular IP were like, "I'm mad." And it's I think it's really important to set the record straight here. And I if it isn't really obvious already and Divisible Error has mentioned this already about how much passion and joy you have. The people that make pinball machines are love making pinball machines. They're not doing it to make anybody unhappy. Like they aren't going around to find out what your IP is and deliberately trying not to make it to piss you off. And I'm assuming that you made Dune because you wanted to make Dune. It's opportunities that present itself. Like there are licenses that we've turned down that probably would be huge. But if I can't get certain actors or certain assets, I will not I don't want to make the game because I'm not being fair to the fandom of that of that fandom. So it's like I want to make the best product I possibly can. I also want to do licenses that I think could potentially open up the pinball hobby. Like you know the pinball demographic is not getting younger, it's getting older. So anywhere that I can see a synergy of crossing paths of IPS that can maybe skew a little bit younger or in a different area I will want to explore that. Um and again we have to choose licenses two years at least two years in advance to develop it in time. So you're you're kind of betting on where's it going to be culturally in two years now. I mean I guess when you talk about nostalgia Yes, we are old. Trust me, my son tells me every day. Um, it's one of those things of, you know, what are my what is my team passionate about? What is the pinball demographic asking for and how can we play with that? And we, when I look for licenses, I put them into three categories. We have A, which is this should be a no-brainer, out of the park winner. We have B. Uh, it probably g it would do okay. Um, but it has the potential of being massive. And then we have C that it shouldn't exist at all. Like it doesn't it shouldn't exist, but the licenser, the story we think makes a compelling game that we think should exist. And hopefully B and A will cover, you know, if C doesn't do that well, we'll cover, you know, we'll cover the the mistake of that IP. So where does Dune sit on that? because I feel like Dune is a little bit of the C category. I actually disagree with that. I I actually think the world when we are looking at Dune, the people that love the book, love the old movie, love the new movie, like they're all very different demographics, sure, but they don't tear each other down. They actually really celebrate that universe. Not like Star Wars where it's very segregated. Like, you know, you I'm original I'm a fan of the original three films. Oh, I love the TV series. You know, they're very separate from each other. Where the Dune series, I feel like people that love the old film still love the new films or they love the books and they're all very encompassing. So, we felt like this was the demo on uh Dune is actually pretty square in the pinball demo. Um, but it's very wide, too. Sure. Okay. I'm happy to be wrong about that. Angry Alpaca says it's also an A and B or a B minus. Uh I I just I am a fan of the idea and the world of Dune. I actually the video games speak to me a lot more. Like I remember playing in late 80s, early 90s Dune. Yeah. And it's funny because I think Jonathan Berson's artwork or Johnny Crap for his more well-known Instagram name. I think a lot of the artwork in that kind of hearkens to that in its own way, which I love his artwork. I don't mean that in a in a negative way at all. And I love how unique the I like it's got its own look and feel to it. It doesn't just look like, you know, Labyrinth with a Dune skin pulled over it. Um, from my digging that I did, it seemed like Dune had been locked in as an IP when when Labyrinth was released. Like you guys had that already locked in way way back. Yep. We were looking at again always looking for different opportunities and we weren't necessarily looking for Dune. Um but when talking to them regarding other IPs and that it was like you know we see the storytelling that you're doing with Labyrinth would you want to do this and um I wasn't even really aware of part two we kind of knew how we didn't know how they were going to do it and I'm like I think that world building I mean Star Wars like George Lucas has been very you know has always said like he kind of ripped off Dune you know the books so it was like well here's an opportunity to do what some pe people consider the Lord of the Rings of science fiction, you know, with the different families and, you know, the the drama between them all and stuff like that. Um, again, you had the very serious people that love the books and you have the people that love the movie and then you have the people that love the bad, you know, the bad side of the movie and then you got all the young people that just absolutely adore the new films. Sure. So, that's super that's 100%. Um, the uh I I've just pulled up some playback of the of the playfield in the background of the movie. Um, so you're going into this, you had mentioned that, by the way, respect. I I realize I'm stumbling here, but respect for choosing an IP where you can access the actual assets. I mean, I think that one that's spoken about a lot is Jurassic Park, Stern's Jurassic Park, where they were able to acquire the IP, but there's zero v there's no film footage in it whatsoever. And I imagine navigating an IP as big as you know any uh of you know Jurassic the the staples of the biggest films of the 80s and '90s is probably very difficult. Uh but you were able to get all video footage. What What isn't in here from the the film? So the assets I mean you have voice likeness, you have music and you have film. Yeah, we got film, we have sync rights, and we Yeah. And music. don't have all the music. We had to choose what we want to do because there's a always inherent cost to a lot of this. So there's stuff that you just straight up can't get and then there's a cost that comes with it. So then there's stuff that you can get, there's a cost to it and then there's stuff that gets bedded into their original uh when you get it. So it's a combination of trying to figure out before you because you you got to sign all this before like you got to sign a contract before you even try to know what you've got. So at the very beginning it's a race of trying to figure out what you can get, what you can live without and then even once you feel like you got everything in place, things will go sideways anyway. So it just comes down to film making 101 and production. All right, well, we just lost that because something just happened and all right, well, how can we turn this into something that's more impactful for the player or how can we make that an experience different? Sure. So, it's it's one of those things of you never know exactly what you've got. Um, I mean, Hansen, we pretty much knew everything we had. Um, but when you deal with this level of, you know, talent and so many, you know, bits and pieces, it's it's a mindfield. You got to dance around it and you got to figure out what makes the best story. Very true. Very true. So, yes, movies, sync, right? Voice. We're doing custom voice call outs. I'm actually recording them tomorrow with the talent. Um, well, there's your answer to that, Alpaca. Alpaca just asked about call outs and if there were more coming. Perfect timing. So a very good example, we are writing characters for this game not to be just call outs, but they have to be in universe. So everything that we're doing has to be filled natural to it. So these are, you know, we're adding characters, call out characters that are technically characters in the game itself. So that's how much level we get into with how legendary they don't want it just to be a generic X and some games and some licenses are really suited for that. But the world that we're creating here has to be all-encompassing. Sure. So I'm I'm a little curious and this is such an opportunity to talk about some of the business stuff behind it. I don't expect you to talk about like finance numbers, but when when an IP is handled when you get an IP from, you know, whatever studio that's handling this, how do they get their return? Is it based off of like landmarks like landmark sales milestones? Like do you have to hit a certain game numbers and then they receive it per certain payment? Do they receive a percentage of royalties per unit? Like how is that handled the same per licenser or is it different? There's always a fee up front and that's up against your royalties of the game on the back end. So whatever you forecast what's going the game's going to do and then you pay money upfront for that and then the rest comes on the back end of you following through your forecast. So if you forecast incorrectly you'll never work with that company again. If you try and short change them on the front and it's a bad experience. Definitely never going to work with them again. Um how do you even begin to project those numbers though? You got to just be honest. Like you got to say this is where my gut is on it. I mean, that's the gambling side of it, right? Like you go, well, we think this is where it's going to be and just be upfront. This is what it's going to be. This is what we think it's going to be and what does the upfront payment need to be to make you happy, but also not take away from our development funds because we're going to put a lot of money into making this product that pro actually not probably shouldn't exist. No pinball machine really should exist, but we are going I said those exact words. I mean like let's be honest film making that shouldn't exist but we do it because we love it you know we want to share those experiences so it's one of those things of how can we make sure you're confident enough that we're going to follow through of what we're going to do and but allow us to have freedom of develop doing the R&D on the game to get it where we want it to be that we think it will succeed and hit its forecast marks. Sure. Interesting. And you don't want to be in a position where not asking for enough money or getting in a fingerpointing scenario because then like you said like the business is all about relations and yeah um someone asked uh in chat if Dune currently was hitting pre-sale expectations. So I can tell you there's multiple things I couldn't control throughout this year and there were multiple things I couldn't even control with Labyrinth. The good news is it is actually doing better than we thought the economic environment would allow it to be for sure. Obviously tariffs were out of your control. There are days where I had things literally in customs when the the tariff got put on it and it was taken off by that late afternoon, but I still got dung for it. Like it's just it is what it is. But again, this comes down to um a situation of I can't just look at my feet. I got to think about what our long-term goals are. Like, yeah, this hurts us. We're going to eat it. We're not going to pass it on to the customer, but it will level out by the time we get to the end of it. For those for those people watching that don't know that you sent out an announcement stating that the tariffs would not increase the cost of the at that point unannounced Dune. And I think that's super important because as I've said on the channel previous times that I think that Barrels of Fun is is very much a consumer focused company at least currently and that there are other companies out there I won't name that had sent out similar emails from the other standpoint where they were like hey we're cranking up the cost because tariffs are affecting us. And so people will say that yes we did have a $1,000 price increase on this game but that wasn't due to tariffs. So, one of the things that we learned on Labyrinth, there were multiple things people were complaining about and requested us that if we could add these to the games as add-ons, they would really, really appreciate that. One, shaker motor. Two, by the way, the list, the list is way more than $1,000 worth of components if you bought them from another company like Stern or if you bought them on Pinball Life. Sorry. um the dual coin slot door coin door, but I did not do that because I would rather put the extra $40 onto the playfield than onto the onto the uh cabinet onto the coin door itself. However, we will have an opportunity to if they people want to add a coin door, a dual coin door on it, a dual coin slot door on it, we can do that. Um they people said the lighting on Labyrinth was too dim for them. Okay, that's where the how lighting system came into this. Invisy glass is something that people were asking for. Um, the cabinets was not something people asking for, but my frustration of like I wanted something nicer and I was playing around with different stuff. So, it was one of those things of this is something we can add on. And with the success of Labyrinth, our buying power got a lot better. So, all of a sudden, now I had an opportunity. I can now include a shaker motor. I can now include invisy glass. We can now include a lighting system that will actually help us tell the stories that we wanted to do in Dune. Like there's so many moments that we wanted to create an emotional environment that that lighting system allow us to do now. And it's not even just marketing crap cuz when you and I talked early before, well, not really early, like literally seconds before we went live, but the how lighting system kind of blew me away. I I expected it to just be like PinStadium Lights or or similar to Stern's like John Wick thing, but it's not like it's recessed in a way that the lack of a diffuser, which I had originally was going to be critical of, is totally irrelevant. Like they are they are almost completely transparent to you as a player when you're standing directly in front of the machine. And it really does add to the experience in a way that I was just like, I've seen plates. Who cares? But no, it's it's really well done. Well, we didn't want to have it where it was attached to the playfield. And B, I didn't want it to be because you've seen them installed on the side of games and you can see the LED strips. Yeah. So, we really wanted to make sure it was built into the cabinet and twisted away. So, when you're playing it, you weren't I mean, you can still technically see the LEDs on the metal on the wire forms and stuff, but you cannot see it from the top to bottom. So, it's not affecting the game play. So, it was one of those things of we had to build that into the cabinet and it was something that we knew that we'd always want to continue on forward. Um, we had to, you know, we had cabinets getting, you know, cabinet decals being damaged in shipping. So, we wanted to solve that. That was one of those things of, well, can we add on a product like that? And we played around with multiple versions of how can we make it better? And obviously, our Everglass uh became the winner. and that debate that we had. And then also the audio system is like as much as I love our audio system. Dune demands bass. Like it demands a massive sound package. And I will say the sound package that's in this game is actually a stepping stone to our next game's audio package. So we're actually taking it another step up this one. There is a very large amplifier in the back glass. For those of you who don't know and haven't opened a barrels of fun game, uh it's in the center is their is their Linux- based hub which controls basically everything's brain. Then you have your driver boards around it. You have your sound amplifier in the upper left and then there's the display kind of HDMI bridge output that goes to the to the playfields. It's well done. It fits and the lighting is Yeah. Uh Silver Silver mentions he's like, "Would the camera footage exacerbate the effect you've mentioned?" Something that's really important that people don't understand about the video footage and and it's here as an example on the screen. I don't know if you have the Twitch pulled up, but you can see the h the how lights reflecting in the glass and stuff and also from the edge of the cabinet, but you're looking at the game from like standing on the side and it's not where you play it. It's not. You stand directly in front of it and then the that experience is totally different. Like the lights are are they're just not there. They don't look like they're there. It just magically appears onto the playfield. It's It's really cool. Yeah. And you know, it's just again, we wanted to provide a product that you don't feel like you have to add a single thing to it. In fact, we had a conversation. I was like, are we putting too much in our game? Because one of the things I loved about Pinball getting into it was making modifications. I mean, that's why I got back into it because I wanted to fix it. I wanted to add things. And I was wondering, are we pushing it too far? Because there is a whole modders market there that people really gravitate towards games when they can make it personalized. Sure. Um, I started buying Ellies because I'm tired of doing the same four install bullshits that you have to do on every Stern game. I'm tired of putting a shaker motor in. I'm tired of putting art panels in. I'm tired of putting in speakers in from Pin Sound. You know, like they aren't sponsors, by the way. I just that's the ones that I've been putting in my games. Anyways, like I I understand what you're saying, but I would prefer that the mods that go into a game that you do be cosmetic and by choice and not something that is a fundamental part of the pinball experience in my opinion. Yeah. Well, and when we looked at all the stuff that we wanted to add on that people were asking for, we looked at the price points because if we could not like when we added up what everyone else is doing that are either add-ons or a part of their level package that they're selling, like when we did a comparison between them all, we were still cheaper than five of them with everything included with add-ons and stuff like that. So, it was really important to us to come in at a price point that when you compared us to everyone else with the add-ons or what they included in that level package, it was a very good value for money. We want to be when you look at ours, you're looking at a very, you know, the one and only exclusive version of that IP of that game. You do not need to do anything to it. And if you do, I can't wait to see it because if I didn't think about it, then I must have been sleeping or something. I think you've checked pretty much every box of something that you would want in it. But I am also I'm curious what the maker community is going to make for to expand into the Dune, you know, into whatever they're going to add to Dune. I mean, uh, that's funny. By the way, Stumbler is going to be on the podcast soon. And, uh, as somebody who is legendarily known for making pinball modifications, I I just can't really think of anything. Um, we got to talk about the worm. Yeah, I got I was really impressed with Labyrinth that the the amount of mods on that game are pretty much zero. So, uh I mean I've seen people put little statues and Sarah and stuff which are really cool. But nothing that like you know Stumble I mean he's like the king of all mods, right? Um and maybe doesn't like Labyrinth. I don't know. You should reach out and tell me. Um but I think it's probably more that they couldn't think of something that would really improve the game. I mean, you think of his other modifications, those like the Jaws uh like buoy lighting system. Obviously, Godzilla is the biggest example. Everything on Godzilla has basically been replaced, but that's cuz those plastics are cheap and they look bad and the stuff that he's done make it look much more like that threedimensional world under glass. And like you already have that threedimensional feel to it. I mean, the harvester is is big in a satisfying way and not in the way like, I don't know, the dragon on D and D. And the, you know, Bowen himself said that the the rock sculpts are the best rock sculpts in pinball since Flintstones. So I always think of White Water, but he is right. I love Flintstones with the whole rotating apron where the balls like that was a holy crap moment when I I mean Flintstones, it is what it is. But when that whole ball passes down, it goes around the apron comes up the other side. I mean, talk about a pinball moment. Like I got to figure out how we down the road. I just that that cool I actually honestly the loop on um on Labyrinth where it comes down and around was kind of inspired of that make you think it's going past the outside land and coming back in. that was kind of inspired to create that moment of like, oh, was it going to go out? But that something else that I do like about Barrel's games is that when you look at the playfield, it's initial like simple is not the right word, but when you look at the path of balls that are on the playfield initially, you think it's very obvious, but then as you start playing it, ball paths start to manipulate in ways that you're like just not expecting. like diverters and stuff occur and you really do get to explore the game and start to reveal like oh wow this is like a lot more layout and path ball path situation going on here than I expected as very obvious in Labyrinth and as I'm getting into Dune it's definitely happening more too um so worm we're going to talk about the worm you you couldn't make Dune without a worm and and I mean this endearingly when you put a worm in giant prolapsed anus not the first thing that would have come to mind having played The worm is awesome. So, can you What was the design process behind coming up with the worm? So, we had a lot of different ideas for how we were going to make the worm do what it does. Now, what it comes down to again, we do blue sky. So, we're thinking about we can do X, Y, and Z, but the reality is we have budgets and there's only we there's only so much magic you can do on a playfield. So, you know, so do you want to make the worm sideways like it is in the movies? like how can we make this happen? Um so we came up with an idea of like well it's got to eat the bowl so how are we going to do that? Magnet toten is a really good example of that of the ball going get pulled into the playfield. So it's like well how can we take that to the next level you know and then you think about well you want to ride the worm. So okay well now if we can suck it down how do we rise it up? So again, so okay, well let's take what would it take to take the ball that sucks down. Now we got to put a mech around it and make it rise up. All right, well that's kind of interesting. And then someone made a comment, it would be really cool if you can make it rotate. I'm like, okay, well let's figure out how we can make it rotate as it rises up. And Travis and Paul would go to work and they would just come up with little ideas and stuff like that. And then um I remember the day that came in like, David, this is going to cost too much. like it's going to be $600, whatever. It's going to be expensive. 4 to600. It's a complicated mechanic. There's a lot underneath there. Has its own little board. I mean, it's got its own little brain. And it was one of those things. And it's terrifying. Like, it's just everything that went into we put a lot like a very complex mech into this game. And when they approached me with this, they were like, "Well, it's just going to be too expensive." And I'm like, "Well, we haven't built it yet. Like, let's just build it." Like we got to have a moment in this. And we've got these little things off the side that we're doing, which is fun, but we need I want to have a moment when people go, "Oh, it did that. Oh, it did that. Oh, like I wanted that constant leveling up of like, oh, we've seen that trick before." It's like a magician. Like a magician does never does the trick twice unless he can totally redo it again. So it was really mental capacity of how can we keep adding on to the moment. Um so they went away, they designed it, they came back and yeah, I mean it's still an expensive mech, don't get me wrong, but something I learned on Labyrinth, there were many things that we were able to fine-tune and just iterate on to make it better and cheaper. Like, oh, we could we don't need this part. or when you shoot it and you practice with it, you realize you can modify this and modify that. So, it was able to get the price down to where it was reasonable and it created a moment that like when you hit it that first time, you know, it was funny when I had someone play for the first time and the first thing they did was like when you do the harvester battle, you kill you kill the Omnicopter, you kill a Harkinan, and then once you've destroyed the harvester, you have an opportunity to dispose of the Harkin bodies, which is you shoot the the worm and it sucks it down. So, there's that moment of people like I saw people go, "Oh, wow. That's really cool. That's from this game." And then they just playing the game because they don't think of it doing anything else. Um, I remember the first distributor said, "Oh, you've got a magnet or a spinning disc there. Oh, very nice." And then that moment where it rises up and well, first of all, the ball sinks a little bit, so you think it's going to do the same trick. And then it rises up like that. Yeah, it was like, "Oh, now you get all of those experiences almost in order when you play the game, which is really smart." Cuz you know, it's easier. One of the easier things to do is or first kind of task you are presented with is destroying a harvester. So, you get to see what it looks like when the worm grabs the magnet and sucks it down. You're like, "Okay, cool." And then later, you know, when you get to uh uh what's the main multiball called Rackus or the Desert Power Multiball? Yeah. And then Desert Power multiball. So when you get to that, that's when the actual mechanic rises up and then dumps it onto the wire form and you're just like, "Oh my god, like what's up?" Um, then you have and then you have ride, which is the moment when Paul rides the worm. And in that mode, you've got to set the thumper, but you got to like in the movie itself, there's multiple times that he's trying to find the right frequency for the thumper to call the worm. And like he puts it on top of the mountain, then he brings it down a little bit more. And you basically you're doing this in the game. So there's three shots that you got to find to set the thumper in the right position. And then you got to shoot the thumper to make it start happening. And then you've got to lock the ball up onto the mountain just like in the movie as the worm's coming towards you. And then you've got to the ball will release. This is a T. So let me back up on the rules. I'm not a rules guy, but I get really passionate about when I talk about this mode. Sure. A lot of the uh the prophecy modes, the modes we see Paul become who he is are set in two tiers. So you have the first tier that is a set amount of shots and then you shoot it up into the into the siege where the ball will get held and then you can choose to cash out your jackpot from that mode and just go on keep going on the game or you can go to tier two which is the next section of that mode. So the first section of ride is calling the worm to you. The second section is now mounting the worm and setting the hook. So the second time is you put the ball onto the worm, it rises up and then you got to hit the worm to set your locks like to find to stop yourself from falling off of it. And then you set lock one, lock two, which is your, you know, your your hooks. And then you get to rise it up and you get the whole moment of the frameman going, "Yay, successful." and then you get a nice hurry up and steering it. I mean, there's there's so many movie mechanics or like movie moments that you sync to do it. One thing I like the Thumper's light show is one example I think of something that's really uh engaging about the game too when you when the Thumper happens and it's setting up and whether it's uh uh from the harvester right before you dispose of bodies or when it goes into the multiball, the thumper happens and you see it kind of like cascade throughout the like rest of the playfield and uh that's neat. I do wish from what I've seen I do wish that there were more lighting effects. Like it feels a little barebones in that capacity now, but again it's it is early and it's released. So I'm curious what are things that are not in the game that are coming so people don't have to be like man I wish it had this. It's like it's coming. So currently right now the game has desert power multiball. It has your battle harvester uh modes. It has pain box. It has. And the guys will tell kill me on this. Survive and escape. You got escape. Yep. Uh ride and escape. Uh survive and um ride. Um right after that, we're going to have train. We've got uh awaken, rescue, and fight. They're the modes that will be coming next. And then you got Battle of Araken, Fall of the Siege, Liberate Aracus, and Voice from Outer World. So those are modes are still coming along. So those are those are the wizard modes that Bowen talked about that where you get to collect Dune letters through some mechanic and then once you spell Dune you get to do one of the many wizard modes and progress through those to the final tier which is the voice from the outer world if I remember correctly. And I will never be that good and that's why you have those people talk about it because I just I just live to get to like three modes and I feel like I've completed it because then by then I've lost the ball for sure. And if people wanted to learn about the modes and rules and stuff, they should go watch the other podcast with Bowen. Like that's not what we're here to talk about. Uh but kind of if we had a bigger team, I would have, you know, nice layouts of the mo of the road map of what we're doing. And we are working towards that. But, you know, keep in mind we are still a very small group that are working on multiple projects plus running, you know, we got 30 people, you know, full-time employees running a facility of we just expanded our facility by 13,000 square ft. So, congrats. How many is that now? Under Yeah, we're over 30,000 square ft now. And it's just like growing the company to where we need it to be comfortable so we can create products at the demand. So no one's waiting too much. Oh my focus back. I literally bored your camera. But again, we want to get the company to a point where we don't have a delay too much getting games out to customers, but also sustainable enough so if the the economic environment or something happens that we can Carl Weathers those storms as well. Dracula asked earlier, I did I remembered if you're still here. Uh he asked about international shipping specifically to the UK. What is what is the shipping landscape look like? I know that you're on record of saying that all of the dunes are going to ship by the end of the year. What does that look like for an international customer? So the certification that you need to send overseas is uh you know in place. So like Labyrinth um a lot of people don't realize that certification is very rigorous and when we started doing it ourselves it was changing and it still is changing um but we we did not intend to have labyrinths take so long to get over to Europe but again I wanted to sh games that were safe and tested to be safe. Um, so regarding Dune, we actually put this game into testing literally in December. So we wanted to be in a position when the orders came in, we'll be able to ship them. Normally what happens, we air freight a couple of games into people. Um, Stefan, who's one of our u distributors over there, he already has two of them. Uh, Freddy's getting his I think this week or next week. It's a short week this week. And then Robert Englunds. um they're getting theirs I think the week after that. So we're shipping individual games to get into the rooms, but typically what happens is they have they want to fill a container worth of them. So we try to pack them all together so you know 20 of them will go at once. I mean that makes sense. You want to optimize international shipping. Empty space in a container seems like an absolute waste of money. Oh it certainly is. Now, also the the thing is we can't control is um now with the tariff situation, they actually cancelled a lot of the container boats. So, now we're seeing about a 30% increase on containers now. So, um which is nothing we can do about it. It gets passed on to customers and it sucks, right? And it's important people that are waiting for their games and mad that they haven't arrived yet. It's like again like it's not like you're intentionally trying to delay the games to be shipped overseas. It's just Well, and that's why we can even talk about the launch of this game. A lot of like we had media day. We had everything planned out to the day that we launched it to, but there are so many outside third party things that we couldn't control. Like we're very strict on our QC. Um, and for example, Labyrinth, we said we're going to make up to,00 units, right? So that gave us the right to cancel it off if game two was ready to go and we didn't get as many orders we could lock it off and then move on to the next game or if the demand was high then obviously we got to you know make some extra money and help develop and build a bigger company. Sure. And um we learned from that we lost a lot of parts due to products that just was not good enough to go in our games. Um and that's why for example um Dune is up to a,000 units because over that 1100 units out of Labyrinth we lost pretty much 950 pieces due to games worth because of just quality that I would not put into a game. Interesting. So when we were building up for game two a lot of the stuff that we were expecting to come in to be right cuz you again this is all scheduling. This is all planning how things go and I can't control again that comes down to like I try to be ahead as possible cuz we invest in the games before anyone else does. Like we put the money in to build the games, not our customers. And again, we've already paid for all the parts. It's just a matter of all coming in and hoping it's all good. And if it's not, then we work with the vendor to get that corrected. And sometimes a whole batch can be bad and it's like I can't I'm not going to put that in a customer's game. I'm just not. No, I mean it would harness the reputation. It only frustrates the people that are there to enjoy the game. And I I would as a if I got a game that had busted parts in it, which has happened unfortunately quite frequently over the last three or four orders, not with Dune, but just in other games that if you follow the channel, you you'll know something's something's going to break. And that's where like our 12-month warranty is like we can't control when these games get on into their boxes and go onto trucks and uh boats and planes is that's why we have a 12-month warranty. We will take care of you, you know, within reason. There are there's a couple of things that we've had like did you put a third party mod in this and that completely fried the system because what you're explaining is not right. And we still took care of them, but you know, I'm a collector. I want to be treated with respect. I want the best product I can within reason and I will work my best to make sure that the experience is worthwhile. It's also funny to be providing a warranty on a product that inherently is designed to destroy itself. I mean, it should be making I can't pull that toy because that would give away the next game. Um, uh, by the way, I'm I don't know if you've announced this yet, but your next game should obviously be Conan. your own your own artist has said that they want to do Conan and I think I speak for a large majority of myself when I say that I want the next game to be Conan. Okay. So Conan like so I am like when I saw Conan for the first time as a movie like I think it's the best representation of that world done in cinematic history period. I think like it's just plus the Basel Ballador score is amazing. Yes. But my thing is is like that could be difficult for licensing. Would you accept a world of Conan where it was more animated like the video game series like was that would I mean but for example if you took the music from the film like you I could get the soundtrack. I'm not saying I can, but I'm just saying sure, you know, marry those worlds together because Conan, yes, we love the movie, not the second one as much, but I still enjoy it. That's a guilty pleasure. Yeah. The Destroyer is not a great film. It's one of those things of like if I can't get the movie because I'm a fan of Conan, can I tell that story in a different medium? Sure. And I think that's an excellent question, but people and I imagine this is something that you have to deal with is IPs and memories attached to those specifically other forms of media like movies you're talking about sell. And in the end, like you are making pinball machines because you love pinball, but you cannot make new pinball machines if you don't get money. And in order to run a business, you need to make money. Yeah. No, we're not, you know, we're self-funded and um every sale that we don't get does absolutely hurt us. But that's why we try to do different categories of games. Like again, I do want to see original games exist. I I want to see games exist that shouldn't exist because a lot of the ones that I love should never existed, but I love them. But they've they've become classics over time that people get to experience them, right? So again, it's part of our strategy of getting IPs that we know will really resonate and do very well and feed the company and feed the employees, but let's have some guilty pleasures in there. Right. To answer your question though, because you asked, you know, would would I specifically and I think largely let's direct this at chat too. Would you be happy with a product that didn't pull from a movie, but if it had other source material, you could build it on that? And I think we're already seeing that because if you look at Stern's King Kong, King Kong isn't based on the 1933 film. It's not based on any of the weird Frankenstein hybrid films. It's not based on any of the weird Japanese illegal makes of it. It is based off of the free to grab up IP of Kong and they decided to skin it with its own style and some people love that and some people did not. Personally, I think Conan has a lot of like artwork that defines what Conan's vibe and mythos looks like or whatever that it would still make for a playground for the right artists and the right animation team to kind of have fun with. So, for that, I would be totally down with it just because like you're not betrothed to video footage, but you know, yeah, but you know, like, you know, what is best in life? Like there's some really iconic moments and iconic sound bites that you would probably want up on the tree eating the eating the Yeah. Fighting the ghouls in the weird desert. I mean that shaman guy like his those call outs of that shaman guy. That's the kind of like fidelity that I think call out should have. And I've been critical of Stern on its call outs where it sounds like they're reading off a script. And you know, when you're making a call out, it's got to be listened to hundreds of thousands of times. You know, hundreds slash thousands, not hundreds of thousands. That would be a lot. You'd be playing a whole lot of Dune if you were hearing that that many times. Um, but, you know, the performance needs to be there. So, if you can't get those sound assets because you're not doing that, that's got to be a design challenge. Well, I'd say, let's give Stan uh some credit here on King Kong. Like I mean when I look at King Kong, the easiest way to do it, get Peter Jackson's Kong, you know, pull from that film, get all the actors involved. I mean, that would be the easiest, most straightforward license. But to Stern's credit, they totally went with an original idea with a fantastic designer to tell their own story. And again, that's not too different that we're trying to do with the IPs that we have here is like we want to tell a story like this. Dune is your plan is the Fman. You are a part of the Fman. You are battling the hearkenins. You're battling you're destroying harvesters. But while you're doing that, you're seeing Paul become who he's meant to be in this process. Right? That's the whole point of what we're doing is we're trying to create skate that world of you get to experience the movies and the assets you love, but we can unlock little side adventures that get you a little bit more deeper Easter eggs into that world. Right. which is great. I mean, that's the exploratory nature of expanding into a game and enjoying what it reveals itself to you is part of the experience of playing pinball. At least for me. Kong is a great game, by the way. I'm not shading on [ __ ] Stern because I think Kong is bad. I just the artwork is a point of context to talk about getting an IP that is not a movie asset license. Um, so yeah, Kong is fun play. If you can find a Kong, you should play it, but if you can find a Dune, you should play that even more. Uh, Dracula also everybody wants to see Fifth Element, which is another great film. So, you know, yeah, that would be also another great stepping stone, but we're not here to try to dig for hypothesized products that are coming out of barrels. Um, that we have with simple as that. Say I'm sorry, say that again. I was I was talking over you. No, I can I can't confirm or deny that we have spoken with the rights holders of that. It's as simple as that. There's your There's your answer. Maybe. anything. But again, I've I I have relationships with nearly all the IP holders out there. Um it just comes down to what opportunities there where it creates a win-win for both of us. Sure. Uh all right. Uh this has amazingly gone so much longer than I intended and uh I really appreciate everything that you have told us about the the process and where your company came from and how you've arrived at your second game. Congratulations, of course, on releasing Dune. We're not done yet. I do want to throw it to chat if there's any questions. Uh I know you guys have been captivated by the stories of what it's like to to be a crazy person and start a pinball company. What were you thinking? But uh throw it if you got questions, fire them off. Absolutely. And maybe I've got something I can give away here. So, let's you randomize someone who asks one of the top questions in there. I don't know how you want to do it. And I'll give them away something. Putting Putting me on the spot. I need to figure out how to randomize this. Uh, all right. Give me uh 25. Okay, there's 20. There's 25 people in the Twitch channel, YouTube. I'm sorry, man. I just can't get into the stuff real quick. So, let's do a random number between 1 and 25. Uh, I'm gonna have to prepare for this next time, man. Uh, all right. Max 25. I'm ready. I'm ready to generate a number. Boom. It is number eight. Let's see who that is. That is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. That's J Biscy. Oh my god, that's hilarious. Uh, one of the dynamic duo. J Biscety, you are about to win whatever Barrels of Fun is talking about. Let it rip, David. Let's have a By the way, I love that you were talking about uh Tales from the Crypt. Oh, wow. Amazing. It's the alternate backlass, which reminds me of a question that I needed to ask. Uh J Biscy, if you are comfortable shooting me your shipping address, I will make sure that it is forward to uh Barrels of Fun. And uh please give them a big thank you. That's [ __ ] awesome. A second. So this is not perfect, but this is a second cuz we've sold out. I think we're close to selling out all these. But these are a second that I got sitting there. If he's not happy with that, I can pull something else. She I bet is stoked. So, she says she's obsessed with Labyrinth. So, that is like pretty much the best possible giveaway that could have possibly happened. Uh, amazing, David. Thank you very much. Uh, that does, uh, remind me, I am not a huge fan of the back glass on Dune and I understand why it is there and what it's necessary marketing stuff. Is there a timeline for the alternate back glass and when can I get it? A lot of the accessories that we're working on are based on uh outside environmental economic uh situations, but it is all in the works. We are hoping to have it all done within 9 months. Knock on the wood. I'm I'm also knocking because I want it too. Do you have any idea like to see for an alternative backlash? You know that that's an interesting question. We've been talking about that. I talked about it a little bit with uh Johnny Crap, who was very good about not giving any spoilers about what was or wasn't in production. So don't you can he's done good by his NDA. Uh I don't know. I mean, I think it should be cinematic and it should be very Donesesque. I could imagine seeing the worm in its entirety in a nice like landscape that has, you know, rule of thirds composition on it. something that's very on theme with the color grading of this game that's like teal down to to brown, which is if people poop on the colors, they're not getting the idea that the the playfield is details upon details. And the lighting system is also part of the experience of Dune and the color grading that goes into it. So, but you know, like you said, and trusting your artist, man, I would I would trust Johnny to to do his thing personally, but I you know, I I just don't want to see Tim Timothy Shalom's face. That's my thing. I don't could give two shits. The joke right now is, which too bad we're not going to actually be able to see the backlash when I stream it, which we are going to, uh, is I plan on taping a, uh, Kyle uh, face over Timothy so that I can kind of hearken it back to, uh, you know, the David Lynch version. A lot of the things people like to do is put googly eyes on it as well. Googly eyes. Yeah. I think Electric Bat uh, was showing off how their entire game lineup had been vandalized by googly eyes, which I think is pretty funny. Absolutely. Rdle says he wants a mirrored back glass. I don't know what the production cost involved in that would be, but alternative backlass is typically a mirrored back glass. I don't see that changing anytime soon. Nice. Uh, FlipFlock asks, I'm getting a bunch of questions are flying in, so I'm I'm getting through them. Uh, FlipFlop asks, is Dune's coming in with an acrylic topper, but he hasn't seen any games with it. So, that was a third party situation. They actually Hold on. Let's get Let's Let's still here. Hold on. Hot take. We got a dirty pool. Hot take coming. Hey, thanks everybody by the way for showing up. David is taking a step away to go grab something that has to do with the topper situation. If you are enjoying the podcast, uh thank you for listening. Uh, I do urge you come check out the Twitch. Come check out the Instagram. I'm going to plug myself. David's not here. Why not? Uh, yeah. Things have been growing crazy and I'm working to try to make it even better. Wow, that's cool. I didn't realize it was three dimensional. So, it's finally come in. So, this we will be shipping it out to everyone that has one. They will get this in the mail. We'll get this shipped out to them. But the toppers are finally in that come with the game. So, uh, had a couple of changes here and there, but we are very happy how it turned out. I think that looks awesome. I love the parallaxing look of it. Means if you walk, uh, if you change what angle you're looking at the game, it'll make it look like the ornithopaths moving. That's it. Uh, let's see. You want to see a giant stillgar with a giant speech bubble, leis, that's what you want your alternate backlash. Don't listen to Silver Ion. He should not be providing suggestions to you at all. Uh, all right. This is your last chance everybody and then we're going to do the outro. Someone wants to know that there's a fancy topper coming in the future too. That is correct. Yes. It is in the in the works. I'm right. I'm giving you a mental 10 seconds chat. If you can't think of anything, David's got a lot more important things to do than hang out with me on the internet. David, thank you again. I hope that I can have you back on the show in the future when Barls is doing new and exciting things. Uh, thank you for creating another pinball company in a in a world that needs pinball competition. Uh, it really, now I'm being very serious. I think that obviously there are pinball companies that have been around for a very long time and make a very particular product. It is on the responsibility of every person who loves pinball to consider owning a game from a smaller company to ensure that in innovation in pinball and the pinball hobby can continue to grow. Um, that's my plug. I'm not saying to go buy a Dune, but I am saying that if you think that you need to support pinball, you should absolutely consider every company that makes pinball machines. And with that, go buy a Dune. There you go. Or Labyrinth. We only got 60 Labyrinths left, so they're almost gone. I thought you were sold out. No, we still got a few uh a few out back. But my thing is is like I just we're a small company. We're We're having a lot of fun what we're doing. Uh we're investing everything we have into this and uh we don't do everything perfect and we take feedback good and bad and uh we try to do better. So as long as we can keep selling games and making good products that resonate, we will be here doing it. Awesome. I kind of want a labyrinth. I just don't have space. Sheen's asking how can we reach out to you. Do you mean in terms of providing feedback? Feedback is a dangerous thing because getting too much of it is it's hard to sus through and everybody has the best idea in the world which is not necessarily helpful when you're trying to design something. But if there is is there an email that people can send general comments to? There's info there is a co contact page on the Facebook. U if you do a little bit of digging on pin side and Facebook I am not hard to find. Um and I may regret that but again um again I am very open to a lot of things and I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't push the boundaries of reaching out to folks. So just do a little bit of digging. It's not like I'm hiding anywhere. And if you actually honestly if anyone's in Houston, Texas or traveling through Houston, Texas, you want to come by the factory, please let us know and we'll make sure that happens. Well, I would like to definitely do uh a trip there at some point and kind of do my thing of photography and recording behind the scenes at Barrels of Fun if that is an option. So, uh Genius wants to know, "What's your favorite part of working in Houston? How is it having a business in Houston?" So, my wife originally came from here. Um, in Houston, I can fly anywhere in the US within 3 hours directly. No connecting flights. Um, I have a non-stop flight back to Australia. So, that's very convenient for me. It is the workforce labor. The workforce here is highly skilled um and very fair. And bringing stuff in from overseas is one of the cheapest ports to bring things into. And B, I don't have to worry about snow. I can wear shorts pretty much all year round. has some of the best food around the world. Like if people think of Houston as a big Texasmex and that we do have great text mechs and barbecue, but we have so many energy and oil and gas companies here. So we have so many expats from around the world. So if you want to talk about food, you have every option that you have here. Um I'm not far from any Disney park and go to Disneyland or Disney World relatively quickly. Sweet. Plus I imagine that Texas has pretty low humidity, right? No, Houston's sticky. Houston is Man, I was trying to lead up to a joke about how the playfields won't be warped. That's a different conversation. Anyways, uh no matter where you get them, who makes them, they are their own beast. When you talk about three different substrates that can completely change due to chemical balances of what's in it or the environment it is in, it is an unpredictable product. Like again, there are much better ways to make money than making pinball, but we love what we do. True. Dune is shiny. The clear coat on it is hardy. Is there like is it the same clear coat that's on Labyrinth? Yeah. So, we have multiple sources of what we do. In fact, we uh the playfields change to the again the ingredients that goes into making it, the product that it gets cut from, and it changes all the time. So, at the end of the day, I could have the best playful man manufacturer in the world, but if they get a certain wood or a chemical that reacts adversely to the day that they had bad humidity or it was too cold and it didn't set correctly can completely change the compound of that playfield. So that's that's why we have a 12-month warranty because we can't predict what the environment that product is made in and we will stand behind it no matter what. So it really isn't due to who's doing this and that. And I won't lie that we're playing to we're playing with doing our own playfields ourselves. Um it's just one of those you heard it here. We are vertically integrating as much as we can down here and in Houston and that's mainly not because of what happened in the world in the last six months. It's just it allows us to rapid prototype more the more that we can do in house. That means if I can rapid prototype here the more craziest ideas that we have the more we can make. So the more All right, I know you want to go, but when it comes to prototyping, no, I'm honestly Carl canceled on me, so let it go. Prototyping things, you have to send it out. Like you can do 3D prints and you can play with it, but it doesn't necessarily play how you think it's going to play. So to prototype an idea can take up to anywhere from two to six weeks before you actually get to put it together and test it and see if it's even viable. Um but with 3D printing we can do that much quicker now. But the more that we can do metal in house, playfields in house, cabinets in house, printing in house, like all that type of stuff, it allows us to go from just with a CNC brake press out there, the plasma cutter we've got, we can take an idea from 4 hours into something that's potentially usable as testing. So the more we can vertically integrate what we're doing, the better it is for us to develop new and exciting stuff. Now, when I say that we potentially are playing, we're doing playfields. I will not put a playfield out into the world until I've tested it for at least 18 months because playfields is not something you take on lightly. And we may not ever do it, but I'm at least going to have a router out back that I can cut all my whitewoods and all my stuff so we can again, it's about constantly pivoting, constantly making changes the best we can, as quickly as we can. And a lot of times you can't rely on third party vendors to get them done in a reasonable time. No, I mean you have more control. If you're going to do it something right, you can do it yourself. At least you have control over that landscape. Yeah. When I screw up, I try to screw up. Same. Uh, okay. Amazing. David, I'm going to say thank you a third and final time. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to talk about this and and to entertain everybody here and answer their questions. Um, if there's anything else you'd like to plug or say other than that, we're going to go check out and raid another channel because we like to drop viewership on people that are streaming and don't have a lot of followers because it feels good to have a bunch of people dropped in your channel. Well, I appreciate it. I appreciate everyone listening. We still got a lot more exciting stuff to come for Dune. Um, we're doing the best we can with what we have and make sure you send me the information so I can get this back glass out. You heard it, J Biscy. Send me that message. Shoot it. shoot it over to me on uh either Twitch or Facebook and uh I will absolutely make sure that David gets it. And thank you for doing that. That's super cool. That's our first absolute manufacturer uh gift sendout. I don't know what you call it, but that thing. All righty. Well, this is episode five. Bye.