Episode 78 - Sopranos Pinball w/ George Gomez

Wedgehead Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 8m·analyzed·Apr 14, 2025

Buzzsprout-16946801

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

George Gomez discusses Sopranos design philosophy, theme integration, and casual player accessibility.

Summary

George Gomez, legendary pinball designer and current EVP/CCO at Stern Pinball, discusses the design of The Sopranos pinball machine (released 2005) in depth, covering its massive popularity in Portland 20 years later, his collaborative design approach with programmer Lyman Sheets, theme integration philosophy, mechanical engineering principles, and the importance of accessibility for both casual and experienced players.

Key Claims

George Gomez became EVP/Chief Creative Officer of Stern Pinball in summer 2011, taking over a studio of 9 people which has grown to 50 with 30 additional external consultants
high confidence · Gomez stated this directly when discussing his transition to full-time at Stern
The Sopranos pinball machine was designed as a contractor to Stern, alongside four other games: Playboy, Dark Knight, and Lord of the Rings
high confidence · Gomez confirmed he 'did four games as a consultant to Stern Pinball' and explicitly named these titles
Both George Gomez and Lyman Sheets were fans of The Sopranos TV show and the game design came together easily during brainstorming
high confidence · Gomez: 'Both Lionel and I were huge fans of the show' and 'everything just kind of fell out. Lots of ideas were obvious. It was an easy game to design.'
The Sopranos pinball has earned consistently well for 20 years in Portland, with 25 machines in the metro area and it earning as well as brand new releases
high confidence · Host Alan states: 'the game was released 20 years ago this year' and 'it's a game that consistently earns as well as a brand new release'
George Gomez's design philosophy prioritizes 'easy to learn, hard to master' gameplay that works for both novice and experienced players
high confidence · Gomez stated: 'the traditional concept is easy to learn, hard to master, right? So I try very hard.'

Notable Quotes

“I came from an era when prime directive in the era in which I started designing pinball machines was they had to make money. That was the thing that I grew up learning and trying to learn how to do.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Explains Gomez's foundational design philosophy rooted in commercial viability and operator earnings
“It's really important that designers are into the fiction that they're trying to build games around...They have to be passionate about what they're doing because you're going to get much better stuff.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Core design principle that guides his studio today; explains licensing and designer selection
“I want to take you and I want to put you in the world of that fiction as much as I can. And that means lots of attention to detail, the speech calls, the music, the theme setting stuff.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Articulates his theme integration philosophy that makes his games engaging across player skill levels
“An industrial designer is a cross between an artist and an engineer...An engineer works typically at machine-machine interaction. An industrial designer works with man-machine interaction.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Explains his unique background and approach to pinball design combining art and engineering
“Early in my career, I figured out that if I didn't learn more of the engineering, it was too easy for engineers to tell me that something couldn't be made.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Justifies his decision to develop mechanical engineering skills to realize ambitious design ideas
“Games are all about feedback. If it doesn't have feedback, it's a passive form of entertainment. Interactive entertainment must have feedback.”
George Gomez @ mid-episode — Core design principle underlying feedback design in pinball machines
“Discovering things...this is not something I invented. Games do this all the time. Discovery is a big part of games. That's all part of design element that I try to incorporate in a lot of my stuff.”

Entities

George GomezpersonLyman SheetspersonThe SopranosgameStern PinballcompanyDwight SullivanpersonLonnie RapppersonAlanpersonAlexperson

Signals

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business_signal: Stern Pinball's development team grew from 9 people to 50 full-time staff plus 30 external consultants under Gomez's leadership from 2011-present
high · Direct statement from Gomez: 'I had nine people in the development group...I have 50 today. I probably have another 30 consultants on the outside'
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community_signal: The Sopranos has achieved cult classic status in Portland with extraordinary longevity and consistent player preference across skill levels
high · Host describes game as 'top five game' in Portland, with players constantly requesting it, many listing it as favorite despite 20-year age
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design_philosophy: Gomez emphasizes multi-sensory feedback (audio, visual, haptic) as critical to perceived game quality; player perception of 'smooth shot' depends on comprehensive feedback layers
high · Extended discussion of how audio, visual, and mechanical feedback combine to create player experience of smooth shots
?
design_philosophy: Gomez prioritizes commercial operator viability over aesthetic perfection; all games designed for street placement with 7.5-degree default settings
high · Gomez: 'operator should be able to take my game out of the box...set it up at seven and a half degrees...and go to town'
?
design_philosophy: Gomez's industrial design training and mechanical engineering self-education directly enabled ambitious game designs that engineers initially said were impossible
high · Gomez explains early career decision to learn engineering to overcome engineer objections: 'if I didn't learn more of the engineering, it was too easy for engineers to tell me that something couldn't be made'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.204

0:00

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, host of this podcast, joined as always with my co-host Alex in his basement studio. We have a very special episode of the show this week because our guest is definitely on the Mount Rushmore of pinball, any way you want to look at it. He's done so much in his 40 plus years in the industry, including designing iconic pinball machines such as Monster Bash, Lord of the Rings, and Deadpool, to name but a few. He partnered up with Pat Lawler to design the Pinball 2000 platform, Tri-Save Williams pinball division in the late 90s. He is currently the executive vice president, chief creative officer of the largest pinball company in the world, where he's helped grow and shape the resurgence of the pinball industry with Stern Pinball. And he's responsible for their innovative insider connected platform. He has truly done so much in his career and continues to this day to deliver pinball magic to players all around the world. His career is far too vast to cover it all in this one episode. and thankfully he's been a very generous individual with this time in the past and plenty of other documentaries podcasts and articles have covered a lot of his career very well already so in this episode we are going to talk to him mainly about one of his underappreciated games in depth and pick his brain on his design philosophy and what makes his game so engaging and why they are so good at hooking in new and experienced pinball players alike so without further ado it is a great honor to welcome the legendary mr george gomez on the show. How are you doing, George? Hey, guys. Great to be on. Thanks for having me on. I love to talk about this stuff. So whenever people ask me questions about some of these games, it actually jogs my memory. It's been a while. So let's get into it. Sopranos is kind of an interesting one. It was myself, one of my frequent collaborators, Mr. Lyman Sheets. And we had a great time. uh you know line and rest in peace was we him and i did a bunch of games together all of them are pretty well loved you know i miss them dearly well the reason why i reached out to you george and why we're talking about sopranos is hopefully we can get some good stories and jog some memories but i reached out because there are currently 25 sopranos pinball machines in the portland metro area where my bar where i operate pinball machines is at the game was released 20 years ago this year So we're celebrating a 20th anniversary. And while you were designing it as, I think, an independent contractor at this time, contracting for Stern. That's correct. And so, like, it's massively popular here in Portland. And since its release, we route two of them. And it's a game that consistently earns as well as a brand new release. Players clamor for a Sopranos pinball machine to play. And it's many, many, many different players' favorite machine. Or even players that are very casual. they only play one or two games. Very often it's a Sopranos machine here in Portland. It's become like a cult classic in the Portland area. I don't know if that stretches outside everywhere, but here it's like a top five game. It's crazy to see the reception that Sopranos gets in the area. So we're going to ask you some questions about it, George. And the first one I want to ask you is, can you tell us how the Sopranos game came to you? Like it's a massively popular show. Were you a fan of the show? Did you select the theme? Both Lana and I were huge fans of the show. I took the role that I'm in as Chief Creative Officer for Stern Pinball in 2011. In summer of 2011, I think it was July, right after the 4th of July, I started full-time. I'm really proud of what we've built in that time. When I rolled into Stern Pinball, I had nine people in the development group and the company was just, you know, a year from having survived, you know, a demise, you know, the crash of 08, you know, almost took the company out. And so here we are a couple of years later coming out of the, you know, sort of rising from the ashes when Gary calls me and says, you know, come and run product development. I have a new partner and, you know, we want to grow the company, want to build the company. And so at that time, I had nine people in the studio. I have 50 today. I probably have another 30 consultants on the outside that help us build the games we build. You know, it's just been a heck of a ride. I'm proud of what we've done. At the time, I was a consultant when I was – I did four games as a consultant to Stern Pinball. Playboy was the first. I did, you know, I did Sopranos. I did The Dark Knight. I did Lord of the Rings as a consultant. And Sopranos, you know, both Lionel and I were fans of the show. We were watching it. And Gary always has, he tries to do things that are big in pop culture so that we can take advantage of the fact that people know what you're talking about when you're showing the game. And Sopranos was one of several licenses. I'm trying to remember what else he offered me at the time, but I quickly jumped on Sopranos. You know, Lyner and I set off. You know, we knew the show pretty well. It didn't take much. You know, we sat down to brainstorm ideas for the show and everything just kind of fell out. Lots of ideas were obvious. It was an easy game to design. One thing about, like, the theme in your other games that you were working on, the contract games from Stern for this time, they're all, like, much more mature adult themes. Even, like, Lord of the Rings, it's obviously, I guess, a family-friendly theme, but it's not, like, a kiddie theme. Was that an intentional move from Stern to kind of have you focusing on more adult themes at this point? Like, your games, like you said, Playboy, Sopranos, Dark Knight. It was definitely a shift. So I'm just curious if that was intentional or if like if you guys were targeting a different audience. I mean, it's like really important that designers are into the fiction that they're trying to build games around. And to this day, I use that philosophy when I manage my studio. I don't want to talk someone into doing something. They have to be passionate about what they're doing because you're going to get much better stuff. I don't think there was a lot of thought given to, you know, me as the guy who did more adult themes. I mean, at the time, the company's designers were Steve Ritchie, Pat Lawler, and myself, and John Borg was the only guy on the inside. The three consultants were, you know, Lawler, Ritchie, and myself. And so I think Gary would shop ideas, and, yeah, I think Pat used to lean towards very family-friendly themes. I have nothing against family-friendly themes. I think that we can only afford, even today, we really can only afford niche themes every once in a while. You know, like John Wick was a niche theme, right? But reality is that what we want is we want the broadest possible audience. We want anyone to go up to it, enjoy it as a pinball machine, and it should theoretically go into any location. That said, the business was a lot different when I did Sopranos, right? It was almost entirely a commercial business. That means that the games were going on the street. They weren't going in your house. The focus had to be they weren't going into our caves. Beer caves hadn't really started to happen yet. Right. They were coming. We were on the verge of, but there wasn't that many dedicated pinball locations. There would be locations that had a few pinball machines. It was a street game. It was intended to be that from the get-go. And so, you know, there's a family friendly mode in the game to take all the cursing out of the game. You know, obviously there was stuff like that. I mean, so the game, like you mentioned, has three famous pinball programmers listed on the credits as Lyman Sheets, Dwight Sullivan and Lonnie Robb. Can you describe just sort of like the role? And I want to ask you this question about Sopranos in this game, but also just about the role of programmers kind of in general in a pinball machine. and like what do they do about the rules and the game path for a game how involved are you as the lead designer and especially at this time when you're sort of a contract designer outside like how much was it sounds like it was probably you and lyman doing a lot of this like the game path of sopranos yeah lyman and i absolutely conceptualized progression through the game the concepts in the game and what we wanted to explore etc that's pretty much the way it happens on all design teams, the designer and the lead developer, the software guy that's in charge of software, those two guys are really the creative drive behind all the games. And every design team, there are specialties within that team. And so, you know, the gist of the creative in terms of the direction of the game, the overall architecture and the vision for the game comes from those two guys. I might say something like, you know, the way I work game rules is most of my game rules are very, you know, very tied to physical devices and architecture. I envision a progression, a reveal, an evolution of the feature, right? I'm not a guy that is going to, you know, create the intricacies of interaction between two rules. Like if you start this and you start that, That's the kind of stuff that typically the software engineer really has a bigger hand in, at least on my games. Now, we generalize, but the reality is that teams are different. And so even within my studio today, there are teams that handle this differently. There are teams where the designer is very much driving rules and teams where maybe he's more collaborating on this. I usually lay out a big arc. Like I told Lyman right away, we have to climb the ranks in the mob. Right. That's got to be a feature, right? You got to go up there. Yep. I said, we got to do something with Carmela's food. I mean, we just absolutely have to do that because it's funny stuff, right? All those great names for Italian dishes, right? Yeah. So I would do stuff like that. You know, I want to have an area that represents the Bada Bing. I want, you know, we got to do the fish. We got to do, you know, the Stugats. Like I would say something obvious but ridiculous, right? Like, why don't we get Stugas? It's got to be a two-ball multiball, right? Right. I mean, that's sort of what I do. And then we come away every week. These ideas get battered around and everyone goes off to do their thing. And then when you get together the following week, you know, I might show him the beginnings of a play field. And I might say, here's how I think I'm going to lay out the rank progression in the mob. and I'm thinking that the fish goes over here and it does the things that it does in the show. And he'll come back to me and say, I was thinking that we could create this rule around that, right? So it's an interaction. It's absolutely an interaction. In the case, you mentioned guys that are currently lead developers in my studio and guys that I've also done a lot of great games with, Dwight Sullivan and Lonnie Rapp, both super talented guys. I just did James Bond with Lonnie, right? And that was the last game that I worked on. And in this particular case, they were in helper modes. You know, no modern pinball machine, even going back to the days when we built that, is entirely programmed by one person. There are exceptions. Lyman used to really like to program, you know, a lot of his own games. But in this particular case, in that era, we didn't have a lot of depth in the studio in terms of software engineers. So almost everyone worked on everything. There are games like from that era where Lonnie was the lead and Lyman was the second seat or third seat guy. and the same thing can be said for Dwight right so everybody sort of collaborated if you will all hands on deck like to get the product done it just means that and the way that works is let's say Lyman you know has an idea for a you know particular multi-ball rule and he's working on the overall you know framework of the game he might hand that to Dwight and say hey Dwight I'm thinking it works like this now when Dwight gets into it Dwight is going to say you know maybe not like this, but like that. After this happens, you know, we start a timer and you make the shot, you know, we restart the multiball or whatever. There's creative collaboration in the teams from everyone, right? Everyone has ideas, contributes the mechanical engineer, the electrical engineer, the, you know, the artist. Everybody has the opportunity to collaborate if it's done right. And so, yeah, the designer and the lead software developer might lay out the grand vision, but lots of amazing people make a contribution to the grand version. Yeah, that makes sense. I think it's interesting to hear about your specific approach with Lyman. I think that's a big part of why so many of your guys' games together are so highly regarded by both beginners and experienced players alike. With you kind of focusing on those broad strokes, basing the rules off of shots, that's, I think, huge for beginner-friendly games, where it's like, the mode is this shot, and that's something that people inherently understand. And then, of course the incredibly talented lineman kind of fleshing everything out making sure it's balanced it's just uh it's kind of like the dream combination i think sopranos it's got an incredible job of like theme integration right like the boat the talking fish the dancers at the bing characters get whack you even get like the ducks and the duck call outs and the ducks on the dmd screen and you feel like you're in the world of the sopranos and it's something that you're particularly good at and with your games in general and i'll just say for the listener monster bash corvette lord of the rings nba fast break deadpool james bond you look at those games and you're like these are all great examples of theme integration and execution can you tell us about the way you look at games and how you think about theme integration so a couple things right So you mentioned that the games earn well, and you mentioned that they seem to work for everybody. When you have a game that earns well, basically what that's telling you is that it's approachable by a novice, casual player. It's also a game that a very good player can park on and spend time with. It is a traditional concept in game design, and some people can do it better than other people, but the traditional concept is easy to learn, hard to master, right? So I try very hard. I come from an era when prime directive in the era in which I started designing pinball machines or coin-operated games in was they had to make money. That was the thing that I grew up learning and trying to learn how to do. And so what that means is that you have to be able to make a game that when a novice walks up, even if he goes three up, three down in terms of drains quickly, he still has to enjoy something. He has to feel like, you know, he should feel like I want to try that again because I think I could do better as opposed to this game screwed me. Right. So it's a really fine line to walk. Like I always ship my games. I watch my games. I percentage them. I go through all of this and I ship my games with the intent that they're going on the street because I don't know which ones are and which ones aren't. Yep. And it's much easier for someone in their home to, you know, drop the game to six and a half degrees and close down the outlanes and, you know, and maybe set some things to easy in the game rules and stuff like that. And that's very doable. But an operator should be able to take my game out of the box, you know, set it up at seven and a half degrees, get it priced the way he wants it and go to town. You know, just the background that I came from and where that was the measure of a good game. The measure of a good game was not how pretty it was, and the measure of a good game was how much money did it earn. You know, I have people call me all the time and go, man, this game is so mean. Why did you set this? And I'm like, well, you know, this is just closed down. And let's talk about theme integration, right? So when we do it right, when it's done correctly, it is exactly as you said. You know, you are, I want to take you and I want to put you in the world of that fiction as much as I can. And that means lots of attention to detail, the speech calls, the music, the theme setting stuff. I want you to recognize elements from the world, right? It brings me great joy. You just read out things that I said. These are things that are recognizable components from the fiction. And I have to create features around them in order to make people easily relate to it. They'll know about the ducks. They'll know that the fish talks. They'll know all this stuff, right? So that's a goal. I try to teach it in the studio to all my design teams Some teams do it better than others Also has a lot to do with how passionate or how much a designer understands property that he working with That makes sense. That makes sense to me. To get off the Sopranos for just a second, what won me over the first time I played a Corvette was realizing it wasn't just a generic V8 in the back. It's an actual LT5 out of the ZR1. And you're like, oh, a car guy was actually involved with this. Like somebody that knew what this was did it. I mean, that's really important stuff. It really is because it adds like that authenticity and it makes the people that care about the theme happy to see it done right. Yeah. And even me who knows nothing about Corvettes, I love the drag racing Corvette mech in that game.

17:40

Immediately, I'm like, oh, it wants me to hit shots. And like, I'm actually racing this other car. Every time I play that game, I'm like, yes, like I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. It's simple. I love it. It's fun. you know like you're racing fast cars like that's fun like that's cool yeah and see that's a good example again something that i teach a lot is around here is there's a progression to engaging a pinball machine and that progression starts from across the room when you're across the room and you look at the line of pinball machines i need to see the art on the pinball machine has to be the equivalent of a movie poster it's got to convey to you something that you recognize about this game or something that is interesting to you enough to get you to walk up and look beneath the glass. When you look beneath the glass, the stuff underneath the glass, that's the curb appeal. That's got to entice you enough to say, I'm going to coin this thing and I'm going to interact with it. That's a lot different than the event of buying a pinball machine. Sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So now you're engaged with the pinball machine and you've coined up and now there's a bunch of stuff in the center of the game typically if you draw like a 30 degree pie shape emanating from the shoot again light in the center between the flippers moving up play field that's what we call the bozo zone that's where most novices flip and the reason most novices flip there is because there are novices tend to flip early yeah flipping early puts the ball in the center of the play field because you know the outside shots are off the tip of the flipper and a novice is afraid he's going to lose the ball so he's always you know he's always quick on the flip which means that the ball is going up the middle of the play field so an interactive toy everybody's got to have something in that area that you can engage with someone who knows nothing about your game is going to shoot there and something's got to happen you do it enough times and you're going to give them multi-ball or you're going to let them lock balls or whatever it is so in Sopranos you got two of those you got the Stugatz boat and then you have the safe kind of right next to it safe is pretty much in the middle you know yeah the safe is like I want to talk about that for a little bit we'll get a little bit out of order on my outline here but I want to talk about it the safe because like you said it progresses your rank through the game which I think is very intuitive for players, but you can also collect, you know, envelopes to collect, you know, move through your rank. Everyone listening in the Portland area already knows this because everyone knows this game inside and out, but I'm just talking about our listeners outside of the Portland area, but that safe is kind of a showstopper mech. And it's right in the center of the play field. I think like what you're saying. And, and I know that you wear a lot of hats. You always have. I think anyone that knows much about you knows that you do a little bit about everything. And one of the things that you do in particular is you have done and continue to do some mechanical engineering yourself. Can you tell us about the role of mechanical engineering in pinball, designing mechs, and then just sort of like how the safe came to be? Every development team has a guy we call the project engineer. He's typically a mechanical engineer by trade. You know, he might also have some guys helping him behind him. And his job is to bring the designer's vision to life in terms of, you know, mechanisms that do the thing that the designer's envisioning. He's also, of course, involved in making all of the parts for the game real and manufacturable and reproducible and cost the right amount of money and reliable and all that stuff. So he's got a big, big job. He may have guys under him that are helping him bring it all together. The really the core team is the designer, the lead developer, lead software developer, the mechanical engineer, the project artist and the sound designer. That's really, you know, and then, of course, when we introduce the LCD, the guys that do all the motion graphics, they become an integral part. And there will be a guy from that team that's working with with that group. And that group is really they're really the guys that are determining what the game is. The mechanical engineer, he's got one foot in reality because all of this stuff has got to become real. I'm an industrial designer by trade, and I've come up in mechanical engineering environments my entire career. A designer is a different animal in that an industrial designer is a cross between an artist and an engineer in that an engineer works typically at machine-machine interaction, You know, like how many gears, how many ball bearings, how strong does this have to be? An industrial designer works with man-machine interaction. You know, what does this thing feel like? What does it look like? Why do I want to interact with it? And when I do interact with it, how does it make me feel it? You know, what texture is it when I touch it? And, you know, what does it do? Industrial designers determine what your cars look like and what your phone, you know, and devices you hold and interact with and stuff. So that's my training. Early in my career, I figured out that if I didn't learn more of the engineering, it was too easy for engineers to tell me that something couldn't be made. Ah, yeah. You know, my ideas would then be stillborn, right? You know, if I had remained a pretty pictures guy, designers typically can sketch and convey ideas on paper because that is their job. Their job is to ideate and bring these ideas, new shapes, new forms, new things into life. And the problem is that sometimes it's, you know, early in my career, I ran into I was working with mechanical engineers and too often they were telling me that something couldn't be done. So my way around the problem was, okay, let me understand why you're telling me that and let me learn about it. And so I learned a lot about materials and mechanisms and process. I was a toy inventor for some time in my career and that further honed my mechanical design skills because I had to create mechanisms. And I have a love for mechanism, by the way. And that's why you're talking about the safe. And, you know, a lot of the stuff I've done, it has mechanical interaction because I think it's an obvious thing in a pinball machine that a device has a transformation or a revelation. You know, it's like a reveal. I use discovery a lot in my games, the notion of discovery. When I was a little kid, I'll tell you a story. I had a castle and I had played this castle, you know, castle like in knights and stuff. And it had a, you know, had drawbridge and moat and all this stuff. And it was really cool. And I played with this castle forever. And I and one day, I don't know what happened, but I I touched some panel in the castle and like the secret door revealed a thing in the castle that I'd owned this castle for years. I never seen this. I had no idea. And, you know, that, oh, wow, that kind of discovery moment forever put in my head that discovering things, you know, it's like element. And it's, you know, this is not something I invented. Games do this all the time. Discovery is a big part of games, right? Seeing things you haven't seen, finding new things. That's all part of design element that I try to incorporate in a lot of my stuff. Yeah, 100%. I think that's so like, that's interesting to hear you say like the, that discovery would be in like a core memory of your childhood. Cause I just have very similar memories like that. And I think that's a huge part of why your games have been so massively popular over the years. You kind of touched on something I wanted to ask, so I guess I don't really have much of a question, but I did want to say I think there's a strong correlation or a strong reasoning behind the success of your games and specifically how popular they are with new players and your past history at Marvin Glasson Associates and the fact you have an industrial design degree. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting to hear you kind of tie that all together, because I think that definitely goes underappreciated sometimes. You're like, it's not a coincidence that the guy that makes some of these beloved games used to make toys. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, it's I tell people I really couldn't be doing the job I'm doing right managing development studio here had I not been all the places I've been. Right. It's like each one of those places taught me something about what I do and whether it was toys or, you know, coin operated games, video games right out of school or Xbox PlayStation games later in my career and pinball machines at Valley Williams. So it's like all those, it's no different for anybody else, right? If you, every time you change jobs, every time you try something different, you're learning new things. And at some point in time, you begin to synthesize all that stuff that you've learned to try to make, you know, do the things you do. And so in my case, every one of those jobs taught me something, right? I've learned about presentation. I've learned about trying to create simple interactions that are meaningful. I've learned about materials and I've learned about mechanisms. I've learned about choreography from the many people that I've worked with, both in video games and in pinball machines, that games are all about feedback. If it doesn't have feedback, it's a passive form of entertainment. Interactive entertainment must have feedback. You do a thing and there's a reaction, some cause and effect condition between what you do and what the game or the machine or whatever it is feeds back to you. Back when I was in school, this was called cybernetics, right? It was like the notion of the stove is hot. You touch the stove. You feel the heat. That machine is giving you feedback. And so like haptics and a phone or whatever, you know, doing the same thing, right? And like the safe itself, like when you hit it, it moves backwards. You know what I mean? Like it moves backwards. And then when you explode it, the moment of reveal, it pops up and out, not just up, but like up and out. Yeah. So you're tying all these things I'm saying now. Now it's all hopefully making a lot of sense to you, right? Yeah. Oh, totally. For sure. Yes, that's exactly right. So because you think about this, what are the feedback elements in a pinball machine? What is it that, you know, we have our fingers on the buttons and when we make a shot, somebody say, man, that thing is smooth. That's a smooth shot. Well, how can you tell it's a smooth shot? What is it? What's giving you the feedback that it's a smooth shot? Because all you're touching are the plastic flipper buttons, the metal and wood of the cabinet. And so what makes it feel like a smooth shot? Well, some of it is audio, right? Some of it is the fact that it didn't clunk. You know, you didn't hear it. It went fast. It was visually uninterrupted. And then there were artificial feedback elements that were also being presented to you, like, you know, whatever swoosh sound we made or whatever, you know, whatever visual happened. Yeah, or like a flasher bulb goes off under a dome. That's like, yeah. Your brain ties it all together, right? your brain is like super smart humans have this incredible capacity to sense things and so that's what you're doing that's what you're feeding all that stuff to them right right and you've touched on this and this is a good time to ask you this question but it's like Sopranos has an incredible sound package one that definitely elevates this game you get a lot of quotes from the show the iconic Sopranos theme song amongst you know many other great sound effects and musical cues I see on IPDB that there's no listed sound engineer, but Pinside listed as Chris Granner, who's a legend. Can you confirm that he was the guy, or can you tell us about the sound? I'm going back in time. I worked with Chris on a couple of games in that era, which means I worked with him. I definitely worked with him on Lord of the Rings, and it's very possible he was my guy on Sopranos. Sopranos is heavily influenced by the speech call-outs and the theme, Right. The Sopranos theme. It was Chris, I think. I wanted to ask specifically if it was you guys like you and Chris or somebody at Stern or if it was HBO that made the decision to put that HBO sound in the game. I love that. I just think it's such a clever. It's like the most clever bit of like blatant marketing tie in. But it works so well. That was us, not them. And that was us basically. It's exactly the conversation when we started today about, you know, theme integration. Right. And so that is theme integration. That is like, you know, HBO show when when you sit down to watch The Sopranos, those are the things you hear and see. And so it is very much theme integration. Yeah, I just I love that so much. It feels so cinematic. So I just wanted to bring that up specifically. And it's interesting because it like it kind of breaks the fourth wall. but it's also so recognizable to someone that knows the show. So it is theme integration. Like it's, it's a good example of it's like, there's no real rules in how you can implement this stuff. And you're like, it's the world under glass, but you're not pretending that the game exists in the world. It's just transporting you to that show. Yep. We got to ask you, George, because this game, there's a lot of great call outs in this game. I want to ask, do you have a personal favorite call out for this game?

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That's a good, it's a good question. that's a really good question that you know what i don't i don't think i have a favorite but i i can tell you that i love pasta call outs yeah yeah those are good during food fight very funny story the day we came up with that lyman and i had to go find an italian restaurant for lunch it was like let's go to soprano you know there's a italian place near the pinball factory called Sorrento's and it was we were like let's go Sorrento's for lunch and so it was like we just got you know we were just like gotten done talking about all you know all this stuff but I think I think the swearing is funny right oh yeah just everybody cracks up you know everybody cracks up and so what we were doing and we were like you know yeah we'll do it you know we'll do a family friendly setting and but we got to have this stuff in there because it's like Tony going off the most quoted with us is definitely the this kid can fucking earn yeah that one it's so good part of our daily it's like anytime a new game is on the floor and doing well you're like this game can fucking earn yeah every single yeah exactly my personal favorite i love when you're in the pops and you're about to whack somebody and one of the guy goes whoa whoa whoa i got a family like i that that kills me every time i got a family you know i tell you the games they reach a point you know there's there's so much work that goes into them before before they start at the point where it really starts coming together you know the progression through the game is there the all the feedback stuff the sounds and that is a really exciting time in the development cycle of a game and games make they make leaps and bounds in terms of fun during that time because the minute that the team gets its hands on something that is performing you know the way that you know they envisioned or not you know they they make adjustments and more ideas fall out of that so like you know you get you know oh hey we we got to do this with it and and so There's this evolution of stuff that happens in that period of time when there's enough in the game that you can really start playing it and it really begins to feel like a game. That's when they make leaps and bounds. Prior to that, it's kind of like you're shooting a whitewood. I have a rule that whitewoods have to be fun to shoot when they have nothing in them. You have to start there When you got nothing in it it got to be fun And then build from that right I want to talk to you about that because I have a question on here that next The layout of Sopranos is what I think most pinball players, I don't know if you guys talk about this in the industry at all, but most pinball players will refer to as like a fan layout. I know that's like a nebulous term. I've done a lot of them. And I think that people, especially on the forums online and stuff, it's like you got to have a thing in order to sound smart about a game. Right. You know, I hear like, you know, it's just a seven shot array. It's a fan, blah, blah, blah. You know, it's like. It's very important to the Internet, guys, to have an easy way to belittle a new product. Yeah, absolutely. It drives us nuts on this show. We did a whole episode about fan layouts and just defending them. because defending them because so many of the greatest games of all time would be considered fan layouts and i look at it like all these games sopranos included i think they're just very accessible games because of the way the shots are laid out not having enough a flipper and just sort of like you know like they miss one shot maybe they hit the other shot yeah i i step away every once in a while and you know you can you know it's like in my career i've done two you know three flipper games right in corvette and and bond and you know and that's you know it doesn't mean i think one thing is better than another it's like it's all really driven by i mean look at i look at keith ellen layouts i look at jack danger layouts i i enjoy that stuff i mean and nobody can accuse nobody can say x-men is a fan layout you know it's a fantastic layout right and so it's fantastic it's new it's fresh the same thing with with ellen stuff ellen you know ellen stuff is like yeah i'm not gonna do three pop umbers at the top i'm gonna i'm gonna put them at the bottom i'll do the weird stuff with them you know people can try to insult me by telling me i got family outs all day long and i don't care like i want to clarify i was not insulting you with that question no no no i i knew you weren't i know it's a it's a derogatory thing on the internet when they talk about these things that's just another family out that's the weirdest part It's crazy. The guy sweated all these details about that you can't even begin to comprehend. Yeah, exactly. You can't even begin to comprehend the sweat that went into just the fan layout. And honestly, even my own games, like, they don't recognize the difference. And so I think that I've often said I wish that guy was in my audience at some presentation because when I overlay the games one on top of another, like you will understand how they are not architecturally the same. Oh, yeah. And so it's kind of like that is such a generalization that all the games, all his games are the same kind of thing that I think like I always have all that stuff loaded into my laptop. Don't ever ask me that question in a presentation because I'm going to show you how wrong you are. That's awesome. I love that. It's funny because the same guys that are complaining that all these games are the same are usually the same players that will complain if you remove a single post from a game. And you're like, well, if one post can make that big of a difference on a game, imagine what like a million little tweaks can do, even if things do. It's such a lame complaint. That's why it's one that we've, it bugs both of us. It bugs both of us a lot. And we're not even game designers, dude. We don't have to hear that. We love so many games that are fans. I know, because they're fun. And the thing is, is like the way the shots lay out, they're fun. I mean, I think this is sort of like the next section of this interview, George, is I want to talk. I want to give you my when I play a George Gomez game, how it feels to me. And then you tell me how on base or off base I am with some of these observations. Yeah, they're intentional design things that you've carried through. Definitely intentional. But I don't know if he thinks it's a fingerprint of his. So one of the ones I notice as an operator is your in lanes and out lanes are like parallel or close to it. even to the top of the slings and i'm assuming that's to make side drains a little bit less likely or at least a little more nudge and skill savable what what would you say about that yeah it's control it's about trying to give you skilled control so if you have skill you can control that you don't have the skill um you know you get what you get but but if you can work it look i mean my bottom is the classic people call the italian bottom the the reality is that most of the time and i i've said this to a lot of my designers there are so much stuff to work on and focus on and polish up playfield that the last thing i want to do is spend time with something that at the bottom of the playfield that i know works and so i have taken not to say that i haven't tweaked it over the years. I have, but a lot of my focus is always on the stuff up play field. And so I have kind of taken my basic, you know, my basic bottom and it has evolved over the years and every once in a while, a lot of times the changes are subtle and like I'm a fan of when you don't make the shot, the ball should still do something interesting. So when you make the shot, the ball should go somewhere. My best execution of this in my mind is Lord of the Rings. So in Lord of the Rings, when you're aiming for something and you don't make that shot, the ball is going to do something interesting. People don't even know that's why they like that play field.

42:34

So how do you get around that? Well, I'll tell you what. If I have one of those short, plunge things that whips the ball around and puts it in the in lane and it's in the flipper, like two seconds after I flip, guess what? I'm going to fast flip, you know? Yeah. If I'm not, just like if you became a great baseball player or a good tennis player, you adjust it to the velocity of the ball in that environment, right? On the court and the size of the court, all of that stuff. Those are the things that your mind's eye has got to come in. And pinball is no different, right? The way a ball comes off a drop target is different than the way the ball comes off a stand-up target. It's different than a slingshot or some active device like a pop bumper or a dent device like a black rubber post. Those are all the things that your mind's eye has to learn to kind of come to grips with so that when you get the ball down on the flipper, you're not so freaked out and you know that, okay, I have this much time to do it, or this is more or less where the ball is going to go when it hits the flipper or slingshot or comes down the lane, whatever. So that's what that's all about. It's not about anything else. And by the way, I've just done what millions of pinball games before me did, right? I just kind of put it all together. This is why that's important. It comes from another time. It comes from a time when, you know, that was what they had to do. I'm just interested as an operator because I still care about the player experience on location. I'm a location player first, became an operator, run my own spot. We're pinball only, right? Like those places that you said, you know, like that didn't used to exist in the market that you were designing for. We are now a pinball only establishment. But it's great. Yeah. Love you. Well, it's awesome. We love your games. So I think about this all the time where I'm like, what is causing? Like, why is it always when I go, what's the game that got you into pinball? Why is it four out of five times a George Gomez game? Yeah. What is it about the George Gomez game that so many people will tell me it's Deadpool or it's Monster Bash or it's Lord of the Rings or it's Sopranos? It goes across generations. It's like 20 whatever. Well, now 30 years of Gomez games being the gateway drug into pinball. So it's very interesting to kind of like see the puzzle pieces and be like, oh, no, this is like a thought out thing. Yeah. So that's why we're trying to pick your brain so much is because it's like all these like little things. I want to get sort of a little nuanced explanations from you while I have your time, because it fascinates me. Two more things here is I heard you mention an old documentary, but I'm bringing it up because, you know, I can't even remember the name of the documentary anymore. And I'm sure, you know, you probably don't even remember. But for the listener, I heard you mention one time that there's like a standard, you know, there's like a standard flipper size and there's kind of like a standard flipper gap, but that you have a slightly just a slightly smaller flipper gap. Is that still true? Was that ever true? They're all very similar. I did do. Yeah, I think what you're referring to is many years ago. I think when I was working on Pinball 2000, I was very focused on trying to analyze the notion of a novice interacting with a game. And so a lot of things I'm telling you now are things that I began thinking about back then. I did a study. I took everybody's flippers and overlaid them. A lot of designers, lots of different designers. I had like eight designers over there, and I grabbed all their stuff. I even went back in time. I grabbed some stuff out of the archives from great designers, and I just compared them. I made some choices, and I tried them out, and they worked for me. And, you know, it's not a radical difference. There were radical differences. You know, there were some, you know, like some really crazy ones. But for the most part, all of them are. And, of course, I've influenced the ones here at Stern. And so, you know, they're all very close. And now I think especially we share a lot of this kind of stuff, so it's not uncommon for one of the designers to have grabbed my – may have grabbed some of my flipper space thing, and it all works together. The other thing is you'll see a lot of – recently you've seen a lot of center posts between the flippers, and those are really designed when architecture of play field has some shots that might be screw you shots, and there's not too much that the designer can do. So they'll put those in to give the player a chance. A skill-based opportunity to influence the ball back onto the play field instead of draining. That's right. So here's another one I want to talk to you about. I think this one will be super obvious to any listener out there, but it's your ramps. I think you have very distinctive ramps. And the ones I really want to talk about in particular are I think you really were the first designer to do ramps with super tight turns. And they feel like a signature of yours. And I call them like turnaround ramps. Your left ramp on Monster Bash. Both ramps on Deadpool. Both ramps on Lord of the Rings. the right ramp on Corvette, fast break, all of these things. Can you tell us about your design philosophy for ramps and why you get those hairpins? You have to think of ramps as a toy in and of itself, meaning that a ramp, if all you do is run the ball back along the side of the playfield without any kind of interesting motion, then I think you're wasting an opportunity. And not that I haven't done that a couple of times, But what I've learned is that, for me, those tight turns are just simply about optimizing the allocated space, if you will. I want to do other things with the ramp down playfield. You mentioned the Monster Bash ramp. The Monster Bash ramp is interesting because the Bride ramp, because I start that ramp right on the floor of the playfield. The wire forms go right to the floor of the playfield. And that ramp was supposed to be like a super speed ramp. It was all about velocity. It was all about making you feel good. You noticed I had to cover most of the wire-formed tubes because I had the ball coming off of it. It was so fast. The Deadpool running up on the left side can be brutally fast. You notice that that's got a third wall, a third wire, if you will, guarding it. I've inspired my guys with the conversation about ramps need to be a toy. You see Owen doing some crazy ramps. You see Jack doing some crazy ramps. And those guys took it to heart. You know, it's kind of like, you got to do a ramp anyway. So why not make it something really interesting? Right. So it's a signature of games. It's a big signature of how a pinball machine feels different to different people. What makes yours really interesting to me is you do really tight turns horizontally. Like you like, like the left ramp, even on Lord of the Rings, you do that again. It's sort of similar to the Monster Bash. That's so interesting. And then Keith likes to do a lot of the vertical 180 kind of flip over ramps, you know, and in very tight spaces. I've got that little that vertical horseshoe and Sopranos right by the gots. Right. Yeah. Like it feels so rich. Yeah. The Meadowlands. Yeah. And so that thing, you know, that was absolutely tight for space. How do I do a ramp? I've got no space whatsoever. Right. I actually did it in a very interesting way on plastics in one of the home editions, one of the very early home editions I worked on, The Avengers. I believe I used the same thing. Nobody's ever seen that game. But I also think there was a couple of my ramps that other people have been influenced by, right? Like my Lord of the Rings, that tiny little wire form hood coming out of the – it's a Valk, but it's just a tiny little wire form. And you're going to see that again very soon with something that we got coming up here. And that was influenced. Literally, the designer came to me and said, I was looking at your Lord of the Rings ramp. And so I've done it a couple of times. I try to be elegant with them, and I try to make them interesting, right? The bond ramps the way that they come together and then they split apart The bond ramp is super interesting Oh it so good The big sweeping orbit shot through the left that an orbit that kind of turns into a ramp that super interesting and then the the right ramps that are close in and they have two separate entrances one from the upper flipper and one from the lower parallel wire forms are very cool yeah that's why we wanted to talk to you about ramp design because it's like we got to get the god of ramp design to talk to us look at some of the stuff that elwin's done and and he's done some really super interesting ramps you know there's plenty of boring ramps in the world too right so it's like but i try to make them interesting i try really hard to to make it something you know i i also i worry a lot about just the general feel and look of the architecture of my play fields i like open areas i like to see things and I don't like it like the layer cake thing where stuff is buried and yeah you got some pop bumpers under there but if I can't see them I don't I don't really care so I spent a lot of time with that stuff right that's why you see to me contrast is interesting so if you have an area of the play field that is super busy then you need an area of the play field that's more quiet yeah that visual architectural contrast is like really interesting to me and i you know look at bond and you you'll see almost seem to have nothing going on and then there are areas that are more intricate more interesting and visual interest is important when you just like stack a lot of shit on top of each other to the point where yes you're getting the ball all the places you need to get it and you're doing all the things you need to do but honestly it doesn't look very interesting and i don't even know what the hell i'm looking at that was a hallmark of a lot of games in the 90s you know where george i was i will say like when i shop some of those 90s games i am i am pissed as an operator a little bit pissed well i think that they're super fun though i love those games but yeah sometimes you're like the serviceability is just like really difficult Yeah, that serviceability is significant also, right? I've said this before in interviews and people, I think my engineers understand, but I don't think anyone else outside the building understands. I work the details. I mean, I fuss with how things fit. I fuss with, you know, how are you going to take it apart? What are you asking the guy to do to service it? I'm hardly perfect. I mean, there's, you know, I and but those were hard lessons that I, you know, that I learned lessons. I learned the hard way Corvette, you know, my first pinball design is the most serviceable machine in the world there. And there are some things there that I would have done a lot differently, but I didn't know better. And so, you know, kind of live and learn. Right. You're finding your voice. That game is super fun and very unique. Like, I think like the people that criticize you, I think they should, you know, they should play Corvette and be like, have you played another game that plays like this? Because I haven't. Like, I don't even know what to compare that game to. Gary's father, Sam Stern. I never knew Sam, but Gary tells me that Sam used to say every game finds a home. And that means that not everything is for everybody. And I tell people all the time, what you should do is you should buy and play. and get to know the games that speak to you, the games that, and not necessarily just because it's popular doesn't necessarily mean it's going to speak to you. It just means that it speaks to a large majority of people. It's no different than a movie or a book or a band, right? Yeah. And so it's like you can find scenarios, and pinball is no different, right? It's we're creating a piece of entertainment within the medium, right, the medium of pinball. And the medium of pinball is, you know, it's a ball that's played, you know, with two flippers and a ball, it's on an inclined play field. And the first rule of pinball is keep the ball in play, right? If you don't keep the ball in play, you get to do that three times, then you're out, you know, X-line if you're out, right? So that's the first rule of pinball. And now we build on top of that. Yeah, I think pinball is an art, right? And so all forms of art, there are different sizes of audiences for different pieces of art. And it doesn't mean that the people, if the audience is smaller, it doesn't mean that they're not interacting more passionately with that piece of art it just means that there's less of those people that get it or whatever but it's like my personal taste george for my favorite pinball machines they're not the common games i have weird tastes i will say i got to talk to elliot at the show about john wick i love john wick i love i absolutely love john wick i love it i don't understand how people don't like it you know like it's so weird to me and you're gonna get you know what's interesting about that game is we're working on a bunch of stuff for it people don't even know how cool some of this stuff is and i think some people are going to be like having to eat their words i just think it's such a great flow game like it feels so good but but it's different it's different for everybody like people you know some people will come to me and go that game is so hard And other people come up to me and say, that game shoots great. And so you go, all right. So different people, different experience, different games they play. You know, there is a thing, right? If you play a certain kind of game and you get dialed into that kind of game, when somebody serves you something that's radically different than that, it will not feel right to you. It's going to take some adjustment. Right, of course. Tournament players, like, you know, I mean, look at tournament players will talk to you all the time about how, oh, my God, I hate playing that game. You know, why? Because that game is, for whatever reason, different. You know, you get that even here, right? Like, I'll walk. I have a Deadpool in my office, probably the game I play the most in the building. And I'll come off the Deadpool and I'll walk over to somebody else's game and I'll feel like, oh, my God, I can't shoot this thing. You know, my brain is dialed into the Deadpool. And so it's kind of like it's going to take me a couple of games to kind of dial my shots in on a Metallica, as ridiculous as that sounds. Right. You go, but you know what? If I play Metallica every day for a week and then come back and play my Deadpool, I got to dial into my Deadpool. Yeah, totally.