17:29me yeah yeah man we're we got we got a couple of our Toppers in there so you definitely need a Topper yeah I like the home BR that you said too I I um I went to um Expo I think it's been 25 years ago we used to live we lived in Milwaukee for a while so you used to go down so I went there quite a while ago um but yeah I got a chance this year to go back and um got to play some of the home brw the H Tony Hawk was cool I think the what is saw was that a re is that's a well win yeah yeah and that's in the Nom that's in the list as well yeah yeah very well done that that's kind of I that's something maybe I would aspire to do someday I I'm not sure at this point in time but no I mean time time being the operative word in in that sentence yeah Jimmy you got any uh tppy uh tppy shout outs for us yeah yeah so like some of the content creators aside from this I can't plug what we're currently doing here okay can he can so I'd plug away my friend NOP nope can't do it uh shout out to the uh the pinball Mafia down in Houston or Bowmont Texas the you know a group of tournament Players they get together every Sunday for the past 10 years and have been streaming on Twitch no drama just a fun loving family they're all um you know they they get together and and and play every Sunday night and they stream it so uh they're they're on the nominations as well so uh you know big shout out there uh home Brewers obviously Nick you killed it on Tony Hawk i' I've been out of the the the home bre scene for about a decade now but it's like that you you you're pulling me back in with that one like I I see it and I'm just like oh that so fantastic and then of of course shout out to Brad Albright for his work on Motorhead um with Dave P um you know Blood Sweat and Tears just his heart and soul went into that game so my hat will will always be off uh to to those guys and and the next generation of uh you know pinball designers is if they're not you they're gonna be standing on your shoulders so fantastic job all around for sure all right guys I'm gonna I'm gonna flash it up there tes.com if you know a mod maker give him a shout out there's a lot of and content creators tons of content creators and of course all the games I mean the new games like if you look at the new games and you want to vote on new game there wasn't like five new games this year there was like 15 it's crazy so definitely a great year to get in on the votes all right right we're doing this so uh guys we're going to talk today about uh all the things that we've seen uh Heard done uh not done well about making mods uh so the idea here is we're gonna kind of go through you know what at least we've outlined is like kind of the seven stages that you would go through in the process of making a mod and just kind of talk about you know each one um I don't think we're going to get through it all on this episode uh so we're just going to kind of set it out right here this will probably be a multi- part episode uh in terms of you know hitting these and and hopefully we can get Jimmy and Brad to come back and and talk with us more about it uh but we're going to take our time with this if you guys have questions about anything uh throughout the show uh really hitting any area of mod making you know put them in the chat uh we'll try to pull them up uh and hit those so um let's go ahead and kick this off um uh We've we've we're kind of to start at the early stages of mod making which is the R&D phase um and I call it r D research and development it's really just the point where you're trying to decide what to build and of course decide how to build it and think about who it appeals to um so uh Brad uh I know you're new to this with your product but Jimmy and Davey have been through this with lots of products uh Dave you want to start us off and kind of tell us what your current process is for early things yeah I mean mine's pretty sort of low fire I guess um you know really what I do is wait for a new game to come out I mean I think um I think as you know I think sort of the guys who were sort of really trying to turn mod making into a business have sort of come to realize that where the most amount of sales are is going to be new games coming out so um you know by following that release schedule of the of the of the main sort of Manufacturers you're sort of benefiting from their hype as well so uh new comes out there's lots of hype surrounding it there's all the marketing surrounding it and you're sort of riding that wave I suppose so that's where the the orders will come from is from the new game so really um my R&D is led by those new game releases but I guess the the sort of the analysis that you have to do comes from what happens after that release um and that is how well is this game being received by the community um is it going to be a is it is it massive if is it not massive um are there other games coming out later on down the path that are going to be more massive you sort of trying to we out what to focus your time on because um my mods take you know months and months and months to develop and then months and months and months to fulfill um if you just Chase everything then you'll never get anything out and and you'll just be chasing your tail the whole time so you sort of have to be a little bit strategic about what you focus on and what you target um obviously everybody's mods aren't going to be in that basket because um some some people's stuff can be released quicker uh and they can be sort of more reactive to things um but for mine I sort of have to have to sort of make those kind of decisions on a on a new release um then it's down to are there mod making opportunities in the game um are the ideas that I'm coming up with sort of even conducive to my style of modding which is Led sort of heavy um um and then I guess finding out whether there's you know all the other mod makers are piling on or not and whether it's going to be a really competitive Marketplace for that type of thing um yeah that's that's my thought thought process on on whether to create a new mod or not and then and then sometimes you just come up with such a not a great idea but an idea you really want to pursue anyway you just do it anyway you know which is quite often the case what about uh what about you Jimmy what what's your thought process when you're coming out with a new product uh I guess it kind of depends on the mod right so if it's a utilitarian mod right and one that's going to be generic to every game my R&D is mostly validation of the problem and is this a problem that I can solve across Stern games jjp Games Etc whereas if it's in the case of like the Twilight Zone displays and stuff like that game specific uh that one kind of came about as is I think that would be cool I'm G to make one and I did and then for the most part you're just hoping that you don't desecrate the game and and people think that you've ruined you know the yeah especially with a game like Twilight Zone right right that's like oh this Grail game you know or whatever and so yeah uh but but most of my R&D on the utilitarian side is validation of the problem how easily can I make a product that's generic to the different manufacturers in the space the different regions in which these games sold um before I go out there and just kind of order a thousand of a thing or whatever and then validate it with the market right so a lot of times what I'll do is I'll I'll make a prototype of something I'll record a video we'll drop it on pinside and worst case scenario it's just a hey I'm hacking on this thing thread then you kind of you know vet the response that way and then of course make friends I a lot of my friends you know they they get the products8 n 10 months before the public even sees them because we're testing on that so that's typically how I draw the line in the sand I guess with the different mod types and how I would approach R&D to those but hope that makes sense yeah yeah you know with with Toppers we we don't necessarily always take the same approach because usually the manufacturer either shipped it with a Topper or they're coming with the topper um so we're looking at back catalog quite a bit uh but I will agree that like top of Mind Games is is really critical right whatever that means outside of that Spectrum I mean you like with Metallica Metallica hits the marks you just brought up Davey because like it's out recently and people are really excited about it I think it just hit number one on pin side strongly which it may stick around you know that's pretty impressive so yeah I feel like top of Mind Games is really important um a couple things I kind of wrote down you know get a little bit more into the weeds um around making the thing which is like you know as you as you Source parts or or or or you start to build it like really think about you know how hard is this going to be to assemble in Mass right so like really spend the time to not just think about it from building one but from building many um and and the parts you're sourcing can be a part of that like you know if you're going to be building this for a year or two um are there alternatives to maybe some of the parts you're using um those are things that are kind of beyond the theme but really get into just like the longevity of it which I think the sooner you can kind of ident Identify some of those things the better and then for us like shipping is a huge issue in terms of breakage so uh we're constantly you know thinking about building it for for shipping at the very early phases and we've even eliminated uh creative ideas uh that we felt like you know the shipping could have have an impact on um so uh interesting you mentioned that man because like it's it's such an unglamorous side of mod making isn't it consider I'm going to a and it to you but it's it's such AAL you know and it's all these it's all these unglamorous parts of mod making um that I I like and and you mentioned Parts as well like keep you know ensuring that you've got enough parts to build something ensuring those parts are sustainable um you know and and you know working out how many you've actually got in your share or your Warehouse or whatever it is is such an unglamorous part of mod making but it's like one of the most important things um interestingly I received pulp Pulp Fiction today um I know six months behind everybody else but what I was so surprised at was that all of the foam that they used to pack out Pulp Fiction fitted inside a single um carrier bag like shopping carrier bag like you know when you get a new Stern new box and it's like the phone is just like Monumental you know like it fits in garbage bags like three garbage bags or whatever like their's fit in like a small carrier bag in that now what I want to know is whether that's enough you know to not have people receive it with damage or whether they've just been more clever about it you know yeah yeah well Brad you're uh you're you went through this process probably recent more recent than any of us any you you look back on that you might have done differently or any uh any advice yeah for us um I mean we you know it's my in my background we doot usually do a lot of benchmarking and looking try and improve products but in this case our first product um you know there was really what what what was there to Benchmark was the machines that have been out and the designs for what 75 plus years and so you know we we're walking into something that really has never been done before as an accessory on a machine that I'm aware of and I've never seen one over the years so we were really coming up with a new idea and so um we made first prototypes and got them out to some higher in players just to see what they thought about them you know we um I think it's a very fickle um Market of acceptance you know when you're bringing something out and we didn't you know we didn't want to get totally crapped on right out of the shoot so we sent some to some players and got some high-end players and got some really good feedback that you know hey this is a it's a pretty cool product and um and that's kind of how we started and given us motivation um but we our our company what we're going to do mostly is probably going to be outside of the glass or with um the glass taken off so we're working on another product right now that would be uh a useful Service Tool um for the industry and we think that uh when we bring that out it'll be very good product so we're we're starting to look at that and um and in the R&D also you know we put a lot of lines in the in the water like sending sending parts to Rob just to get people's feedback early on in the process and Rob thank you know he actually gave us some advice on some things on it and we appreciated that so just getting you know we had a group of people that we went and talked to and and got um you know got some got some good feedback now tell us about uh Davey Jimmy like how many iterations of the product do you think you go have gone through before you actually start even ordering parts for the first multiple of these things uh so just like for a 3D printed part um um and I I I mean iterations is kind of a little bit sort of flexible here I suppose but in terms of the exports of the design file that I use to then print with and test with um locally like maybe 20 for some some of my um big mods um and is that all prepaint or is that are you painting those too or is it no no no no like fit testing that's just fit testing so with theater uh which was uh the new uh Godzilla Center building that I did for the back that has like a collapsible wall thing and a Servo that sort of pulls it down um because and sort of fire shoots out the wall because everything was sort of really cramped in and had to sort of skirt around internal opdo brackets and things like that the fit was just you know really really tricky so you'd sort of you know measure up and you'd print one and it wasn't quite right and then you'd sort of you know go through this process and then you'd think you'd have it right and then you'd forget that you hadn't added one of the parts that was needed so you'd add that part in and then suddenly it wouldn't fit again so yeah that that went through you know so many iterations and not everything's like that of course like uh I'm working on uh a mod for Elton John uh at the moment uh which is a lot simpler than what I just described and and that's maybe gone through six or seven printed iter iterations uh before or before it was correct and I think as well as when you get your um get more experience doing these things um you can sort of anticipate problems happening before they happen um just because you've sort of seen it before so you sort of design you sort of Build That Into Your Design before you even start printing it um but that just comes through experience I suppose um what about you Jimmy how many uh how many iterations did you have to go through before pin lights became pin lights I mean certainly more than the limitation on Fusion 360's like trial Edition or whatever right that's like the that's how you know that you've made it right you're like oh okay we're getting there when they won't let you export them anymore um it's yeah I mean I I just pulled the our metal uh mounting system and all that yeah we're on revision 23 of it just because we're like well okay what's the angle look like on certain games as a matter of fact if you're installing lights on a game made in 1975 versus one made in 2025 uh vertical clearance you actually need a different metal Mount so that the light gets thrown to the right area on the on the uh Playfield and so yeah and and as you've just said Davey I mean we' learned that just through experience and just going through the iterations and and stuff like that but yeah we've we've done close to 30 revs on that part alone and even more on the The Twilight Zone stuff just getting the viewing angles right you know yeah it's just part I was gonna say like given that pin lights is sort of a universal mod in that it's uh you know you're you're aiming to uh get it into every game no matter what the architecture is no matter what the game title is I mean obviously that's that increases your Market massively but it also increases the complexity massively right oh yes yeah you know the the the problem with that is things are fun when you're building 10 of them right you're giving them to your closest friends and and when you need to build 4,000 of them a year that's a job and you're like you're like okay well how do we you know how do we how do we do that you know do you buy shop space do you hire out help or uh in our case what we did is we've tried to automate everything to where we're a sub assembler at that point we get sub assemblies made uh by our manufacturing Partners our strategic partners and then we assemble them here so final assembly gets done here and those are the types of questions as you know you you have to ask and answer as you go from you know tens of mods to hundreds of mods to to thousands and that diff that's going to be different based on your expertise but yeah it's it's definitely changed things for us compared to what we were doing in the Twilight Zone yeah I think that's key too I mean one of the uh one of the uh points we were talking about earlier Rob was like the dos and don'ts of mod making and I think that's like one of the key things that has enabled me to sort of scale um as you know I went from you know selling 30 mods to selling you know thousands of mods is you know embracing as many sort of third party as as much third party help as you can um so cable assemblies you know get all them made somewhere else uh you know you know absolutely anything that can get made externally um get it made externally because that's just going to speed up your process massively and when you are a small business and you only got a certain number of staff and you want to do it in a sustainable way that's not going to you know increase the risk of your business massively um you know getting as much stuff done outside of your business as possible is really going to help in that process yeah I'd agree with that and you'll get better with that over time to kind of identify what's critical and also the timing of that I mean there there are cases where you can you know make it by making them yourself and the quality might even be better than Outsourcing a little bit but it just doesn't make sense to do that long term and and you've got to be patient with yourself to like be like okay you know I'm going to take the time to make 50 of these but I'm GNA also start today to figure out how to get the the next 50 made by somebody else because it does take a lot of time you got to wait for the samples to come in uh make sure they look right build in you know an iteration or two there um and so we're starting to get into production so we definitely want to talk about I think one thing I I want to say too is like what's so special about the pinball space is like everybody wants to help so also as you're in the R&D phase as you're learning new things ask uh you know the people you know they're going to know people um you're going to get a lot of answers pretty quickly so definitely you see it in the home brew uh you see it in the mod making space like people are there and they want to help and ultimately they they may end up collaborating on things too so I think there's a of reason to make that happen um all right so let's talk about production which obviously is an extension of R&D uh I talked a little bit about making decisions about Parts but as you move kind of beyond that product that you know is ready to go uh what are some some things that you're doing differently Davey that you might have not been doing a year or two ago anything come to mind um well I think I've always I mean number one is sorting out the bomb right so the bomb is the Bild yeah um uh you know and and I think everybody who's involved in pinball you know knows knows that term because you know we always talk about you know what bomb goes into a pinball machine and whether it's worth what we pay for them the visual bomb you just look at the bottom of the Playfield and you know exactly how much it cost yeah well your bank balance yeah um so you know and that's and you know even even sort of when you're doing things small scale or large scale you know all comes down to basically an Excel spreadsheet and just having all your all your parts listed what they cost um you know and don't forget how much don't forget shipping factor in shipping into the yeah that cost yeah exactly and and uh you know don't forget tax to import tax um and assembly cost too so if you're if you're doing things at scale you know make sure you're counting the time it takes to put these things together so you essentially want to break it all down in a big sheet I I still like I've automated a lot of stuff and moved away from Excel in a lot of ways because it sort of gets too things get too complex to just doing a spreadsheet but I still do my bomb costs in XL um because it's quite simple uh in terms of uh how you calculate you know what a part costs where it comes from how many of those parts go into the mod uh what it costs for one part what it costs if you're ordering in uh lots of 100 or 500 or whatever it is um what the tax is on that what your uh if you're using PayPal and what your PayPal um charges are um uh and um breaking it all down that way you know I mean that's that's sort of number one that's sort of how I work it out and then uh as a maker you need to determine what your margin is uh on the product um and everybody's got a different um idea on how to calculate that uh it depends on whether you're aiming low or you're Aiming High um on that or with you going smack bang in the middle um and that's not really you know I make a lot of Rec recommendations to uh friends within the the mod sphere about where they should sort of set that thing but ultimately um it's up to the individual themselves and where they want to place their product um and I think in tandem with that lies understanding the market too so you know you know you might want to price your mod really high uh in order to maximize the profit on it but will the market accept that you know are you going to lose sales as a result of you positioning your price at a certain point um so in my view there's there's there's a there's a there's a sweet spot on that you know there's a way to keep your business sustainable there's a way to earn profit um in order to keep going and have a successful business but also sort of encouraging people not to think that you're gouging uh at the same time um so that's a really difficult uh problem to to teach someone and I think that's only something that people can um can work out on their own right I'm BR I forgot a challenge that I'm sure you can sympathize with which is um let's be careful with Bry yeah I was trying to I was trying to be careful yeah that is me being careful yeah yeah so so I've got four bamboos Brad and I'm always kind of asking myself like should I add another right and what is the benefit and am I just do I just want another 3D printer you know like of course I do right so how do how are you thinking about expanding this key tool for building your product well you know I just got back from the skate trip and guess what was on my front porch brand new one nice which is a good which is a good thing you know for um you know people that are in B they using B Bo you know it's it's it's not expensive but it's still cost you know depending on on the products you're going to be make and the volume that you can make so in our case we we took the approach to launch with um with Stern Spike two um we we we have two part numbers if you don't consider color um that can basically cover all of the spike 2 games going all the way back to to Batman 66 I think was the first and you know looking at that market um it's supposedly around 100,000 or so machines so we took the approach for that and then you know for our manufacturing at least to start to have those two two SKS we don't have a a bill of material because it's just one part for us right now um the next product we're working on does have a bomb with other parts that we'll end up purchasing um but yeah we go we we went back and just calculated the you know what if scenario you know what if we got 2% of the 100,000 you know how many would we make a day to be able to fulfill that um you know we when we put out things on pinside like little teasers on a thread for our Jaws on pin grip for instance you know we'll see a flurry of that and I'll usually make some in advance and have them in anticipation um of that but that's the approach that we took we just kind of looked to see and then you know wasn't too difficult for us to expand at this time to have additional manufacturing I I love that you threw out 2% and I want to reinforce that so what he's talking about there is looking at the entire market and looking at 2% is is a success right like if you can hit and succeed by selling to 2% of entire possible Market that's that's a great place to start I don't know Jimmy and Davey how you feel about that one but I think grounding yourself in a number like that can be really beneficial so how do how would you find out what the total Market is in pinb uh for to be honest with you uh so we were at um and when we were at Expo we went to the the stern party because we're part of the stern Army as well we run tournaments and so we we had the opportunity to have a fireside chat with Gary Stern and Seth Davis and uh and and I've heard it I've heard it another place before that there was approximately or 100,000 or so Spike two units out there in that ballpark range interesting I don't know I don't know if you guys have heard that but I've heard it a couple different times no next time you have that fireside chat can you ask him how many Godzillas they've sold yeah 2% 100,000 way more than that love that stuff we looked at that and we said you know like that's why we started there as well um that that we had if was if there's anything that was going to give us a chance to be successful then we we targeted that market Jimmy you've had a lot of success in mind making me talked about that but I'm quite certain you're probably making more pin lights than anything you've made before in terms of volume is that true oh yes yes so what's that been like insane uh you know it's it's it's been insane just just because um you know we didn't really know what the response was going to be in terms of offering a simpler product right I mean usually you don't be like oh we're going to be successful by removing features um but uh in this case it was a formula that turned out to be a a well workk formula simpler in terms of your competitors or something you had before yeah yeah it was so it was it was basically also in terms of also in terms of your own products right Jimmy like is is this I mean outside of the uh you know the app that you've written to support the product which is incredibly complex the product itself you know is it correct to say it's it you know it is a simpler product than sort of pin Vision was by by far by far uh in terms of the installation in terms of How It's manufactured uh how it's programmed all that type of stuff as a matter of fact most of my time now is spent on the production side of the house not the product development inside of the house like so as we get into more generic products I've found that my my mental capacity has been pulled in the other direction more so that's where you can optimize right or that's where your creative your creativity can provide value yeah yep yep just different side of the brain but uh yeah it's it's it's been uh it's been nuts but um most by far most of the games we sell into are the the Sterns I mean yeah so it doesn't surprise me Brad to hear those figures um just based on how many units we have leaving that that just get slapped on the latest you know the spike 2 games yeah there's got to be a ton of them out there uh let's talk about evolving the product during production are you guys finding yourself kind of making tweaks that and and why are you making those tweaks uh when you're actually making real product what's what's happening there anybody oh yeah should I um I jump in yeah yeah it's my turn yeah I'll jump in um yeah yeah no constantly like right up until the point okay good you're making me feel better yeah I mean stupidly as well you know like I mean Jimmy was just talking about how a simpler product has been wildly successful and that's awesome Jimmy and I you know I'm so I'm so pleased and happy for you this has been such a huge success but I think it's also incredibly interesting that um and it's the same thing sort of with with my products too like Tokyo neon the the sign that you know started it all has been far and away our biggest seller and it's far and away the easiest thing to assemble the easiest you know the simplest thing out out of everything we've done and yet my you know my trajectory has been to make things more complex and harder to assemble and and um you know we've just been working on the Jaws buoy um you know trying to get the first 50 out the door um for the last 3 months and the first the first build run you know uh we've been working through assembly issues and screws not fitting and all kinds of things just because the bomb's grown the complexity's grown and you know while that keeps me creatively satisfied because I'm pushing the boundaries um from a business point of view it doesn't actually make a lot of sense um you know we we would be better off making simpler stuff because you know actually it you know do does does the consumer want more complicated things or am I just satisfying my own creative Ambitions to make more complicated stuff um and it's not really it's not really a question I've solved yet um but uh the Elton thing that I mentioned earlier is going to be simpler than than you know what we've done in the past so yeah we'll see we'll see whether that's you know more of success or less of EX and a lot of things can drive success though too right like um you know I mean jerk and Elton sold well maybe should have maybe not yeah better than most yeah probably better than Avatar right slightly better than Avatar yeah but possibly not as uh as much as uh Harry Potter will but we shall see um yeah so yeah to answer to get back to what we were originally talking about yeah I'd make tons of changes through the process either pulling in uh feedback from people in Threads or ideas or just wanting to pursue sort of a creative Outlet yeah I I do make tons of changes through the process Jimmy sounds like you guys are constantly tweeting as well yeah well I mean it kind of depends on the the nature of the changes right like you can't for example feature changes you can integrate every feature that gets suggested to you because otherwise you're going to have a big Ru Goldberg machine product that is impossible for anyone to install but you also kind of take your licks as you're going through the production cycle and and and you get feedback forced feedback that's like it doesn't work in these situations or it fails in a certain way so yeah we're we're constantly tweaking things one one thing was recent you know turns out that EMB barrels of fun they have two different uh cabinet no boards that you can potenti get one has 11 pins the other has 13 pins well it's stuff like that that you've just got to you know kind of keep on top of but uh and in those cases yeah you you you better be making revisions if you you know if you want to have a successful product I that's that's gonna be my response there but yeah it's constantly constantly so you're I mean you're talking about sort of after the fact too isn't it because um you know there's there's there's tweaks through the through the development process I suppose um but then tweaks after things you know go live and how you respond to that as well and I mean that's an art in itself isn't it like how you how you manage those problems um both from a consumer uh facing point of view and also from a design point of view you know responding to those issues quickly um but not in a knee joke reaction that could potentially create more problems and that balance when things go wrong I think is incredibly difficult and I think Brad could could speak to this better than anybody just on the product driven development side of the house you know that that often goes into these things but from a technical perspective as well it's okay if we have X number of boards in the field and I send out a firmware update that bricks those boards I have a really big this is not a hypothetical problem this is a okay now all of a sudden we have a very expensive problem on our hands and so there are those types of limitations but you know most certainly you know we're constantly tweaking sending out updates and stuff like that but we we definitely do have to be careful that we don't break the experience for everybody else but yeah it's a fun feedback cycle don't don't don't get scared dear listener it's it's fun a lot of fun yeah so uh so we've made our products here we go we got we got these guys ready to go are you guys ready to move on to the fun part yeah yeah yeah let's do it all right so so we mentioned earlier we're probably going to break this up and we're definitely going to have to break this up um so let's let's spend a good amount of time kind of talking about what that experience is like leading up to launch like what are you doing obviously you're building but what what have we found amongst the group here that has kind of contributed to success and maybe some things we we wish we' have done differently in the past soad yeah what's your last month been like Yeah in our case that that was huge for us because we um I sent many many many parts out in prototypes to people to get feedback back and so you know you get various ranges of feedback depending on people's what they're looking at the the part you know I got people that said these are great you know it's exactly what I wanted and then I've talked to other people that you know they have a maybe a little more Keener I um had the opportunity to stop to talk to Scott Denise about them and uh he's an engineer and he and so we talked about some things that I didn't really recognize they they weren't major but just some tweaks that he suggested and you know just getting that feedback um to make them better um you know and just to just to make them more robust before we were doing it and getting that feedback from several different people you know it can't happen in every case but in ours we were able to do that and you know I I'm still sending sets out for just um I call it marketing just to get marketing feedback I've sent many many sets out just for free even people that order them from us now I'll send them even one or two extra sets for other games that they have in their collection just to you