says, "Best hold screen of any podcast." What's going on everybody? I'm going to bang my mic. It's Jeff uh Dirty Pool podcast. Here we are. Today is a special day, as every day is for the Pinball Podcast. Uh it is the 11th episode and I am so pleased to be joined by an international uh pinball lover this time. I'm going to try to say your name correctly even though we did talk about it. I had it. Well, you said I what? 98% correct last time. 98.6. Let's see if I can bump it up one. It's Gom F. Brilliant. You got 100%. Brilliant, man. Well done, Joe. It is Paris Pinball Addict known uh more I would say commonly in the States. Uh thank you for joining me. What time is it there? It's actually 900 p.m. in France and Paris. Yeah, it's uh it's not night time, you know. We're very hot today. I you your lighting has got me all tricked. It looks like it's like noon over there at 9 p.m. Amazing. Uh so you and I have talked more before the actual broadcast went live probably more than any other guest and uh I think that that's kind of a interesting two-parter uh because what I would love to dive into today, we talked about a few topics and I kind of want to set the stage here with everybody that's joined us. The first one is of course you your journey as a kind of like pin influencer which I [] hate that name pinball ambassador uh and what it's like to become someone like that and what you would kind of talk about with people that are interested in going down that road. The second thing that we talked about and I think is is extremely important. you work in marketing and we talked about what can the pinball manufacturers do to make for a better state of release in terms of how to communicate new games and how to get the excitement and the news about game releases from the company to the consumer. Right. Brilliant. Very interesting topics. Let's second one. Yeah. You know, we'll get there. Let's start with you. When did you get into pinball? All right. Well, first of all, Jeff, thanks for having me on your podcast. really appreciate the opportunity. Love talking pinball and uh big fan of your of all the content you've put over these last few months and I think you're just uh you're it's amazing what you've done. Uh, so I I've been into pinball pretty much as a fan since as long as I can I can remember, probably my teenage years. And as you and I have discussed, we've we've had some years where we left that on the side of bed because of, you know, school studies and stuff. And in my early 30s, got back into pinball, got the opportunity to buy a house, a bit of more space. I'm like, well, how about I fill it with a pinball machine? And you got one, got two, you know how it works. And then you're like, because I'm a marketer, because I like coms, because I like visuals and sounds, I'm like, how about I do some content about this? But I appreciate what you said earlier. You made me feel like Keith Hwin for a second. But you know, I'm just a random guy from France trying to make uh fun with pinball. And as we discussed, it's not always easy from afar because obviously being across the pond, you you're not in direct contact with the the actuality. So you need to have some relays there. And fair enough, I've got a lot of good friends in the US. But um it it's been a fun ride since uh probably 2018, I think, for for the content creator on Instagram. Oh, so I think that I'm going to I'm going to say something that I think is fairly controversial, but I think pinball needs pin influencers and pinball ambassadors. And the reason I say that is because unlike a product or or someone who's just doing lifestyle posts on Instagram, pinball's not easily accessible to the general population. It's an unknown thing. It's a niche hobby. It needs people to have a voice in order to share and spread that info to people. And I think that creates an environment where there's a responsibility for the people that talk about pinball to kind of represent it in the best format. And uh yeah, what are your thoughts on that? I'm also going to go turn off the dryer cuz it won't shut up right now and it's my podcast. Shut up dryer. Come on. Right. So, you know what? I I think it's uh it's interesting what you said because we we need those people I believe like you said to be um to have the the word of mouth and to be your your uh your player on the street and be like I did play this game or come in with me try we need those ambassadors so to speak and I believe the brands being in marketing I believe brands need ambassadors but what I try and bring to the table because of my my profession is being more of an analyst I don't try necessarily to chill for chill when I'm super excited trust me I'm super excited and I'm the first one to chill But I like the the whole market analysis. I like to put things in perspective a little bit. See how brands differ from one another. Uh see um how they do things, how they how they could improve things. I try and bring the level of analysis that I do for my clients in PR to my favorite hobby, which is pinball. And I think that's at least in France. I think that's pretty unique. But to to your point, I think, yeah, um it we need people to talk about pinball cuz it's it's an old hobby, right? We can go back to the uh the early 1930s even even to the bagetel from the days of Louis the 15th and Louis the 16th in France because I'm sure you're aware of that pinball used to be yeah it used to be bagel he was founded in France back in the 17th century and it transported to America and Americans being American they decided to improve the game and put flippers so that's why it's called pinball. So the original wood rails were a French invention. Yeah. So you it's called pinball because it was like like a wood platform with pins and the ball was just the pins and like that and the Americans brought the flippers. They're like, "How about we send the ball back up? That's that should be fun." So the flippers come from America, but the actual woodwork and the pins come from France. So that's a funny thing. Uh I lost track of my story. I don't even know what I got there for. We're talking about the the importance of the of the pinball influencers to communicating the pinball. That's right. And it's it's an old game. It's a game that's very physical, tangible. It's It's a hobby that's expensive that it eats up a lot of space in the room. So, we need people to realize in this day and age where everything is digital, everything's untangible, we need to realize that it's fun to put your freaking hands on something physical and to actually make sure that no two games is alike. And I think this is the critical point with pinball is that you play video games, it's zeros and ones in the code, obviously. So, you get to the end of that say video game, it's over. you can have fun again, but you you've seen the end of it. A pinball machine, even if you have one pinball machine in your room, you won't have two games alike. And that is mindboggling when you come to think of it. So, this is why there should be some people say, "Come on, wake up, play this amazing game." This unlike any other game. Uh, Fartex is asking, so this is a good this is a good setup. So, Fartex is asking, uh, what is your job? and we talked a little bit about work and how we can speak pretty independently without any fear because our income isn't from pinball. And I think some of the stuff that we're going to say about how pinball should change in terms of its uh marketing process is going to be pretty blunt in the next hour or so. Um so why don't you yeah tell Fartex let's talk about a little bit of your background. and I'll talk about a little bit of mine and then we'll dive into what we think could be improved in the pinball industry. Sure. So, um, so I'm a PR person and I've been working in PR for more than 25 years now. I work in tech PR. So, I represent brands, big brands like Dolby, like Polaroid, Nvidia, uh, Huawei, the telephones, big big international brands. So, I do PR programs for them, marketing programs, digital marketing as well. So, this is my I I have my own company. I have an agency with about 30 people in there since more than 20 years. So this is how I get my income. Uh so pinball really is a hobby. Uh I do all those travels for pinball expo, pinball festival in Texas on my own expenses. Uh I've I've always made sure that it it's a hobby and I want it to stay a hobby. So this is what you know we discussed together uh before is I think it gives us some freedom of speech that we can say the things the way we we want. We don't feel obliged to have to chill anybody. Uh, so I think that's a strength that we have because we can speak genuinely. And I think at least in France when I talk to people on those live shows that I do in France with my team. I'm like, you know, like it's genuine because I'm not trying to be uh sneaky or mean, not at all. I just say the things the way I see them. When I love something, I say it. I don't have any allegiance to any brand in particular. I just love pinball. I recognize that we need Stern. And granted, we got Sterns. There wouldn't be pinball otherwise. That doesn't mean I have to chill everything that Stern says. I'm big friends with the European director of Stern. uh he knows how I feel about things and it's always been very nice and I want it to be to be kept as a hobby. That's true. Uh so let's do we get into do we get into the do we dive straight into Yeah, let's go. Pinball marketing to the consumer. Should we do that? All right. Yeah, let's go. So there have been a number of launches of pinball machines over the last I mean decades but for this year has been a bumper crop and every single company has kind of taken a slightly different approach to how they are trying to advertise their games to get people excited about it and you and I talked about how each of these had slightly different approaches and that not all of them have really landed and so to help with pinball all people if there are people marketing people that are watching this or listening let's talk about our experience and just a little bit of transparency as well because you talked about being a shill I'm recently I'm working with barrels of fun so I just want to be transparent about that I know that David has been very concerned about people marketing me as a shill as well I'm happy to be very very uh clear about my opinions on both the companies I'm working with and the companies that I'm not on top of that similar to you said with your marketing I work at a post-production company and we do marketing for Amazon and we work huge brands helping taking their assets and making advertising campaigns for them. So the point of that is that you and I know what we're talking about when it comes to marketing. Let's talk about a company that's done a good launch. What do you think of the past? Let's use we'll talk about what Evil Dead, Dune, Pinball Brothers with uh Predator, and of course Harry Potter. Let's Let's talk about the good and bad elements of those launches and what would be the gold standard for how a company should present a game when they have a launch release from from uh the rumor mill to release day. Which one do you want to start with? Well, I mean I would say let's pick one you think that's done the most right and let's let's go there first. I would say the one that's probably been the most interesting case study over the last three years. Now you'll see why I say three years is JJP uh Jersey Jack Pinball because to me it all starts with their big bang launch of Gundon Roses which I feel was an amazing marketing launch by Ken Cromwell uh who was working there as a PR marketing person. I think that was the first time that we had a proper showcase of a video something that looked like a bang. Obviously it's Guns and Roses but remember that video you had the lady playing and everything. It felt like oh my god um when pinball meets Hollywood a little bit. Obviously, I'm just farfetching it a little bit, but it it felt really different. And then you had a another launch. You had Godfather, which felt like a step back, and then they came back with the bank with Harry Potter. So, I could I think that could be an interesting to talk about JJP and that sort of wire form that that happened over those last three launches. What do you think? Absolutely. Sure. Let's do that. Also, of course, I can't believe I forgot King Kong. I own King Kong, by the way, so I'm surprised, which is to me, it's pretty interesting that I feel like Owen's latest game is kind of like off the radar in a little bit, which is which is wild because I think Kong is is an awesome game. And uh and I think Stern's event was a good way of bringing the kind of marketing aspect to it. So that they didn't have to do the leg work because they knew that the people they were bringing would do it for them. All right. So, you know what? Let's start with Kong because you're on it and and it's that's actually a amazing case study as well. You know the thing with Kong that's that's my perception of it. There's been a lot of rumor you're talking about the rumor mill. There was a lot of rumors over the last few months when will the next uh Spike 2 Spike 3 sorry Spike 3 come out and people thought you know Keith Alwin game spike 3 makes a lot of sense who better than Keith Alwin's game for Spike 3 to launch it. So obviously Stern knew that was not going to happen and it was a bit of a low-key launch but I feel it was totally assumed by them in the sense that they know what they have. They have the king Elwin. He's probably making the best layouts of all pinball right now. He's the pat loader of the 21st century. Um, so they know what they have. They have Zombie Yeti. They got a great combo together. They know how to work. The product is good. And they also have something else. They've invested in the Stern army over the years um with um with Michael um name will come back. Sorry. Uh so they they have him who's in charge of the Stern army at Stern and they've built that sort of momentum where they have those Stern launchers all across the all all around the US and this is how by the inside like like a Georgian horse they go into the clubs the barge where people meet and they bring the game and they have that launch party and I feel like they felt for a Keith Alen game combined with uh with Zombie Yeti going through the Stern Army was probably a good way to uh a good way to launch probably very efficient in terms of uh money cost, not too expensive. And because they knew the game was good, it would be a good word of mouth and has a snowball effect. Time after time after weeks after weeks, they'll be like, "My gosh, it's a future classic." I think they knew what they had. I agree. It's just it isn't immediately there because of kind of the dizzying array of machines that are out right now. I I want to roll it back quickly to Spike 3, though, because I think there's two really important questions about Spike 3. one, there's no communication on what the deficiencies are of Spike 2 for anybody to give a [] about Spike 3. Like, what is better about Spike 3 that the current engine can't do? Is it that there's not enough processing power for animations? Like, I've been very critical about Stern's animation and their process for disconnecting of an art package on the screen versus the playfield. is there maybe an issue where like the way the animation assets are handled in Spike 2 is problematic and that's why they're changing it for Spike 3. We don't know. So, for there to be like, oh, we got like I don't care if a game is going to be on Spike 2 or Spike 3 because I don't know what the problem with Spike 2 is currently. True. I I've heard those things that they maybe they feel they can do they could go further with the animations thanks to Spike 3 and they could also animate more stuff on the play field all together and do more crazy things. But as you know this is marketing 101. You don't know what you don't have. And what they'll know is when they launch Spike 3, they will make sure you crave for it and you absolutely want to have Spike 3. I actually got one of my friends in France who's one on my podcast and stuff. He's a big chill for Spike 2 and whenever Spike 2 came out, he he traded all his Spike ones because he just wanted to have the new things. Some people are just genuinely interested in only the new stuff. Why? I know that because it's the shiny new stuff. For them in their mind, it has to be the best of the best because it's the latest thing that came out. So, [] SP. Sorry for my my wedding. You can swear all you want. I just want to have Spike 2. And I know for a fact that he will do exactly the same thing same thing for Spike 3 when it comes out. And Stern will make sure to make us feel like, dude, if you don't have Spike 3, wow, you're outdated. you're outdated because Spike 3 can make so much more. So, don't you think it's strange that like with Insider Connect, they were starting to like build the hype for it kind of before it was released, but there's like no information about Spike 3 now? I don't This is a different conversation like are we does the consumer owed anything to be told about the potential development of a new engine inside of their pinball machine? Like Stern has no obligation to be like, "Hey, Spike 3 is coming out and here's the new features of it and whatnot." It would be nice, but like is does the company owe anything to the consumer for that? No, not at all. Like let's go back to Sony back in the 80s with the Walkman. Did they owe the audience? Do you know what they put in a Walkman? No. But they released the Walkman and they make you feel like you need a Walkman. Now there's a fine line between not telling what's what's in your kitchen and also creating some buzz, some attractivity. This is where the whole teasing campaign come from. So, and this is what those brands, to get back to the topic, have been very good at lately is starting to tease a bit more because you go back five years ago, you you barely had any teasers for for upcoming games. You had maybe a trailer the day before and then you had the the reveal. Now, they they did teasing like weeks and weeks, even months before. So, I feel they're getting the sense, they're getting the marketing 101 lessons that you need to build up the uh the future FOMO as we talked about. You need to you need to build up something out of nothing. Oo, though you said such a terrible word and I think it's so much what Stern bases its its model around, but I think you what you said is really important that I think the pinball companies are currently learning how to market to the new generation of pinball purchasers. You have to understand that the pinball people that bought machines in the 70s and 80s, etc., were operators. They were arcades. They were not individuals. So there was really not a whole need, you know, they'd put out a flyer and a pamphlet, you know, and you can see a lot of this material available on the internet, which is awesome. Some of the art and, you know, literature involved in these advertisements to try to sell it to operators is really interesting historically. But now 70% or so of the of the pinball market are home oper or home players. Like now they need to tell the general consumer that to get them hyped to buy it. It it's not about an operator anymore. Yeah. And there's also the social networks that didn't exist back in the days. So now people are expecting to get content flutter to their to their face all the time. So if you're a company, not even a pimple company, any random company, and you don't put content online on on social networks, people feel like you're you're gone or something's wrong with you or maybe you're going under. So pinball companies just like any company has figured out that they need to use social networks. And what how does that mean? That means they need to put content on. So they put trailers, they put teasers, they put little uh little uh uh contests, whatever. They need to occupy the space otherwise people tend to forget about them. So now there's been let's let's go back to the different companies because every single one of these companies has kind of approached the hype and the teaser concept a little differently. Yeah. Um, I mean we could use the most recent and I mean most recent recent being Predator did 10 or so AI generated hype trailers to try to build like hype for the game and I feel that generating hype is a necessary part of marketing but you you tell me because that's that's more your side of it. Yeah. So, you know, you have to you have to go back to the roots of each and every company we're talking about. So, we're talking about Pinball Brothers. First of all, they're in Europe. They're not on the main pinball territory. So, that's that's not a forte. Obviously, that's a weakness, so to speak, in terms of marketing. So, they have to overcome this first. First of all, so not being an American company means they need to build up the trust. And their last pins, whether it's been ABBA, whether it been Queen, uh, Alien, we know it's it's a redo of highway pinball. Uh the last two pinball machines have not been absolutely amazing. So if you're an American customer, are you really going to buy a a pinball machine from coming from from Europe? You don't even know where it is and stuff like that. So what they did is they're pretty they're brilliant. They're like, "All right, we figured it is not working. Queen was like so so alien is alien. Oh, alien kind of work because it's alien. So we need a dream thing. Predator is a is a dream thing." So first things first, they had to put all their marketing and salespeople to secure the license, the IP. That was probably the the hard same which is the same IP uh team as Alien. I had Daniel on the podcast podcast and he talked it's the same connections and he also sneaked out that the future pins that they're producing are also additional 80s kind of action themed pins. So they've they've dialed into their market and I think that that's smart but we're talking like how do you get people hyped on it now? Like okay Predators Predators and a pretty strong IP in my opinion. Some people don't give a [] and that's fine. I mean it's pinball themes are subjective. They're They're a skin but continue. Yeah. I mean, you know, for me it's not a dream theme, but it's definitely a thing you need to acknowledge. It needs to be reckoned with because it's it's a marquee action movie with TRI of the 80s. So, it is what it is. So, I think they they had the first step, right? And now they're like, how can we get that FOMO that that how can we build up the the trust for people overseas to buy our games from Europe? This is how they got into that crazy trailer campaign. And, you know, they they applied the basics. They're like, "All right, we got maybe 6 months to launch. Let's have a a new trailer every month or every 3 weeks or so." And they went through their through through their sheet, you know, it was it was it's very basic. The problem was that the other companies like Stern and JJP had some home runs in King Kong and and Harry Potter and and things. So, they had they have to battle this out. And this is the one thing that I don't get because yes, there are a lot of pinball companies. We We talked about it, but in the grand scheme of things, we're just still talking about only 12 to 15 companies in the whole world. I mean, they know each other. Can't they just, you know, when are you launching your next game? You know, okay, how about you doing April? All right, so I'm not going to launch mine until September. I understand there's jobs at stake and stuff, but why mess up your launch when you're in the middle of freaking King Kong versus Harry Potter? This is This is wild. This is in between companies is not beneficial for the hobby at all. Uh, I noticed that Spooky moved their normal broadcast date of Thursday onto Friday at the exact same time that Barrels was doing Carl's Dune pinball play launch and then offered a free game to get people to watch on it. Why? Like are you you're trying to lower the viewership on another company's game that so that people don't buy it? Like that this is not the move. Yeah, but Jeeoff, absolutely. And And especially if you're in Spooky's shoes, you see this new company Battles come in with with two really good games in Labyrinth and Dune like like for a new company to have these kind of games. I'll tell you what, Spooky Pinball 10 years ago, they weren't making those kind of games. So obviously if you're Spooky, you're like, well, they're they're definitely a direct competitor. They're taking our spot as the new challenger to the Sterns and and JJPs of the world. So So you're concerned. So if there's a stream with KL, who's one of the best players in the world, you're like, [] we don't want people to get excited about doing too much. How can we make All right, let let's just give out a free game that that will make sure we got people around. So, yeah, it's a tactic. Of course, that's that's target target the bigger companies. Do Do people really just want two big pinball companies? Like, there's there needs to be more than just Jersey Jack and Stern Pinball in the pinball landscape. And to your point about how, you know, Pinball Brothers first couple of games, we're talking about Queen and Abba, not being amazing hits in terms of of players liking them to be straightforward and also for them to have kind of some manufacturing issues. Like I know a lot of operators had issues keeping those games up and running. So you're talking about building both brand like confidence and also to make sure that new people are not afraid to buy from smaller companies. If nobody's buying pinball machines from these small companies, they're going to go away. And you're not going to get Predator. You're not going to get Dune because JJP and Stern are not going to take those IPs on. These other companies are in a position to take on the different types of IPs that the major companies or major pinball manufacturers uh won't do. So like, you know, for people that want to [] on all these other companies and all these games that they're oh, I didn't want Predator, like ask yourself like, well, would you rather have no Predator? Like yeah, but do do you remember there was this Joe Camco post like a couple years ago because Stern was trying to get a Harry Potter and they you know it was and Joe Kamo had that post like oh the [] it JJP got it good luck to you and stuff like but to me it was still a surprise that a company like Pimple Brothers had Predator. I didn't expect them to do that. I thought it was a good lesson learned like okay we need to have a dream thing so to speak if you want to make sales we're not going to sell with Abas Abbas and and Queens. So they got that right, but still obviously there was those leaks on the day of the launch. So there was not even some gameplay videos. Why Why can't they just bring a call or a Jack Danger or someone like that over it's just a plane ticket to fly to Europe and have the guy in the factory with a nice background and show in the best way of the world how you play a freaking good game. This is how you get people excited. Imagine Carlo or Jack playing like, "Oh my gosh, it's so good. I can do this and that." People be like, "If Jaco Car is having fun, I won that game." This is what you guys have been doing with barrels in June. Dude, Canada, which I'm gonna say that word here on the podcast. Canada himself said the exact same thing. They said he could have just bought a ticket for me to go over there to Pinball Brothers in Sweden and play the game. And there you have at least somebody that has some sort of polar or followership that can play pinball to a better level than the than Daniel. Sorry, Daniel, if you're watching this. He said himself in the in the gameplay video. He's like, "I'm not a very good pinball player." And as much as I appreciate that kind of honesty, you and I both agreed you have one chance to show off the game that you're going to present. So Jeff, funny story. Last week in Paris, there was the Paris International Air Show where we have like the equivalent of your all those we had actually an F-35 Lightning stuff. My dad My dad was an A-10 pilot, so I'm I'm familiar. Wow. All right. We'll have to chat about this later. So we had the Paris International Show and all those war planes were were flying over. Imagine you you have like your rubbish pilots like, "Sorry guys, I'm on the plane. I can't do much with the plane, but I'm still going to try and show you what the F-35 can do." Oh, I can't do much cuz I can't I can't So, I'm sorry. I'm going to lie. This is how this is actually the same. You need to put You put the best pilots in the best planes to show what to showcase what they can do. You need to put some great entertaining players. So, that's why I wouldn't put Canada. He might be polarizing and entertaining. He's not a great player. You want a guy like Carl or Jack who can be who can talk and can actually play well and make sure you see the everything about the game and makes you want to get that. I don't get why company like EPC, European European people company, you own Spinball Brothers are like we just buy back a plane ticket and it will make our game shine the best of light. This is easy. Yeah. You're looking at maybe $1,000 plus housing, $2,000 worth of an investment to sell many units of the game. Like this is like mindblowing that this cost seems insurmountable from a small pinball company when the reality is that that the pinball people that are pinball influ encers, it's a it's a collaborative experience, right? Like they want to play the latest game. They want people to watch their stream because they have it on there. And the companies that are making this game want that to happen because it's advertisement for their game. What are they doing? Why? Why is this why is this not happening every release? You know, Jay, I have no idea. And year after year after year, you see the same mistakes being made or the same things not being made and you you don't understand why. So, something interesting switching to Stern. You've seen Stern over the last couple years flying some um American influencers from where they are in the US to the Stern to the Stern offices in Chicago to uh to see the new game. So, they haven't extended that to international. So, have I've been officially invited by by Zach Sharpe, but they didn't not to the point where they would pay me a ticket. But I I appreciate the fact that now they they send emails to people who have like a bit of a fellowship and be like, do you want to come and see our launch in the first things first so you can tell your your followers what you've seen. So, that's a nice step, but you're like, gosh, that's 2025, man. We've been doing that with brands for decades. And it's like pinball is just coming out of the ice in like, oh, oh yeah, we can do that. we can use those people. Still, they're not using us enough. I feel I feel we could do a lot more for those brands visibilities. I mean, I agree. I mostly just cuz I would love to play new games. But I think that companies like Stern and Jersey Jack are kind of like locked in their old habits of how they handle the release of pinball machines. And new companies are just like falling into those habits instead of taking the opportunity to look at the landscape. You said a really important word when we were talking earlier about getting market research. Like, yeah. How hard is it to go and get a nice snapshot of what pinball people want and then translate that into an effective marketing campaign? It's not expensive. It doesn't take a lot. There's plenty of people to be able to You can hire someone to do this job for you. If you can hire someone to work on your pinball machines, you can hire someone to do marketing for them. You've probably you've probably seen the series Madman. You know this comes agency in the 1950s in the US. This This is the whole focus group things, market research, going on the street and just ask people plainly what do you want? Has been done since the inception of times. They were doing that obviously in marketing in the 1950s. They couldn't even use interns to go out there in Chicago be like all right so we're a pinball manufacturer manufacturing company. You know pinball? Yeah. Right. Oh you've played medieval manage. Okay. That's a long time ago. What would be your top 10 things? What do you want? Oh, you want a karate kid or you want a Harry Potter or you want this or that? All right. And And then you bring you go to your boss and like, you know what? 70% of people said they want karate kid. Imagine, oh wow, I didn't know that. Well, yeah, let's make a game because people buy themes. You can have the greatest pinball machine ever built. If the theme doesn't appeal to you anymore, in 2025, you're not going to sell. This is not the 80s and the '90s anymore when a no theme could sell. You can't you can't reproduce Fun House. You can't you can't have Attack from Mars again. I mean, you you can have it once, but that would be the exception. 99% of the time, if you don't have a theme, you're not going to sell in this day and age. So, why don't you go on the street and get the dream theme that people want and make those games? So, this is where you and I kind of differ a little bit here. And we talked about the difference between like tournament players versus, which I'm not a tournament player. I realize that I literally played in the tournament yesterday, but that's not like my thing. Uh, I I think that the theme is important as a skin to the game, but that the rules and how the shots like feel on the game is is more important, but to you that that experience of being drawn into that world under glass is more of of importance to you. Let me rephrase then. Um, let me rephrase. Um, yes, I don't think you're wrong. No, the the whole world in the glass thing for me is the most important, but I agree with you. We need to have the whole combo. We need the rules. We need the audio. We need the callouts. We need the the animation. Everything into a and it's as complex as it's ever been. So, for a game to be a great game in this day and age, it's very hard. It's really hard. Talk about Godzilla. They were able to get the rules, the code, the animations, the the world in the glass, everything. But it doesn't happen so often. I like what they've done with Dune. I like it. know the code is improving. I think the world in the glass is there. The theme is there. But where where I said I wanted to rephrase is we're talking about focus groups on the streets. Those guys, they don't know nothing about rules and stuff. They just want to be attracted to a machine and they will only be attracted to a theme they know. Why did Terminator 2 work in the first place? Because they so Schwrazzy on the translated to play this game. They didn't even know what the rules were. They probably didn't know how to play it, but they came to this because it was Shwuzzy. They got to Fun House because they saw Rudy was like, "What is that freaky little puppet?" So for for guys like you and I who play pinball a lot, we need those rules. We need the whole thing because I would say we're in the upper echelon in the sense that we know pinball, but any random people in the street, which is 99% of the population who doesn't care about pinball, what they will what will have them attracted to a machine is something they can recognize, acknowledge, something they know. So it's a theme. All right. So we're looking at multiple stages of of attractiveness of being sucked into a game, right? So you've got your top layer of like is the IP interesting? Is the art package drawing you in to actually walk up to the game? And then is the game going to keep you interested by having rules and shots that have a feel and and a flow that make you want to continue to play it? Whether that be for a short time in an arcade or a long time in a permanent home game. Uh I think that's like that that and the game being fun. I know Keith Owen's on record of of saying that like fun is every design decision that he makes is based around is it fun? Is the game fun? like he got rid of cycling inlanes uh mini games, you know, for like in lane bonus because it's it's too uh confusing for new players. They don't know to move it and it's too easy for advanced players. So, it doesn't fit either niches. So, none of his games have it. And I think that's a really interesting approach to that. Uh to reel it back though to marketing, right? Since you work in marketing, a pinball company has come to you and is like, "Hey, we have a new IP. We're going to make, I don't know, uh, Poooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Banana Butt the pinball machine, and we need you to help us launch Poo Banana Butt. Where do you what does the campaign look like to you? How do you build the initial hype for it? How do you give a honest experience of what the game is like? You know, you talked about involving an influencer or having someone play the game. What What is the release timeline and and package look like for a properly released game? Yeah. So actually another great case study to to answer your question is actually barrels. The The way they promoted secretly their company for about a year or even more than a year before revealing themselves and launching obviously Labyrinth was was to me is a great case study. Do you remember how it was like for about a year and a half they would go on trade shows and they would leave some cards say saying in in the sense of something fun is coming out. So it they would implying that a new pinball company was coming but didn't reveal the name. They didn't say what it was. So I think that was a great way because all of us were kind of intrigued you know like wow something's just brewing in the background but we have no idea what it is. So I think that was a very healthy no cost kind of teasing about about a new company launching something. Then they launched Labyrinth which was very interesting because they put everything all together in the first place. Usually when a a young company starts they go through the growing pains. Uh this will work but this won't work. Everything worked. They had a theme that was something we acknowledged. Um, they had a world in a glass. They had an amazing topper, which that means all the artifacts around the game were already available. The The crazy shooter knob was available. The topper was available. U, they had a great booth at pinball expo. They had all the um all the people from Barrels had the t-shirts. They They were very corporate, very nice and friendly, but very corporate in the sense that they were they they were dressed in in barrels of fun. It looked like a company who belonged. It looked like a company who had been on the on the map for about five or 10 years. So to get back to Spooky, it took Spooky 10 years to get to that level of respectability. Those guys at Barrels of Fun, they got that respectability on that trade show on D-Day, which was amazing. And I remember talking to my guys and and also to guys from Stern and GP, they're like, "So what's that? What's that comedy barrel? Have you seen that brand?" I think, "Oh my gosh, it looks amazing. Oh, I got to go and see it." All the guys from Stern JJP wanted to go and convey to the booth to have a look because they were they were impressed. This was a way to launch a company and a game that was unheard of. We had never seen that before. But to get back to your point of the timeline, the timeline obviously is critical. So I would get back to what I said earlier. I would ring my 12 um co-arketing people in the other 12 companies like guys when are you launching your next game? Don't need to tell me what your next game is. When are you launching it? April, September. You usually launch in September. Are you doing this again? Okay. I would have a fairly correct view of the the panorama for the year ahead and I will try and be in a in a in a in a spot on the agenda where it's empty, where it's actually nobody's talking about pinball. So, step one is communicate with the other pinball manufacturers to try to find a release window that doesn't interfere with anybody else. Of course. Remember two a year and a half ago, it was Texas Pinball Festival. I think 2024, seven games were launched during TPF. Seven. Not helpful. Do you think that those companies are going to communicate that to each other? Well, they should because say you're one should is different than will they? I know. No, but this is just about good sense. I mean, you go to TPF and you've prepared your launch and you see six other companies launching their own game and maybe there's better games than yours and you're stuck and you're like and then you got three months where nothing's happening between April and June because it's what happened. It was completely empty until the summer. So why don't you use that window when you can be the lone rat swimming and every every eyes is on you? As a followup to that, I will say maybe part one a don't be afraid to delay your game. You we see this with the software industry all the time. There game game companies have I mean look at GTA 6 or whatever that's coming out. There's so many game companies that were just like the release date dropped and they were like [] this like we're pushing our game a month or two because we're not going to try to release this when everybody's gonna want this new thing. So, okay. So, you're saying step one for transparent pinball marketing release is communicate with other sellers and also don't be afraid to delay your game if it steps on another release. But, but look at Stern. What they're doing, they're delaying their codes. That is crazy because Stern decides to have three or four launches per year. No less, no more. And so, they will go through their agenda no matter what. So, you say Stern's delaying their code. Well, you know, they launch games with code in 0.8. 83 84 86. So for sure I think Stern's major thing is to delay the code for as long as possible. Yeah, but that's a problem. That is a problem because if if Stern was a company in the 80s, they existed, but I mean that the Stern that we know now, not the modern version of Stern for sure. They would not release a game until Cody is 1.00. That would not be the case. Back in the days, those Adams family, Twilight Zone, all those games we love, it was almost as ready. the the you can't you can't update you can't update ROMs as easy as you can a software update over Wi-Fi or plop out an SD card and update it. Yeah, but the problem is we consumers and players um we take the grief for that because they can leverage the technology knowing they can upgrade anytime and so they're delaying their upgrades and you buy a game for 14 grand knowing you won't have the full version of code 1.0 until a year. I know guys who've sold their game three times in a year. I know guys who never have a 1.0 zero code from Stern because they they trade their games every 3 months, right? And they're always in code 0. So that that's another problem. So to get back to the to get back to the discussion, let's Yeah. So step two So step one is to try to find a good release time and a window for your game to come out and to to not be afraid to move it to a successful release date. Yeah. Second thing would be once you have your your IP confirmed license, why don't you communicate about it? Why don't you create some engagement? Say I've got Predator. Okay. Uh I know I've got Predator. It's not a secret. It shouldn't be a secret. I know there's other other companies are going to launch other games. I want to make sure that they feel, oh my gosh, I want I want Predator because that's my dream theme. So, I'm not going to buy Harry Potter and Kong because I'm waiting for Predator. So, why wait to reveal that your game is this one? Because companies never say the game. They They don't even say a new, you know, a new game is going to come, but you only know basically a week or two weeks or 3 weeks before that it's actually going to be Predator. So, all right, that's a fascinating question. Why is this information secret? It's not like they're gonna It's not like they're going to say it and someone's going to be like, "Oh, surprise. I'm gonna buy it." Like those that person's already going to make that decision as soon as they know what the IP is. It's not like springing it on him is going to change their mind. Exactly. But look, Jeff, look at Hollywood. They They teased their their films a year before. You know, a year before that Star Wars coming next summer, you know, next year Jurassic Park is coming. You have a a six-second trailer that Jurassic Park coming next year. So, we're excited. We get excited. So, why don't you say our next game is Predator with a fancy 10-second trailer and then nothing for 6 months. Nothing. You just wait till the day, but people know you're coming with Predator and they get they're excited by your brand. Oh my gosh, this is the company that's got Predator. I can't wait to see it. But then you shut up for 6 months. You don't do a trailer every month because you just start to dilute the interest with every new trailer. You try to add another 10 seconds and people are like uh oh, did you see that? Oh, Oh, I'm not sure. Why' you do that? Why do you give people ammo to criticize your game? I love this. All right, so step one, release it. Don't be afraid to move it. Step two, you do not need to hide your IP as if it is some secret code or secret like trademark thing like you can tell people what game you're making and especially if it's, you know, it's your dream theme, leverage it. Be proud of it. Be proud to announce you got better or something else. which every game that people work on, especially now that I'm recently working at barrels, like I I totally care. I want everybody that plays Dune to be like, "This is the coolest thing that I've ever played or they am hearing at least like people that work on the games are proud of them and they really are excited to be working on them. Even if they're themes they don't care about, they still want to make a great game." So, this whole illusion that people are trying to make you mad as a pinball person by sabotaging your pinball dreams, by making your favorite theme terrible, is just like, it's got to go. Step three. What is step three? Yes. Step three is is Dday. It's a bang. You need to have the killer video. You need to have the killer marketing materials, the killer flyers. You need to inund the space, all the social networks, the whole planet knowing you got the best game that's ever been made. All right, break down step three a little bit more cuz because marketing materials could mean every I mean you could send out EPK, you could send an electronic press kit to specific streamers. You could build a promo video of a different side. You can do a talking heads thing like Jersey Jack did of this. Not like insanely, but we're trying to I want to make a framework of like I want pinball manufacturers to jump to this part of this podcast and be like, "Hey, you know what? This is a good thing to hear and this could help change how games are mentioned and talked about. I appreciate Jeeoff. So yeah, of course going with the NDA thing and getting your top influencers so to speak to be have those informations ahead of times under NDA so that everything is released on their websites and their their social networks on D-Day men. They're actually doing this now. Stern's doing this. I was contacted by um Pinball Brothers a few weeks before to get the materials like the guys like Nap Arcade. We got that same Google Drive with a bunch of materials in it. Yeah, exactly. But it's still done in a way that's not very exclusive. You don't you don't feel like you have access to amazing outstanding materials. In my work, when I let's I work for Nvidia. When there's a new graphics board, a new uh GTX or whatever, I make sure under NDA to brief completely the journalist. So, he has his article in his review by the new GTX ready for D-Day. And when D-Day comes, he can publish it and it's as detailed as possible except for pinball news uh and and arcade as well. Uh we have access maybe to some interviews and stuff. I don't know. I feel like most people don't. So, it's more like a case of oh, we did it. Yeah, we shipped a few images to to everybody. That's done. So, it's a bit amateur hour a little bit. So that can be done in a much better way to um uh ignite your top 12 15 guys and make sure they they have the in-depth article ready with the nice HD photos that put your game in the in the best of light. So that's that's something to do. You also want to set up those interviews so that those who are able to to show some video content can ahead of time. We saw that with Harry Potter with Ritual Ralph. He did a very nice feature it but I feel like he was sponsorized a little bit by JJP. I don't know. It felt a bit like that. But the content, we should talk about the JJP1 at the end cuz I think that's a really good use case of of things that were done good and things that were not so great, right? But in terms of the the look of it, it looked professional. It looked like it it's it's a great thing for GJ JJP. So, you'd want those content creators to to have access to that. When you see Stern flying people in the US, only in the US to the Stern factory, it looks like like Ben Camp a little bit. They got their backpack. They take some pictures. You got a few factory. It's It's great, but it looks a bit amateur-ish. You can do much better than that. Bit more pro. So, the whole the amount of effort to go from amateur to looking pro in terms of promo material stuff is like not a lot. It is a very small step for a graphics package and you know gameplay footage and stuff like the the kit that needs to be put together to to make a pinball machine look and be amazing for marketing materials is not big. No, No, it's not big. And to be to be fair, uh they've stepped up their game over the years. It's not where it should be, I believe, but it's still much better than it was even 5 years ago. So, I think those companies are on the right way. Definitely. And again, to talk you talk about the new companies doing some things. I feel like companies like Barrels with the way they've promoted themselves in the first place have influ the the old-timers like oh wow oh look look what they do it's a bit different like they you you can go outside of the boundaries you can think outside the box as we say in marketing so also another thing those brands have started to have proper marketing directors whether it's it's Zach Sharpe at Stern whether it used to be Ken Croml until recently at JJP this wasn't the case a few years ago they're staffing up They're a company with marketing people a bit more. Those guys know how it works and they're bringing those things. They also have the money to do that. And the margins for pinball machines for smaller companies do not leave that much of a room for that kind of budget, but the people that are running the companies are just having to do the extra leg work for it. But this is like hopefully the information for that. On that note, uh audio and slave says the Predator gameplay video with commentary was horrible. And I'm sure the guy commentating was exciting, but man, it sounded like he was green greening out and not interested. That's Daniel. That's the CEO of Pinball Brothers playing that game. And that's what's crazy is that like not only is like that not either communicated, but also it just shows that like why are you doing this? He self- acknowledged he's not a great pinball player. And as much as I understand culturally that delivery is like a little more mellow, that's more of a a cultural thing as instead of a marketing thing, but that's been criticized by a lot of people that that gameplay video is just like too chill. It's like Netflix and chill of pinball gameplay and it needs to be a little bit like you're selling a product, you know? I don't think it gives justice to uh people company to have the CEO uh play on the game. I know Stern's doing that with uh with Gary, but it's for fun. And we all know Gary is for fun when he puts his hands on the game and they do a couple pictures, but but Gary is not selling the game for you. But when you went Pinball Brothers and you're a young company, you still you're building that trust because you're overseas. It's complicated. And you have your own CEO who is not even a native English people trying to talk in English and he plays at the same time. It it's it's more complex. It's um they bring some difficulties to themselves that they didn't need they didn't need to. So step three is to build marketing materials and actually have a good presentation of the product that you are selling. Right. Yes. And And also very important that everything is launched on D-Day, not the day before, 3 days before, one day after because you feel like things are leaking. You didn't you don't know if it's leaking from the inside or the outside. But all these companies, there's some leaks right now. It's like it's amazing. Whether it's JJP, Pinball Brothers, everywhere you got a leak. It's like coordinated coordinated launch. Yeah. I mean, I remember visiting Stern and seeing that room and it was like forbidden to go inside. It was the room where they were starting to have the white woods of the new project. So, it's easy to shut a door and not leak it. It's not Keith Al who's going to leak his own game. So, you feel they're coordinating sometimes, not always. Some leaks because they they feel it's going to give them the edge. It's actually the opposite. They're shooting themselves in the foot. So, you don't need to do a factory tour to do uh a launch either. So, if you're worried about leaking material, like do it digitally. you do not have to invite streamers to your, you know, your factory. It's great to have that kind of transparency and give tours and whatnot, but if you're worried about leaking whitewoods of new potential projects or whatever, like don't do that then. Oh, don't do that. No, the the one thing that puzzles me is I feel those companies are struggling to have a proper reveal on each hour of D-Day. You know, it's coming on the 18th of June, but somehow on the 17th at 4 p.m. you have all the the blurry pictures and it's it happens all the time. So, I don't I don't understand that any dude. What about Jack's announcement of Harry Potter at [] TPF? Like, what the [] Oh, we all know it's Harry Potter. Yeah. But you know what? He He had a pass on that. Not Not the way he did it, but everyone wanted Harry Potter. This is the was probably the ultimate dream theme thing that we never thought we'd have because we all know the story with JK Rawlings not wanting to blah. So even if he were standing up on a on a table and seeing it in the words the most plain voice, it still would sell. People like, "Oh my freaking god, it's actually coming." And from JJP, he had a it was a home run regardless of how you say that. But if you're going to try to do a coordinated launch, like involve that part in it. You can easily say like, "Hey, like yes, everybody knows Harry Potter. We're working on it." And be like, "He did. He was like, "I can't wait to see it." Like save your money or whatever he said. It was just there was something so strange about it that like I know I remember coordinated. You know something Jeff? Uh that's that's a question I want to ask you know Ken Cromo left JJP but whenever I see him next probably at expo I want to ask him but I be I will tell him this. Um Ken you were at JJP when Jack did this sort of came out and then say this how did you react as the P person because that was I heard that wasn't planned at all. He just came out of his own way and just said and he said some things like yeah you will see uh it will did you like Wizard of Oz it will be exactly like that as much so we all thought it was going to be a white body because he promised so many things in it and and I mean the game looks amazing don't you know don't get me wrong but he just said so much things I wonder on a PR standpoint how did they do the damage control after this like Jack what happened we told you not to say it and you did and we're not ready I don't think they were worried just based on the acted as Harry Potter. They were just like, "The game's going to have its own it's going to have its own marketing legs based on word of mouth." And at that point, they just don't give a [] Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So, what are we stage part four, part five? All right. So, we've got day and we've announced a marketing campaign. What's step five? Yeah. So, so now the game's out. All the marketing materials on the social networks. Everybody knows. And now people are just going to go blah. I love it. I hate it. It's great. It's horrible. Okay. Now, you can't control that. And you have to stick to your guns because you're always gonna have the haters, the naysayers, but you have to trust that you have an amazing product because you've you've worked for this for like a year or two. Okay. So now you have to do it's the post launch. You need to make sure that this game goes in the hands of the people that will give justice to it. So, you want Carl, you want Jack Danger, you want the guys that will make it look or play even better than it actually is because those guys are fun. They're entertaining. We know they play well and they can get the most out of the game. In 30 minutes, it will get you to some levels that average Joe on the street can't even get you to. So, you won't get excited. Make sure this game shines in the bright light. That's audio enslaved also said, you know, he mentioned Joel and Jared from Flipping Out. I think it's also good to give it to streamers that are also distributors. Like, why would you not want someone who's streaming it that you can that can actually sell the game immediately if people are interested in it? True. I mean, they're doing a great job. I mean, there Yeah, it's it's good. I mean, not to plug them. I'm just saying like if you were if you want someone to sell your game, it would be convenient if the person that's showing it off could also have the ability to sell it in case people are interested just on on the basis of actually moving units. Um, all right. So, don't don't [] shy on supporting the game post launch. you need to continue that momentum after you've released an amazing press kit, after you've delivered the game to people that are going to show it off in its best light. Do we talk about do we talk about code updates now? Like what's what's step six? Yeah. So, the code is a problem in itself because as we've talked previously, uh companies, they just throw their games out there and the code is not ready. So, it's deceptive. People are like, uh, wizard mode is not coded. Uh, the audio is not synced up. Uh, so wouldn't step one kind of resolve some of this though? Because if they're not trying to rush if they're not trying to rush their game out and they know that they have a window that other ga mes aren't going to step on, doesn't that give a company the potential to plan to have the code at a certain state for launch date? It It should be, but I I do believe that the whole code issue should actually be addressed. Look at JJP. When the game comes out, it's as close as possible to 1.0. You're usually on 90.93 94. So what you see is not exactly what you're going to get but as close to what you're going to get and that is satisfying and like like we said although it was a time of the epsoms is how the Bally Williams games used to be. You You had what you had but Stern has launched that sort of um habit of we're getting the habit of not not having a finished product when the games launch and we all know that it's going to be deceptive. This going to lead to critics. Look at X-Men. X-Men is an amazing layout by Jack Danger. one of the most innovative and creative layouts of the last 10 years, I believe. Jack is an amazing designer. But the game has been killed so far, so far by what the code was. And of course, you saw last week they decided to take it again. It's going to be much better. And I I've heard people who've played the new code. They're like, "Oh my gosh, it's a great improvement." It's But I'm not going to say it's too late. It's never too late. You can have a second or a third career. But why mess up your first launch? We said earlier, you have one chance to make one good first impression. Why don't you do that? Why don't you just kill a great layout with a code that's not ready? I don't get it. They're They're abusing the consumer faith that the game will get there eventually and then pushing their FOMO process where people have to buy the game in their mind because they believe that they'll be missing out on something. Joe brought up a really good point here. Joe the Dragon says that they need to get it out there for more wide testing. I mean like software has the ability of doing a beta launch where they can put out whatever hundred thousands of versions of the software or to give that version of that software to people to find out where the problems are. Pinball Machines is a 400 lb dead piece of weight. It's a little harder to do that. Oh, damn it. There's ads coming. Hold on. Silly alarm sound. We got 2 minutes until there's ads. ads. Uh, so how do you how do you get the game properly play tested by a wider audience without getting the hate that your game is unfinished or whatever? Yeah. So that's a very critical question because back in the days again going back to the 80s and 90s uh in Chicago people like Pat Lauder and and Joe and Joe Demar and Larry Demar sorry they would put the games in a few arcades and they will see how people react. I know a famous story from Pat Lauder. He said, "We were testing Fun House. We didn't we we think we had a hit, but we were not sure at all because it was very innovative. He had the first animatronics thing. They put it in in one arcade for a Saturday and Larry Demar and and um and um Pat Lauder were just sat in the background and they just saw people, girls and boys coming be like, "Huh, what's that head? Oh, that's spooky. That's freaky." And they would all be attracted to look at it. They wouldn't necessarily put a coin in it, but they will all come across and look at it. And you know what? Pat turned to Larry Dear and said, "Dude, we got a hit." They knew it because they field tested it. That's an amazing story, but you can't do that now. If somebody put a game in an arcade that was like a secret, it would be all over the goddamn internet in like minutes. So, how can someone play test it without like exposing the reality of what the code is in that current state? So, what you want to do is if I were if I were that company because this is why you asked me earlier. I would I would call Carl and I would call Jack. Let's get with these two guys. We know they're great players. I'll be like, "Guys, I'm going to fly you over. You're going to sign an NDA. You can't take any pictures. Uh, you have to leave your phone at the entrance. I want you and I'm going to pay you and I want you to freaking test that game to the end of it and I want you to tell me everything that's that's right or wrong." This is what kind of they do. But the problem is they do it in-house with people who are in the house. Like at Stern, Keith will call Brian who's going to call John Borg be like, and they're all like, "Oh, it's a great game. Oh, maybe I would do that." Which is great. It's fantastic. But how about you got to break you got to get out of the bubble. the the filter the filter of internal team feedback is not like someone who's outside of that company is not going to be afraid to say something that could be potentially hurtful to someone's feelings or they may just see something that you just aren't aware of because you've been heads down in the development of it. Yeah. And also because eventually it's a product that needs to be sold. So you need to have someone who's an total outsider and see how he reacts to something shiny and new that's presented in front of him. Because if you're John Borg and Brian and you've already been called up on three times or four times the last two weeks to check if the ramp is working, you're like, I know he's working on new Metallica. I know it. But if you're Johnny Good and you're just a random player and and you're like, ta, you send an NDA and you don't have your your camera be ta new game. Oh, or like okay. You can see immediately by the behavior, the non-verbal language if he's attracted like he like when he was attracted to Fun House. Those guys didn't play Fen House, but Larry Dear and and Poller knew they had a hit just by the way people's eyes reacted to Rudy like h even what those who were spooked were like we got a hit because the way they reacted. You need outsiders for that. So Joe Joe also says that you know you got to test it with non-pro players as well. I I think that that's less of an issue just because the people that are developing pinball machines, they're not necessarily the best pinball players. I know that you want to believe that every single person that works at a pinball company is like the top 100 IFPA. That ain't the case. Look at Pinball Brothers as a perfect example. Daniel, the CEO, is the one that played the gameplay for Predator. That is an average player. Sorry, Daniel. Uh it's just that's the reality. So, it's easier to have access to players that are average than it is players that are like aliens like Carl. Who's mean to me, by the way. He was mean to me when he came over and played Attack from Mars. He was a big jerk and he's such a sweetheart, but something about being on the stream, he's just a big He just razed me left and right. But it worked. We got to rule the universe four times in one game. So, proofs in the pudding, you know, man is absolute maniac. Yeah. Well, that's uh you know, I think the hobby is glad that we got guys like that who can not only play well but explain well as Yeah, Carl is an incredible resource to every pinball manufacturer and it's a shame that like you said it's people like Carl and it's not just Carl. There's plenty of players that are really good that have good streams that would be excellent like platforms for this opportunity, right? Um, and I think that the way you frame this out is is so clear and obvious that I hope that any pinball manufacturer that is watching this video even takes a small amount of this process to heart and maybe changes how the pinball release process is is done. You know what? It's not complicated and we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. You just have to look at any launch of any product that's mainstream and see how those guys do it and just apply those rules. It's just it's just again it's basic. It's very basic. It's It's like because you work in marketing. Yeah. But it's maybe the fact that our hobby is a niche hobby and they make they make it niche marketing as well. Trying to do things a bit different. But again, it's more like um in French we say do bons. I'm trying to find a translation just uh do the things how it's supposed to be. Like you know, you don't want to uh you don't want to overflood in the days before. You want to make sure there's no leaks. You want to make sure the right people have the the game. You want to make sure your code is ready. just just basic stuff, man. Just don't give ammunition to people to to be like, "Ah, I told you. Ah, and look and this and that." This is what's happening. There's too too many naysayers, but they have the ammunitions to be naysayers because we we feed them the Anyway, no, I mean, it's true, but also like you say like just, you know, do the NDA, don't break, it's easy, blah, blah, blah. But like, you know, that that retailer broke the NDA by releasing that footage of Pinball Brothers uh whatever the of uh Predator without permission. Like what are they going to do? Sue him? Like that doesn't help anybody. And it's not like you want to start that kind of like That's bad. That's bad. Actually, the word I was trying to use is common sense. You You need common sense. Sorry, I was looking for that word. But yeah, I mean, you're talking about you're a distributor, so you're official and you actually baked the game. It's just there should be a penalty for it. You can't just let it go. would not give that distributor access to the game in the future, but then okay, now you're losing whatever potential sales that that distributor would do. That's just I don't I should probably know this, but that distributor if they didn't know that that was okay, like if they thought it was okay for them to release the footage, that's different. But if they released that footage like with the intention of trying to get extra hype for their particular company so that they could sell it, like they've done a disservice to both Pinball Brothers and their own business. Like that's [] They screwed up huge. Yeah. And now Pinball Brothers has to make excuses for it. Exactly. Plus, what they did was like to release it the day before. So, it's it's irrelevant. It's not like they're going to get all the sales. It's the day before. So, well, it's it's a moot point. Why' you do that? I don't get it. So, this all this tells me one thing. Those companies are progressing. They're on the right path to becoming professional, but it's still a little bit amateur hour in terms of marketing. They can do so many things much better if they had just common sense. Talk to people on the street what they want. Have people test it before. No, No, no. Just Just make it work. Make your launch a success. It's not complicated. But then again, you see sometimes a great Harry Potter launch and I think everybody agree that it looks like it looks it's amazing. But one thing about one thing about Harry, let's talk let's talk about Harry Potter. Let's talk about Retro Rouse video and and the launch for Harry Potter. The thing about Harry Potter, and I'll start with that, is the game has been sent to the content creators. So, they're achieving it. We know that they receive the game. So, they're like, of course, they're going to say, "Now the real deal comes from JJP." People like you and I, people who play games are going to get those games and be like, "Okay, this is what I really think about the game." And now we're getting to phase two where the real feedback on JJP is going to come out. Is it really a good game? Is it No, no. Honestly, I got a good feel about that game. Uh, it usually doesn't take me. Have you played it? Have you played it yet? I haven't played it. What What's your What's your take on it? I've played two games on it over 5 minutes at on tilt and uh it's congested in the back. It's pretty minimal layout for a Jersey Jack game, but it flows really well and there's a lot going on with ball paths in a way that make it feel really exciting. I think a lot of people have complaints on the code. I I'm not getting one. So, I'm not going to be able to go deeper into that. Like, if it's in League, I will play it. But I think it's going to be one of their best games. It's fun. It's fun like Elton John was in terms of how like flowy it is. Uh, and it has so much Harry Potter stuff going on that it'll probably appeal to a lot of the people that love Harry Potter. It It's a good game, but when does Jersey Jack put out a game that's just a straightup turd? Like all of their games are like okay to good at worst and okay to good also at best which is my personal criticism with JJP. I've never played a game from them that's just been like holy [] like this is you know a Godzilla or you know a Jurassic Park like the whole package you mean? Yeah. Right. Uh well you make me happy with what you say because first you said it's packed at the back. I like that. I like when it's packed at the back. I like when it's flowy. So that means the first twothirds of the play field need to be empty to get the flow. I like that. I like that there are a lot of pathways. It's fantastic. There's mechanical issues. The staircase broke within a week at Ace. And also the uh there's a special switch that's kind of like a it's it's not a full gate, but it's like a like a like a spear that detects when the ball comes in from the out lane cuz the like protect target, which is the clear target that pops up from the out lane to allow the ball to go through. It doesn't pop up every time and it's supposed to be as it if it has enough speed in the out lane. It just like jumps over this gap and immediately on the other side of the gap there's this little spear switch that you know lets the game know that the ball has made it across the gap. That mechanism hasn't functioned 100% on location. But is that an problem? Probably not. But that is concerning and this is to my point like now we're going to have the reflection of those issues which we didn't have with the content creators right now because they were all chilling because they had the game for free, right? Nobody's going to say that kind of [] if they're given the game. Yeah. No, I know. I know. But But that's a shame though because they they're talking to an audience who's going to have to pay 12 or 14 or 16 grand for a game. That's a lot of money. That's a That's a small car money. You owe them the truth. I agree. I think if you were given Sorry, go ahead. I'm just getting hyped up because I totally agree with you and I want to talk about how much I agree with you. I'm not talking about a a $150 product. you talk you people are going to put five freaking figure on something that's a toy they need to to know the truth so if a mechanism is weak it's not doing it justice to the company like oh what an [] no I mean it has to be reported hence going back to the field test that we talked before because they would know that this is a problem right the game that they use like you said to have people test it like Carl or whatever it should be a game that gets a hell of a lot of abuse It shouldn't be like multiple units and they're all just kind of getting worn a little bit. It should be one game that gets rode [] hard and like with no love like it needs to get beat up and exactly find out what the issues are by players that are going to play the hell out of it. Like Like Porsche takes their cars into god and they go like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles and there all the conditions and they know that car can sustain 100,000 km. Not miles, sorry. But I have no idea what a kilometer is. is I don't know what you're talking about. Is that Is that a Is that a type of drink? Is it a sandwich? Absolutely. I was born in England. I should know this now. You grew up in England? Yeah. Oh, no. We'll have to Oh my gosh. I grew up in England as well. I was in London. Oh, we'll switch. I'm a little further north and a little a little more east. We'll have things We'll have things to chat about. So, again, we go back to marketing 101, common sense, doing things normal. Make sure your game is is test approved after hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of people beating it and see what breaks and what doesn't break. So gosh, but you know what we need to do? We need to get a a pinball manufacturer that has seen this video on the podcast and be like what what are we saying that's so simple to us that is hard on the other like what's the other side of this of this mirror, right? like why can't you just do easy materials for this or that? Like what is going on? Like why why can't this be resolved easy and find out like what is the problem that is preventing this from happening? So I'm going to give you one answer one straight answer about this. They have their own agenda and one of one of the items on the agenda is having to pay the bills to pay the salaries. So they can't afford they can't afford that's what they'll tell you to postpone a game by two months because they have those freaking bills. Uh remember that game it's legit though. Yeah. And remember that a game takes between a one and two years more two than one to make. So it's it's a long project. So at some point they can't be like oh we need another 3 months. You with thing you and I like you know you've already been working two two years you can't afford another. They can't because they're like this you know they they need to pay those freaking bills. Um and and in the case of the salt and pepper posy here on the pinball internet and and in the case of Stern, which is obviously the biggest pinball company in the world. Even Stern, they got another problem. They got a huge factory now, twice the size of their previous factory. They got more lines than they have. They have to fill those lines. They need to get the games going. So every 3 months, they better have a game. They need to have four games a year. They can't be like, "Oh my god, my code is not ready. We need to post." No, No, dude. We got another game in 3 months. Your game goes down. Deal with it. I don't expect a company to digest and completely change what they're doing from the ground up. But I think that even a small percentage of some of this stuff of either communication or how they change their marketing stuff, like how they test their games, if even one of these steps was even slightly adjusted for the the whatever release cycle of a game, it would benefit everyone. Yeah. Like nobody loses here. No, of course. But then again, they they have their own agenda. They have those things we're not aware of. What we know is how much uh a pinball machine costs, how much they're selling each, how much profit they're making. We know how much machines they make over one year, all these things. But at the end of the day, it comes to, you know, you're going to sell a product mainstream, but a product that's not necessary. So, you need to go the extra mile in terms of marketing and sales because it's not like you're I mean, you're not selling tomatoes. We need tomatoes for your salad. Sleep. It's not. So, you have to do something else. You have to make sure that I need it. I want it. That's why they've created this whole FOMO thing which is kind of disappearing right now. That was a tactic of course, but when you sabotage your own launches, whether it's through a distributor or yourself or what, it's like why do you shoot yourself in the foot? It's already pretty complex to sell pinball machines that are expensive. Don't shoot yourself in the I think that pinball m companies are missing the point that the consumer for the most part isn't a total idiot and that the FOMO part is a predatory practice and that a lot of pinball people I think a lot of the toxicity that exists in the pinball community and that is directed at companies comes from being frustrated at being treated like that and true agree just if you treated your consumer with a little bit more not respect, but whatever the the nice version of that is, like I I think that that would be a better approach. And you know, it's interesting because when you go on those pinball shows, those those guys are like the friendliest people in the world. You go to Stern, you go to JJP, you go to barrels, you go to Spooky, but they welcome you with open arms. They are the obviously I do go to trade shows and I see brands and stuff, they will not be welcoming. So there's there's a camaraderie, there's a friendship around pinball and people from the inside, pinball people from the inside working those factories, designers and stuff. They're super approachable. They will talk to you. They will engage with you. I remember I had a chat with John Borg about the differences between X-Men and Tron, those games he made and that he he had those two games at the same year and he had to pull something from Tron to put in the other game. And they will just say things and then when it comes to marketing, they they just close their eyes. They close their factory like no, we don't worry. We know we know better. We know better. We do our own stuff. This This is just controversial. I don't get it. It's two-faced. Why is the Why is the personality that exists at the trade show when you're forced to be face to face with somebody different than the when you're stuck in the [] working on the game? I don't know. But again, we mentioned earlier they're trying. They want to make great games. So, this isn't I don't think they're deliberately trying to be like this. No, they don't. And they know there's room for improvement. And I do believe they've engaged in a good way. Once turn flies people around, it's a good step. It's not enough, but it's a good step. They're They're starting to understand that they can use this community. They can use the social networks. They can use all these mediums they have around them to to uh create some uh intensity about themselves and and they have to because it's expensive. It's an expensive business. Look at that. Speaking we've manifested. We've brought in barrels of fun. CEO has has arisen. We've We've summoned we have summoned a pinball manufacturer by speaking about it into the ether. Thank you, David, for hopping on. Uh maybe David would be one that would be able to come on here and talk about the five-step process that we've come up with and and what the actual challenges are that that make it more difficult than us being just like this is easy. Why doesn't everyone do this? So, David, I don't know. Is David listening? He's here. He's in the chat right now. So, David, I don't know if you remember me, but we had this interview um on the day you launched Labyrinth in uh I think it was Texas Pinball Festival, right? Uh and there you go. You were super welcoming and we loved it as French pinball content creators. You have the CEO of that new company take time for us. You had so many people on the booth. You took your time. We took 20 minutes. We shot a great video. People loved it in France and you immediately gave some amazing feedback and people were like, "Wow, that's a really cool, great company, a great game, approachable CEO, very engaging and this is how it works, you know, and you you got it right. I think you had a great launch." Well, he says pinball launch or pinball's hard. Leaks are a huge problem. Ask David step two. I'm curious what David's response is going to be to that. Just step two. You're trying to remember what step two is. I'm putting you on I'm putting you on the spot. Yeah. Uh step two step two is to not keep your IP secret of what what your next project's going to be or why or why is that being kept secret? True. Thank Thank you. That's actually the most important steps. I do believe there's no need to keep an IP secret. Why is that? We talked about the example of Hollywood. When they have a great movie, they announce it a year before. They They uh tease Jurassic Park a year ahead. They tease Star Wars a year ahead. people get excited about it, you know, and then there's nothing. You shut down for a whole year or for six months. Why do pinball companies, including barrels, why do every pinball company just wants to keep their theme a secret until the days before? Why is that? Which is which is actually a mistake because say your competitor launches an amazing game two weeks before, all the money goes to that game. And then the consumer who might have who might have wanted your game like, I've gotten because I play I bought Kong before. But if you say you got Dune ahead of time, people like, "Oh my gosh, it's my dream theme. It's Frank Herbert. I want Dune." Well, you can launch Kong, you can launch Harry Potter. I don't care. Dune is my dream theme. I'm keeping my money for this. So, the question is, why not announce a theme early on in its development cycle? You had mentioned what? Because this was your idea, and I I don't think it's a bad idea. I think it's an interesting topic to delve into. Why are the IPs secret before actual D-Day or the weeks, months leading up to it? to me doesn't make much sense unless unless your IP isn't completely secured and then until Dday you need to find sure yeah but if your contract is sealed you've got it it's yours just announce it create some create some some attraction to your brand even if your game is released in two years you know you've got that brilliant again imagine you're launching imagine Star Wars in 18 months when you've got Kathleen Kennedy from Lucas Film and she goes a new Star Wars movie comes out in 18 months. Look, she said that about 10 times over the last 10 years. But every time she says that, there's a spotlight on her. Oh my gosh, a new Star Wars film's in the making. You don't need to show anything. Just say you've got it. I mean, let's use Stern as an example for this. I'm sure David is like typing away right now. Uh, so I mean like would if Stern had said yes, King Kong is Keith Ellen's next game, would it affected sales at all? Bit different. Bit different because it's not an IP. They didn't get the King Kong IP as you know. True. It's based off, you can tell it's based off the book because there's uh well, one, one of my friends is like a film historian and came on and talked all about Kong's like licensing issues and the difference between saying King Kong versus Kong versus the book stuff by worth naming the ship in it after the name in the book to separate it from the actual film to make sure that there's no legal issues. So, it's it's a bit different with Kong as it was a bit different with Godzilla because those themes are not get get my money now. It's not Dune. It's not Star Wars. It's not Star Trek. It's not blah. No, it's something we're like, "Okay, remember when when we knew it was going to be Godzilla, people were like, then we saw them the pen and everybody was blown away. But when we heard that Stern was making Godzilla, it was like that's rubbish." So, the theme, that's why the theme is so important. But when you have something as epic as uh current as Dune, because you know, we're talking to David right now. To me, it makes all the sense in the world to tell I've got Dune. Dune is at the movie. He's going to be in your game room soon. Go and watch the film. It's in your game room in in a bit. If you have Star Wars, say it. If you have if you have Back to the Future, why freaking not say it? You're trying to sell your Alice game. You're trying to build some Yeah. You're trying to build some trust on your brand. If you say you've got Back to the Future, the spotlight's going to be on your brand, and I want to know more about your brand, and maybe I'll even buy you an Alice because I'm attracted to your brand a bit more. You see, this is common sense. Uh we got Ian is in here, too, from Nudge Magazine. Man, it's a party. We've got we've got the the whole pinball sphere is a buzz. You have you have summoned like so many elements of the pinball world, man. Uh French Dutch. Also, I remember George Audio Enslave says he remembers George Gomez saying that they were in late development stage on a game and it got canned. Okay, so that's a good point. Uh also, I think David had mentioned earlier that a title can get pulled as well. So, I guess they're, you know, announcing a title before you have anything physically to back it up either with gameplay or or any marketing elements and you could have and then you have to apologize because you've promised a game that's no longer coming. No, No, no. Hang on. There's a tweak here. Let's get back to the Kathleen Kennedy example. She every every six months she says there's a new Star Wars series or film and whether it happens or not, nobody like Okay, but the announcement is there. You don't need to promise a game. You just need to say we have secured the IP. We're We're going to make do. No, because we're talking about barrels. Doesn't mean you're making it in 6 months or in two years. We know that um Beetlejuice is coming. I know it. I've known that Bele juice is coming since 2 years. Okay. I even know who's been working on some little skulls for Beetlejuice. But all right, but nobody has actually said it. But people, every time I mention that I know Beetlejuice is coming, people get super excited because it's a dream theme for some people. Why don't a company leverage this and say, "We got it. It's going to come. We're not going to give you a release date just yet." As a person who works professionally in marketing, do you think that the rumor mill and hype of these like unknown for unconfirmed IPs does more for building hype around the game than flat out announcing it? I don't think it does because those rumor the rumor the rumor mail that you're mentioning stays within the community. So it's then within a very very strict circle which is not expendable and right now what brands are trying to do the Sterns of the world and all the others they're trying to expand pinball and sell to a broader uh spectrum. You've seen Stern giving away machines to influencers that have got nothing to do with pinball just because they have an outstanding followship of hundreds of thousands to make pinball so that pinball goes out in the wild a bit more. So that's smart cuz that helps everybody cuz that that breaks pinball out of the like pinball people bubble and pinball needs to be outside of that bubble. As much as I love it being in that bubble there needs if in order for pinball to survive it needs to be digested on a larger scale. Absolutely. If we want Exactly. You said the right words. If we want it to survive, it needs to be a lot. That's absolutely right. So to get to your questions about the rumor mail, it just stays within ourselves. So it's fun. I mean it gives us things to talk about on podcast and we love it. I mean come on. We who who doesn't love a good rumor? Uh, you know, we just again we I mentioned Beetlejuice, but that that's something cool to talk about. And then whether it happens or not, all right, we'll see how it goes. But at least we had a good pinball shot about this. Well, okay, but I'm getting mixed signals here then. Is the rumor developing more hype and better marketing for the game than a flatout confirmation of the announcement? Okay, answer is no. I don't think a rumor is helping um put the spotlight in the right way on a company or eventually helping sales. It just serves the rumor and the conversation. But again, the most important thing is when if and when a company has secured what we call the dream thing, just plainly announce it. Say you're super proud, you're excited at what's going what's coming next. It's going to be amazing. This is that when say watch this space for the reveal date, whenever that is. You don't have to promise something, but just say you have it and you get people excited and be and proud of your brand. You know, again, let's get back to to Pinball Brothers. Obviously now the launch is done and we we've seen some some things but when they they cannot they cannot undo that gameplay video won't do it but when they said we got Predator people like whoa that's exciting nice nicely done pinball brothers you're actually an actor to be reckoned with because they said the magic word they say Predator they said what they had bit too late so the last thing I'll ask about that though is I feel like if they announce a title 6 months a year before it's actually done right there's a time where people just forget, right? And some other new hotness could come to replace that. I feel that a lot of companies announce that they're making the game finally when they're ready because they have supposedly the marketing assets ready regardless of whether those marketing assets are any good and their launch is any good. That's a conversation we had earlier in this and the answer is generally no to that. Uh, so do you think that part of the reason they wait to announce is because they are not ready to follow it up to continue the momentum? I I would think the reason they're not doing this is because they don't have complete control about their um the licensing about you know how it works. They although they secure the IP whenever they put an item on the playfield they have to make sure it's it's confirmed by the lensure and we've seen that with James Bond and George Gomez. So they had the license for James Bone, but every time they would touch one bit on the code or something on the playfield, they always had to go to London and be like, "Are you happy with this?" The guy's like, "No." Oh, the mustache is not good enough. Change it. And so the schedule moves. So it's like quicksand then you don't really know. You know you got it. You have a ballpark when you want to launch it, but because of all these licenses issues and the production line and all these things and then then they got COVID and everything, quicksand it happens and it shifts. Okay. Sure. So, how do you do that? You would you want to have, again, let's go back to Hollywood. To me, it's the perfect example of how the the entertainment business works. They will do a very first teaser about 6 months or a year before. Let's say Jurassic World. Then 3 months before they will have an a trailer number one, and then trailer number two, and that's it. Usually, you have teaser long time before, trailer one, trailer two, and then there's the movie. I think that's how you occupy the space over a certain time frame to make sure you're not being forgotten. And if you know if you know that your your film your pinball machine is good because the thing is good, you shouldn't be worried that people are going to put their money elsewhere. Let's talk about me for one second. I'm a huge Back to the Future fan. If today Dutch Pinball goes, you know what? Stay tuned. Back to the Future is coming, but they don't say when. You know, it's probably going to be roughly within 6 to 12 to 14 months roughly. You know what? From this announcement, I promise you, Jeff, I saved the money in my pocket. I'm not buying any other pinball machine because I want Back to the Future. They can release King Kong 3, whatever spec. I don't care. I'm keeping my money because I freaking want Back to the Future. And I I would gladly keep my money and I would save up for it. I would save up. So, I think that's how it should be done. All right, there you go. I'm very I hope that this episode is listened and there's some feedback from some of the community that is involved in the manufacturing and uh marketing process to have a discussion that goes further than just two guys who do work in the industry. You and marketing me and post-production for trailers. Your point to teaser and two trailers is exactly correct. teasers come out at least for features one year to six months beforehand to to build the hype for it and then between three to six months before that trailer one drops and then trailer two two drops within one to three months before the actual film release and then it goes out and then they have two two to three months depending on their deal before it goes to streaming platforms and you know I mean like the entire it is designed the process is fully designed and there is no design around the pinball release launch now and it should be standardized to help companies not to not to help consumers. Like I don't really give a [] Like I'm my money is available and ready to buy a game that I want when it is available. It's not like if I don't have the money ready for it, if I don't have space in the house, it just doesn't matter to me. But to to be given a proper uh kind of like release experience where I know what I'm expecting to get, I think would help a lot of consumers. Yeah. And I will add one thing though is that because those games are so expensive right now, I'm talking five digits. uh people want to know what they're going to buy. It needs to be the the complete package in your in your living room or in your game room or in your your uh ceiling seller, whatever. It needs to be the So, you're not just going to buy a pinball machine that those days are over where I mean, I'm not talking about the uh a tournament player just want a game to just have I'm like that any game will be a good game, but for the majority of people, if they have a pinball machine, it needs to be something they're happy to look at because they can relate to it. So it means the the transl or the backlash should be something they can acknowledge like like let's talk about Dune. I love Dune. I love I've read the Frank Herbert books. My My brother is a huge fan. We've talked about Dune. So that trans I've loved the movies. I can see that on the back glass. Okay. I can see that in my house because it's something I can relate to. So that means if they announce ahead of times few months earlier that they're making Dune, I will definitely save save up for it because I can see it in my house. People will not randomly buy a random pinball machine just because it's out there. It's too expensive to to think. For sure. And And nobody should play Nobody should buy a game that they haven't played yet, which or see it played to a to an extent where they can make a decision to your point where we were talking about having somebody like Carl or the Flipping Out guys or whatever playing it. Uh there's two there's two relevant questions in the in the chat that I want to I want to get to before they skip by. Audio Enslave says, "What happens if a Dream Team Hamme 2 comes out when someone like Spooky of Pinball Brothers says Pack of the Future is coming but it never comes?" that hasn't happened yet. No pinball company has announced a game and then pulled the plug on it. And I think it's the responsibility of the pinball company to only announce a game that they know is coming out. I mean, you're you're arguing or concerned about something that just hasn't happened yet. Yeah. And I don't think that's really a problem because it's a way to to phrase it when you make your announcement. Rather than saying uh uh Back to the Future is coming, you can say it's coming out. You can also say we got Back to the Future as in we got the IP. Doesn't mean that I'm actually releasing it this year. It means we got it. We've secured it. So there's a way to phrase it to create some some anticipation but not frustration. So every word matter. Um but again Dr. John only also says sorry go ahead. No No please go ahead. So Dr. John only said also about what about competing uh companies and altering release dates. We talked about that earlier. There should be better communication between companies which is not always guaranteed. You know, we talked about Spooky changing their broadcast date to step on Barrels's announce or Barrel's stream with Carl. So, not every company is going to play nice, but you do have the option to move your release date to a certain degree without [] up the entire release timelines of of production that you have going on. A few weeks or a month isn't going to make life ordeath decision, especially on on pinball development where there's always things that can be done on a game. I mean, [] Jaws isn't even at 1.0 yet. Like I imagine that they're probably going to launch the 1.0 of Jaws along with the 50th anniversary. If they didn't, I would be absolutely shocked. But that information isn't broadcasted. Why is there not an email from Stern that says, "Hey, 1.0 code coming soon with Jaws 50th." There's literally no reason for them not to say that. It would build even more hype and people to be more excited to talk about Jaws. So, you know, something funny that happened last week or two weeks ago. Um, a lot of people start to complain about Stern, the fact that they're coder not ready, blah, blah, blah. actually did a post about that. And you know what? The next day, Jack Danger makes a post about, "Hey guys, good news. X-Men is going to be completely redone on the code side. We've got a new team." Everybody got super excited. The day after that, that post was deleted by Jack. And I feel like Yeah. I feel like what happened is Jack obviously got super excited, wanted to share the news to the world. Yeah, makes sense. But he got by George Gomez and team be like, "No, no, that's not a corporate announcement. that's not official. So, they had to make it official a few a few days later. It's not official. You can't use your social networks to say something that's corporate. So, we're exactly in this um this this frame of what to say, what not to say, when to say it. But at the end of the day, this is an exciting news and people love that Jack shared that news because he's obviously passionate about his game. We were all expecting a new code update. Why can't he Why don't they let him Why does it need to be handled like a corporate thing? Oh, I'm sorry. your shareholders are mad that your employee shared a a relevant bit of information that is of a game that's already out. Like I'm sure he was told off. I'm sure he got told. I'm sure he got probably slapped on the wrist big time. But if I was Jack, I would be so pissed that I mean his game clearly X-Men had the short end of the stick from the beginning of its release to what it is right now. It is great that they're giving him the opportunity to make the game what it should be. But if do you think that X-Men would be getting the help it needs right now to be a great game if the community didn't cause such a [] ruckus about how poorly, you know, how bad the code was, how little there was to do in the game, and if people didn't make noise about that, would it be getting the update that it is getting now? That's a very fair question, Jeff. And honestly, I don't have the answer, but it's fair question in the sense that it turns out that these announcements about X-Men and John Week literally came after some posts were made by a lot of people. You know, there was that this complaint and I think at some point probably Jack, who's a social network person, he reads those things. He probably got into a meeting be like, "Look, I've printed all these things from Pinsite or whatever, all these guys. We can't we can't this is this is unprofessional." And kudos to Stern. They made that decision for John Wick for X-Men to get back to the game. I mean, for whatever reasons they did it, I don't know, but could at least they did it. And I and I Stern has a history of making their games better after launch. Like that's like the Stern release cycle. Like get a get a new Stern a year later is like the best time to go into that. Um GR Young says, "How many designs have in the past have had license pulled mid-production or near the end?" It's a fair question. I mean, look, King Kong, the original Data East one, obviously got pulled, but the reason that those got pulled, like you said, I think there's a safe way to make announcements about, hey, we have the IP. We are pursuing making a pinball machine about this. You can be excited about it. Let's say the IP people decide to re, you know, to to take their deal away, break contract even, and now the pinball company has to explain this to consumers and it makes them look bad even though the IP holder is the one responsible for this. what how is that situation handled? So look, there's there's something we haven't mentioned about this is usually an IP is um there's a time frame for for an IP. You can't have an IP forever. So that gives us something else that's like when you announce that you have an IP, you should know for a fact that that machine is actually going to come out because the company can only use it for a certain amount of month or years. Usually it's probably two years, three years and then they have to give up the IP. Um that's a conversation we had with George Gomez a long time ago about Lord of the Rings. There was this discussion about is Lord of the Rings going to be remade like Vaulted and stuff and he said something interesting. He said look the problem is we don't have the IP anymore so we need to get that IP again. Plus the people who are the licensers who we negotiated with long time ago they're probably gone or moved on to some other pasture. So we don't know who we're talking the deal could be so much worse that they're not going to get it or they won't accept the deal anymore. So that complicates the deal. It's not we just take our old game and we vaulted in something. Why did it work with Metallica? Very easy. John Borg is John Borg is friend with the guys with the band. He's friend with the band. So he talked directly to the band and he's like, "How about we upgrade your game?" Yes. Let's do a different deal with Lord of the Rings. So my point to this is when you're a company and you you announced Yeah. When you I see it. When you're a company and you announce that you have you're you're happy because you got an IP, you've secured it, we all should know that the game is going to come out because the IP is for one, two, three years, probably two, three years, not five or 10 years. So, you better make that game. And And we know how much it costs. It's obvious you're going to make the game. So, you know, you don't take too many risks saying that, right? Okay. I mean, this is I this all of this discussion is so fair and I'm I'm glad that it's transparent. It's easy for us to talk about it, but I really I hope that some like I said, I said this an hour ago, but I want to see a pinball manufacturer comment on some of this stuff. Um I know David was here. I don't know if he wants to chime in. I know that this is a hot topic. I would understand any pinball company being like [] stepping anywhere near this because you know a company a pinball company especially the smaller ones they need to be able to establish enough capital to continue running and it's the amount of pinball machines being purchased right now are less than there were in co so and there's more pinball companies than ever because people that love pinball are trying to make pinball machines this is an ecosystem that is dangerous for smaller companies and less dangerous for companies like Stern and Jersey because the companies like Jersey Jack and Stern aren't going to change how they treat the consumers or how they make their games quality controlled if they don't have any competition. Yeah, that's right. But, you know, I I think that all this what we're having today is an interesting conversation because a lot of people believe that because we're talking pinball and it's a it's a hobby that almost went away a few years ago and almost disappeared and there there aren't too many companies. Yes, there are like probably too many pinball companies, but in the grand scheme of things, we're only talking about 12 or 15 companies. People feel the need to chill everything to say everything is great. Every pinball machine is great. And when you say that a m a game is not good, you'll always be like, "Oh, you're a naysayer. Oh, you're a hater." No, we we love to have that chat because we're trying to improve the hobby so that it can broaden its spectrum and it can interest more people outside of it. So, I just want to say this word to to your audience is that whenever we say something that's not absolutely super amazingly chilly positive, it's not because we try to be mean. Absolutely not. We love everybody in pinball. We do. It's because we really care about it and we think we can hopefully help in our little ways make it a little bit better. So, that's why we do it. So, you know, we try to be as honest as possible. I I say I've been insanely critical of D&D on my stream. I think that that game has mountains of problems and every time I talk about it, I put into solutions to how to resolve the problems. If you're going to if you're going to make commentary about why something is terrible, then you should have some sort of framework for why that is and then maybe a solution for how it could be resolved. Cuz otherwise, you're just being a big toxic piece of [] And you know, say it's this is stupid. This is ridiculous. I'm sure if Brian or Dwight were watching the stream and they saw me talking about how unhappy and how bad the game was designed, that's probably not going to make them feel great. And the point isn't to try to make them feel bad. The point is now I'm talking about like, hey, these are weird design decisions. I would not have done this. I'm curious why it was done like that. And then maybe they can go and assign that knowledge and make it somehow better through code, right? Like you can't fix hardware or shop geometry with updates in the past. But to your point of having somebody play the game and really just like rock it hard like Carl to find where there are some deficiencies in it where you're not developing or finding these because you're you've got your blinders on during the development process. Like pinball companies need to be open to hearing like criticism that is constructive, not criticism that is just for views, you know, like certain personalities that have podcasts that just like to make a lot of noise. There's a big difference. One of us wants to have the game get better and one is doing it because they want an audience to be true riled up and and interact whatever engagement. There's something to be said about the subjectivity of a pinball playfield or playfield layout. And I'm going to use the example of a painting because you and I we see a painting. We go to Lulu next to my office. We look at a painting convenient. We won't have the same we won't feel the same thing about say painting. You will feel something I'll probably feel something else. And there's also a you know that there's a geometry to painting. There's a way the colors that you navigate your eye through it. The composition navigates your eye through it. Absolutely. So to my point is that maybe you will see a layout a certain way and I will see a layout a different way. Maybe something that will look like a flow to you will be like interesting to me or something like that. Of course, there's some playfield that are not good. Some are amazing. Let's you you got there's a pin that we both love. Twilight Zone. You and I actually adore Twilight Zone. It's an amazing layout, but for some reason, it is not the most popular uh I mean loved game of all time, because it's complicated, it's complex, but also because that layout that I feel is actually amazing that I could talk about it for days. Some people are like, "Yeah, it's not really fun. It's not that. It's not." And And I can't believe they say it. And I sometimes I got really offended like you're joking. You it's probably the masterpiece of pinball. How How can you? And I realized over years that it's subjective that the way they they receive that the layout proposal is different and maybe something else they will love it for like completely stupid or rubbish. And I'm always amazed that people love monster bash like oh it's amazing. I'm like it's boring. It's It's definitely Attack from Mars plus Medieval Madness copied. You've put a few puppets there. They're not even nice. I don't like it. I'll never own one. I don't get why it's got this cult status, but I I appreciate that some people love it. But so there's a bit of like a painting. There's some subjectivity to a to a layout, you know? I feel absolutely. No, I mean, I think that's true. But it it really is get the criticism, get the feedback, and then as the designer determine what about that feedback is subjective versus objective, and also what your design goals are. just because someone is telling you your game is not ideal or great in this capacity that the designer may want it that way and that's their choice for sure and just because you know people like me may not see the vision of what D and D was supposed to be in terms of shot flow and and whatnot like okay so the game is not for me but that's okay cuz there's tons of games out there and a lot of people really like D and D and are really enjoying it and that's awesome I'm glad that those people if it if somebody played D and D and is now into pinball mission accomplished you know it's Not a home game for me. But you know what? I I think it's an amazing case study DND because uh I've got one in the office to be honest with you. I'm starting to get a little bit tired of it. Uh, I was probably more excited about it the first couple of weeks, but I know for a fact that this game is different in the sense that um, obviously it's the first role playing machine and the code, the way they take this code will make or break this this game cuz regardless of what happened on the play field, this is a one of a kind. The story happens on the screen. I I deprise that. You know, for me, pinball should be under the glass, but this is a role playing game. So, the way we're going to interact with the story and the stories on the screen will make this game relevant or not. And I've been a bit disappointed over the last few weeks that the code hasn't really evolved a lot. So, we're stagnating a little bit. And because the playfield is what it is, I will probably not be as harsh as yourself, but I agree it's not it's not a masterpiece. But again, I knew from the start that that game would be ahead if the code and the story makes it brings you into the role playing game of Dungeons and Dragons. It has the potential to is not there yet. There there's a concerning pattern with the recent code updates with Stern games in my opinion though where the games where there are difficult in a way that is not fun like artificially difficult and I'll use like John Wicket as an example and Dn D as an example. So, like the uh dungeon crawl in D and D for the most part. People weren't able to play it long enough for it to like matter. Like you can't explore the dungeon layout enough for it to be fun. Whatever the the shot scenarios are, you're just you're not in it long enough for it to matter. And with John Wick, the shots are obviously like the the return speed from rejected shots is so fast that the game you do not you drain a lot in the game, right? So Stern's solution for this is to add extra ball save to these moments. And to me, that's like a crutch. That's solving a problem in like the worst possible way. That is lazy. Super lazy. Agree. I I Is there a better solution? I don't know. But it feels like a band-aid to a problem that needed to be resolved either during development or with an alternative way of handling it. So like yeah, in the dungeon crawls, they're adding 20 seconds of ball save at the beginning of it. So it's just like what? Like that's usually like wizard mode opportunity. Like that's when you pull the like unlimited ball save out of the bag, not when your game's just like artificially hard and you're trying not to frustrate players. I I totally agree with you. It reminds me also of something a bit cheeky that Stern does a lot now is you save some money on the kickback. You know, before you had a kickback on the out lane, now they're like, "Okay, it's like, you know, right to avoid putting the kickback." Yeah, the ball actually drains and they launch another ball. And I think that's so cheeky and and it's not satisfying. You want to have a kickback like in Star Trek Next Gen with the left out lane and the ball goes back on the playfield. No, the ball now drains and gets shot back on the playfield from the right side and like come on just to save up $5. This is rubbish. Yep. You know again does have a ball save that launches the ball back on the left side. Dune. All right. I'm a shell. Yeah, but No, but no, look, I haven't played Junior, but I played I played Labyrinth and I played it with with David on DDay. What impressed me with this game labyrinth is that how can I put that into words? There was no compromise compromise. You had the skulls, you had the torch, you had the rims, you had the it was like it was all there. You had a world on the glass. And again, this is the first thing you see is am I attracted to it? Yes, because it's a freaking world on the glass. You like that a company makes no compromises. And unfortunately, Stern's business model has to be about compromises because it's three to four games a year. because it's that big factory. It's like 3,500 employees or whatever. There has to be compromised so they will pull the kickback and that sucks. What I don't want to see is JJP pulling back on things. JJP should be the Ferrari of pinball. It should be JJP. Sorry, but you know Ian was talking about how Stern is a business meaning like business. It's not and that's a really different thing even more so that that Seth uh has joined from Disney. I think he's from Disney. He's bringing his corporate values of Disney to make it an even more profitable business. It is a business. The guy that they got from Vivventi as well. There's DLC coming to Stern in the near future. The Vivventi guy acquisition. I mean that guy that guy tanked like Valition that that guy tanked like two or three companies in the game industry just through the process of of doing like monetization and bringing in like partnerships with like smaller like video game brands and stuff like that. I'm worried about the future of Stern's monetization and financial stuff, but that's speculation. I don't want to put [] bad vibes in the pinball ecosphere. We'll see. Right now, Stern, you know, Insider Connect is a harmless addition to to hunt for achievements, but the writing is on the wall for new hires for what Stern's like business future is going to be. You know, I was one of the most uh I criticized the insider a lot when it came out and I'm actually chilled on that because I I can see where it's going. Obviously, we knew the DLC were going to come out, but now I can see an interesting pattern that they could use for DLC's. Imagine you got your game. you got your uh by David who was thank thank you for being on board with us. Imagine you got your stern Star Wars for a few years and you're like all right I love it Star Wars blah blah and then Stern comes out with DLC you have to pay an extra $249 and you have like five or four new missions. Would you do that? I would. I would because it wouldn't. It's like if there's value to it, like I buy expansion packs for video games and you can think of an expansion pack as kind of like a like a really giant DLC thing, but there's a there's a difference between getting like like look at the dumb horse armor that came out for uh whatever Oblivion back when that first happened when Bethesda Interactive released the first like predatory DLC business practice of charging 50 or 60 bucks for gold a rmor for your horse as a cosmetic item. That's That's bad. That is horrible predatory business practice. It's based off FOMO. But that's the problem. What other company is basing their business model on FOMO? The companies that do that are the companies that pursue DLC monetization. It's just that flat out. But then, you know, you look at other companies like uh uh the Balders's Gate 3, the Larant Studios, right? They are unlimited, you know, free patches for everything except for the major expansion packs which add a substantial amount of content to the game that you are given the choice to purchase. That's to that has value to me. So yeah, but look, let's on purpose, let's get back to that Star Wars example. The game was released in 2017, so it's 8 years old. Say Dwight Sullivan is like, you know what? I'm keen to get back on that game and and create a couple more wither modes. I'm like, "Yeah, you you need to pay for it because he's not obliged to do that." And And you're not you don't you don't have to. But say you love your Star Wars machine, but it's sat in your in your game room for years and you know it's the same old Star Wars and you're like, I can have a couple more wizard modes because do I put some effort? I'm keen to pay, you know, two 300 more because because right now those people who will complain about this, they still pay their toppers $2,000 or $3,000 and no problem with that for a piece of [] that's that cost like $79. And look at what the look at what the toppers are doing right now. You have to buy the topper to get an unlocked character in D and D. You have to buy the topper to unlock a specific mode in Jaws. What? That's a $1,000 DLC. And I hate that because us in France, we don't have as big houses as you got in the US. Like in my game room, I got six or seven games. I don't have enough space on top of it to put a topper. I can't. So, I would be left for that. I hate that. Yep. But I'm sure you can probably buy it for a small cost through Insider Connect coming soon. So that that's why I'm chilling a little bit on the insider connected because I know that the the future is ahead and you can't stop it. The DLC will be coming. But if it's valuable upgrades, packages that adds to the game experience or or for a game that's been left out for a few years can have another life thanks to new missions, honestly, I would pay for it. Imagine Twilight Zone. You had an insider. You're like, "You know what, Jeff? It's been 30 years with Twilight Zone, but we've added uh five new missions for $249 thanks to the insider. Do you want to do you want to download them? Ah, come on. We would do that. We'd love to have five more missions on on Twilight Zone here. You know what? This is this is what I want to see from Insider Connect, right? I would pay 8 $6 a month, whatever it is to have that the data is in the game. I would pay to see average scores based on graph where my drains were over time, like if it was the left out lane, the right out lane, center drains, which shots I hit more than ever, which shots I was having problems hit. if I was getting legitimate metric feedback that was presented in a nice UI in a graphic way that I could actually digest to be able to do better at it. No, I'm talking about $6 for the platform itself, not per game. Joe's like saying $6 per game. No way. But I think that there is a place for a small amount of pay to get something back from it, but that's legitimate. You're getting you're paying for something, right? That that's the whole point. You need to get something in return that's valuable and tangible and relevant. You don't want to pay for [] You don't want to pay to have insider just to get ads on my pinball machine about the upcoming game. That's cool, but that's not relevant. That doesn't bring me anything. Do you think paying $1,000 for a topper and getting an unlocked character or a a unique game mode is value? No, it's not. Obviously, it's not. But the problem is for guys like us because we love our games so much. Um I'm like, "Oh my gosh, would I do it?" Yes. Is it stupid? Totally. It's totally stupid. But I'm stupid. If you do that, then it doesn't force them to change their business model. And they won't. Of course they won't. Have you seen the the latest light toppers, whatever they call it. Oh yeah, they're like their flat like stern billboard ones. I saw it. They probably it probably cost them 20 to $30 and they sell it for 300 or 400. It's plexiglass and a small LED strip. It's It's ridiculous. Xbox or PlayStation. Come on. plus a plastic. This is a ripoff. So, this is where I'm like in terms of marketing. Of course, it's working, so they're doing it, but they should take a step back and be like, if we really want really want to be in this business long term, like long long term, um, for something that's unnecessary, we need to treat this thing properly. There's something that that are worthy of a certain price. You can't have people pay 500 or 300 for a piece of plastic. This is not how it should be. I totally agree. But that's why I like vote with your money. I like of course there's some games that are just so fun that you want to have them in your house. But like I don't know. I've said before that I am absolutely a shill for smaller companies. I said that before the whole working with barrels thing started. But if the smaller companies aren't supported that are legitimately trying to give value to pinball, whereas other companies that are already established and aren't afraid of being damaged by the pinball market dipping if it does like you need to support smaller companies that are making good products. It's that simple. I I think Spooky and their Evil Dead is a great example because they they're they finally I believe came into their own with the last few games, but apparently that Evil Dead game everyone everybody is like unanimously saying it's it's a fantastic game. It's great. It's a white body. There's everything in it. There's all the toys and there's the the underplay field and everything. So, good on them. That's great. We need that. Yeah, Evil Dead's a great game. It's super fun and there's code coming. They added two wizard modes. I mean, there's a lot in that game. But then Jeff, would you have Evil Dead in your game room? I would buy an Evil Dead. Sure. Okay. I don't have space for another game right now. Well, as soon as I get rid of my D and D maybe, but I The problem with that is that you can't buy a you can't buy an Evil Dead. They only made 500 or whatever. Like, which is wild that they sold out of a game and I don't know if it's like their IP holder isn't allowing them to make any more like did they have a limitation in the contract for how many they could manufacture or they're worried about pinball. What's that? I think they have a range with every new game. they they have a certain figure they're trying to achieve and when they get it they should step up a little bit with the next game. So good on them because now there's going to be FOMO for their next game. Especially if it's a great life a great great IP like Evil Dead. People are like, "Okay, we missed out on Evil Dead. We can't just do that again." So we'll So they probably will sell 600 or something. Oh no, Spooky's going down the FOMO world now. Round it's company company three into the world of FOMO. Uh it's an exciting business. It's great. Yeah, I've the last couple of spooky games have been really great. So, I'm excited to see what Beetlejuice has in store. I'm excited to play Predator. I don't know if I'm sold on the gameplay video and how it seems to play. People are [] all over that game and nobody's actually touched it yet, which is just I get that there's a bunch of armchair warriors on Pinside and Reddit that want to like just obliterate a game's potential before it even comes out. I'm worried. I I don't know how amazing it really looks compared to some other titles that are coming out, but uh you know, I'm going to play it first and then we can have a different conversation at that point. Exactly. That's right. So, all right. Uh we're we're pushing on two hours. This is a long one. This has been an awesome conversation, man. I really feel that like regard if if nothing comes of this, this has been just absolutely amazing to just like workshop think tank like the whole industry as a whole. you're obviously been involved in this for so long and so knowledgeable on on this topic, especially with your your actual business and professional experience. Uh I just I thank you so much for taking the time to be on here. Uh Chad, do you have any questions while we do our outro? Yeah, but thank thanks to you, Jeff. You know, always a pleasure and obviously love to have pinball conversations, especially when they're marketing pinball discussions. A little bit on the side of what we talk pinball normally, but I absolutely love it. So, thanks for having me. Um, I hope we can uh we'll do it again when there's more pinball news, you know, drag you back on here. Uh, all right, chat. Last chance. Any questions? Did we touch on announcing titles in advance? Yes, we did. That was like the That was step two. Uh, talking about whether companies should uh just come out and say what they're making. Um, but now we need to have a real we need to have a pinball company person on here that's going to actually talk about why they don't do that and give some honest reasons why. I don't think that's going to happen. I don't I think that the secrecy and the concern of of uh, you know, bad feedback is is too pinball companies are too afraid of saying the wrong thing because it's it's a fine line between being in business and not in business as a pinball company. That's right. I agree with that. Uh, all right. It doesn't look like we have any questions. All right. Well, we're going to do what we normally do. We go find someone who's small to raid and drop a bunch of people on them and totally make their day. Uh, thank you everybody who has been in the chat. And, uh, of course, the alarm goes off for the [] ads. Oh, thank you, Johnny. That's a very good point. Johnny. Johnny, I appreciate that. I got to ask you a very important question. And we were talking about Stern. You know, they've been doing a lot of remakes and I've just been thinking about a lot of potential games that could be coming out from the future of Stern. And I'm just curious out of these three games, which you feel would be kind of the best step forward for Stern as a remake. Um, the first game it's it's Raven. Second game, I think that would be an interesting remake would be Raven. The third game, if they brought it to market, Raven. Um, I I mean, it's it's a tough one, but I I would think Raven. All right. You heard it. I would go I would go with Raven. Yeah. Would be amazing. Dream come true. Dream theme. Like the remake from a totally different company. Yeah. No, I've got goosebumps. I've got goosebumps just thinking about Raven being remade is just uh that's one of those things you just hope in life. But Right. This is the market research that needs to be done. People don't, you know, the the pinball, you know, peeps don't get that this is the desired theme for the next remake, right? But now, fair question. Is Isn't Isn't Raven the worst game of all time or is it not? Honestly, it's in the contest for it. I don't think it is though. But it's it's in the in the top five, top 10. What? Carl said what? Thunderbirds, I think, was his. That is bad. Uh probably Blues Brothers. Oh, yeah. But that's I mean that oh home pin we're not gonna talk about home pin. I just can't Thunderbird Thunderbirds is medieval madness compared to Blues Brothers. You're not wrong. Uh all right. While I go dig and find someone to raid, why can you tell Can you tell everybody what your top three pins are? You don't have to say Raven. This is a legit question. Like Like my favorite pins is the question. Absolutely. of Adam's Family, Twilight Zone, and Star Trek Next Generation. Awesome. Star Trek Next Generation is going to be the next game I'm streaming, by the way. Anybody interested in that, stop by. Uh, it's going to happen because it's literally six feet away from me. I got to The Final Frontier for the first time yesterday. I'm pretty happy about that. That's cool. That's good. I mean, I I love Star Trek, but it was not necessarily a dream thing, but I think that that machine is absolutely outstanding. There's so much creativity, inventivity, mechanism, secret path pathways underneath the playfield that that was uh an eye openener when I got that. So, it's in my top three and it Yeah, it is. It's It's actually I do want an Indiana Jones. It's much more difficult than it's more complex than Indiana Jones. So, I prefer it to indie. Well, it's harder to get to the upper play field because, you know, Indiana Jones has all this [] in the way, but you know, next generation is like completely open. doesn't shoot as well as Star Trek, but uh yeah, Adams and Twilight Zone will be my top two forever. They're the you can't debunk them from their their top two spots. It's just Pat Lauder forever, man. He's the best. What is it? What was his last game? It was Toy Story 4. I wonder I wonder what's coming. I wonder what's coming from him from from Jersey Jack. I'm surprised he that they put Eric on. Oh, he's retired. He's Oh, retired. Yeah, he's retired. Yeah, that's it. That was his last game. And I I got to interview Pat Lauder in his office at Jersey Jersey Jacks probably a month and a half before uh Toy Story 4 would come out. So, we didn't know it was Toy Story 4, obviously. And I remember when he when I shook his hand, he looked at me and be like, "Wait for my next game. It's going to be quite something." And to be honest with you, I was a bit disappointed because being such a pat fan, I thought he would throw everything in the kitchen thing, too. You know what he did? Like the Elton John, Steve Richie thing. He took all his good things, put it all together, and it's Toy Story 4. So, it was a bit of a disappointment. So, I thought for a final game for the the Masters Chief that he is, little bit of disappointment. So, you know, I'll stick to Adams in Twilight Zone as as my favorite color games. I mean, he has a legacy of amazing games to to enjoy outside of Toy Story 4. Um, that's right. Is there uh I of course I forgot to ask. Is there anything that is going on with Paris Pinball Addict that you want to plug? Uh interviews, information, news, stories, anything going on that you'd like to throw out, please do. Well, thanks Jeff. You know, we have a great follow following community in France. Obviously, we do our things in French, but I've got the Instagram account, which is international, of course, and our Facebook translates every post. So, you feel free to come and join the join the gang on Paris Pinballics, and I do go to the shows twice a year to the US, uh Texas Pinball Festival and Pinball Expo. So, would love to meet you guys there if we haven't met yet. I'll be there and we're going to we're going to have a pint over it. Uh we will definitely let's see who's uh let's see who's on the uh the raid boat. Let's do it. Ah we got to raid Joe. Joe is I convinced Joe to get into pinball and he is renting a 007 and is trying to find a Godzilla to purchase. But uh he's just a nice guy and has been streaming constantly now that he's obsessed with pinball and how could I not raid someone who's just caught the bug, you know? Right. Yes, for sure. For sure. All right, everybody. Thank you so much. Bye. Thank you very much. Thanks, Jeff.