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Pinball Roundtable with George Gomez - Episode 80

JBS Show·podcast_episode·2h 51m·analyzed·Dec 19, 2025
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

George Gomez discusses collaborative design, market evolution, and technology vision for Stern Pinball.

Summary

George Gomez, Stern Pinball's Chief Creative Officer, discusses his collaborative design approach on an unannounced game with Jack Danger, contrasting it with his previous practice of scrapping inherited designs. He reflects on design philosophy (favoring simplicity over excess content), the evolution of pinball from commercial to home markets, and his vision for technology integration like Insider Connected, while emphasizing the importance of iteration and community engagement.

Key Claims

  • George completely scrapped the original Deadpool design after the designer's legal troubles and restarted from scratch six months in

    high confidence · George explicitly states: 'I balled up the design. I threw it out. I started over. Yes, this happened.'

  • George is collaborating with Jack Danger on the current unrevealed game rather than restarting, keeping Jack's design intent intact

    high confidence · George: 'I didn't – I rearranged some of his stuff, but I didn't take anything away... I worked really hard to keep his design intent.'

  • Jack Danger's game was approximately two whitewoods deep when George joined the project

    high confidence · George states: 'maybe Whitewood 2 or something' when discussing the game's progress stage

  • George designed the Star Wars pinball topper due to team resource constraints with John Borg

    high confidence · George: 'The team was jammed up. John was up to his eyeballs in work and I'll take the topper... I'm going to leverage some stuff we have.'

  • George's design philosophy prioritizes simplicity: 'give me five great things, not 18 mediocre ones'

    high confidence · Direct quote from George discussing his core design principle

  • 70% of Stern's pinball machines now go to home collectors, a significant market shift from the commercial-only era

    high confidence · George: 'we live in a world where 70% of the pinball machines that certain pinball makes go into the home'

  • George was first to reintroduce center posts on Stern machines after they were considered a design crutch at Williams

    high confidence · George: 'I was the first guy in a long time to put a center post on a stern pinball machine... when I came up at Williams that was considered a crutch'

  • Tanya Kleiss is the lead developer on the Jack Danger collaboration game, with Josh Henderson and Andrew Wilkening providing support

    high confidence · George: 'lead developer on the project, which is Tanya Kleiss... Josh Henderson and Andrew Wilkening... they've made a huge contribution'

Notable Quotes

  • “I balled up the design. I threw it out. I started over. Yes, this happened. Let's move on.”

    George Gomez @ Early segment — Direct statement about his decision to restart Deadpool from scratch after designer's legal troubles; sets tone for transparency about difficult decisions

  • “Give me five great things, not 18 mediocre ones.”

    George Gomez @ Design philosophy section — Core statement of George's design philosophy emphasizing simplicity and iteration over feature bloat

  • “The only way you can ever get the fun is to iterate. There's no one, myself included, no one can play it in your head. You try to predict the fun. The reality is that when you build this thing and it all starts coming together, that's when you really start understanding, is it fun?”

    George Gomez @ Design process discussion — Explains the iterative nature of pinball design and why physical playtesting is irreplaceable

  • “I'm a jack of all trades in terms of getting a lot of stuff done. I step in when I need to... No job is too small for me. No job is beneath me. I'll do whatever it takes to get it done.”

    George Gomez @ Game design discussion — Clarifies George's hands-on leadership style and willingness to handle tasks at any level

  • “Everybody says they want new, but not really... Designing a pinball machine is like designing a Jeep. If when you're done, it doesn't look like a Jeep, the Jeep guys will absolutely set you on fire.”

    George Gomez @ Technology discussion — Explains the tension between innovation and community expectations for form factor

  • “We live in a world where 70% of the pinball machines that certain pinball makes go into the home. So that's a little different.”

    George Gomez @ Design philosophy section — Key insight into how market composition (home vs. commercial) has shifted design priorities like center post acceptance

  • “I'm the subject matter expert in the building that can either kill or advance your design, right? Because, you know, and even me, you know, even I, I use the talent around me to help me to clarity.”

Entities

George GomezpersonJack DangerpersonTanya KleisspersonJosh HendersonpersonAndrew WilkeningpersonCale HernandezpersonRetro RalphpersonJamie Burchillperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: George is recruiting for Insider Connected development team but finds qualified developers hard to find. Indicates resource constraints on platform expansion despite high demand.

    high · George: 'I wish we had more developers... they are hard to find... there's just a firestorm of ideas relative to what to do with the platform.'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern leadership (George and Jack) actively engage with designer community through floor walks at Pinball Expo, playtesting homebrew games, and behind-the-scenes content sharing on social media.

    high · George: 'There's a night where I walk the floor with all my designers... People in the homebrew love it.' Mentions Jack's Expo content garnering 200,000 views. Discusses posting design drawings and photos on Instagram.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: George acknowledges inherent tension between community desire for innovation and preference for evolutionary form factor changes. Community resistance to radical design changes limits revolutionary potential.

    medium · George references Chris Turner's Ninja Eclipse receiving negative feedback for 'virtual pinball cabinet' appearance, forcing design concessions. George's own cabinet concepts rejected for being too futuristic.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: George Gomez is deliberately moving toward simplicity and iterative design over content bloat, contrasting with some Stern designers (particularly Dwight) who favor deep rule complexity.

    high · George: 'I preach great simplicity... give me five great things, not 18 mediocre ones.' Also references needing to 'reign Dwight in' on Dungeons & Dragons complexity.

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.516

0:00
This week on the program, co-owner of the Electric Fat Arcade in Tempe, Arizona, Cale Hernandez. Home pinball collector and YouTube sensation, Retro Ralph. Location player and Facebook Reels extraordinaire, Jamie Burchill. And joining us this week for a very special interview, Stern Pinball's Chief Creative Officer and Toymaker legend, George Gomez. This week on the JBS Roundtable.
0:30
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Pinball Roundtable. Today's special guest, right, but let's introduce Retro Ralph and Cale Hernandez. I am Jamie Burchill, and we have with us Executive Vice President and Creative Director of Stern Pinball, George Gomez. Thank you, George, so much for joining the podcast. We really appreciate it. Hey, guys, thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. We really appreciate it. And we want to give a thank you to Kerry Hardy. Kerry interviewed you last week. It was a really great interview, and we made sure that we're not going to double those questions at all. No one's wearing any anti-stern shirts, so we're in good shape.
1:16
All good. And I think – I didn't even notice this. Was there an anti-stern shirt? Well, you know, Carrie's got some interesting ones, and so I didn't think of it as an anti-stern shirt. He said it. Okay. I think it's stern with devil horns, so I'd call that kind of anti. I don't know.
1:39
I thought it looked cool. Yeah, it was cool. And, you know, you wouldn't expect anything less from me. I'm drinking out of a stern glass, so there you go. Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah, you know, I think Terry's shirt had horns on the pinball and the Stern logo or something, I think.

George Gomez @ Seth input discussion — Clarifies George's leadership role while emphasizing collaborative decision-making approach

  • “It's a Trojan horse. I get it in your house, you realize how cool this thing is, you got to have another one.”

    George Gomez @ Costco games discussion — Explains market strategy for entry-level home games as gateway to premium machines

    • Steve Ritchie
    person
    Dwight Sullivanperson
    John Borgperson
    Dennis Nordmanperson
    Keith Elwinperson
    Sethperson
    Garyperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Electric Bat Arcadeorganization
    Insider Connectedproduct
    Deadpoolgame
    James Bondgame

    design_philosophy: George emphasizes that pinball design success depends on physical iteration with full game integration (lights, sounds, choreography, video) rather than paper/whiteboard design. Play-testing is irreplaceable.

    high · George: 'The only way you can ever get the fun is to iterate... when you build this thing and it all starts coming together, that's when you really start understanding, is it fun?'

  • ?

    historical_signal: George provides detailed historical perspective on how pinball market shift from commercial to home has changed design requirements and acceptable practices (center posts, play time, quality standards).

    high · Extended discussion contrasting 1990s operator-focused design (fast play, durability for truck rotation) with modern home-focused design (longer play, cosmetic quality, player engagement).

  • ?

    licensing_signal: James Bond licensing was notably difficult and complex, contributing to George's decision to restart the design from scratch rather than inherit Steve Ritchie's work.

    medium · George: 'on top of that, that licensure was super difficult... I'm going to have to design, I'm going to have to defend work I didn't do.'

  • $

    market_signal: 70% of Stern pinball machines now go to home collectors, fundamentally shifting design priorities from commercial operator throughput to home player experience and aesthetics.

    high · George: 'we live in a world where 70% of the pinball machines that certain pinball makes go into the home.' This explains acceptance of center posts, longer play times, and cosmetic quality emphasis.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Tanya Kleiss is identified as lead programmer on the Jack Danger collaboration game, with support from junior developers Josh Henderson and Andrew Wilkening. George is actively mentoring these younger team members.

    high · George: 'lead developer on the project, which is Tanya Kleiss... Josh Henderson and Andrew Wilkening... they're both fairly new to the company, but they're hardcore pinball guys, and they're so into the theme.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Jack Danger is transitioning to a deeper collaborative role with George Gomez on an unannounced game, rather than solo design. This represents a shift in how Stern handles game design internally.

    high · George describes Jack as 'actively a part of the company' with 'special set of talents' beyond creativity, including community relationships. Both designers will sign the limited editions, indicating formal co-credit.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern is continuing to expand Insider Connected with new features including Beat My Score community challenges, physical badges, weekly studio live streams, and player stats tracking.

    high · George: 'Every day we're adding stuff to that... I wish we had more developers... You guys come at me with stuff all the time.' References to Electric Bat implementing Beat My Score and community response.

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern's Costco entry-level home games function as 'Trojan horse' gateway products designed to introduce new players who then upgrade to premium machines.

    high · George: 'It's a Trojan horse. I get it in your house, you realize how cool this thing is, you got to have another one. We've seen this numerous times... then they upgrade.'

    • 2:00
    Well, I hope he sells a lot of them on silverballswag.com or wherever he sells them. I might have to get one. Yeah, you might. You should.
    2:09
    Kale, why don't you start us off, sir? All right, let's get right into it. This is going to be fun. Thank you so much for joining us, George. This is an absolute pleasure.
    2:21
    I'm 50 years young, and I've been playing games that have your fingerprints on it since I was a child. So this is really a special thing here. But let's get right into it. I want to talk about the game you're designing right now. And I know you can't say much about it. The aspect I want to get into is that in the past, when you've taken over a game from a designer, you usually scrap the design and start over. From what you're saying and what Jack's saying, you didn't do that this time. That's right. Why? So this is a slightly different scenario, right? I think everybody understands the drama associated with the original Deadpool design where, you know, the designer got in trouble, legal trouble. We had to, you know, we had to cut, the company had to cut ties with him.
    3:24
    You know, the facts behind the story were, you know, dramatic and difficult. and the team was demoralized and, you know, we needed to, like, I needed to, I needed an absolute fresh start, right? And so, you know, I asked the company, I've said this many times, I think people have heard this, I asked the company, we were X number of months into it, quite a bit actually, I think it was six months into it or something, and I said, you know, I don't want the story, I don't want the conversation, even though I'm going to have to address it when I do the podcast circuit to promote the game. So, and everyone's going to ask me about it. And I don't, I just, I want to clean, you know, I want to go right to it and say, I balled up the design. I threw it out. I started over. Yes, this happened. Let's move on. Right. And that's exactly what happened. I'm very happy we did it. That's exactly, precisely what happened. And in the case of James Bond, I had a different situation.
    4:37
    You know, my friend Steve Ritchie said, hey, I don't want to, you know, I want to go pursue, you know, a different opportunity.
    4:47
    You know, he was very clear with me. He said, you know, I want to retire someday. I want to, you know, I want to do, I want more freedom to do different things. And, you know, hey, go do it. And he was months into the bond design. And I said, I just don't, you know, I didn't feel good about, you know, finishing what he'd started. And on top of that, that licensure was super difficult. So I thought to myself, I'm going to have to design, I'm going to have to defend work I didn't do. And that's difficult in and of itself. So, again, I balled it up and started over. I'm very happy I did. I think the community is happy I did, you know.
    5:31
    So, yeah, that was the scenario. This is very different. Jack is actively a part of the company. Jack has a very special set of talents beyond, you know, beyond being a creative guy.
    5:48
    You know, he had a relationship with the community. that preexisted the company that, you know, and we think that the company needs a presence of that sort to relate to the community. And so, you know, we said, hey, you know, is this really are we really leveraging, you know, his talents the best way? And on top of that, you know, do we have anybody that can even come close to doing that work? And we don't. So he was the natural choice. And he was, you know, very involved, and he started the project. He was the designer of record on the project, and he laid out the play field, conceptualized the toys, was working very closely with the lead developer on the project, which is Tanya Kleiss. You guys know Tanya and I collaborate on Deadpool, and Jack and Tanya collaborate on Foo. So both of us had a relationship with Tanya and a good working relationship. Tanya's backed up by some super talented young guys that are both fairly new to the company, but they're hardcore pinball guys, and they're so into the theme we're working on, and they've made a huge contribution, you know, Josh Henderson and Andrew Wilkening. And so that's the team. And and and honestly, Jack had a lot of it done and meaning he had a whitewood. He had you know, he was flipping whitewood. One side of the game was kind of unresolved, meaning that he had a lot of things that, you know, the intent was there, but they weren't quite working. So my, you know, I jumped in to kind of take it the rest of the way and bring it home, right? Again, big license, you know, licensor with a lot of input, a lot of opinions on how the property is handled. And so I have a lot of experience with that, more so than Jack in this case. And so it's a combination of, you know, I did a lot to polish the kinetics, get the shots just right, make everything kind of feel right, and kind of lead the team the rest of the way. And that's really the thing. And, you know, we're both going to sign the game when the limited editions come out. They have both of our signatures. It's collaborations with designers. They're not as rare as you guys would think or you guys have heard. I'll tell you a story. I don't know if you know, back in the day when the first Elvira was happening, the Bally guys had just been brought inside to Williams, you know, during the acquisition in the late 80s when Williams Electronics acquired Bally and Midway. and the Elvira product was in the works and Dennis, you know, like hurt his leg in a, you know, in a motorcycle accident, you know, and, you know, both him and Steve rode dirt bikes and Dennis hurt himself and he was in the hospital, couldn't finish the game and Steve stepped in. And so Steve took that original Elvira and, you know, fixed some things, did some things that needed to be done. So it's not unheard of. Along the same lines, there's a game called Truck Stop, which I don't know if you know, a Dan Langlois game. And Jim Patlow worked on that game. And I can't think of the other designer now. There was another Williams designer that worked on it. But still, I mean, it's not unheard of, you know, at all. And honestly, you know, I have a lot of stuff on my plate, but I'm a jack of all trades in terms of getting a lot of stuff done. I step in when I need to. You guys know that I talked to Kerry about the cabinet project was my project, you know. You guys just saw the Star Wars topper today, right? I did that. So, you know, the team was jammed up. John was up to his eyeballs in work and I'll take the topper, you know. And so I said, you know, hey, I'm going to leverage some stuff we have. I'm going to create some new stuff and, you know, we'll work it out. And so, you know, I'm all about moving the ball, right? So I will do whatever it takes. No job is too small for me. No job is beneath me. I'll do whatever it takes to get it done. So that's a good follow-up. Like what yard line was the game at, right? You're talking about Jack's game? Yes. Like a couple of Whitewoods in, I think, you know, maybe Whitewood 2 or something. I think when him and I go on, you know, when we do this again after the game is announced so we can actually talk more intelligently about it. I hope to, you know, be able to show photos of those early Whitewoods and stuff. I mean, I didn't – I rearranged some of his stuff, but I didn't take anything away.
    11:22
    And I didn't – you know, it's like I kept – I worked really hard to keep his design intent. I just – look, I mean, Jack's done three games or something. I've done 20. I know my way around some ball guys and ramps and stuff. I can make, you know, I can make these things work pretty well. So.
    11:47
    George, since we're talking about game design and everything, is there something, I kind of find it fascinating because you obviously oversee the whole studio. So is there some, like, design rule that you personally believe in that's, like, a big thing for you that, like, some of the designers at Stern, like, your designers at Team disagree with? Like, is there something you are like, oh, my gosh, this is something I love to do, but Team disagrees with it?
    12:13
    I don't know that there's disagreement. I think that I preach, you know, I preach great simplicity, right? So give me five great things, not 18 mediocre ones. So I – and so, you know, sometimes it's challenging, right, because there are guys that want to put a tremendous amount of content and depth into the games. And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, our games are all over the map in terms of depth and content, meaning that I think that different designers, different developers deal with the problem slightly differently, right? Like, look at the depth in Dungeons & Dragons, right? I mean, here's a game that – and we had to, you know, we had to reign Dwight in because, you know, he was so – His flow chart would be pretty big, wouldn't it? Oh, man, you know, and I think that, you know, and that hits a certain spot in the community, in the world, in the fan base, et cetera. But, you know, look at a game like Deadpool, right? It's like, you know, I had a very short period of time. I didn't have a, you know, there is no giant toy. There is no Batman turntable. There is no Batman crane. There's no, none of that. And so I don't, I'm not a believer that more is necessarily better. I think that doing with what you have is the magic, right? Right. And I think the other thing that happens is that when you have a manageable amount of content, you have more opportunity to iterate. And the only way you can ever get the fun is to iterate. There's no one, myself included, no one can, you know, you play it in your head. You try to predict the fun. The reality is that when you build this thing and it all starts coming together, the light, sounds, choreography, video content, that's when you really start understanding, you know, is it fun and can it be fun? You know, how do I make it more fun, right? And look at any of the games and, you know, the speech call-outs, the timing, the choreography on the speech call-outs, Deadpool making fun of you, right? James Bond saying funny, you know, James Bond lines and all that stuff is like, that's when you're starting to get to, okay, is it fun? Yeah. Well, we're definitely going to hold on to the idea of code and rules and things like that, because we're going to get back to that in a minute. But I'm just so curious, because you've been in this for a really long time, for a large portion of your career. So is there something, and this is going to be a little forward looking, though, is there something technology wise, that you want to see integrated into pinball that you've thought about that just doesn't exist today and you've never seen anybody do it, anybody talk about it?
    15:29
    That's a good question. I think that, you know, I've had I've dabbled in a lot of things, right? I've dabbled in, I was very early in with the concept of a version of AR, right with pinball 2000 yeah right i was um i think that uh you know insider connected was born of my experience trying to put you know trying at the at the birth of xbox live and playstation network i happen to be leading a video game design team for xbox and playstation i had to put those games online and that experience really kind of informed what i did with insider connected many years later, of course, because I said, when I have to connect the pinball machines, I kind of want to do it in a way that makes sense to pinball. I don't necessarily just want to kind of clone Xbox Live because many of the things on Xbox Live don't work in pinball, but some things do, right? Like I thought, oh, I can make achievements way cooler than them. And I can do quests and I can do, you know, I want player stats. And every day we're adding stuff to that. You know, I wish we had more developers that we could focus on it because, you know, there's just a firestorm of ideas relative to what to do with the platform. And, you know, you guys, by the way, you guys come at me with stuff all the time, right? I get suggestions, you know, do this, do that. I wish you had more people. I'm a recruiter. Maybe I can help find you some, but they are hard to find. And, you know, we love Insider Connect. It's fantastic what you guys have done there. Yeah, I mean, I love, you know, every time I see Electric Bat talking about it, you know, you guys really, you guys understand. You guys get it. You guys totally get it. It was like, I'm like, man, look at this. I couldn't write this copy.
    17:32
    You're welcome. When you guys were doing, well, you're still doing it. When you started the Beat My Score thing, because I go to Electric Bat. I try to go every Tuesday. That's league night. and like five people came up to me and they go, I got your badge. Like they were so excited. They were like, I worked at Kong and I got your badge. My score wasn't amazing, but it was like, you know, it wasn't super easy to get. And that's cool, right? Because it started us talking about, even though he showed we got the badge, now all of a sudden I didn't even know some of the people that came up to me. So now I'm forming these new relationships based on a badge that someone got for playing a game, which was pretty cool. So George, is there not one thing you could think of? Like that one like technology thing that you think of? You know, it's hard to say because I, you know, I really, I think about, I guess I think about the business all the time. And I think about just like real future looking stuff. Like, you know, I mentioned this when I, when Kerry talked to me about the cabinet.
    18:30
    I have someday, and I'm never sure if I should share it because like someday we might do some of it or whatever. But I had some really futuristic stuff in the cabinet design. And when I did my own critique, I was like, they're never going to accept this. They're just never – they're going to beat the crap out of me for this. So it's kind of like you guys – everybody says they want new, but not really.
    19:00
    So everybody kind of wants – you know, so it's like the form factor of a pinball machine, like, could be so different. But, yeah, everybody says, you know, it's like designing a Jeep. If when you're done, it doesn't look like a Jeep, the Jeep guys will absolutely set you on fire. So I think pinball is a little bit of that. And so you have to do evolutionary stuff. You can't do revolutionary stuff to some extent. I mean, there's revolutionary stuff like in a space where nothing existed, like Insider Connected, right? There was, you know, people had connected pinball machines and stuff, but they weren't doing anything with it, right? Nothing of note. And so that was an opportunity where I could, you know, oh, here's a blank sheet of paper. I can do anything I want because the stuff that people are doing is just not that interesting.
    19:54
    But in the form factor of a pinball machine, man, I'll tell you what, I would love to show you some of those cabinet sketches because I think they're cool. I just think, you know, I'm an industrial designer by trade. I look at how products are designed in the world. And so when I look at a pinball machine, I think my product could look like the products that are made in 2025 in the rest of the world. But, you know, my community is not going to – they're not exactly there. So I have to kind of take baby steps and evolve what they accept. revolutionize what they know. Well, I think some of that awareness is good because I'm going to share a quick, super quick story with you. I'm at Pinball Expo and I go over to Chris Turner who brought Ninja Eclipse and it was the first time I saw it and he's got a little notebook. He looked a little defeated and I go, what's going on? He's like, oh man, I just wanted to get some feedback from you. I'm giving him feedback and I was like, well, what are other people saying? He's like, well, the last 10 people said it looks like a virtual pinball cabinet and they hate the cabinet. And, you know, I don't know if you ever saw his initial design, but it was really like slim and sleek. And he changed it because the majority of the feedback was about the cabinet. It's funny, you know, if you think back to, I don't know if you've ever seen the very two, the very first home additions I did, like, you know, 12 years ago or whatever, right? The little ones that, you know, they had a metal, like, transporters and stuff, right? Powder-coated cabinet and they had a hood that I actually raised up. It's very similar to what Chris is doing with his glass, you know, where the glass was integrated into the front molding. And in mine, you know, you lifted it up and, you know, you could free a ball trap without like going through the ring of a roll of unlatching the bar. There's no place to put it. You got to be careful with the glass. You might, you set the glass on the corner, you're going to shatter it, you know, all this stuff. And, you know, it was done with the notion that, I mean, we're trying to get people that don't know the secret sauce that we know, right? You guys walk up to a pinball machine. You don't even think about it. You just open the coin door, unlatch it, pull the glass out. You don't even think about it. You know how to place the glass without breaking it. You know all that stuff. But I'm trying to grow the audience, right? That's what the Costco games are about. I'm trying to get a whole new people that, and, you know, the Costco, it's like, you know, it's a bit of a gateway drug. There's people that buy the Costco game, and we've seen this numerous times, and then they upgrade. You know, they've had it for some amount of time, and they say, I want one of the big ones. And so that is doing, you know, that's exactly what it's supposed to do, right? It's a Trojan horse. I get it in your house. you realize how cool this thing is, you got to have another one. And so, and for some people, it's not. For some people, it's simply, here's a more affordable game, and this is all I need. I got some young kids, they're never going to dig deep into rules, or they don't, you know, they're not going to beat me up because it doesn't have some giant animatronic. They're just having fun with it. And so, yeah, I mean, it's, I think,
    23:20
    I mean, it's some of the thoughts, I'm just giving you some of the thinking behind some of the things we do.
    23:28
    Yeah, Cale, I think the next one's a question for you, right? Switching gears a little bit. Yeah, I'll go with it. George, in a recent podcast, Keith Elwin mentioned that Seth had some design input into King Kong. What are the growing pains of having a non-pinball guy involved in the design process? Is it hard to explain to someone who came from outside the industry why you can add something or why you can't remove something from a design? Yeah, I mean, okay, so let's talk about this, right? So, first of all, he's, you know, he's a really bright guy, so it didn't take him a long time to sort of get the vibe of what we do. And, and he, you know, he's, he's sensitive enough about the magic that he knows that, you know, he's, he's never going to be the final word on, on, you know, what, you know, what a designer should or shouldn't do. He's going to have opinions that are going to be taken under, but, but at the end of the day, I'm the subject matter expert in the building that can either kill or advance your design, right? Because, you know, and even me, you know, even I, I use the talent around me to help me to clarity. When I'm unsure, right, I'll get all these guys in a room and say, what do you guys think? So I think Seth is,
    25:00
    you know, he came from video games, has a lot of experience with video games. He understands presentation. He understands the notion of choreography, understands the evolution of play and the progression through a game. He knows all that stuff. And so, you know, he comes to it with that. So when you say design input, well, he's the CEO, he's going to have opinions and so does Gary. And Gary's been in it all his life. And to this day, he still struggles to play pinball. So I think that you have to kind of, you know, you have to, yes, everyone in the building is going to have opinions. Look, the sales guys have opinions, right? Everybody at marketing, manufacturing guys have opinions. Everybody plays the games. We're lucky to have this conglomeration of input. And I don't, yeah, I'll tell you that, like I said, I'm the subject matter expert. It lives or dies. Based on, am I going to allow that or am I not going to allow that? By the way, I don't mean that to sound like I'm some dictator with this stuff because I'm not. And a lot of times, I let these guys try things and I let them convince me.
    26:23
    You know, I was the first guy in a long time to put a center post on a stern pinball machine. and when I came up at Williams that was considered a crutch, a bad design crutch and I told him that, I told him, I said look if you were a designer in the Williams pinball department when I was coming up, people would have been making fun of you for this and they would have said you have some problem and you've got to fix your problem and this isn't the fix, this is a thing you do at the 11th hour because your game's on the line and you're draining down the middle. That's what this is. And we had the conversation. And at the end of the day, you know, he's one of the best players in the world. So he, you know, he's clearly going to have a little bit more sway with me on that. But I had to explain to him, you know, this is the perception from the time when I came up, God forbid, I should have done that, right? Jack's done the same. Jack said to me, you know, Jack picked it up, did it, and I had the same conversation with him. And, again, you know, he showed me. He brought me to the game. We played together, and he showed me. He said, well, I think I need it. And by the way, the world is different now. There used to be a time when I was coming up, the success of a pinball machine was entirely based on how much money was in the cash box. and nothing else. It wasn't based on how pretty it was. It wasn't based on what was under the glass or anything else. It was like, is this thing making, you know, a couple hundred bucks a week? If so, your success. If it's not your failure, that's it. Done. And so now we live in a world where 70% of the pinball machines that certain pinball makes go into the home. So that's a little different. So that's why all of a sudden that post between the flippers is way more acceptable. So would the conversation be back then, that's going to make the ball times too long and therefore Yeah, that's right. And you know, if you ever see, there's a bunch of threads in the Deadpool forums where people say, you know, isn't there supposed to be a rubber on this outlane post by the inlanes? And we say, yeah, they're in the cash box because your game, you're going to extend the play time on your game, and I designed them the way I always did for the street. And, yes, you can close them down. You can close down my lanes. You can add the rubber. You can make the game easier. It's your game. I want you to have fun with your game. However it is you want to. You want to make your game flat? Make your game flat. You want to make your game steep? Make your game steep. You know, I just want you to have fun with it. I really don't care. but my choice, how I design them, how I play, how I'm used to, that's the way they go out the door. And after that, you can do whatever you want with it. It's your game. You know, I'm an operator, and I've never understood that whole thing where operators want fast-playing games because, I mean, if anybody's paid attention to the top-earning games, you know, we talk about on the podcast, it's always the Elwin games, and they're the longest-playing games. I've found that the longer playing games are actually making more money. So, Cale, it's the difference between your environment and the environment in the 90s is that there were lines of people to play.
    30:03
    And so, you know, and that's really it was strictly a throughput issue. How many people can you get through the location? And a location, by the way, in those days, the other anomaly is in those days, a location with more than five games was a rarity.
    30:25
    Okay? So, you know, the wall of pinball machines was five, six games. It wasn't what you have. It wasn't, you know, what we see today in the dedicated pinball locations. There's another thing that the player was a little different because it was a player that may be very good, but his involvement in the hobby was, this is a place I stop at on the way home to get a beer, or this is a place I go to hang out with my friends.
    31:06
    he didn't know, you know, they didn't, that the notion of a player understanding who the designers were, giving a, you know, giving a crap about who the designers were, or geeking out on all the stuff that players geek out on today, that was non-existent, right? Like, you know, I tell people all the time, one of the challenges we face today is that the product began life was a product for commercial operations, and there were the quality level of, like, the fit and finish on materials and all that stuff was really designed around those environments. So, you know, all that black paint, every operator on the planet had a can of black spray paint. No operator on the planet was sending something back because there was a bubble in the decal. There was no operator. Absolutely. That's good. Yeah, no, no. I mean, there was no – never was a guy – you know, like the way it used to work is a machine would come out of the box. The big distributors would literally put a machine on legs, have a tech go through it, operator shut up in his truck, picked it up, drove it to his location, put it in his location. The game – an operator back then, especially a street operator, he rotated his games. The durability of cabinets and stuff like that was based on him having to put that thing on and off a pickup truck, move it across the city. I'm taking this out of the – I'm taking this Adams family out of the 7-Eleven. I'm putting it in the bowling alley. I'm taking, you know, I'm taking the fish pails in the bowling alley. I'm putting it where the 7-Eleven was. every three weeks he rotated his games to keep his earnings to make his earnings uh you know uh to keep the location fresh make the earnings you know what they need to be um and those games went through hell that's why when you buy a 90s game that's been on the street you get what you get right that's what that that's what it is that's how that was operated it never you know it's like a home use game from that era was a rarity right and you know the world market in pinball back then is like 50,000 machines a year, right? So, you know, I think we're probably over half of that, but we're not 50,000 games a year, right?
    33:30
    Yeah. One thing I want to see, my favorite thing back when I was a kid was behind the scenes, behind the scenes of Star Wars. I had books. You'd watch HBO. They had these specials in between movies. the making of. And you've been posting some very cool stuff recently on Instagram. I don't know if it's still on Facebook also, but I've seen it on Instagram. Drawings, old photos. You mentioned you're going to show the Whitewoods of whatever you guys are working on right now. Can we get more? People love this behind the scenes stuff and I think it's been missing from pinball. Yeah, I'm happy to do it. Jack loves to do it, by the way. I mean, he's constantly like a lot of his tinkering that he just likes to do on his studio. I don't know if you saw that little thing that he put together for Expo. Oh, yeah. That was so fun, right? That little thing, George, I posted it because I filmed it and posted it. It has like 200,000 views. People were obsessed with it.
    34:41
    He said to me, have you flipped it? while we were at the show, you know, have you, I said, no, I was like, you know, there's a night, you know, it's become a thing. There's a night where I walk the floor with all my designers, right. And people in the homebrew love it. You know, they, they love us playing their games and they'd love to talk to us about what they did and how they did it. And it's really fun. And so, and that night we walked the floor and I got on that thing. I couldn't leave it alone. I was like, and really, honestly, that shows you what you can do, and that is where the fun lies, right? It's like it begins there.
    35:24
    You know, Steve Ritchie, who was an early mentor when I started designing pinball machines, said to me one day, after flipping one of my early whitewoods, like Johnny Mnemonic, or I don't know what it was, but it's an early white white and he said to me, he goes, you got something because when you don't have any sounds, you don't have any lights, you don't have any rules, you don't have anything. If this play field is fun to flip, that's where it begins. And he wasn't wrong. And I've used that kind of, you know, when I talk to my, when I talk to my designers, when I, when I do my own stuff, if the thing is fun to flip with nothing in it, that's, that's a great start. Because you know that once you start layering in all the stuff, you're ahead of the game, right? It's when you get a play field that doesn't do much and you're going to try to fix it by doing other stuff, that's when you struggle, right?
    36:26
    That's WWE. That's our WWE, right? That's like, you know, like, man, you know, when we did that game, I threw everybody at it. I threw Lyman at it. I sent one home with him. I said, see what you can do.
    36:41
    There was no, there was a limited, there's, you know, a limited amount of things that you can do. You got to start from like the thing that Jack had, right? Just flip it. It's fun.
    36:58
    For sure. So how much, like if Ralph and I have talked about we would love to have that thing on our desk. Yeah. If you put a little paint on it, how much would that thing cost us?
    37:09
    I mean, really, it's the play field, all that stuff is not the cost. It's like, what are you going to drive it with? So we almost have to take an Arduino or something and create some kind of little device to drive it. You know, you get into it. It gets, the problem is it gets dicey. You need 48 volts. You've got to find 48 volts. You need a power supply. You need 48 volts. You need, you know, all this stuff. But there's – so, yeah, I mean, I think he did it with somebody's system. Was it Fast? I can't remember who. It wasn't our system. I don't think it was our system. I think it was one of the hobbyist systems. And, you know, I mean, that's where your money is going to be. It's not going to be in anything else. That piece of wood, the couple of flippers, not a big deal. Although when I was talking about it, he said to me – I said, hey, Jack, could you put this many spinners in a game? He's like, I think they would kill me because it would be too expensive. Are spinners really that expensive? Like why are the spinners so expensive? No, it's – so the calculus that everybody does and is it's not that one thing. It's like all of the stuff. And so you come down to what do you – you know, we're a business. So we don't – and some of our – some of the other people in the space that manufacture football machines, maybe they don't need the margins we need. Or maybe they don't – maybe they're not aware or they're not as business savvy. I mean, you know, you guys deal with us. We're the game developers, you know, the design studio, the designers, the artists, et cetera. But we're a real company. We've got, you know, we've got a CFO. We've got, you know, we've got a whole bunch of, you know, financial people and accountants and everything else. And so when you look at how much I can put in a game versus what I have to sell it for, there's a middleman in here, right? Somebody's got a dealer, distributor. They have to make a buck. So we try the discipline of business, by the way, is what has built us. Meaning that when I joined the company, you know, I said this on Carrie's show, I had nine people in the studio. And there were 35 people in the factory. Today I got 55 people in the studio and another 30 consultants. I got 150 people in the factory, or I'm sorry, in the front office and 500 people in the factory.
    39:45
    How did we get here? Well, it was in everything that you do in life. There's an element of luck. There's an element of work. There's an element of discipline. And discipline means you want to make great, amazing stuff, but you've got to sell it for a price. And, you know, that means paying attention to what things cost you.
    40:11
    And, you know, I'm not a big fan of – I think the constraints of the sandbox are what yield creativity. But the open checkbook, not so much.
    40:30
    I had a quick follow-up about the homebrew section. First of all, they must geek out like crazy when you walk by with your design team, right? I think they love it, and we love it too. We love seeing the, you know, the energy, the passion. Let's give a big shout-out to a couple that you might like, all right? Let's give a shout-out to them. Was there one this year? Oh, my God. There were so many.
    40:58
    You know, there's a bunch of them that a couple of years ago. This past year was actually light because there was a lot of stuff that had been there the year before.
    41:07
    But the year before, you know, the kid that did Portal was awesome. The kid that there was a Pokemon that was really well done. there was Tanner Patch with all of the wild, crazy play fields that he's made, right? So, I mean, honestly, there was just a lot of just ingenuity and passion and the work that goes into those things. I mean, I know what it takes to make the real one. So I when I total respect when I see what some guy did in his garage and and, you know, I mean, you talk about in the garage, right? Keith Elwin is here today because of that Archer prototype that he built and that I saw and said, man, the level of, you know, just the finish and complexity of this for a garage built is impressive. Imagine if he had resources, what he could do. And that proved to be the right choice on my part. That was a good move. Good move.
    42:18
    That was a good move. Good call. All right, Ralph, take us back to the pinball code, if you don't mind. Yeah, yeah. So I was thinking we'd shift gears because Cale and I both had some questions around, like, code and rules and just accessibility to pinball in general.
    42:33
    You know, one thing that I think about this a lot, and it's interesting because I came over from arcade gaming, and then I, you know, everyone always said you're going to buy one pinball machine and it's over all your arcade games, all your retro stuff is going to go out the window. and it did, it did, like right away, really quickly too. Within a couple years I had sold off everything to fund the pinball hobby but as I gotten into it longer I now very comfortable with the deep level the code can get but I can help but think about because I have people that come to me almost all the time now because I tend to be the podcaster who doesn't go too deep into like that people listening to me won't understand what I'm saying. So I try to keep it, you know, for everybody. But I got to think like, how do you approach this? Because you said you've said it on many shows where you want to bring new people in, But you can't ignore the fact that there are people that get deep into the hobby, so they want this deepness to the code. They want this complexity. So how do you approach this with your team? Because you have to somehow have a common ground where it's going to still be easy enough for the casual to come up and have some fun with it, but then you're not boring the hardcore players. So what is the philosophy? Because I feel like this is not an easy challenge. Easy to learn, hard to master, right? Yeah. So it's actually easier to engage the hardcore than it is to engage the novice.
    44:01
    And what do I mean? Well, a novice, philosophically, we talk about, you know, where's that first multi-ball? We talk about, in the studio, we try to design from the start button up. Right. So that's why, you know, I don't want anybody thinking about a wizard mode, you know, for a while. I want you know, I want everybody working on, you know, what's that first multiball? What's that easy multiball? What's the thing that every novice? How do we get something where every novice think that was fun? I want to do it again. Right. So that's why bash toys, you know, you know, that again, I said this before in the podcast. right? So let's talk about design philosophy, right? So a novice flips early. And so why does he flip early? He flips early because he's afraid the ball's going to go off the end of the flipper. So what happens when you flip early? What happens is you're in the bozo zone. The bozo zone is a 30-degree cone emanating from the center of the flippers going up play field. If you put stuff there, a novice is going to be able to interact with it. That's why we like bash toys. That's why, you know, the dragon is where it is in D&D. That's why the rocket is where it is in bomb. That's why little Deadpool's where he is, right? Because those are easy things. They're going to, they don't even, they don't, they can't aim. They just flip. So, but if you interact with that thing some number of times, good things will happen. So that's a beginning, right? That's a beginning. The other thing is you can't, you, you, you, no one plays your games the way you envisioned they were going to be played in their head. That's a, that's a nature, that's the nature of all games. Video games, whatever you want, strategy board games, no one plays the way the designer envisioned. So that means that a player can do something anytime, anyplace, anywhere they can do something. And you have got to let all that stuff that he's going to do that you didn't intend for him to do, like you're lighting the arrow on the right side of the play field, but he shot on the left, right? And so nothing can be dead. Everything has to be alive. Even when the thing he's doing is not the thing you intended. That's got to give you some feedback. That's got to give you something that, you know, you've got to feel the reaction, whether it's sounds and life. Of course, it's not going to be as big as if he did the right thing, but something's got to be there. My Lord of the Rings play field, which I'm sure you guys, everybody's played it.
    46:56
    I learned a thing about that. I taught myself a thing inadvertently when I designed that play field. and that is even when you brick the shot the ball's going to go somewhere interesting and and and so I've kind of kept that in my head a lot ever since then and said you remember how on that game like I meant to do that but I instead you know I bricked it and it bounced over there and it fell into a thing and it returned it to the ramp that's the kind of stuff you want and and There's a couple of guys in the building who do it really well. Elwin does it really well. He knows a lot about, he pays a lot of attention to what happens when they don't do what you want.
    47:45
    That's a thing. I'm sorry, Ralph. It's just a quick follow-up. It's a little bit of feedback more than it is a question.
    47:57
    The one thing that I think that you guys could do more of, and this goes into what you were saying. You guys are a business. You're in this to provide fun products but also to make money. And I think sometimes when – and I think it would help sales. When you guys do these streams to reveal a game, you've got some of the top players playing it. Like you've got a game. And that's great. But I think sometimes if there was maybe a supplemental piece of content that's showing people how to play versus not just the rule sheet. Because I – George, I check out on the rule sheet. I leave my body as Jamie says. I start reading, like, this is too much. So how I learn is, like, playing with Kale and playing with Jamie. And, like, Jamie's so good at Batman 66. He's like, you've got to do these things. And I'm like, okay, cool. And then that opens up the game for me, and it makes me like it more once I go. Because it's that payoff. It's not just the easy multiball now. Now I'm going, oh, wow, if I do these shots in sequence, I get this reward, or I progress through a mode. I'm all about egghead, George. But I can't help but feel like you would sell more games. I really, you know, that's the kind of, yeah, that's great.
    49:09
    You know, Ralph, you're right. That's 100%. You're spot on. That's a thing that we could do a lot better than we do. And I think it would make a lot of sense. It would have an effect, I should say. yeah I mean it's like you know we're somewhat conditioned to how rough people are with us when we debut stuff and so we want to try to show it in it's best light and so you know I think that you know you get Nick Wayna on the game and Josh Henderson and you get some you know you get some shooters in there and they're going to show off the game So I think that's really why it's gone. But I think your point is taken. I think there's, you know, the games in here, I'm hardly a great player. I never read the rules and I never pay attention. I sort of follow the game. So when I walk up to the game, I will just flip it to see what happens. And, you know, I know to follow the lights. I know philosophically. I understand, you know, what the team was thinking. I may not know the nuance of how they executed it until I've spent some time with it. and so that's how I play them I play them I walk up I start flipping see what game does how it how it reacts where am I going to get and you know I mean look I got guys like Mike Vinicore you know Cale you know Mike well right he's you know he's all about the intricacies of layering right and so and and sometimes when he explains it to me I say Mike I'm I'm not sure I'm going to get it until I play it, you know, you know what I mean, and it's like, on Bond, you know, I laid out, like, really high level, you know, like, hey, I got, you know, I got six films, I got six villains, six weapon sets, six Bond women, I, you know, I mean, it's like, I'm gonna, I got six minor villains, I'm going to structure this so that this is going to be your progression through the game, right? But, you know, somebody like Lonnie and Mike took it and they took it to another level, right? They took the bones of what I gave them and said, oh, but we could do this and this, or we could start this at the same time as that, and we could make this depending on that. So that, you know, that's an art in and of itself, right? What about those videos? Do you think, like Ralph was saying, me and him were talking the other night, The three of us talk too much, and we were thinking on the home screen, when you put your name in, maybe there's some videos there. You know, it probably wouldn't take much. No. Have you seen those? We haven't been consistent, but we have for a while. We were making videos that showed you really rudimentary shots. I mean, in the attract mode, right? And so what you're talking about is a little bit more of that or making that more available because those are pretty clear, right? Like, you know, the arrows going, you know, do this, do that. It would be cool, like, on 007, you brought a 007. On the home screen or on, you know, when you go in your Insider Connect and you put your name, which is so brilliant, too, by the way, for home users, is it had a video. It said how to get to 007, right? How to get your minor villain. How to get your major villain. How to get, you know, Orange Q, by the way. That's a little OP. You might want to work on Orange Q because a lot of people in the tournament are killing Orange Q, Jordan.
    53:12
    You know, I think that could be pretty cool. Yeah. You know where you guys did it? You know where you guys did it where I was like, I was learning about games I already owned? When you guys did the pinball cup. I don't know if that was your idea or who gave that idea. but it wasn't my idea. Yeah. So they were small, like, Hey, do this thing and you're going to get points for a pinball cup. It showed you how to do it. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I didn't even know how to do that. And now I do. And then I'm obsessed with it because I want more points for pinball cup. So I kept repeating that same thing. So I got really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Pinball, pinball cup. Uh, definitely, uh, those kinds of things are absolutely, We've got to do more of it, especially when people pick up on it, right? And we can tell. We can tell what's happening now because we see it, right? Well, George, there were a couple SOBs that were taken off the glass. I'm sorry because I was calculating how long it would take to achieve that and then the points people were getting per day. And I was like, some of these guys at the top, they don't work and they're playing pinball for 24 hours a day or they took the damn glass off because this isn't even possible. I did all the math, George. It wasn't even possible. But other than that, it was really fun. Interestingly enough, you know, a lot of IC has been self-policed, meaning that the community has been pretty good with it. Yeah, I think most people are fair and not cheating, I think. I got to tell you, in the beginning, you know, even leaderboards, I've also said this publicly. You know, when we were coming up with ideas, a lot of the tournament players in the building said, no, they're just going to pull the glass. Don't do leaderboards. You're just going to pull the glass. What fun is that, though? I mean, what fun is that? Who wants to pull the glass off and play? That's defeating the purpose. Right. And it turns out that the community self-policed pretty well.
    55:09
    Otherwise, there wouldn't have been the clamoring for leaderboards that there's been, right? But, yeah, those are all good ideas. I think you guys are spot on.
    55:19
    Kale, take us to the flipper question, sir, if you don't mind. Yeah, this is a selfish thing. I got into a conversation with somebody on Reddit that was talking about the flipper angle and how it's supposed to be lined up on stern machines.
    55:37
    And, you know, I always thought it was supposed to be lined up, you know, the point of the flipper with the dimple, right? Yeah. Some guy came in and said King Kong and other L-Wing designs don't align with the dimple with the center axis of the bat by default. You're supposed to line on L-Wing games, you're supposed to line up. The dimple is supposed to line up with the upper edge of the flipper. Can you settle that? What's going on? Yeah, no. No, I mean, so it's interesting you say this because just this morning on Facebook, I saw a post where a guy threw up a Deadpool and said, you know, is this correct? And I wrote a paragraph on this. But the dimple is, on modern turn games, the dimple is the center of the flipper.
    56:30
    And this has been tried many, many different times. So flipper positions are designer choice. That means that certain designers like to line them up with the lane guides where the face of the flipper is perfectly aligned with the lane guide. By the way, I don't know if everybody knows this, but the flippers are actually never perfectly aligned with the lane guide. They're actually set back from the lane guide so you don't get the bump when the ball comes off the guide. And so they're just a hair below. and typically that dimension has to account for all the manufacturing tolerances. So when things are stacked up against you, it still works. So, but on modern turn games, the tip of the flipper should be lined up with the dot. There are games like, and I say the flipper position is the designer's choice. For example, all of my Williams games, I, you know, because I was mentored by Steve Ritchie and he always lines up the face of the flipper with the lane guy, by the way, sort of Brian Eddy, all my games were like that. When I did Deadpool, I think Deadpool was the first one, maybe Batman 66, I can't remember now,
    57:46
    I realized that my architecture was such that the outside shots were easier if I centered the flipper more or less to the center. If you struck a line down the center of the guide, it hit the tip of the flipper.
    58:06
    And so I made that change. A bond is like that, deadpool is like that. What it does is it makes the outside shots more accessible. In the case of bond, I had the DB5 and the Thunderball area, and they're fairly down play field. So it really helps you make those shots when the flippers are – they're not quite flopped. Flopped is the old school where they're literally down from the – and some designers would do that, right? So – but it's designer's choice on Stern Games. It is the center of the flipper. You'll find some 90s Williams games where they used to use a roll pin.
    58:54
    And the roll pin was behind the flipper bat. So, you know, here's the flipper bat, and the roll pin would come up. I'm trying to show you.
    59:04
    Right behind it. So you rest the flipper on the roll pin, tighten it, and then move the flipper up, and they'd pound the roll pin right into the play field. so it would be, and it was a through hole, so you could actually, if you ever had to do it again, you could put a drift on the backside of the play field and pop it up and use it as a gauge to set up the flipper. And you'll find that on a bunch of Williams games. Other people may have done it too. It was something from that era.
    59:39
    It went away because sometimes the guys on the assembly line were a little aggressive. if somebody took a hammer and pounded the, you know, dented the play field while they were pounding the roll pin and, you know, flushed the play field. There was another thing that was done at Williams, which really didn't work out, which was there was a hairline shape of the flipper at the tip in the art. It was a black line, hairline shape, and you were supposed to, you know, move the flipper so that it lined up with the lines around the tip and then tighten it. The reason it didn't work is back in those days, games were also, all the playfields were silk screened. So there were registration pins on the board and they brought the silk screens on top. But there was always some registration issue between the screens and the actual physical board. And if the art was off because it was misregistered, those locations were off. And so we quickly went away from that. It's a conversation we have here a lot. Like there's been a lot of conversation about, hey, should we neural the flipper so that, you know, it indexes into a couple of positions precisely.
    60:59
    I think that would be really cool, actually. If there was like sort of a, you mean so it was sort of keyed so that it was only a couple of places? It was keyed to a few locations. We've talked about it. We just haven't. You know, it's like we can't – the engineers are a little shy with it because we use flippers in a lot of places, right? So if you do it for the bottom ones, what happens when you have an upper flipper, especially like the upper flipper in Bond, where in order to make sure that the shots were makeable, it's actually dropped. The other thing that happens is when you make that orbit, I don't want the flipper sticking out and draining you down the middle. so right there was for Bond I actually printed a 3D gauge which they used actually published it it's up on the site if you ever want to print your own it's up there so yeah I mean I'm going to go look at I've not paid attention but to my knowledge it's always on Star Games it's at the tip of the flipper Yeah, and that makes perfect sense, and that's what I always thought. I'm going to go ahead and pass the mic to Ralph while I'm arguing with this guy on Reddit. Go ahead.
    62:15
    We jumped around a little bit. I'm going back to code just for one second. And I have to give a shout-out to my buddy, Sean. He's Arcade Game Central. We kind of collaborated on this question, and he was talking about Jaws because we love Jaws. Like we play a ton of Jaws and he's like, look, I think we were both talking about how there's there was so much other additional value added to Jaws. Like you had the Jaws, the revenge, and then you had the shark, the shark is broken. And I need to give a massive shout out to Elizabeth because that was so fun and very cool. And I know it was a topper only mode, but man, it is very cool. I don't know how long it took her to do that. I don't know if that was a quick project, but it was really neat. And so him and I were wondering, like, did Jaws get all of this extra post-launch stuff because the game was successful? Or, like, because I guess that was, you know, because it was really cool to get all that additional content. It felt like, oh, my gosh, I'm getting a ton of value from this game.
    63:15
    Yeah, it's interesting, the code question. We, so a lot of times those things are thought of while the game is in development. but we sort of make, you know, we talk about minimum viable product. Like what are the things, what's, what do you must, what's a must have that you got to have at launch? And then how much more can you add later?
    63:37
    The question of 1.0 comes up a lot, right? And, and, and people say to me, you know, how come, you know, all your games aren't at 1.0 and all this kind of stuff, by the way, like hopefully in January, we're going to, you know, there's going to be a massive games that 1.0, you know, There's a big code effort coming to drop like four titles that want to get four titles, four recent titles to 1.0. But the thing about what people fail to understand is when you start the design, even if you, you know, we generate a game design document, lays out what we're doing, how we're doing it, et cetera. What everybody forgets is that just because we did that doesn't guarantee that any of that stuff is fun. It also doesn't guarantee that any of that stuff is actually going to work. So as we develop the game, we go through big iteration cycles. I mean, you know, let's talk about games that I reset, right? Like I reset X-Men. I wasn't having, you know, I didn't like where it was going. I didn't like the, you know, I'm like, God, take advantage. Got to take advantage of things like sentinels. God, you know, I want to mode. I just want to kill sentinels. So those resets really impact the development cycle, right? Those resets are the reason that games ship. And some of it, it's not all that, right? There are challenging licensors, right? That, you know, there are, you know, the folks that approved The Walking Dead 12 years ago are not the folks that are approving The Walking Dead today. And so, you know, we are fighting to get to parity. And then, of course, we're going to add more stuff, right? But again, you know, I mean, the licensor said, you know, you know, this thing you guys did here, we would have never approved that today. So that means there are challenges with – there are licensing challenges that impact the development schedule. There are – sometimes there are, like, personnel things, right? Like, developer on WIC left the company. You know, okay. And the game was, you know, at this level, so now I've got to, like, scramble to pull people from this project or that project. I've got to – those are our realities, right? And I can't predict them. I can't, you know, I can, you know, I try to mitigate them. But I have, there are sometimes, there are the challenges in getting code to where it gets. There's lots of different things. Like, let's talk about D&D, right? There was a ton of work done on the driver, you know, the software driver for the Dragon. And that was iterative. That work makes the dragon, you know, it's not just about the rules, and yet it's software, right? It's software that has to be written that deals with the complexities of this mechanism, all the different things that we're asking it to do, and how the devices that run it are working, right? Like, we had all kinds of issues with the motors, trying to get the motors to do what we wanted them to do. And that's, you know, that's iterating, iterating, iterating. You know, the thing was losing counts. It was losing steps. We couldn't get it to reset. We were like, that's just behind the scenes. Nobody's seeing it. It's got nothing to do with a rule. But it was a ton of software effort. Not only – and software effort that involves many areas of the engineering effort. So you've got mechanical engineers.
    67:34
    You know, they're worried about, you know, how much friction does this thing have? What kind of torque does the motor have? What's the startup torque? What's the – you know, like how do we know where it is and where are we losing steps and the feedback elements and all this kind of stuff? Nothing to do with rules. And then when you run into a problem, you go, okay, this part of the development team can continue to iterate on rules and choreography and light shows and all that kind of stuff and video content. But there's an element of the team, and often when those problems crop up, the most senior software engineers, the most senior mechanical engineers, the most senior electrical engineers. That drag in the top electrical engineers, the top mechanical engineers, the top software engineers in the building working on the problem day and night. The development cycle is moving. Nobody thinks about this when you're talking about, hey, why did it not ship at 1.0? Well, we ran into these problems that we didn't anticipate. Got to solve the problems. or the entire thing is dead in the water, right? Do you ever look at beta testers like the Xbox days? We have a lot of internal beta testing. Would you put that out? So external, so we've been, a lot of people have approached me about this. The most difficult part is that the pace of development is such that you've got to be here.
    69:18
    So, you know, I mean, I can send stuff out to you, but, like, a lot of times, especially, like, you talk about that dragon, right? I'm like, I can't just – the mechanical engineers are iterating daily. You know, the 3D printers are running all frickin' night. The electrical engineers, like, you know, blue wiring circuit boards and God knows what else, right? There's, you know, there's guys with oscilloscopes hooked to the game. There's like, you know, it's like, you know, so you want to beta test? No, I was curious, like beta testing, you know, maybe Star Wars, something in the earlier stages, stages and maybe beta testing some rules and you sign up 100 people that have the machine already. It might be feasible if you have the game and we're still iterating on rules and stuff like that, it might be feasible. But I think that the challenge is it's been a challenge that I don't know how to manage. A lot of people have offered their talents. I had a couple of customers that were professional, you know, they were actually testers for video game stuff, Xbox, PlayStation stuff, but yet they're pinball guys, and, you know, and they've reached out to me saying, hey, I know a lot about test protocols, I know a lot about, you know, software test protocols, and all this kind of stuff, and I'm a hardcore pinball guy, and I've got, if I had the game, could I beta test, and, you know, I would consider it, if it was feasible, I got to tell you, the last four or five months of a game development cycle,
    71:05
    it's like you drove the car off a cliff, and you're trying to fix the parachute on the way down. All right, Cale, take us to your next question, sir.
    71:23
    So, George, working in the game industry is notoriously difficult. How much of your job is emotional support versus technical support?
    71:35
    You know, so, you know, I think you're asking about a subject that's dear to my heart, which is what I consider to be leadership, right? I think leadership means, for me, it means being in service of the people that you lead.
    72:05
    And so, you know, some people think leadership is some kind of a privilege. And, you know, I think that the reality is that leadership is a service. and so you're in service of the people you lead and so you're gonna you're gonna do what it takes to lead these people to achieve the things that you you know and it begins with what's the collective vision of what we're doing and and um how do we get everybody on that page where we can agree that this is what we're trying to achieve at you know at the sort of the at the highest level It's like we're trying to make the best games in the business. We set the bar for our games pretty high, and we are, in a lot of ways, our own worst critics. You guys have no idea how hard we are on ourselves about the quality of the product. And I'm not talking about necessarily the build quality. I'm talking about the quality of the games. And I think that if you analyze our games over time, I think you'll find that we're pretty damn good, right? Like you guys are still talking about stuff we did a long time ago. When you look at the list wherever you want, you know, you're going to find a bunch of Stern product that – and, you know, we're proud of it, right? But to get back to your question, leadership means being in service of the people you lead, trying to get them, you know, to the place you need to get them. And it's hard. It's like there are schedules. There are things that sometimes don't make sense. There are needs for many pieces of the organization. The marketing needs towards the end of a game are, you know, things that have to be satisfied. And yet the team has got their, you know, they're in, you know, they're in deep and they're trying to get, just trying to get the damn thing to where it needs to be. And yet there's all these demands from outside, you know. You know, I need photoshoot code. I need, you know, I need, can you go over the, you know, can you go over the matrix, the feature matrix? Can you, you know, the art guys need publicity photos or, you know, the marketing guys need publicity photos. All this stuff, there's all this noise, right? So I try to fill in, I try to fill holes, right? And sometimes my, you know, my job is to manage by walking around and seeing what's going on and where can I help out and how do I get you to a place. Sometimes, you know, we're all human. We all have things in our lives. We all have events that happen and, you know, in the normal course of business, they happen in the middle of a development cycle. And, yeah, sometimes I got to talk to people and motivate or try to give them perspective on the things that are being asked of us.
    75:13
    That's a big one, right? It's like because we're in our own little world and we don't understand that, hey, the marketing guy's got marching orders too. His requirements to satisfy his job are somewhat dependent on us. And so we can't, you know, I understand that he, you know, you want to kick him out of your office because you're trying to solve this problem. You know, it's like, I can't deal with your feature matrix. My dragon doesn't work. Get out.
    75:49
    So, but some of what I do is, you know, I have to manage down. I have to manage up, right? I'm in this weird place where I have to deal with the, you know, sort of senior executives' needs in terms of, you know, the goals, directions to the studio, the requirements of shipping the game, the problems that come up. And I also have to deal with the, you know, the guys that are in the trenches doing their thing. So, you know what, my first, I'm the oldest of seven.
    76:31
    Wow. My very first leadership lessons were when I was a little kid and, you know, I'm 12 years old. My mom and dad are working and I'm in charge of the house. So, you know, those are my first leadership lessons. Then I'm an Eagle Scout. When I was in scouts, they began to formalize the notion of leadership, right? They began to teach me things about, hey, you're, hey, Mr., you know, when I'm 13 years old, I'm a patrol leader and I got to go, you know, I got to, we got to get ready for a camping trip. And I got to, back in those days, you had to do the chain phone call to all the, you know, to all the parents to make sure that, you know, who's going to drive and, you know, and you got to, you had to organize your, we got to, we got a shopping trip. We got to do this. We got to get our food. We got to this. So I think they began to formalize the notion of leadership, right? And then some element, the last thing is I've built the studio I've built based on the good and the bad that I've experienced over time in all the studios I've worked in. so I've worked in, I think you guys have heard me say the studio at Williams Electronics was like seven street gangs and there were two street gang bosses and then the minor street gangs were allied to one or the other and so I said wow we were amazing, we were the best in the world and someday I want to be the best in the world again, but I want to kind of leave behind the street gang thing. And I want to make sure that it's not an issue for me to say, hey, Brian, come in here and play Keith's game. What do you think? Or, hey, Keith, come and play Elliot's game and tell me what you think, right? So it's like we're all going to be better for these opinions. We're not, you know, no one is trying to kill anyone. it doesn't it just doesn't you know so I uh to your question I I don't know a lot of I I it's hard to put a percentage on it I'll tell you my days are really busy and the stuff I do is very diverse so yeah well congratulations for making it to Eagle Scout I never got past Weeblos yeah all right I'm gonna pass the mic to Ralph now yes sir George this is one I think you're gonna love because um I find myself in a position a lot of times where I feel like I'm a reasonable person and I take data and I formulate an opinion but I try to and you've even called me out before like Ralph just message me if it's something like because I think I made some really bad mistake And he'll just message me. I will tell you what the deal is. So I did that. I guess I was a little late on the Spike 3 cabinet, but we're not going to go down that path. But there's so many content creators that cover this hobby now. And that's good because I think more people talking about pinball is great. But what's something that you hear that's like, nip it now. Is there something, like a misconception, that you hear content creators repeat over and over and over again, whether it be about pinball or stern pinball in general, that you just feel like it's wrong and you're like, I just wish I could get everybody to understand this one thing and then, you know, we can move on from it. Is there something that's like you can think of? I mean, we get accused a lot of everything. Everyone perceives that everything we do is about cheap, making things cheap, making things, you know, like we're cheaping out. We're, you know, we're like, you know, shortcuts and all this kind of stuff. That is just so not the case.
    80:43
    And yet, you know, it's like I hear it constantly or I hear, you know, I hear. So, you know, the other thing that everybody has to kind of take a step back on is there's a vocal minority that's very vocal and about things. And I don't like it when falsehoods are propagated, and I try to, you know, elegantly cut them off or clarify them. but I don't like the, you know, this whole notion that we're the evil empire and everything that we do is like, you know, we're like plotting and scheming and wringing our hands to like take your money and, you know, I think like I always tell people, like, I don't, if you don't like our stuff, it's okay. There's people that do. And if you – there's no obligation for you to buy the stuff we do. You know, it's kind of like the anger that I see come through on some of these things is – it's kind of – it always baffles me. It's like I think, wow, for a hobby that's about fun, for people to be this angry about something. You know, it's like I'm like, I don't get it. My favorite thing that Gail says is they're making toys, people. Yeah. They're making toys. Trying hard to entertain you. And also, you know, the product development in this organization, we have an outsized influence on the direction of the company, right? We are you in some ways. We are consumers of our own product.
    82:48
    You know, Keith Owen has bought my games, right, has walked in here going, hey, can you sign my bond?
    82:59
    So we are the consumers of the product. We're not, like, purposely trying to make stuff bad that we're going to own. or you know so we there every segment of the hobby is represented in on my staff I have tournament players they're all about tournaments I have collectors they're all about collecting I have modders they're all about modding I have casual players that are all about casual um so I you know I don't know what to tell you I you know we pay we don't we don't pay the same money you do but we still pay for them and we still buy them and we still own them and we still enjoy them. And so I don't know, you know.
    83:51
    My favorite incident where you were correcting the public was on Facebook when a guy was talking about King Kong and how the spider was stopping his pinball. Yeah. And your response was, no, the spider has no mask.
    84:09
    Right. But I hear, you know, I hear the, like, I'm a broken record with the, you know, hey, the pinball, the actual ball is the hardest thing on a pinball play field. So the softer material will always yield. A piece of wood is not as hard as a piece of hardened steel. so yes you're gonna dimple the wood you know it's just kind of like I don't know how else to say it you know it's like uh the the you know there are and there are things right like when you compare the the hardcoats of the 90s against the hardcoats of today they're substantially different we at some point in time we decided that everything had to be super glossy and super pretty and very thick. And all that's going to do is show you more, show you the dimples all the more, right? It's like, it's like a magnifying glass. You put two layers of super shiny hard coat on this thing. What do you think's going to happen? So in, and in, in the nineties, you know, those things were, they barely had one hard coat. They, um, and it was a functional thing and, you know, intended to make games last on location. Have you ever seen – I'm sure you guys have seen the pre-hard coat play fields out there. For sure. You know, worn down to the wood, right? I mean, Cale, you guys probably have a bunch of those in your place, right? So, yeah. I don't know. Well, I commend you for having to – yeah, I commend you for having to deal with that sometimes because it does kind of feed just one quick thing comment on that last question because it does kind of fit I think with what Cale was saying about like the emotional support versus tech support Do you encourage the guys to when they developing like maybe after a game launch to sort of try to, because I can't remember if it was, like, Steve Jobs that used to be all about, you, Cale, you have something like a signal-to-noise ratio, like, making sure that you're not letting the noise overcome everything else. So do you sometimes have to provide, a little bit of guys. So I'll tell you that I, my guidance is always, you can't read that stuff. Like I always tell guys, you can't lurk up there. People say really mean things that don't, they don't, they don't know you. They don't know how much passion and care you put into this, but they're gonna say horrible things. I learned very early on, right? I, you know, the world used to be different. There was when, when the business was entirely almost, almost a hundred percent commercial operations, the pinball community was really small and, and it was a, you know, rec.games.pinball, the, you know, was, was essentially the, you know, the of the day pin side, but it was tiny. And, and I learned early on that, you know, I think it was Pat Lawler told me, Pat Lawler said, he says, we never go up there. The questions only go to Ask Uncle Willie. And the next thing he said to me is, and you can't read that stuff. And I'm like, why? And he goes, well, because it's emotionally bad for your health, man. It's like people don't know you, and they're going to say, you know.
    87:41
    So that was the era I came up in. And when I arrived at Stern Pinball to work full time, the world was a little bit different. It wasn't even at the level that it is now, but it was beginning to start, right? And so I think when I did Avengers or something, there was a guy on Pinside that said, you know, I want to punch George Gomez and Lonnie Rock in the face, right? That's sad. I was like, what is this, man? What the hell? what is this? Right. That's like, that's like, you know, you like the world. And so it hasn't gotten easier. But what I learned with that, that episode began to teach me that I, for my own, you know, my own mental health, I'm not going up there. I'm not reading that shit. I'm not dealing with it. Right. I, I do whenever possible. I'm a member of all those Facebook groups and stuff. And when I see people having trouble, if I have the time, I will take the time to try to help out. I won't get into, you know, philosophical discussions about how we cheaped out or anything like that. I won't do that. If you're having trouble with your game or, you know, you need clarity. Like I, you know, I wrote a paragraph on this flipper angle thing this morning on Facebook, right? And I don't know, there's always all these experts out there and I, you know, I want to reach through the screen and go, and how many pinball machines have you designed? Right? So it's like, you know, I don't, but, you know, it's like kind of like, I'm, look, I'm a professional designer. I went, I have a bachelor's degree in industrial design. I started my career at Midway Games. I have been, I was a toy inventor at the most successful toy invention firm in the world. I, I, I, I led an Xbox and PlayStation team for nine years of my career. I designed pinball machines at Williams Electronics. So I have swum with the sharks at all of these places, and I've learned a bunch of things along the way, which is the only thing that really allows me to do the job I do today, right, is all of those experiences inform how you manage the studio, what you do, how you design things, how you advise people about the things that they're designing. and that's all I can offer. I can't get into, you know, I had a guy in the WIC controversy, I had a guy that was literally calling me a liar because he had seen some WIC action toy that had guns and I was going, I know, but we're in a different product category and, you know, whatever. And he's calling me a liar. It's like, you know, how long can I engage with that, right? I can't. I have to say, think what you think, and you can't move away. Do you tell them not to engage? Do you tell them, and when they do engage, what do you say to them? I try to tell them, you know, I mean, they do engage, right? And sometimes they come in here and they, you know, they're just rocked by what they read. And all I can say is I told you not to do that. I can say, it's bad for you. Try not to do that. You know, Cale says it to us all the time. And it's such a smaller scale of the crap that we get. But somebody told Ralph he had an ugly face, and I thought that hurt Cale. They did say that. You see what I'm saying? He walks around, he thinks he has an ugly face all day. But that one I was scratching my head, George, because I'm like, I can't change my face, though. So, like, what can I say back? I didn't even know how to respond. And Cale is so good at bringing us down and going, guys. Your face is already at 1.0. There's nothing we can do. There's nothing.
    91:41
    It's very good, Cale. It's very good. I was like, look, my face is that minimal viable product right now, but when it gets to 1.0, it's going to be fucking great.
    91:51
    By the way, you know, nothing ever, like, we are still questioned. We've completed so many games, right? We've taken so many games to 1.0 and beyond and beyond. And yet we're still questioned about the notion of this, right? And it's like we try to ship as complete as we can. There is something that's happened in the last few years that where with Insider Connected, we actually get to see how people are playing the games and what they're doing and what they're getting to and what scores they're getting at. And it does help us. Plus, listening to you guys, right? Listening to you guys talk about what you like and don't like actually affects how we finish the games.
    92:40
    So, I don't, you know, I mean, I think that the other thing that, you know, to your question back about the Jaws game and the content in the Jaws game, every game is different. And some games have a lot of content. Some games have less. To some extent, the design teams make choices about what's in their game.
    93:06
    I have seen people – I mean, I saw a guy post – the game went out at 8.5 or something. I saw the guy saying the code is still early. What exactly do you expect is going to happen between 8.5 and 1.0? The code is still early. I don't, you know, that's a, the community sometimes invents features that we should have that we never dreamt of. Like, they were like, okay, as a suggestion, something we might do, that's absolutely valid. As an expectation of what we were going to do, not so much, right? Because, hey, this wasn't in the game design. You guys invented it. Wow. You know, like, no. So, yeah. But we always, you know, we always finish them.
    93:59
    You know, do I want them all to be closer to done when they ship? Yes, I do. And we're going to, and we're trying very hard to do it.
    94:08
    As I said, the things you always have to keep in mind, the scope of a game changes. Sometimes the licensor has opinions. Sometimes we have technical issues, the dragon description.
    94:20
    And, you know, sometimes things happen. Guys leave the company. right? You know, events that we didn't plan that impact the development cycle. I think your question about people leaving the company is a good segue into Jamie, something you wanted to ask about, right? Yeah. So I work as a tech recruiter, George, and I work with NDAs and non-competes on the daily. And I don't, you know, I know your industry is a lot smaller than the tech or the oil and gas industries that I supply people to, But is Stern protecting their intellectual property through non-competes and – 100%. Yeah. So not only non-competes, but NDAs get signed.
    95:09
    And also, you know, we patent lots of stuff. So – and when we do interactions with licensors and things like that, there's always NDAs in place. a lot of times the reasons we can't talk about, you know, there's a lot of conversation about why don't you guys just tell us what you're doing? Well, my deal with the company or our deal, the company's deals with the licensor don't allow us to tell you what we're doing. So I don't, you know, it's like, yeah, we'd love to tell you what the next three games are, but there's contracts in place and so, you know, we have, there's lots of things when somebody steals IP, a lot of our, you know, like an aftermarket guy making, you know, Deadpool toppers or whatever with our art, you know, sometimes our contracts actually stipulate that we have to report this to the licensor. So, you know, the licensing thing, the legality of it, of those scenarios is complex. and so it's kind of like when we say you shouldn't do that like okay, yes you're stealing our IP if you put a Stern logo on it, you're stealing our IP and we're going to have something to say about it but I don't know, you want to mess with Disney lawyers? Really? No. I don't know. Really? And they'll tell you that, I don't know I think it's a risk you take where where, okay, I'm small fry, they're not going to bother me. Maybe, and maybe you're right, maybe you can get away with it.
    96:54
    But that's the, the IP thing is very, we're a real company, the companies we deal with are also real companies.
    97:06
    Yes, all that stuff is, there's NDAs, there's contracts, there's stipulations on when stuff, and what people don't realize is that how things are, like, the licensor has 100% right of approval. So that means that all marketing materials, all content for the games, in every way, shape, or form, the game design, the content on screen, the speech calls, the rule progression, the what you're going to call modes, all of this stuff has to go through approvals. Every piece of art, plastics, decals, you name it, the sculpts, everything is approved, has to be approved. It's a big process. It's a real pain in the butt.
    98:02
    Stuff gets kicked out all the time. It gets sent back. It needs to be changed. The scale of this character resonated with that character. the likeness, you know, in movie properties, a lot of times the actors have prominence contracts with the, you know, with DIP. So, you know, everybody beat us up about the Game of Thrones people all being the same size. Yeah, I know. Nothing I could do.
    98:35
    Nothing I could do. No actor could be highlighted differently than another actor. Right. So, I mean, this is the stuff everybody forgets about. And and also everybody assumes that that, oh, you know, why didn't they get this song? Well, yeah. Did you think we were unaware of that song? We were you know, we just couldn't get it. It was like they said, no, you can't have this song. Well, I'm sure there's times too, right, George, where like access to that song would be so expensive that it wouldn't even make the product viable anymore. And licenses also, right? Licenses also. Like there's a limit to what we will pay for a license because at the end of the day, it figures into the cost equation for the game. So it's kind of like, you know, yes, I want this license, but if it's too expensive, I can't take it. I won't, you know, it just doesn't make sense.
    99:43
    You know, there are companies in the world that exist only to have the jobs they have or maybe can afford it. And I don't know. I don't know the business mechanics of the other companies in the space. I only know mine.
    100:02
    And so I can only tell you that there are limits to what we will pay for something. There are limits to we have to make the product viable to the, you know, to the business targets of the company.
    100:18
    All right, Cale, why don't you go on to your question because we want to be respectful of your time. But so far, it's been fantastic. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. I got all night, fellas. You ask away. I'll block it out for you. Oh, that's bad news. You don't want to hear that from you three. Yeah, don't tell us that. Don't tell us that.
    100:39
    I have a little excerpt from a book I read about Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs often told the story of learning craftsmanship from his father while building a fence. When Steve only painted the visible front of the fence, his dad insisted the back must be just as beautiful because you will know. A lesson that taught jobs quality matters everywhere, even unseen, influencing Apple's meticulous internal design and craftsmanship. This principle meant creating products with care, even components customers never see, to ensure true excellence and personal integrity in their work. That being said, was not finishing the edges on the new cabinets a design decision or a financial decision? Was it an oversight? So there's only one unfinished edge, the one in the front panel, and I think in the future I will finish it. I think you'll see a generation of cabinets where that edge will be finished.
    101:48
    And it's really not about that. It's the fact that the edge banding will protect the corners or the edges of that panel when you rest the play field on it. The only other unfinished edge is really one in which you have to take the armor off, and then you'll see it. That one, what's interesting about that one is that I actually considered finishing it, but the edge banding machine cannot handle that shape.
    102:18
    So the cuts in that shape that I had to create, the edge banding machine can't do. But I actually talked about it. Don't you think a little black spray paint would have solved the whole edge gate problem?
    102:33
    Well, on that front panel? Yeah, like when you take the lock bar off. But maybe, you know, so the difference is that, you know, you have a process right now where that panel is, you know, I mean, as it comes off the machine, it's basically done. There are no secondary operations. And so it's like that would probably be the only panel that gets painted. Now, you'll notice that I went to the trouble of creating little molded plastic black caps in the pockets that hold the side armor. And also there's a molded plastic black cap that trims the hole that the hinge bolt goes into. Right? And also, when you look at one of those cabinets, notice that the edge under the cabinet is finished. Right? There's a piece of etched molding under the cabinet. There's pieces of etched molding in the back. So the absolute only edge that's exposed to the outside is this front one, and it probably will be in the future iteration of the cabinet.
    103:50
    Interesting. so you know talk about the Steve Jobs thing this is very interesting the um so there's a Steve Jobs line that also came from that book that we that um I've read that book by the way um that that says real artists ship and and and that is that speaks to the notion that you know, you are business and yes, there is artistry in what we do, but you're a business. That means that, you know, the experience at Next, before he went back to Apple, was an experience in which some of that internal, you know, the screws, you know, custom screws designed to look a certain way inside the machine really sidelined that product, right? That attention to detail internal to that particular product really was, you know, one of the things that extended those development cycles and extended the cost of the machine. And there's, you know, whether it's the – I think it's the – one of the books basically goes into this. Um, so I think, I think we try to be practical, right? We, we hold costs where we can, you know, uh, some years ago, I think I was talking to John Papaduke, right? And he wanted all of the stuff underneath the blade field to be stainless steel. And, and I was like, okay, you know, that's great, man. But, you know, you're going to add a bunch of money to stuff that probably doesn't need to be stainless steel. and and I'm you know it was strictly an aesthetic thing it wasn't any kind of like a functional you know it's gonna it's gonna corrode or or it's not strong enough or anything like that it was strictly an aesthetic thing so I you know I'll draw the line and stuff like that but if you look at you look at one of those new cabinets and ask me why I finished the underside edge because it's not you know you're never going to see it uh you know you'll see it when you take it out of the cabinet it. And so, yeah.
    106:06
    Cool. Yeah, thank you. I'm going to pass it on to Ralph. Ask your BOM. I think that's a good question. Yeah, when I wrote this, I wrote it a couple of times because I was like, I don't know how you're going to answer it, Jordan. Not that that was playing into how I was going to write it, but I want to be kind of maybe a little bit more clear than how I wrote it, so I'm going to improvise a little bit. Sure. So I know that like any company, I work for a tech company. We have, we have a bill of materials when we build something. And, uh, and usually we have maybe a little flexibility one way or the other, but for, but, but to, or for us to make the margins we need to make and everything while still create, creating a quality product, we have to stay within some confines. And I was just curious, maybe, maybe this is a wild question, but if like suddenly you had zero bill of materials restrictions, has there been something over time that you've had to remove from a pinball machine that, because it costs so much, but if you did have zero restrictions, you might bring it back? But it's prohibitive now because if you put it in, you would, like, blow the whole thing apart, just because it would be way out of the scope to make the margins and things you guys need to make. Yeah, I mean, the only things I can think of are things like possibly aesthetic things. I think that we, so our bills and material are not like cast in concrete. You know, they're flexible to some extent. There are targets that the teams work to.
    107:46
    And those targets are in a, and we have you know, so the cost of a game is not strictly the bills of maturity, even though that's what everybody in the community likes to talk about.
    108:00
    The cost of the game is also, you know, the development cycle, the tooling costs, and essentially the labor to manufacture the game, right? So those are – and the cost of licenses, the cost of music, the cost – all those things, all those peripheral things all add up to equal the cost of the game, right? So my tooling budgets, for example, if a designer isn't using his entire tooling budget, that gives me flexibility to spend that money on the next guy's game that has more stuff that needs more tooling. So at the end of the year, I just kind of need to be balanced to what I'm allocated in terms of that budget. And it's a natural occurrence. It's very seldom that everybody wants to tool that, you know, like has like maxed out tooling budgets. It just doesn't happen. So, but in terms of the bill materials cost or the targets, we have flexibility to some extent, right? Like I have these discussions with the teams all the time. So the teams, the development cycle has got some elements of discipline. There are gates along the way. And these review gates, the team presents the status of their project. In the beginning, they're concept gates. This is what we think we want to do with the game. And, you know, it's all lots of, you know, PowerPoints with images and concept drawings and descriptions of what's going to happen and how it's going to happen and what music they're going to use and what sculpts they need and all this kind of stuff, right? And as the game development cycle progresses, things become more real and people start seeing more stuff. Eventually you're looking at, you know, you're looking at CAD and then you're looking at, you know, Whitewoods and then you're flipping the game and then you're all the way along. All these things happen. Well, the conversation is all of those costs and things are talked about at every one of those gates. They get talked about. They get reviewed. Hey, we think we're going to be like really high because of this. And what do you guys think? And stuff gets evaluated. So my mantra to them has always been, you know, like if it's we keep all the things that are vital to the game, anything that like how badly is it going to hurt you? You're you're you know, you're three hundred dollars over cost. This thing costs two hundred fifty dollars of that. Is it vital to the game? If it's not vital to the game, you know, and sometimes it's a, maybe it's not specific enough that you can't use it on the next one. That's happened too, right? Like, okay, you know what, you didn't really need that on this one, but, you know, that's a pretty cool thing that you did.
    111:09
    So maybe you use it on the next one. But there's always some flexibility. But my conversations with senior management a lot of times are, hey, can you imagine the game without this thing? Can't really take it out.
    111:27
    And, you know, remember, I said what I said before, I'm the subject matter expert. So they're not, you know, they're going to say to me, can you find money anywhere else? or, you know, okay, you know, there's hard conversations about how to get the product, you know, to the end state and not compromise what the product is.
    111:52
    I know we're not going to talk about future releases. We're not going to ask you to give us the name of the next four-term releases. Okay, we're not doing that. Okay. But there's a rumor out there. Yeah. Okay, on a particular title that my children are obsessed with. And they're adult children, they're 26 and 22, and they play the hell out of this game called Fallout. And they just wanted me to tell you, because I told them I was interviewing you, that, well, I need to thank you because I guess I've got to start saving now. It's the end. because the youngest is home for Christmas, and he just started Fallout 4 on my Xbox, and he's given me a ton of achievements, so that's great. You guys are tough. I love you. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just telling you it's going to cost me a lot of money, and I hope it's great. I hate that.
    112:56
    No comment. Okay. George, how the heck does this stuff – this brings up a good question. I know there's sometimes holes in the ship. Where are these people at Stern? They kind of – or – Where are they? I try to ask the – Yeah, I try to ask Elizabeth Gieske stuff. You have her so well trained. She's like, Ralph, that sounds great. Oh.
    113:21
    Next, please. It's better than that. Like, Mike Vinicore stays at my house for a week. and you can't, he has never he just thinks, he just thinks man, you're not getting anything out of Mike you're not doing, he's going to, you know, yeah no, I think, I, okay my opinion, my opinion is that the leaks come, you know, it's some combination of maybe, I don't know, maybe it's the dealer network. Maybe it's, you know, because they get some previews. You know, they get some preview conversations. And that's just my opinion. I can't actually point to anybody and say that's the leak.
    114:08
    I think that for a long time I thought it was Gary. You know, Gary's talking to somebody and yeah, you know, working on this. I don't know. I'm not sure. I really don't know. I don't believe it's anyone internally on my staff anyway. I don't know. There's been a lot of stuff. And, you know, we, you know, what can I tell you? It's like I, we talk about friction, the friction of day to day, the emotional friction of the community, the community's opinions on the guys doing the work. and I think that one of the things that I've always preached is we keep our eye on our ball and that's what we have to worry about. So it's kind of like you got to have the confidence to say we know what we're doing and we know what's good for us and it's okay to listen. it's absolutely necessary to listen but at the end of the day most of the we get paid to be forward looking the community is mostly backward looking and what do I mean by that? This is not uncommon in any product people that buy cars the folks that design cars are forward-looking and the people that own and buy cars, they, so what happens is that people want you to, they reference what they know when they talk about what they want. So it's a data point. It's not, you know, they can't envision that they're not paid to envision the future. My designers are paid to envision the future. They're, so I think that I say, keep our eye on our ball, we listen, we take in all the stuff. It's really important to listen, but it's also important to have filters that say okay, I think I heard that, but I think we should do this.
    116:43
    I don't know if that answers your question. No, no. I mean, I think there's a lot of I've been in lots of different hobbies and it's interesting. There are people that from other hobbies I've been in where they'll literally pay to look at Long Beach port manifests and they'll see what's coming in on a crate and they'll go oh, there's a bunch of, I'm just making up, some toy is coming in and that's weird and we heard this rumor that Some licensors publish who the IP holders are.
    117:21
    So for a while there, we figured out that, oh, somebody figured out that they can go to these websites and the licensors actually list who they're working with. Yeah, who they're working with. And so you go, oh, that's where they saw it. And Jason Knapp.
    117:44
    So speaking of Jason Knapp, not to talk about him directly, but we're all friends with him. And he works in a field I used to work in. Like I used to do competitive intelligence for the company I worked for. And so I have all these tools where I can see things like, and I think he uses these. So I could see like the Stern website accidentally published something and pulled it down. And for that split moment, I see that thing. And I don't use those tools anymore because they were company tools and I'm not in that department. I forgot this when he did it. He's a great guy. He is. I like him a lot. He's very even keeled is the best way to describe it. and so I think that I have no issues with somebody legitimately sleuthing what we're doing no issues at all I think it's concerning if somebody publishes a picture and it clearly came from inside back when we were working on Deadpool Cool. That's exactly what happened. And so that, you know, that is disturbing to me. Right. That that's like, OK, we're that that's an internal photo. That's like you had to have, you know, that had to be like, you know, somebody in here with a belt cam or something. There were there were photos floating around when we did the first when we when we moved to Spike 2, the early Spike 2 back boxes somebody had taken. And it was clearly like a spy cam photo, you know, because of the position of the photo relative to where the back boxes were and everything. And so that stuff's disturbing to me. The, you know, the kind of the slate of games that are coming and all that kind of stuff is kind of like, yeah, you know, there's somebody, you know, Gary's talking to somebody or something. But that stuff could be damaging with your relationship with the license holder if it was the right app, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that's the danger of it. And there have been a couple of times when licensors have called us out on it. That has happened, right? So you're not going to go to TPF and just sit at a panel and tell people what's coming? I was in a panel, I was in the audience at GPS. My friend Chris Ranchi disclosed Deadpool.
    120:22
    And he didn't mean to. I think, you know, it was like it was in his head and he just kind of like, you know, it just spilled out of his, it just spilled out in conversation. He's up in the panel. I'm in the back of the room going, what did you just say?
    120:38
    I said, dude, do you realize you just disclosed it? I did? Oh, wow. Wow. Do we have any more questions, boys, or are we? I thought there was. I know I had one more, but I think, Taylor, you had one, right? I thought. Yeah. When we were playing the Walking Dead remastered over at Ralph's house, I noticed there are some new rollover switches I've never seen before that replace the star rollovers. Yep. Are we going to see those more often? What's the deal? Yep. It's a better design. It doesn't have some of the – so the original rollover, the star rollovers, that design was actually – it was a great evolution of the traditional star rollover. The traditional star rollovers have always been problematic in the business from the day that we started using hardcoats. The original ones had a ring that fit into the playfield and a plastic ring, very similar to an insert, except that it was open in the center for you to build the switch into it. and it's always been a challenge to have any kind of opening in the playfield that you have to keep hard code out of. So whenever we have openings in the playfield, there's a lot of design thought that goes into what happens when the hard code gets in there. You always want to avoid situations where you have a secondary operation to clean stuff out. That's more work. It's a thing that you have to control with a fixture. It's just really a complexity. So we went away from the traditional old designs to that new rollover design. And it has some really cool features, like you could level it to the play field. It had adjustments so you could level it to the play field. It was self-contained. It had tricolor LEDs. You know, it had all the things. It was connectorized, so there was no soldering at the device. It had all the things that we thought were great. The one thing it didn't have was there were a lot of situations where if the ball was just slightly off-center of the thing, the thing wouldn't register. So now you've got a rollover switch that, while it serves all these things, and by the way, this is not new to rollover switches. The old ones did it too. but so the switch that you're talking about is designed such that no matter where you are on the edge of the switch or the center of the switch or whatever it's going to it stands a much better chance of actually triggering the switch. So is that something you guys designed or is that an off the shelf? No it's something we designed yeah and actually it was you know that switch was driven by Jack. Jack pushed for it, and Jack's engineer, Kevin Kalujic, worked on it with him, and Kevin engineered it, and it's really cool. As a matter of fact, when we get to talking about the new game, which we can't talk too much about, but I had a situation where when I started working on the game, Jack had a string of these things in the game, and there was a shot that wasn't quite working, and I'm fighting with this shot, just fighting with it. And one day, I, and, you know, we, I went through all these iterations. And one day, I, and, you know, I took all the switches off, because I thought, I think these switches are having an effect. And I, I taped over the holes with blue tape, you know, just, you know, blue painter's tape, taped over them, and it didn't fix it. And then I, then I took ramp flat material and put it over the holes, and that didn't fix it. And one day I took my phone, and I, I, you know, I did slow motion video on the thing, and yes, the switches were affecting the shot, and so were the holes. The tape didn't fix the hole, and the ramp flaps didn't fix the hole. And so I walked over to Jack and said, guess what? We're taking all those switches out.
    125:23
    But they were laid out in such a way that they were great when the ball was cross play field and it was doing this, but when you were making this shot, they were lofting the ball. So I imagine if you remove those, they would be replaced with Optos? No, we didn't, you know, it was one of these features where it wasn't necessary to, you know, it was like one of those like, oh, you know, when the ball is randomly moving from the left side of the plate to the right side of the plate, it's going to make the switch. And when you, you know, it wasn't like a thing you could, you know, I suppose you could shoot for it, But it was a very peripheral feature. And so what we learned was, hey, if you put those things in front of a shot, you're going to get some lofting. If you put them like we have them on Walking Dead where you're rolling down and over them, they work just great.
    126:18
    And I'll tell you that the old Star Rollovers, they didn't behave a lot differently. They still lofted the shot.
    126:25
    Yeah. Yeah, but it is a really cool switch for situations where, like in Walking Dead, where you're like, you know, you're not shooting directly over it. You're basically, you know, like draining over it. Then they work fantastic. Right.
    126:44
    So, Jordan, I have a question about LEs because I can't help myself. I always feel like with things I buy, I always look at the high-end version of it. And even though I have local people that can powder coat things and do all that, there's a convenience thing for me, which I think a lot of people forget about when they think about LEs, that there's a lot of things you put on there that, sure, you'll sell as accessories, but I don't have to install them. Even though I like to tinker and do that, there's kind of a fun factor to customizing your pinball machine. I think that's why you guys probably are really successful with accessories, because it's fun to see your game kind of turn into what you want it to look like. But, and maybe you've answered this before, so I apologize if it's repetitive, but is there, like, something that you guys are thinking about, like, as a next step of the LE progression to say, maybe bring something that's really unique to the LE? Because it is the top LE. Yeah. There's quite a delta between premium and LE. So just, I'd love to, as much as you can share, I'd love to know what you guys are thinking around LE. So I think I said this on Gary's – on Carrie's podcast also.
    127:57
    We're very – we've been thinking a lot about how to add value to the LE and also how to make the LE even more special, right? So we've added a bunch of things, which what's interesting is we've not gotten credit for adding them. So, you know, we invented the, you know, we added speaker expression lights and it went unnoticed. You know, we've added expression lights to the cabinet and somewhat went unnoticed. I think that we have had discussions about special modes and things like that. We have had discussion about giveaways and peripheral things to the theme that could maybe come with it The code discussion is an interesting one in which we be very interested in feedback because when you look at the toppers, right, the whole topper code thing, it's a thing you can blame me for, right? Because at one point in time, you know, I had a development team that wasn't thinking, And, you know, it was like, oh, it's just another bunch of lights. And this is the beginning of topper life, right? And so I said, well, why don't we make it significant to the game? So why don't we add something that's significant to the game that, you know, something that tracks your score, you know, something that affects your score, a new mode, something, et cetera. And that sparked them, and, you know, we started down that road. Um, but it's, I also hear from people that they, they don't want us to do a special mode for toppers that they want. They think that, and, and for, for my perspective, it's an additional thing. It's not like pivotal to the game. And, and if you, you know, and it does add value to the notion of the topper. Um, so I, I don't, you know, I don't know where to go with it. I, if, if we did a mode, we did special modes for LEs, which, by the way, we've done a couple of times. I think Tron, you know, has end of line, right, on the LE.
    130:24
    I think, you know, would that, I mean, would people want that, right? So, you know, there's always going to be the, there's another thing about all of this, you know, we talk about additional modes, we talk about additional software and stuff. there's a development cost to these things that nobody thinks about. Nobody talks about it. We put, you know, we put X amount of dollars into a couple of engineers, some artists, sound people to do these extra things. And so that, at some point in time, that has to be paid for in some way. So, you know, I don't know. I'm open to the – I'm very open to suggestions, discussion, et cetera, on how to make, you know, LEs more valuable, how to make them significant, more significant, et cetera. I think that there's a – I'll tell you something else about LEs, and that is we, you know, we just came out of a market, a COVID-fueled market where there's scarcity of things, and it didn't matter if it was Porsches or pinball machines. The fact that the factories could produce limited numbers because of the challenges of producing and the increased demand because people had nothing to do when they wanted this entertainment or whatever, it created scenarios where the market was, all of those products were artificially inflated in price.
    132:05
    And so things literally gained value overnight. And it was worth more the day, you know, the day after you bought it. And so that's not reality in almost any market in normal times. So my feeling is I think that an LE, you know, 10 years from now will absolutely be worth more than it is today. I don't think it's realistic to say that your LE is going to be worth more next week than it is the week you bought it.
    132:46
    You know, I think that we all buy. There's an element of exclusivity that you pay for, and that exclusivity, I think it takes time for it to be significant. If you look at, you know, it's like the notion that the thing is made in limited quantities, if the amount of people clamoring for it is greater than the quantity made, that is going to increase the value of the thing. I mean, I don't, you know, it's, it's, I didn't invent these economics. They're the economics of the world. Yeah. And I don't, you know, I don't want, like, I think it's, we're very concerned about trying to make sure that, that the products are in demand, that, that, you know, we don't overbuild, that we, you know, that, that the price reflects the value, all those kinds of things.
    133:42
    We're not tone deaf to it, for sure. Have there been any discussions about, because I kind of view the LE maybe a little different, because to me, I think there's definitely a part of the hobby where there's people that, to your point, want the thing that they know there's not going to be that many of, because now that's unique. But you mentioned the market and how it's different now coming out of COVID. Do you think maybe, like, has there been any thought of maybe making less of them to make them a little bit more rare? And actually we have, right? I think with X-Men, you know, we didn't – I think we purposely reduced the number. I think the last few games we've reduced the numbers. I think we're – one of the things that happens is our sales department polls dealers and distributors and says, what do you think? and so a lot of the opinions are opinions based on, you know, what they might, you know, what they imagine they can sell. I don't, you know, I think that if you, and that's why, you know, you talk about the title leaks and stuff like that, you know, people, sometimes those guys know ahead of time, this is what's coming, and the conversation that a sales team might have with them is, what's your feeling about this? And then they'll make some recommendation and we look at it and say, okay, that works. There's, you know, you have to, you also have to imagine that sometimes, you know, there are economies of scale, right? So the smaller the run, not every part is affected, but some parts are affected, right?
    135:36
    Now, we have a lot of the fact that the playfields have been common, that helps, right? Premium playfields and elite playfields are for all intents and purposes the same. So you're looking at essentially peripherals of aesthetics and things like that. But, you know, like we've done like, you know, those polycarbonate decals. I first did them on Batman 66 SLEs.
    136:05
    And we did them again on, I think, Blood Red Kiss, right? If you've ever seen one of those up close, you know, that's a serious step up. It's also a serious cost up.
    136:21
    So, but you may see those again, you know. I don't know. We're talking about it. We're looking at it. We're listening to people. We're trying to figure it out. Yeah, I think my only additional piece of feedback there is, and this is just my personal opinion, and I think I have a couple friends that share it. And getting back to the I want something unique, it does bother me a little bit that I can, like I have a buddy who basically made his Kong look like my Kong. And I'm like, no, I don't want your Kong to look like my Kong. I have the special Kong. So that kind of stuff. But he made it like he couldn't buy the unique stuff, like the back glass and stuff like that. You can't buy that unless you cheat, you know, unless you figure out a way to cheat us. But, I mean, it's like. George, this guy, he knows some shady people. So he's a little bit unique in that way, but he knows some people. But I'm not really joking about that. But, no, but you know what I mean. Like, I don't know. It's cool that you can do the accessories, but. Look, I'll tell you that the sales guys have been your biggest defenders in that area. Okay. Right? Those guys are like, when the development cycle's happening, they're all over us on, you know, that's too similar. That's got to be different.
    137:48
    You know, you've got to have the mirror. You know, I've had a situation with the mirror where I've actually seen somehow, you know, like I think some pieces of art that haven't lent themselves to the mirror. And I think we're really forcing the art into the mirror. And I think that, like, for a long time I said, you know, hey, I want the right to make the choice. as the guy running product of them. I want the right to make the choice. Some pieces of art, I mean, I think it's actually inferior to the non-mirror.
    138:28
    It was like, no, no, it's got to be the mirror. Okay, the mirror, the mirror. All right. We've been standing on our heads to make the mirrors amazing on everything regardless of the art. The mirror looks pretty good, George. When we went to go see Kong and you didn't have the, I don't know why, I think the Ellie wasn't ready yet or something, but you came in with it. We were all like, oh, yeah. Like, it looks really good. Like, it looks very sharp on Kong. You know, I think, you know, we're always learning, right?
    138:56
    You know, the Star Wars backlash, it's interesting, is we did those stripes because it harkened back to the blister packs that we remember from the, you know, from the Kenner toys, right? And I think in retrospect, while, you know, we did it on the home edition boxes, and that's where we first did it. And we liked it so much on those home edition boxes that we said, oh, let's do the back glasses like that. And I think that hurt us. And I think a lot of people have come to me and said, is the back glass smaller? I was like, no, the back glass isn't smaller. It's the same size. But I think – and those paintings, the other thing about those paintings is, you know, those paintings are spectacular. The problem is – and I don't know if you were here, Ralph, when we debuted it, right? Like when we did the influencer event and we debuted it and we threw those images in the slide in the room and the room went, oh. You know, they loved them, right? But then when you saw them in the actual games, people said, oh, that looks smaller. So I think the stripes were probably a mistake on the backless. I think we probably should have gone full on, you know, with that arc. But that's a, you know, hindsight thing. When we looked at it, we're like, yeah, I love those kind of blister packs, right? Yeah. I didn't make it to the influencer thing that time. I actually was coming back from New York, and I randomly texted Zach, and I was like, hey, can I just come through and see it? And I got put in a room. I got the same experience, but I got put in a room with a bunch of, like, people getting a repair training. So I didn't have the same experience because when you guys showed it, I was like, oh, that's cool. And they were just kind of. When we showed it, the room went crazy. They loved it. They were like, oh, my God, those are fantastic. It was like, okay. And then they got on the street and everybody was like, oh, they made that back glass smaller.
    140:56
    That's funny because I didn't really think that. But that was interesting. I can see where someone might. Yeah, I can see where someone might. It's not a delusion. You can't please everybody, right? Yeah, no, never. Stripes are swimming, boys. Yeah, right. Okay? I'm a little bigger than those two, okay? I'm telling you, stripes are swimming.
    141:16
    I want to get into the growing pains of any company. The tone of any company is set by its leadership, and over the past couple of years, we've seen the tone and mood at Stern shift dramatically and become much more negative. We've seen many employees and departments publicly or semi-publicly, I'm on some discords where some employees are, they complain about the new stern and sales don't seem to reflect positive change. What is your opinion about this direction? Can you tell us some benefits of new leadership that has benefited? I know exactly. You're referring to a specific situation. And I think that, you know, I mean, we have a policy that employees shouldn't, you know, sort of post publicly because, you know, you say, well, you know, like there are – the company has spokespeople and they should – everybody's entitled to their own opinion. and, you know, if that person's opinion may not be somebody else's opinion. And so I don't – I think that when you talk about growing pains, I don't know that the growing pains that I see are the growing pains that you imagine, right? Like the growing pains that I see are we're scaling into new markets And, you know, there's a need to address and maintain those that's different than things were when we were smaller.
    143:06
    I think that, you know, we have higher production capacity. There are big challenges with making sure that that production animal has to be fed. And so, you know, you've got to get your procurement, you've got to get your parts here on time. And you've got to deal with tariffs and costs and all that kind of stuff. That's the kind of growing pains that I see. I don't – you talk about new leadership. I think that – I think we've made some great selections. I'm personally very happy that Seth is the guy that got picked for that seat because I can work with him very well. And I think that he understands. And I think that at the end of the day, as I said before, I'm the subject matter expert. And when it comes to the things that matter relative to the games, he's going to defer to my opinion. So I don't, you know, I don't worry about stuff like that. He's very good at things I'm not very good at. Right. So he understands business really well. He understands the modern environment of marketing and, you know, basically promoting the company much better than I do. So I think that – and I think that, you know, he's got his – he's got a very global perspective on, you know, what the business should be worldwide. and there's a lot of initiatives to help some of those foreign markets emerge and grow.
    144:49
    And so I think that, you know, I think that there's a lot of people in leadership, new people in leadership positions that where they just haven't been here long enough for anyone to say, you know, is he effective, is he not effective? But I can tell you that we go through some pretty rigorous screening processes when we bring people in. And, you know, we try to pick people that, A, we think will get it, B, we think we can work with, and C, that brings something to the skill set with their skill set that we don't have or that we think could elevate the business. So we have new folks, Matthew Geyer in marketing. He hasn't been here very long, but he's got expertise. He's got a lot of expertise that we didn't really have. We have Tom Helma running the parts and merch area, also very talented, and he brings expertise that we didn't have. So I think, you know, I don't I'm excited about the future of the company. I don't I you know what? I don't like I'm 70 years old. I don't have to be here. I don't have to come to work every day and do this. I do it because I want to do it. And I'm also mature enough and I know myself enough that I'm not going to put myself in situations that don't make me happy.
    146:33
    So I think the company is a better company than it's ever been, actually. I think from the breadth of talent that I have on my staff and these new people that are being added to complement areas of the company that, you know, we didn't have people in because we didn't need people in, right? We didn't need, you know, we didn't need people of Tom Helm's caliber in running that area. But that area is a piece of business that with huge growth potential that's making, you know, that accessories emerge, right, and parts. That's an area of the company that has huge potential and needs somebody with some business sense and experience in similar situations, which he brings, to run it and manage it. And so, you know, I don't, like I said, I don't have to be here. I could, I'd be, you know, if, you know, the day I'm unhappy is not a day I'm going to, I mean, I don't take that too literally because I'm not a guy that walks away from situations that are not perfect. I'm a guy that works to fix those situations to my liking. So on that point, we love the public The pinball public loves seeing you And it seems like you've had to do damage control in two major situations The gun gate, right? And thank you so much for flying us out and feeding us pizza for that thing And then now, edge gate Do you wish that Stern had a dedicated spokesperson that could educate and talk to the audience? No, I'll tell you that I'm happy to do it because I'm so close to it. I'm happy to do it. I'll say that I want Jack to be successful in his role, and his role is in some ways similar in that, you know, he's about informing and having a connection to the community and, you know, a two-way communications thing, right? Ask Jack. All those kinds of things are all about, you know, let's hear what you're saying. and let's try to respond to your questions, to all that kind of stuff. So that's a very necessary thing. In my role, chief creative officer for Stern Pinball, right, that I'm going to get the hard stuff, right? I'm going to get the hard stuff, and I have – I think I have credibility with you guys. um I if I if you know every once in a while I run into a guy that um maybe isn't aware of my portfolio I don't know you know but but for the most part I think I have credibility with you with you guys So, yeah, I'm going to get the hard jobs, right?
    149:55
    I think that, you know, you guys, I think a lot of the community has made, you know, it's like sometimes people need bad guys. They need somebody to point at or whatever. Poor Seth, you know, they've thrown the shit at him. And the reality is he's a great guy. we interviewed a lot of people for the role and we said whoever it is that's in that seat if we can't work with him or we don't see that he's getting it he's got to get out he's still here and I think he's doing great I don't – and I have – I think that part of, you know, the – look, he listens and he's in here in my office all the time saying, what do you think about this? So it's like – and he'll pull – you know, and he hangs out with the designers and hangs out. He loves to come down to the studio, flip the game, see what's going on, talk to me about this, talk to me about that. That's the part nobody ever sees, right? They only see – and so – but if you think about gun games, and you say, who should have answered that? Well, if Seth answered it, you guys were just going to throw more shit at him. So I have some element of credibility with you, so I'm happy to take it. I'm happy to bring, you know, and, you know, the cabinet thing, it's interesting, right? Like there's a guy saying, you know, it's an MDF cabinet, you know. You know, my mic drop moment on the Kerry Hardy podcast was, hey, here's a Williams Congo. There are two pieces of plywood in the entire cabinet, and one of them is the coin door panel. And the other one is like eight inches by 27 inches. It's the panel that holds the back box on. The rest of the freaking cabinet is MDF. My cabinet is actually plywood, and you guys are like beating me up because it's a, you know, You can't put melamine directly on plywood, so they have a, you know, it's an HDF high-density fiberboard, not even medium-density fiberboard, high-density fiberboard on either side just to take the melamine. I think the real mic drop moment was you explaining that you guys have been using that since 2018. Yeah, yeah. It was like, you know, what I wanted to do, the entire camera thing started with, I wanted to, I said, This is my Deadpool in my office. I got my trusty Swiss Army knife. I'm going to scrape the paint off so they can see it as the same damn material. Yeah.
    152:42
    After the whole controversy started online, Ralph and Jamie, we were all talking about it so much. And Ralph was in contact with you, giving, like, real information. Yeah. That very night, we had a pinball tournament at Electric Bat. And one of our friends, Bob, that owns an atomic-age pinball here in Mesa, Arizona, he's an expert woodworker. So we cornered him. We're like, can you explain what's going on here? And he said, Cale, that's no issue. That material is used in high-end cabinetry. Yeah, it is. It's better than straight plywood. So think about this.
    153:27
    As long as we're talking about it. Back in the day when it was a piece of plywood, the entire thing was plywood, and it got a coat of paint.
    153:39
    And they're applying the decals to it, and they were floating the decal. So they're getting the surface of the plywood wet with soapy water, a solution of soapy water, right? And this is the instruction from the decal manufacturer on how to apply the decal. And I'm sitting there looking at this thing going, it's a piece of wood. It's not sealed. I mean, the paint helps to seal it, but it's going to absorb some of the moisture. So, you know, after dealing with, you know, the, like, you know, three, the cabinet, the decal was perfect on the cabinet until it got to the other side of the country. And then you called me and it had bubbles in it. Why? because there was air trapped underneath the thing in the grain of the plywood, and it found its way out even though it wasn't here when it left, right? So I'm looking at all this, and I'm thinking there's got to be a better way. The upright video game guys, the coin-operated video game guys, have been using melamine-faced MDF for years. And you guys know this, right? I mean, Ralph, you know this. Half the cabinets you had that you got rid of to buy your pinball machines were made out of that stuff. Yes. And so I said, let's just go to that. And then I said, but we were still, in those days, we were still using the locked miter joint. And so I said, but the core has got to be plywood because the core, the locked miter joint is not going to work with the MDF. It's not going to offer any strength at all. So we found this material, and we started using, you know, we started using the material. So why go away from the lock miter joint? It's a beautiful thing, the lock miter joint. If you put glue in it and you staple it correctly and consistently, it's a beautiful, strong thing.
    155:28
    However, at the end of a day, I had a situation many years ago, you guys may remember it, where cabinets were getting out to customers and they were coming apart at the seams.
    155:40
    And when I started, when I root caused the problem, I got some cabinets. I got a handful of cabinets here from the cabinet manufacturer, and I took a rubber mallet to them, and I took them apart. And I look, and it's like, this one's got three inches of glue. That one's got no glue, right? The guy – and when the cabinet is painted, the structural integrity of that joint is invisible to me unless I do this destructive testing. So I look at this, and I go, I don't – the guy built I don't know how many cabinets every day, and he's talking to his buddy or he's worried about what's going on someplace else or whatever, and he didn't consistently apply glue and staples to the cabinet. And to me, I have no way of knowing this. The cabinet looked perfectly fine when it got here, and it went down the line, and it fully assembled, and now it got shipped to the U.K. or something. And some guy over there, you know, it's been on three trucks, two jets. you know I mean it's like you know and and um and so I got I got and the guy's saying to me it's cabinet so I don't know if you know this but at one point in time we started adding bolts to the you know like at the at the at the lockdown bracket to hold those corners together these were all like like remedies to the notion that I can't tell once I get the cabinet and I'm calling the cabinet house and I'm yelling at that guy and I'm saying dude you gotta put some glue in those joints, the entire structure of the joint is based on the glue, even more than the staple, because the staple, you know, like the staple is only going to hold it so much,
    157:24
    and what proved it is that, oh, they had staples, but no glue, and they came apart. So now I've got joints that have come apart in cabinets. A year ago, I had situations where people were getting games where they couldn't take the glass off, right? The glass was so tight in the games, couldn't take them off. And I'm trying to root cause all this stuff, and I'm reverse engineering things, and I'm figuring this out, and I'm thinking, it's a piece of wood. The stuff, you know, what happens is when that joint is tight, when that lock miter joint is actually glued and stapled tight, the wood and the ambient temperature dries out, the wood is going to move. It's going to warp. And I have no way of telling because when it left here, it was fine. But now it's changed environments. It's all kinds of things have happened to it. So I said, you know, okay, so I need precision. I need accuracy. I need all these things. And as I thought about it, and I think I said it on Carrie Hardy's podcast, I have designed, I've probably designed 40 coin-operated game cabinets in my life. I started my career at Midway Games. Before they let me design any games, as an industrial designer, I designed cabinets and control systems for upright video games. George, didn't you design the Tron Environmental cabinet? I did. I did the Tron Environmental. I did the Tron Upright. I did, you know, I did the Spy Hunter cabinets. I've done so many cabinets for so many different things, some really weird ones too. I did the pods in the Battletech centers. I did. Did you do? It's really awesome. You could live in the Tron environmental cabinet. You could live in there if you wanted. That would make an apartment. Well, the sales guys used to kid me that, you know, there were sleeping berths in the Tokyo airport back in those days. And the sales guys told me, when we can't sell this thing, we're going to send them to the Tokyo airport. They're going to be sleeping berths.
    159:29
    Did you design the steering wheel on Spy Hunter? I did. Man, I love that thing. That is cool. Just grabbing that, like more than even playing the game, just grabbing that thing and thinking how cool it was. I did. I sculpted those grips. I literally sculpted those grips out of wood. I have the pattern somewhere in a box. Is it the Satan's Hollow and Tron stick you do? Yeah. I love that stick. It's very iconic. And actually, that stick first, I first did it for Gorf, for Dave Nutting's Gorf. Yeah. And then that's when I first did it. And then I used it in Satan's Hollow, and then, of course, I used it in Tron. And then in Tron, yeah, I think you guys have heard the story.
    160:20
    We were having a problem with the switch inside, and I asked a molder to mold me a clear one. because back in those days we didn't have CAD, right, today. Today I can open up my CAD system, cut sections through things, turn things invisible, make stuff.
    160:38
    And so I said to this guy, I said, I want to see what's going on with the switch. Can you mold me a clear one? The guy said, yes. So he molded me a clear one. I worked all that out. I happen to have those things laying around on top of my drawing table when we were working on Tron. And I always wanted to, you know, I had seen, remember that we were developing the game at the same time the movie was being developed. So I was seeing very little bits and pieces of things. But I had seen like this business of everything glows, right? All these blue glows and stuff. And so I started thinking, you know, how do I make the cabinet do this? and at the time black light you know, fluorescent black lights were very common in coin operated video games if you've ever had like a Space Invaders from that era I think Space Invaders Deluxe has a black light that lights this little moon, this little three dimensional molded plastic moon and the moon was painted in fluorescent colors so it would excite from the black light. So I had a black light and I was playing around with how to light stripes and things on the cabinet. And it was like seven o'clock at night and I'm leaving my office and I turn off the lights in the office, but I had left the black light on and the grip, the clear control grip that the guy had made for me to diagnose the switch was sitting on my desk glowing blue from the black light.
    162:13
    And I was like, I turned right around and was like, whoa, that's what I got to do. Wow. So next day I called the guy, the molder, and I said to him, hey, this thing glows. And he says, yeah, it's got no UV inhibitors. You can't use it. And I'm like, what do you mean? And he goes, oh, it'll self-destruct. I mean, expose to sunlight or eventually. And I said, I want to shoot a black light. He says, it's especially going to sell to shrugs.
    162:44
    Oh, wow. It would ruin the structural integrity of it. Yeah. He said, it's going to disintegrate the plastic. So he said, you need the UV inhibitors. And I was like, well, but I want this to glow blue. And he goes, well, what we can do is we can do an experiment. and we can add the, you know, 20% inhibitors, 10% inhibitors, 30% inhibitors, and see where you lose the glow.
    163:11
    And because any inhibitor, you know, and I told him, I said, it's going to be indoors. And he said, yeah, I know, but you're pointing a black light at it, which is like just like putting it outside in the sun. So that's what we did. And I arrived at, you know, I had him mold me all these different variations, and that's how I did it. I'm announcing here officially, George, that I am out of the pinball hobby. I'm actually going to start a woodworking, my YouTube channel and social media presence. It's going to be all about wood. It's going to be retro wood, and that's it. That's all we're going to talk about. Retro Ralph Wood. That's it. Great. Just wood. Wood channel. All right. I think, you know, I'll tell you, there's so much thought. I've been working on this cabinet, like, since, like, 22 or something. The very first prototypes were built at the end of 23 with my old friend, Tom Caprera, who's running the show over at JJP now. And, you know, I built – I have – the thought that's gone into this cabin, nobody would know, right? Like those panels, they're all machined from one side to eliminate secondary operations that can introduce inaccuracy into the process. The thing that they called me out on, those slots in the corners, which are, by the way, invisible once you put the leg on, that's because in the old cabinet, once you got the cabinet all screwed together, they put this giant drill fixture in it to drill the holes at an angle to the corner, at a 45-degree angle to the corner for the leg, right? And there was inaccuracy in that because what would happen is if the fixture was seated properly, you got perfect holes. But again, you got, you got this guy moving the fixture from side to side on the cabinet four times, and you have him doing this all day long. And then going at this thing with a hand tool, it's, yes, it's got drill bushings, but, you know, it's like, I thought, so a lot of that stuff is the stuff that, that got designed into this new cabinet. those braces, that's a common brace. This brace, by the way, here it is right here. Here we go. This thing, it's a piece of 16-gauge steel, and it's common for places in order to get an economy of scale. So it is the structure tying a lot of it together. Let's talk about the bolts. The thing about the bolts is that I can check torque on the bolt. So I know I can not only put a torque wrench on it, but if I have any doubt about the integrity of that particular joint or fastener, I can put a tool on it and check it.
    166:03
    So, you know, and there's an additional element, which I can only touch on briefly, but let's say that down the road, I want to do something different with one of those panels. I want a three-dimensional panel. I want to light it in a different way, et cetera. I'm not starting from scratch because it's a module. I just replaced that panel. That's cool. We did things like, you know, we got rid of the bolts on the side for the slides. The art team, you know, they about threw a party because they were always – there was always some bolt that landed on some guy's face. you know so they're always like shifting you know like shifting the art composition around the bolts um you know you'll find some of our cabinets like one side's got a silver bolt and two black ones to try to hide them and the other side's got all silver ones or all black ones whatever so so much thought went into this thing um and it and the reason i i reached out to car to Kerry was because I thought, man, it's like they're throwing this thing under the bus, and they don't even understand half of it, right? The material question alone, right? Kerry says, I mean, you know, we want to make sure that the MDF, you know, in a commercial environment isn't going to absorb moisture. I was like, okay, first of all, it's not MDF. Let's get that out of the way. But second of all, see that 90s Congo? It's all MDF. It's been on the street all this time. So, I don't know. I don't want to beat a dead horse, but it's a great cabinet. We appreciate you going to that length of it, but we need to also call out the fact that when we, us three, we talk a lot. And when Cale and I like to geek out on tech stuff, Jamie, like, he leaves his body. Not only did he leave his body, he just left the podcast. He's like, I can't take it anymore. I'm four Diet Cokes and boys, and I'm struggling. I've had four night coats during this podcast and I had to go to the restroom I'm sorry I couldn't help myself I can relate George thank you so much for your time tonight I thought this was an outstanding conversation it's not hard for us to go three hours so we appreciate you so so much does anyone have any other things they want to add I just want to say that George thank you for taking the time And, you know, obviously we all appreciate what you do and what you've brought to the hobby. And it's just it's nice to get this. We don't always get a look behind the curtain. And so it's nice to get directly talk to you as the source. And, you know, just to kind of get an idea of what's coming, what your what ideas Stern has. So definitely just appreciate the time that you took today. So no problem. You guys, I've I've said this to everybody. I said to Jason Knapp, I said to Terry, you know, everybody, I've said it, you have questions, you can ask. If I can't answer it, you know, I'll tell you, listen, I can't answer that, or no comment or whatever.
    169:15
    But I'm happy to bring clarity to it, and I'm all about, like, you know, I want you guys to get to know us. I want you guys to understand that, you know, we're not the evil empire. we want the hobby we're not the evil empire we don't hate the other guys we want everybody to have success when they do well I'm cheering them on it's kind of like I don't wish anybody ill I think that there's plenty of room and yeah we're the big dog but so what Um, it's, it's, um, um, I, I'll tell you this. Um, nobody gave it to us. It was hard fought.
    170:08
    Um, I sweat every day of it for, since I joined the company in 2011. And, um, and, you know, I am proud of what we've done. I'm proud of the studio I've built. The success of the studio is the success of the company. and yeah that's my advice to anybody is there's that line James Bond line I've been trying to get it into the game I'm probably going to get it into the game in some future code release where he says to himself he wants to chase the girl, he's in the car he's in the Swiss Alps he wants to chase the girl and he thinks better of it and says discipline 007 discipline I love it.
    170:55
    That's awesome. That's fantastic. So on that note, good night, gentlemen. Good night. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, George. Really, truly appreciate it. Everyone, thank you so much for enduring three hours of us. We really appreciate you. Follow George Gomez. Where can they follow you? Do you want them to follow you? I don't know. I'm like I'm on social. I'm on Instagram. You guys. And you guys know where to find us. So, George, thank you so, so much. See you guys. See you, everybody.
    171:50
    Thank you.