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Flip N Out With Friends: Keith Elwin (Stern Pinball) Talks Design, Toppers, Next Game, & MORE!

Flip n Out Pinball·video·1h 5m·analyzed·Jul 9, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Elwin on Godzilla's dual-appeal design, Bond 60th's challenge philosophy, and topper-exclusive modes.

Summary

Keith Elwin discusses Godzilla's design philosophy emphasizing accessibility and immersion for casual players alongside competitive depth, contrasts it with Bond 60th's deliberately challenging single-level design, and explains the King of Monsters challenge mode's integration with the exclusive topper. He details how flexible licensing enabled creative freedom and iterative code development that made Godzilla successful across player skill levels.

Key Claims

  • Godzilla was released with immature code intentionally to gather feedback and iterate rather than shipping a complete 0.85+ version

    high confidence · Elwin directly states: 'We intentionally released the code very, very immature... The power-ups didn't do anything because frankly I hadn't figured out what they were going to do yet.'

  • Toho (Godzilla licensor) approved creative voice acting departures from original movie to add personality to monster callouts

    high confidence · Elwin: 'We were petrified that we would have to take these Toho characters and make them just sound exactly like them... we redid them, spiced them up a little, added more personality. And they're just like yeah, kick ass.'

  • Bond 60th was designed as a two-flipper, drop-target-heavy game to force the ball into danger and increase game-end frequency for social play

    high confidence · Elwin: 'I wanted a game that almost every shot you take the ball is going to be in danger... that really adds to the one more game moment... Every shot you take the ball is going to be in danger.'

  • King of Monsters challenge mode was created because developers realized extremely difficult wizard modes go unseen by 99% of players

    high confidence · Elwin: 'This is when we came up with the idea. Why don't we just make this a challenge mode?... that mode's exclusive to the topper.'

  • Godzilla topper was designed in 2020, well before launch, before sales numbers were known

    high confidence · Elwin: 'This topper was designed in 2020... before the game came out... No, that was never like, hey, we're going to sell 50,000 of these.'

  • King of Monsters mode is not planned for IC app release despite Godzilla shipping with IC support

    high confidence · Elwin: 'It's, despite what people say, it's not getting released on IC, which makes no sense because Godzilla shipped with IC.'

  • Godzilla licensing allowed creative freedom that previous games didn't achieve due to licensor constraints

    high confidence · Elwin contrasts Godzilla with past games: 'The reason it works so well is because the licensor was so flexible... games I've done in the past I set off on that path but I wasn't able to continue it.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm going to throw out everything my brain is telling me to do and do something that the everyman will appreciate.”

    Keith Elwin@ 3:43 — Core design philosophy for Godzilla emphasizing accessibility over pure competitive depth

  • “If you don't hook them really you're never going to hook them. So I kind of take lessons learned from Jurassic Park and Avengers.”

    Keith Elwin@ 3:31 — Explains design evolution from past games toward immediate player engagement

  • “The trick to the successful home game is to have a varied and a deep rule set.”

    Joel Engelbert@ 9:22 — Articulates the dual-appeal design principle that Godzilla achieves

  • “Every shot I hit made me feel like I was doing something... destroying or fighting something.”

    Joel Engelbert (describing his father)@ 9:44 — Demonstrates Godzilla's effectiveness in creating immersion and agency for casual players

  • “I wanted to make a two flipper game just kind of like a retro nod... almost every shot you take the ball is going to be in danger.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~34:15 — Explicit design intent for Bond 60th's challenging, social-play-focused philosophy

  • “This is one of the first games that I've played that I feel like I need co-op.”

    Joel Engelbert@ 17:50 — Validates Bond 60th's co-op mode as necessity rather than feature for difficulty balancing

  • “I'm going to grab another beer, I'm going to stare at my phone for a while, let me know when you're done.”

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonJoel EngelbertpersonRick NagelpersonGeorge GomezpersonGodzillagameBond 60thgameTohocompanyTanya Kleissperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Topper exclusive content (King of Monsters) unavailable on IC app despite Godzilla's IC support; creates access inequality; Elwin acknowledges 'makes no sense' but is locked decision

    high · Elwin: 'That mode's exclusive to the topper. It's despite what people say, it's not getting released on IC, which makes no sense because Godzilla shipped with IC.' No explanation provided for reasoning.

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern provided beta code access to content creators (Joel Engelbert) and competitive players (Carl D'Angelo) for King of Monsters mode prior to topper release

    high · Elwin: 'I got the topper really quickly after it was released... you guys approved beta code and gave me the ability to stream this.'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Initial topper reveal video poorly communicated King of Monsters features; Pinside community reaction negative pre-viewing; sentiment reversed dramatically after streams demonstrating actual functionality and integration

    high · Elwin: 'The initial video that Stern put out wasn't the greatest... But then our stream came out and seemed like an overnight switch. All of a sudden, Pinside got a lot quieter... now we're in a position where nobody can buy it.'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Godzilla demonstrates sophisticated depth at high tournament level: spectator discussion of multi-shot strategies (Rodan builds, Titanosaurus target efficiency); Carl D'Angelo forced to deviate from dominant strategies by heat ray cooldown and destruction jackpot modifications

    high · Spectators at Texas Pinball Festival discussing Godzilla strategy: 'He's close to Rodan... if he does all this... he can get this and start...' Elwin noted balancing Carl's heat ray spam by adding cooldowns.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.197

0:00
All right. My name is Joel Engelbert. This is Flippin' Out With Friends. and yeah this is on the flipping out YouTube channel appreciate everybody clicked on the video and today should be a great time today's gonna be a good time we are catching up with the one the only Keith Ellen Keith thanks so much for being willing to do something like this this is this is a lot of fun for me yeah I had a great time last time we chatted even though I was very sick yeah it was it was fun yeah no last time we did and there is a there is a video it's It's an audio format, but it's out there.
0:57
And we kind of did a Godzilla deep dive. At the time, I don't remember exactly where the code was, but it was really far along. But you've added a bunch of stuff since then. And I know we really did a good job of kind of going left to right, breaking down the shots, kind of what were your thoughts on, you know, all that stuff. So I would encourage if anybody's watching this and hadn't heard that, check that out. It's on the Pinball Network under a podcast. and maybe we can throw a link in the description and all that. But physically, I think we've addressed the game rather well. But since the last time we talked, and yes, I wore my Godzilla hoodie because I never cared about this IP at all. And then I got this game and my kids love it. My brothers, like, I don't know. It's like I've missed out on how great this giant destructive lizard really is. But yeah, it's crazy because as a kid, I remember watching these. I was like, oh, yeah, this is pretty cool. And then after I got the license, I started, you know, going through the movies. And I was like, hmm, yeah, these kind of are geared towards children, aren't they? It's like, you know, they're awesome. They're not supposed to be taken seriously. And I always thought, you know, I'm always a fan of huge campy games. And I was like, that's why I wanted to do it. And I was just like, this is going to have a ton of fun with this. Oh, yeah. And the licensor was just like, yeah, go nuts. So that that is very helpful when designing a game. The licensure can get behind everything you're doing. So, yeah, fun. Yeah. And I think you clearly did that. You clearly leaned into the campiness. I mean, the art is awesome. The audio is awesome. The layout's awesome. I mean, it's just it's got a whole lot going for it. And maybe we can go down that route. I like straight down the middle. They just put out a video of what they feel are the top 10 games of all time. Or you look at Pinside like Godzilla has been dominating right there in the number one spot for quite a long time now. I don't know, from your perspective, what do you feel, like, why do you think this game is liked so much by so many people? Because that type of stuff, you know, like inside it has the whole range of people that kind of fill out that, from novice players to tournament, high-end tournament players. I don't know, like, what do you feel you, the team accomplished so well that makes Godzilla so well-liked? uh you know sometimes i just have to shut off my competitive brain and um watch you know my girlfriend my brother you know people who aren't serious competitive players and watch how they play and watch how they approach a game uh so when i'm you know i'm watching this or if i go to logan arcade and watch people play if you don't hook them really you're never going to hook them uh So I kind of take lessons learned from Jurassic Park and Avengers, and I was like, you know what? I'm going to throw out everything my brain is telling me to do and do something that the everyman will appreciate. It was like, hey, I don't want to slog through 10 modes to get to the mini wizard mode. So I put everything, depending on the path, you should have a clear path to a mini wizard mode, to something interesting in a moment. I really tried to focus that on this game, And the thing that really made it possible was we intentionally released the code very, very immature. Okay.

  • Rick Nagel (programmer) coded King of Monsters mode in approximately two weeks

    high confidence · Elwin: 'Rick Nagel... slapped that mode together in like two weeks... we kind of waited till the last minute.'

    • Keith Elwin@ 19:14 — Critiques modern multi-mode games' lack of social engagement vs. arcade-era pinball

  • “Who would do that? Like, design a topper because they don't want to sell a ton of them because they don't want to make it.”

    Keith Elwin@ 24:07 — Responds dismissively to conspiracy theories about intentional topper scarcity

    • John Borg
    person
    Carl D'Angeloperson
    Eric Minyerperson
    Mark Panaccioperson
    Rick Zperson
    Brettperson
    Straight Down The Middlemedia
    Flippin' Out With Friendsmedia
    Pinsidecommunity
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    King of Monstersgame
    Escape Nubargame
    ?

    design_philosophy: Elwin explicitly critiques modern pinball's universal safe-shot-return-to-flipper design philosophy as boring; deliberately designed Bond 60th to contradict this trend with dangerous ball placement and drop targets

    high · Elwin: 'Every shot as a safe return back to the flipper... I think that makes the game boring... That's kind of why I jumped at doing this Bond 60th layout... not every shot's going to come back under control.'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Contrast between Godzilla's immediately-engaging, varied-path design (accessible to casual players) vs. Bond 60th's intentionally brutal, single-level, high-drain-frequency design for social play and co-op necessity

    high · Elwin on Bond 60th: 'I wanted a game that almost every shot you take the ball is going to be in danger... adds to the one more game moment.' Mark Panaccio added co-op specifically to address difficulty.

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin deliberately releasing Godzilla with immature code (pre-0.85) to gather iterative feedback rather than shipping complete feature set; power-ups initially non-functional; wizard modes added post-launch based on streaming/play observation

    high · Elwin: 'We intentionally released the code very, very immature... The power-ups didn't do anything because frankly I hadn't figured out what they were going to do yet... taking notes from streams, then fill in the rest of the idea at that point.'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Toho (Godzilla licensor) provided unusually flexible creative approval, allowing departure from source material voice acting and design; licensor described as collaborative rather than restrictive

    high · Elwin: 'Licensor was so flexible... when you're with a licensor and you say hey I want to do this and they say yeah that sounds great... it's exhilarating.' Approved creative voice work departures from original films.

  • $

    market_signal: Godzilla topper sold out rapidly after community education via streams; described as impossible to purchase at retail; Elwin credits Joel's stream demonstration and Zach Minney's promo video with reversing negative sentiment

    medium · Elwin: 'Now we're in a position where nobody can buy the topper... they're sold out everywhere.' Credits specific content creators' videos with reversing Pinside negativity.

  • ?

    product_strategy: King of Monsters mode coded in approximately 2 weeks on compressed timeline due to late development start for topper release window

    high · Elwin: 'Rick Nagel... slapped that mode together in like two weeks... we kind of waited till the last minute.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: King of Monsters challenge mode added post-launch as solution to 99%+ of players never seeing difficult wizard modes; created from internal office cheat menu favorite (Escape Nubar model)

    high · Elwin: 'We'd all stand around the game and wow this is really cool... nobody's going to see it. So that's when we came up with the idea. Why don't we just make this a challenge mode?'

    • 4:17
    Because usually every time I work with Rick, we try to at least get to 0.85 or something at release and try to get most of the stuff in there. I think the problem with that is then you get zero feedback.
    4:29
    Stuff's in a game, and it's just going to be time-consuming to go back and change it, modify it, whatever. So it's like none of the many wizard mode rules were written, you know, at launch. The power-ups didn't do anything because, frankly, I hadn't figured out what they were going to do yet. It just, hey, I don't want to have power-ups in here. I'll revisit it later after, you know, I see people playing the game. I see people streaming the game. It's like, oh, what does this game need? And then I'll, you know, fill in, you know, the rest of the idea in my head at that point. And Godzilla was really the first game that we did that on where I was actually actually looking at feedback, watching streams, taking notes. And it's like, oh, you know, there's like a little dead spot here. You know, let's add the saucer attack multi ball, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. Which is it's paying off really well. And I mean, you say that like, oh, we'll just add this. But I also know the way your mind works and the tournament players that are out there. The last thing you want to do is put something in the mode that's overpowered or like, OK, never mind. People are going to completely ignore 85 percent of the game now and only focus on this 15 because that's where all the points are. That's the safest route. So that balancing act, every time you add something new. I'm assuming you have to completely see how that fits into everything else to make sure you're not breaking it, you know, or or creating a path that you don't want people to focus on. Yeah, I think a lot of 90s games broke people's brains where you want to do multiball because that's also where all the points are. I think that was a huge mistake, one that hopefully you're not going to find in my games.
    6:06
    Actually, Lyman and I used to talk about that all the time because I helped him with a lot of Walking Dead stuff. And he was just like, you know, these multiballs – because he originally had the two multiballs stacking together, the well and the prison. And then I was, you know, talking to him and I was like, well, this is all I do. Yeah. Try to stack these two and bring in bloodbath. And it was just like, yeah, you know what? I'm not going to have you stack these two. And a lot of my games you can't stack. That's for that reason. And the other thing is if you make the multiball worth a ton of points, you know, easily, then that's all you're going to do. Yeah. Um, and so to me, it's like, I think the, the, the secret spot is have multi-ball where you can, you know, achieve a lot of points, but you have to, you know, set it up. You have to play it really well. And that's kind of like Godzilla multi-ball. If you just bash a few shots, get a super jackpot, it's, it's not going to do a whole lot to your score. But if you get through it a few times, if you bring in Rodan and all of a sudden, oh, I just got 400 million. And so there's a special sweet spot with the scoring balances. And sometimes it's hard to find, but that's one of the advantages of having guys like Ray, myself.
    7:22
    We also have Dave Hagee, a really good player who worked for us. And, you know, these guys just like, hey, you know, I can shoot this all day. And I was like, yeah, okay, definitely need to fix that. And watching Carl, Carl's team, that's another one. He's like, oh, I'm just going to sit there and do destruction jackpots all day and use my heat ray over and over. So he's like, OK, so now I have to have a heat ray cool down and I got to modify the destruction jackpots a bit. So, yeah. And it's I saw that or I saw the level of this game really show itself when I was at Texas Pinball Festival. And when I was there, there was a tournament going on. And Travis, one of my co-hosts on Triple Drain, he was still playing and I was watching him and he was playing Godzilla at the time. So I'm in the other room watching the projector and listening to people talk and they're like, OK, he has he needs like 200 million. Where's he where's he going to get this is all three. And just listening to people talk about potential strategies of like, well, he could do this and this and this. And somebody said they're like, well, he's close to Rodin. Let's see if he gets this. He can get Rodin. He can start. I forget the the one where the the the battle goes. The guy comes in and out and out. Or no, it wasn't that it wasn't Megalon. I think it was the Titanosaurus because it was just like hit two, hit five targets real quick. But it's like if he does all this, he skimmed a target on the way. You know, it's like everybody's throwing out these different theories. And when you compare that to another game like Taxi that was being played at the same time, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm just going to lock for multiball and do this. And just that that complexity there of it's there for the people that want it, but it also can be completely ignored for everybody else. and I don't know that's that really stands out to me as that really connected once I saw that in that like high-end tournament kind of environment yeah see that's a sweet spot to be clear I love taxi oh yeah high speed you know games where it's like okay do the thing I love that but do I want to play them over and over every day no um it's they're fun to play one time but yeah the trick to the you know the successful home game is to have you know a varied and a deep rule set I think yeah and I know my dad I actually went to uh we went to a pinball bar kind of area and played a whole bunch of games and Godzilla was the game that stood out to him he's not a great player at all and I asked I was like I said if you could take any of those pinball machines home put it in your basement which one would you take and he said Godzilla and I said why is that he goes I don't know what I was doing but every shot I hit made me feel like I was doing something like doing something like he was achieving something and I think a big part of that is the choreography of light show the sound that you've brought into it different shots and then obviously the whole game is about destruction so it's just like you feel like you're you don't know what you're fighting you don't know what you're destroying but every shot that you hit you're it feels like you're destroying or fighting something um and that really that impressed me that you can have a carl d'angelo level player that loves godzilla and then my dad on the other that also loved godzilla so i don't i yeah biggest selling point to me was rick nagel the programmer his dad bought a godzilla Oh, wow. some of your next games or is this like you know what i want to i want to shift for the next one and do something more i don't know that's going to be more challenging like uh like a jurassic park somewhat more linear path i don't know i don't is this like a new design philosophy for you or just did this just happen to work really well for godzilla the reason it works so well is because the licensure was so flexible i mean it's i'm sure it's true with anyone's job if someone's directing you how to do something then you know sometimes your vision doesn't you know jive with that and then you start making compromises whereas you know games i've done in the past i i've set off on that path but i wasn't able to continue it so um like i said when you when you you you were uh one with a licensor you know hey i want to do this and like yeah that sounds great or they'll say well how about this and you're like oh yeah that that's a good idea it's it's it's let me tell you it's exhilarating it's like okay cool these you know really on board with everything I want to do. They're fine with it. And Godzilla is a great example because we were just petrified that we would have to take these Toho characters and make them just sound exactly like them.
    12:04
    Like the X-Zillion. If you watch the movie, the X-Zillion is really boring. So when we did our initial read, we had them very boring. And it was like, wow, this is awful. And so we kind of redid them. We kind of spiced them up a little, added a little more personality to them. And they're just like, yeah, kick ass. you know and that was like oh my god thank you because you know if the whole game was just sterile you know guys reading lines it was going to be tough but um we got the you know the freedom to do it rick z for our voice guy he was super into it he um he did all those voices so it was a great time that's awesome and i think i think it's actually shown because some of the other games that are really like some of the other top 10 voted games like i know right now foo fighters is really being well loved. And it sounds like the licensor of the band was really open to kind of you do whatever, you know, like have fun with that. And then Deadpool's another example. I know when I talked to George, he said him and Tanya were basically given like whatever you want to do. And that's you look at Deadpool and, you know, at one point, you know, you're fighting Dracula on roller skates and another point you're fighting a T-Rex. I mean, it really seems like I think it sounds like when you or any designer is given a licensor that lets you run with it and have, I mean, yeah, that's got to be awesome. That's got to be a lot of fun to have. Yeah, it is. Well, how was then Bond 60th? How was that? Was that, did you, like, I know that's a complete different type of game, a complete different situation you were put into. At least the stories that I've heard, it sounds like this was the game that the licensor actually wanted, was a more like an ode to the older system, a more simplistic game. At least, and it sounds like Gomez was able to talk him into something fancy, but they still wanted this kind of classic layout. And somehow you heard about it or you're like, I'm in? How did that come about? I don't remember exactly. I just remember that they were talking about, hey, we have to make a Woven Ellie type simpler score real game. And they were kicking around some ideas like reskinning Quicksilver, reskinning Galaxy.
    14:21
    But that would have required – because we don't have CAD files for those things. It would require getting one, taking physical – it would be a lot more effort than it was probably going to be worth. So I threw my hat in the ring and said, hey, if you guys want a layout for this, I'll do it. I have plenty of time because I had just finished designing the game that I got coming out next. So I had a little bit of a break before the coders jumped on board. So I took that on. Yeah. And that's something I actually streamed GNR the other night and was talking to Eric Minyer. He was on the stream with me and I kind of threw that out at him. I was like, as a designer, you know, he's he's made some crazy games with crazy max and crazy ramps and all that. And I was like, if there was a situation where JJP gave you an opportunity to do a single level game, would you want to do it? And he's like, absolutely. So it sounds like I think it's funny from the collector side. We look at that and they're like, oh, well, you know, this is basic. This is whatever. But like from a designer standpoint, though, this presents you with completely different challenges that you then what you have with Cornerstone. right i mean making a creative layout um so to me the problem the problem uh i wouldn't say a problem but i think one of the things that we've been like steered towards is every shot as a safe return back to the flipper okay um i think that that's something i'm trying to take back away a little bit because to me that makes the game boring if everything's a combo everything flows together the ball's never in danger to me that's kind of you know yeah where's where's the challenge because when i play you know when i play eight ball deluxe what's the challenge of that game well you got to hit these you know these seven targets on the side oh that sounds easy well it's not because you know what you have to try to get the ball back under control so um that's why that's kind of why i jumped at doing this uh bond 60th layout because all right you know not every shot's going to come back control we're going to have a bunch of drop targets we're going to have spinners you know, the hat in the middle, everything is gonna be kind of flying back at you I wanted to make a two flipper game just kind of like a retro nod Obviously it plays a lot faster than a retro game but I wanted a game that almost every shot you take the ball is going to be in danger And I think that that really adds to the one more game moment that people are experiencing with that. And I did too. when I first brought that game home and we were testing the code, I just kept pressing star too because I was like, oh, how did I drain that? You hit these online drops and the ball drains. You hit the cap, the ball drains. You really got to be on your toes at all times.
    16:59
    To me, that's part of the excitement of pinball is getting the ball back under control. If I'm shooting this big old ramp and just waiting for it to come back to the flipper and it's like, okay, yeah, that's fun for a while, but I don't want every shot to be like that. So, yeah. And I imparted some of that in Godzilla, putting that pop up or no weird spot, you know, bashing the building, bashing of the shield. I forced you to shoot, you know, I forced Carl to shoot stuff. He doesn't want to shoot. That's how I look at it. Which is good. You should do that more. You should definitely making Carl uncomfortable, which side note, he has a Bond 60th now. And I think you've seen the stream that he's already, he's already gotten to the wizard mode. I mean, that guy is, it's insane. it's insane what that guy can do um but you know hey we love carl uh i've streamed on 60th and i will tell you first off i'm super glad that you put co-op mode in the game because this is one of the first games that i've played that i feel like like i need co-op like okay this is this is gonna beat me up but i need you to be you know we need to beat get beaten up together please i need like i need your help to get through this game deeper um and i i will say it's probably the of all the games I've streamed, it's the one game I never want to stream by myself. Like I want people to be there because it is such an equalizer. It makes very competitive games as short as they can feel, or let's go in with co-op and let's see how far we can go together. So, um, if that was your goal, you definitely crushed it. You definitely crushed it with that. Well, I'll be honest with you. Yeah. Mark Panaccio put that in. So shout out to him. Well, thank you. Thank you. And I, and I saw the, um, uh, the Jack Danger reveal stream, where you were there and Gomez, you know, you guys were playing it together and you, all you guys genuinely looked like you're having a blast. Like, and I think that's the, that social type game or that social environment game, this game does it really, really well. So yeah. And there's no, there's no like, like, yeah, if you're playing Godzilla with friends, sometimes you're stuck standing there for 30 minutes, you know, watching somebody just crush it. That's exactly what I'm talking about, you know, because I grew up in the arcade era, my friends and I would hang out and play pinball together. Where it's like now, if I hang out with my pinball friends, we play Godzilla, we play pretty much any modern game. It's just like, I'm going to grab another beer, I'm going to stare at my phone for a while, let me know when you're done.
    19:19
    I mean, those games are great by yourself, but yeah. Social-wise, I think we've taken a huge step backwards, and hopefully some of these single-level games will bring some of those memories back and bring people together. How do you... how do you beat that? Like, how do you get away from that? Like how, cause if you make a game, you know, you make a game like, uh, John Borg made, made turtles and turtles is just brutal. And it's like, you make this game that's hard and people hate it because they're like, Oh, game's too hard. But yet it makes it a fun game to play with other people because it, it keeps the ball time down. So it's like, how do you balance that? How do you, is there any way to like, um, I don't know, make the game go faster or more of a, uh, like a socially fun game to play without people just thinking it's just death, brutal game. I mean, I don't know. No, hopefully you'll see in my next game. I have some ideas. Okay. No, we'll see how they work. Uh, yeah, I, I don't know. That's, that's the, at least games that I found, some of the harder games are the ones that last the longest in my collection. And, and I think that's the same for, for most, but at the same time, you do want to have games that are approachable for your friends and family that come over and they actually want to feel like, they can do something besides just immediately drain. I mean, you hit the nail on your head when you said that, you know, your wife never plays pinball, but she wants to play the challenge mode on Godzilla. Yes. Yes. So let's go into that. King of Monsters, that game. So this is a challenge mode that came with the exclusive topper. So we'll start there. The exclusive topper as a game designer. Let's clear this up because some people say they think Joe Schmo at Stern is in, is in charge of designing all the accessories. That's not true. Like you as a game designer lead, this is like, that topper is just as much part of the game for you to design as the rest of the game, right? I mean. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
    21:13
    Basically what we do is, you know, we throw out a few concepts and then either as a team or, you know, where the licensure will just choose. Like there's a rare instance, like an Iron Maiden, we ended up with two toppers because the licensure couldn't choose. So they said, do both. So yeah, we threw out a few ideas, and then we'll land on one. So did any of those ideas include fire, shooting fire at the player? Because that's what everybody apparently was expecting was a freaking flamethrower. I can tell you the ideas I've had for my toppers that never came to fruition. A flamethrower was not one of them? A flamethrower was not one of them, no. Maybe the next game, no.
    21:51
    So I know when I saw the initial reveal, and I think, honestly, the initial video that Stern put out wasn't the greatest. It wasn't the greatest video at showing what was actually in the topper. So I know reveal day comes out and a lot of people just big old question mark of like, what, what did we just watch as I don't know, like, how do you feel? Like you're the creator of this. This is your baby. This is your brain. You know, like you've been obviously you and the team reveal, like how do you respond to that? Or how do you sit there and see pin side just go off? Like what, what is it? how does that feel or what do you, how do you react to that? I don't know. Oh man, obviously it's not great, but at the same time I'm watching this video and saying, yeah, I don't know what this thing does watching that either. Um, I mean, sure. Do I want this, uh, you know, animatronic Godzilla that comes down and starts choking you and throwing dollars at sure. But you know what, uh, you know, I try to, you know, try to make most of the cool stuff on the play field and I do what I can up top. Um, you know, sometimes it's a give and take. Was there any conversation about affordability? And what I mean by that is, this game is so popular. You've sold so many Godzillas. I think you could have made an absurdly expensive topper with everything. It could do everything. but yet this is so well sold that that I feel like you now just lost the majority of people that own the game versus the other side if you make something that's cheaper then more people can get it because it's been sold more you know an example that would be like Elvira Elvira House of Horrors that game is already a premium level game it's an expensive level game so they were I think that was the first topper that came out over a thousand dollars but it's like okay it's an it's already an expensive game this one I just seem because it's so well loved I don't know was Is there any discussion there on like price point of where this topper should fall based on collectability versus just the overall market? Or you just designed something and price point came out where it came out? This topper was designed in 2020. Oh, okay. Well before the game came out. So no, that was never like, hey, we're going to sell 50,000 of these. You know, let's try to make an affordable. None of that info was out at the time this was designed. That's crazy. Because, yeah, you get those trolls or whatever that they're like, well, maybe they designed a topper because they don't want to sell a ton of them because they don't want to make it. It's like, who would do that? Like, I don't know. But I will say I got the topper really quickly after it was released. And I'm super, super grateful to you and Rick Nagel and George Gomez because you guys approved beta code and you guys gave me the ability to stream this. And what I think is really neat is Zach Minney with Flippin' Out made a good video, a good promo video showing it off well. And then our stream came out that showed, you know, long form how well it was integrated with the game. And it just kind of seemed like an overnight switch. All of a sudden, Pinside got a lot quieter about and then people started getting them and building them up. And now we're in a position where nobody can buy it. Nobody can buy the top or they're sold out everywhere.
    24:55
    I don't know. That's like, how does that feel on your end? Or like you're like, thank you. Now that you've actually seen like for everybody else, it's like everybody that talked before they saw it. Now you've actually seen it. Maybe we can all take a deep breath. that kind of stuff i mean the amount of work that uh brett our lamp uh effect guy put into the topper i mean you can see especially in a track mode you're sitting there watching tanks shoot at godzilla and it's got all these little choreographed shows going on in there that you probably don't even notice while you're playing but uh there's there's a ton of stuff in there so um yeah no shout out to the software guys you know the lamp guy you know rick nagel of course yeah who slapped that mode together in like two weeks you know uh because we kind of waited till the last minute to get that out but uh we got it out just in time for the topper release well let's talk about that in the mode itself the king of monsters time attack um just to clarify it is king of monsters is a mode in the game it is a mode in the game but to get to that mode what are the steps that you have to do to get to actually see that mode in the game oh you gotta see you gotta visit planet and then you gotta work your way through all the power-ups. I think it's 11. So it is hard, is the answer. It is quite a journey and it's quite a ride to get to that mode. And I know I saw, when the mode was added, Carl of course streamed and he got to it. I mean, why wouldn't he, right? And to see it's like, oh, that looks like a cool mode. But once again, from your view, like you and you've developed, you've thought through this mode and then Rick's coded it. for you guys to spend hours and hours and hours on a mode that you think 1% of people that play the game will ever see, that kind of sucks, right? I mean, how do you? That's exactly how the Escape Nubar challenge came about because, so when Rick's writing these modes, we have our little cheat menu. So we go into our cheat menu and start, you know, Escape Nubar, yes. And this is when we're all in the office. So we'd all, you know, stand around the game and, wow, this is really cool. This is, you know, all this effort and work that nobody's going to see. And so that's when we came up with the idea. Why don't we just make this a challenge mode?
    27:05
    And it kind of became like the office favor. We would just play the challenge mode. So that was front and center when we were doing Godzilla. It was like, oh, we've got to have some stuff like this in the game too.
    27:22
    Now, is there any, I would say some people are upset that this is locked behind, the fact that you have to buy the topper.
    27:31
    I don't know. I can see both sides of it, obviously. I'm grateful that I have the topper because I love the mode. Are there any other, I don't know, are there any thoughts on that? Or is that, I don't know if that's your call, whose call, or is there anything else? We have some other challenge modes planned, but that mode's exclusive to the topper. It's, despite what people say, it's not getting released on IC, which makes no sense because Godzilla shipped with IC. Yeah, who wouldn't get it? Yeah. So that the only reason that, uh, those other modes are unlocked because they didn't ship with IC. So. Okay. Awesome. Well, that's great. No, I'm, I love it. And I hope, um, I hope Stern gets around to making a lot more and I hope more people buy it. Um, I will say, I said this in triple drain that, um, my wife has really enjoyed that mode. And, um, there's something about, I think it's an amazing training tool, not only for a novice player, but also a player like myself, because in that mode, you have to fight all four of the first level bad guys at the same time monsters at the same time and to be honest megalon is one that i almost never pick because it's it's a challenge it's a really hard challenge for me and so to force you to you know instead of just ramping out with guy again or you know working on that stupid left spinner man that shot just it's so it feels good when you hit it but man does it feel like you just suck when you brick and brick but to get through that all and then to be rewarded with the speed at which you get through phase one is your reward for phase two. I don't know. I've, I've loved it. And I've, it continues. I still haven't beaten it. I've been all the way to the point where I hit all my shots in the second phase and you have to hit the scoop. You have to hit the scoop to finish it. I didn't know that. So I like, I started to celebrate early when I hit my last shot and I had, I think it was nine seconds to get the ball under control and hit the scoop and didn't happen. no it didn't happen practice your scoop shots i guess no i just need to practice all the shots but um even my wife my wife was able to get through the first phase she had like 15 seconds for the second phase but i don't know i i think you you did something right there and i appreciate to have such a killer mode so deep in the game but now give it a way for everybody else to accept you know actually play it is fantastic yeah and not only that i mean it's a modified version of what you get to in a game. So to get into the game, it's not time. So, you know, you drain, you, you bet. Yeah. So this year, you know, you're, you're not under that pressure. You can just say you're just under the pressure of the clock. Yeah. And it's, it's great. It's great. You said the word modify and, and I'm curious your thoughts here because this Godzilla has to be, there are so many mods for this game. There are so many mods that people have made for this game. I mean, you can see even the speaker light kits that I have, the flaming printing building as a designer. I don't know what's your view on mods these so many of these cosmetic mods stumbler has made his his was voted twippy his Neon took the Tokyo neon sign over the scoop was the number one mod last year I know what is it did he something did he something he has a crazy mods? I don't your view like what are your thoughts on mods? Do you have any that you plan on putting in your Godzilla or I don't know what reviews? those Tokyo Neon mods are really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No when I see Steve, it's like anything else You know, sometimes they're over the top. Other times they're, you know, they're really cool. Like the thing that goes on the roof that diverts the balls, I think, is kind of dumb. But I designed it that way for a reason. But, you know, if you want it to go there, sure.
    30:57
    But some of those, yeah, the neon ones, the UFO ones, the speakers, those are cool. Yeah, no, those are really cool. And I just saw one the other day where I think it was on the premium where the Godzilla's atomic fire was. oh for the back glass yeah that was really cool too so stumbler he has that's his current ufo mod it has four parts to it so it's the ufo that changes and has its own interactive light show the two posts the two star posts down by your flipper when the slings hit those will actually light up differently and then the fourth part is actually this led strip that goes behind the breath and you can connect that to like the spinner or something like that um and then he teamed up with another guy to do this atomic Godzilla figure. I don't know. That was probably one of the first things you saw when people were getting Godzillas or taking the Stern figure out and putting, you know, it's like now people are scouring eBay for these. I had no idea that the Toho, you know, Godzilla figure market was so prevalent and so expensive. Some of these figures are absurd how pricey they are. Yeah. Yeah. We bought a bunch of figures when we're developing. we know they're expensive yeah yeah well so you know to be to be clear my biggest thing when I play is I want to be able to see the ball so as long as the mods aren't like you know blocking the view your view then I generally don't have a problem with them yeah well I'll tell you the figure that I used my brother actually paints like minifigs for Warhammer I actually got a new figure and he painted it and it looks awesome but um it had to have been the figure that you who designed the game with because the screw holes in the feet lined up perfectly. It was insane how perfect it was to swap that out. Which figure? It was some 1954 classic something I don know It was something that Pinside recommended and it about a half an inch taller than the one that in there and it fits perfectly It awesome Yeah Imagine that Imagine that That really cool Well, I don't know. I could talk about Godzilla all day, and I think – I know because of how amazing this game is, I mean, it just seems like you're continuing to improve with that. And to see kind of your design philosophy or your code philosophy change, I don't know. I'm excited, just like everybody else, for your next game. See how that'll work. But yeah, Bond 60th. Well, what about that? That game was announced. It was rumored. It was talked about. And then it was announced. What were your feelings on game day of that? Because some people saw it and are like, you know, you got Bond fans out there. They're like, holy cow, this is the first thing ever that has all six Bonds together in one item. and then there are other people that are like, oh, I want to buy it for eight grand. I'm not going to pay, you know, it's like, what's your feeling on reveal day on that? I mean, of course, I want everything cheaper too. But you see, I never really dealt with the licensure at all. So I had no idea at the time that, you know, getting all six bonds was something they like hardly ever did. So that was actually news to me.
    34:01
    But I just remember people saying, oh that you know that topper is awesome and but the first time i saw it in person i was like wow this is pretty cool george designed it so i had never seen it until like we streamed it yeah i was like wow that is pretty cool yeah um there was yeah i mean i i get why you know people were scoffing at the price but um you know i did my job i was like hey here's a here's a fun game I think you'll like it. You know, maybe not everyone can afford it, maybe you're not gonna see them on location, but hopefully everyone will get to play it someday, somewhere. Yeah, no, that was a surprise to me when Zach brought that for me to stream, and man, it felt weird having a game that expensive in my house. Like, my wife was like, wait, what? You know, like, we have small kids, we're like, nobody go near it, that kind of stuff, but I'll tell you, we had a blast playing it. Um, and yeah, just looking at this layout here. I know, I know last time we talked about Godzilla and we kind of went around the, around the play field and broke down design. You had said you knew early on you wanted some sort of building mech. And so you just kind of were like, boom, right there, there's going to be a building mech. And then you had also mentioned that the Magna Grab originally that was supposed to be an Avengers. So you kind of came in knowing I'm bringing this mech into that. So I think you, you, you kind of had said you kind of threw those down on the white would and then you started designing around that um with this where'd you start was there any particular shot you started with any particular mech that you sat down first or what was your initial design uh i started with the figure eight loop okay um it's basically a modified version of something i designed for another game um it it ended up being a lot bigger than i wanted but i think that worked out because it's it's very smooth so i really like how that shot came out after that um i wanted kind of a two pop bumper i was going for more kind of a centaur upper playfield where it's got two pops shoved way at the top with the target bank in front of it i kind of always liked that so uh that's what i was kind of going for up there and then i kind of everything else just kind of filled in around it uh originally we didn't have a display in the play field. So it was a lot more open than what we ended up with. Yeah. And I actually really enjoyed the display. At first I was like, why are they doing that? And, you know, people with the initial review, people are like, what are they going to do? Put movie clips down there or whatnot. And I will tell you the code, it's actually, no, it's, it's, it's very simple. It's very simple, you know, block letters. And that game is so fast and it's so hard to get under control to have something visual right there for you to quickly see what you need to hit. I came away from it like, this is awesome. This is a display like this, bringing this into other games. I don't know. Is this a unique thing for Stern? Do you think there's any chance we'll see something like that again in the future? Because I actually really liked having that there. I mean, it's basically the Star Wars auxiliary display, but under the play field. But yeah, you're right. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would, too. we had to put it in there uh both for our the service menus and uh i see so to be clear it was never going to show movie clips nor could you because of that that viewing angle is so extreme it's going to look kind of weird um but the way we had it the way mark is using it i think it's very effective like you know you can just see you know you can see your timer without having to like look up you know you can see everything you need to see i think it's very cool yeah i found myself almost never looking up at the back box because one, I knew my score was going to be low. So why even look? But two, it just, yeah, to have it communicate exactly what you need to do or where you're at. I don't know. Incredibly effective tool. What else? I know the jackpot shot, that captive ball was such a, it makes me feel like the, what is it? The smart missile shot on Jurassic Park, similar spot, but you really got to thread that back there to cash it out. And you made it timed so it's just man that was i i only hit it i think once or twice and it felt great when i did but that was one of those that was brutal yeah i just wanted a long long narrow shot somewhere so um it was my intention and that would be the hardest shot in a game but i think actually the uh m target is but uh i'm happy i'm happy with how that shot turned out because it even when it's not lit it makes this cool sound you're just like oh i made that shot awesome Well, I didn't want to, but it's still cool. Yeah, because that's the extra ball shot as well.
    38:48
    And then I knew having the gadget where you can hit the button and drop the inlines. It's not a hit the button and just give yourself a multi-ball. It's a, okay, let me help you out and get you a little closer.
    38:59
    And once those are dropped, though, backhanding that from the right flipper was near impossible for me. So now it's a dangerous shot coming from the left flipper. Or, yeah, multi-ball in that game is a multi-ball I feel I earned. It's not given to you. You earn it. Everything in that game is supposed to be dangerous. I mean, you're a spy. Come on.
    39:22
    Everything's dangerous. So that was my approach. It's like I didn't want to, you know, all right, I'm going to shoot a shot and just sit here safely. Because even if you shoot it up into the rollovers and into the pops, it's very drainy out of both sides. Yeah. That's a great game. And I know the hat, I actually really enjoyed the hat in the middle, the way it spins, the way it resets itself. I know that was something with Avengers. There were times where the post was like. That's what brought that up. And a tarot. It's like I can't do it. You know, the post is like perfectly at 12 o'clock. And it's like I can't spin it. Like I need to come on. I know. That was my regret of the Avengers spinner. So I made sure. So this is actually a different assembly. We use what's called thrust bearings, which, like, if you have a fidget spinner, that's what those use. So they spin forever. So we stuck those in there and added, you know, a big counterweight to, you know, compensate for this weight. We had to use the thrust bearings. But, you know, it spins fairly well but almost always returns to, like, the 3, 4 o'clock position. Nice. So it's kind of, you know, it's mostly out of your way, and it's in a spot where you can drill it from either flipper. Yeah, and it worked. It was consistent. And that was the thing to have a mech like that in front of the MI6 targets, which you're trying to hit. But yet the way it puts itself, I don't know that you whatever you guys did to make that work. It works really well. I don't know how many people are going to have spinners in any games coming forward. But hopefully they use a mech like that because and I'm glad I like that. It's only one post because even though it's a big mech, it's only one kind of little thing that's in your way compared to like a double post spinner or something like that. I saw a lot of people's feedback. Oh, I'm so sick of spinning discs. And I was like, try it at least. I mean, if you hate it, fine. But at least I've tried something different with it. It's going to reset in a nice position. It spins for days if you hit it right. And it's got a sculpt on it, which is actually pretty hard to do. Yeah, it really is awesome. And you said spin for days. I will say the first time I actually got the five spinner combo on that is such a great feeling. And the fact that the geometry is laid out in a way that it can do that and the opto spinners and they just spin and spin and spin um i don't know i think i what you know i'm four spinners i think you should probably just make that a minimum for your games moving forward just four spinners at least here on out because i don't know anybody that complains there's a lot of mechs that they're like i'm sick of this or i'm sick of that i don't think anybody's ever complained about too many spinners yeah well i originally had three on there um the top left the middle and the right and then when i was playing it i was just like I think you can put a four spinner down here in the bottom left. Why not? Yeah. Why not? And then obviously everything's drops. I mean, you've got so many drop targets in there. And another thing that, well, the only thing that people complain about are drops or what, that it slows down the game compared to a standup target. But I don't know. I don't agree with that. I mean, there's something about shooting a drop targets, much more satisfying than shooting a standup. You know, if they're off on the side or whatever, sure. He may stand up. So fine. But you know, if I put three stand-ups in the middle there, that would be just a death factory of air balls coming out of there. So I don't think people would actually want that. No. Go ahead and retrofit your Bond 64 stand-up targets and get back to it. No, I'm good with that. Is there any mech that if you had the ability to snap your fingers and you could make that mech cost half of what it currently costs, that way you could fit it into games more or use it? I don't know. It seems like a lot of people worry about the bomb. you know how well they do this they do the a stand-up target because they couldn't afford the i don't know is there any mech like that that you feel i wish this was cheaper so that i could use it more or yeah that's a toss-up between drop targets and magnets believe it or not magnets okay yeah um uh yeah i'm enjoying that the magna core man the magna grab in um in godzilla maybe this is a quick question i people uh what i read on pin side when they see that the actual core the the MagnaGrab core and they see actual marks on it from the ball. Is that anything? I mean, there are people that are like buying backups. Is that the MagnaCore? They're like, well, this breaks. Is there any way that thing's going to break? I mean, I don't know. I know, Stern, you guys do crazy testing on stuff like that. No, so that core is actually non-magnetic. So that's why it's a little softer, but it's non-magnetic. we've tested those things for forever because like I said it was originally on AIQ so those have been through the ringer I mean if it looks ugly because it's got these little marks on it then by all means buy a spare but it's not going to break that mech is so unique and when anybody plays that and the fact that when that ball comes out and it whips around again it just I don't know it's such a cool mech is that a you do you think that's a mech you'd ever pull back into like pull back out and use somewhere else or do you think that's a Godzilla exclusive no it's a mech that I actually sometimes I'm bored I'll just design mechs and I actually had it doing something really cool um before we even tried putting it on Avengers and I might revisit that someday okay yeah that's pretty cool uh what else do I got for you um Foo Fighters Foo Fighters Jack actually seemed to kind of, it's still an Italian bottom, right? But he messed with it a little bit, you know, adding in those little targets. Do you think there's, I know Stern, I don't know if this is company policy or whatnot, but keeping that consistent, you know, I know you've done some interesting stuff where you've pulled the slings, you know, the slings a little further away from the flippers. And that removes my post pass, but it's, I like though the way it shoots. I don't know, do you have any thoughts, any plans on doing anything kind of crazy or do you, I don't know, what are your views on lower flippers that are more unique with scissor flippers or whatnot like that? Yeah, my next game non-symmetrical in lanes one of them is quite different from the other so yeah, that's something it's like even the Godfather there behind you i think that's really cool what eric did with the the ramp that feeds you know backwards into inland that's pretty cool and it's fast so yeah so i mean i am definitely i think when i first started we kind of had a path uh but we also had three pop bumpers in a nest and yeah and finally i i pleaded my case i'm so sick of playing this exact same game let me for godzilla just let me have one and get it you know where it's actually creates you know havoc and danger rather than just nestled up at the top of the game and um they gave me the green light on that so i think um you know i think i can get a green light for changing the bottom too that's exciting that's exciting because i yeah it's and jack took it one step further with no pops like somehow he found a way to squeak through and i know they have the kafoom target which that's a really kind of impressive mech and foo fighters like it's it's it's cool what that does so it still gives that feeling of randomness, like you don't know when it it's or danger. Um, but yeah, I've, when, when you only have one pop bumper, it actually feels like it's a dangerous mech. It's not just a time saver. Right. So here's the thing. I don't hate pop bumpers, but when they're all nestled together with a single entrance and single exit, and you're just waiting five minutes for them to come out of there, it's, that just drives me nuts. So, yeah, you'll never see that in one of my games ever. It just, it's so, I think the closest you'll probably get is Jurassic Park, and that's because I needed that setup shot, the single exit. Sure. Yeah, that was probably one of my bigger frustrations when I had Toy Story. There's four pop bumpers up there at the top, and, man, you can hit the ball back, and you're like, it's either going to go to the left and fall in the Buzz Lightyear scoop, which will spit it right back into the pops, or it's going to feed out to the right and actually feed my upper flipper. So, no, I agree. I think that's the right move. Um, what else you're like, the overall Stern team is so strong and you guys kind of break up into your, you know, your little units or, you know, like it was Jack and Tanya and then we'll Ray day's part of that. But I know Tim and Ray have done stuff. I know, uh, Dwight and Eddie are teamed up right now. How does that, what's the overall team dynamic there? I mean, um, is there, is it competitive at all? Is it, do you guys work together or run things by each other of like showing your guys games off or sharing? I don't know. And I know you like work from home now. So how does that team, because I know George talks about the studio that he's created. How does that work or how does that feel at Stern? You know, it depends on the team. Like Dwight's really, you know, hey, come into my office and, you know, tell me what you think. You know, he's really good about that. But certain extern designers were actually known to get really mad if you played their game. Not mentioning names. Yeah. He works for the competitors now, but yeah, he was really bad.
    48:46
    But yeah, usually we're, you know, we'll flip it. Like I was, you know, shooting Foo Fighters a long time ago, and I gave Jack some suggestions to help add some more bounce to his game. So he did that. So, you know, it's things like that, you know, actually, you know, we help each other out. Because when I first started, you know, Borg helped me out a lot. He kind of just like oh hey you know here my CAD library Here you know here these ideas I have And you know here some mechs I made that I didn use Feel free to like borrow them and whatever So you know it it it was really intimidating walking into that building you know because we had, you know, John Trudeau, Steve Ritchie and, and John Borg. So these guys are like industry veterans who are all kind of looking down on me. And so it was a little intimidating, but, you know, he kind of took me under his wing and he kind of helped me out and, uh, he's a great guy and I really appreciate that he did that for me. Yeah. You said walking into the building. I know, um, one thing that has been cool dead flipper, Jack dangerous posted some stuff on Facebook where it seems like he's you, somebody sent him into some back room and he's just been cleaning out and just showing pictures of old mechs, like mechs that people have designed for games or original mechs. Um, I'm assuming that's just a treasure trove of, of cool stuff. Um, Oh, yeah, he came down here and he's like, hey, Keith, check it out. And he had a Torpedo Alley hand-drawn CAD file. I was like, oh, my God. That's one of my favorite Dades games. I was like, wow, that's gold, man. Don't lose it.
    50:19
    Yeah, because we were cleaning out the storage space at the building. And that's why he was just going nuts, grabbing stuff, taking pictures. I mean, we could probably open a museum with that stuff. Yeah.
    50:31
    Do you know much about, I mean, the new building, the move's coming up pretty soon, right? I'm assuming you're ready to, are you driving the U-Haul? I mean, what's the plan for that? Or is there anything new with the new building that you're excited about?
    50:46
    I actually haven't seen it yet. I've seen pictures. Obviously, I'm excited because our old building was, quote unquote, old.
    50:54
    This building is much newer and a much nicer amenity. So that'll be exciting. But actually, I haven't seen my office. I haven't seen anything other than pictures. So you are going to have an office there? Mm-hmm. Okay. Because we're so noisy. Oh, yeah? That's – because are you – yeah, how do you work from – like, how do you work from home? I know, obviously, you can work on a computer. You can work on CAD from home, but it's not like you have a – Yeah, I mean, I don't exclusively work from home. I go in, you know, usually once or twice a week because I don't really feel like, you know, drilling holes in whitewoods here. So, you know, once I – I'll bring a play field home, and then I'll work with the programmers. But otherwise, like if I'm making, you know, changes or experimenting with things, I do that at the office. So it's noisy. So we need an office. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Your games are currently I think every game that you've made is still well, not Bond 60th, but still in production. What is that? I don't like I think it's cool that people are kind of discovering Iron Maiden right now for the first time. And that was your first game, you know, because now they're out there and available. I don't know what's that like what's that like because I know you do browse social media and whatnot and seeing people kind of finally like you know I thought I missed out on this and now I finally got one I don't know how's that feel still having every single game available and accessible for people to buy and play Iron Maiden it was I won't lie I hadn't heard Iron Maiden's music in probably 30 years when I took that project um I was like wow I mean I haven't heard this stuff since i was a kid and you know i just remember you know everyone had the iron maiden shirts and i was like wow i really know nothing about this project i know nothing about this band so i really had to do my homework and uh the crazy thing is that i think you know domestically they're you know yeah they're cool i like them but man when i i was just in germany for the ifpa tournament and i had so many german pinball collectors come out to me with iron maiden merchandise oh you know sign this fire sign me well i got i signed like maybe one godzilla thing and maybe 40 iron maiden trans lights and flyers and just like wow this band is just they're like gods here so um it was just crazy because i i had really no idea how big they were around the world yeah because i just think you know a little us bubble here where yeah like yeah they're cool whatever but man like everyone everyone oversees is oh that's my favorite band and oh that's my favorite game and i was like oh awesome well that's great because i had no idea what i was doing when i designed that and uh it was it was uh it was interesting well it sounds like i mean the the foundation you've said this before the foundation the main build of that game was archer your homebrew and then you were able to tweak it in a way to make it play for a stern cabinet or fit in a stern cabinet and then tweak it anymore to be more you know iron maiden specific but the code in that game is is really well liked the art package i mean zombie eddie crushed that again um he's done no jurassic park was the only one because he's done every other one of your games right well not bond 60 at the end that was different yeah no that's quite a combo yeah no no he's a he's a great guy i love working with him yeah well that's awesome um yeah i think that's Oh, tournament. You mentioned going over to Europe. You, I mean, some people like you're an incredibly great tournament player. You've you've been an incredibly great tournament player for many, many, many, many years. What are your thoughts on like current tournament play? Do you feel like it's how has it changed? You know, now that these games are getting more complex, like, do you feel I don't know, like in the world of, you know, being good from an EM all the way to one of the modern games, that skill level is so big now with completely different games. I don't know from you, what are your thoughts on tournament playing? Cause I know you're not traveling nearly as much as you used to, but you still play in some of these bigger ones. I don't know. Overall thoughts on just tournament play right now or the tournament community.
    55:04
    Um, I think one of the reasons I don't play anymore, it seems like everything's been adapted towards maximum whoppers.
    55:11
    And, uh, to me that, you know, it kind of sucks a bit of the fun out of it when you're, you don't really have a final. You're just like playing all night and the first person that attends, you know, avoiding 10 strikes or whatever to me, those, those tournaments are boring. And if you're just cramming a bunch of pinball down my throat, it's not going to be as fun where as it's a structured tournament. Okay. Here is qualifying. Here are finals. These are exactly the number of games you can be playing in finals. You know, I'll be here at this time. You know, that's why Pemberg was so awesome. You just like, you're just following the structure. You're going to play, four games you're gonna take a break for an hour you're gonna play four games you're taking a break then you're gonna go up on the stage you're gonna play three rounds of you know four games and uh those are my favorite tournaments like you know indisc is still kind of like that it's just very structured um and uh it's hard that um i mean i don't want to make excuses but i i really haven't bothered to learn rule sets for most you know modern games um it's just i haven't been playing as much so i haven't had been as motivated to learn and like i went and played foo fighters last night and i had no idea what i was doing you know i was having fun but i had no idea you know how to score points um it's just it's one of those things i just don't you know really value anymore um but you know like the ifa tournament you know we're we know exactly what games we're playing so i could you know i could read up beforehand but yeah every new rule set you learned another one goes out the brain so you know it's tough and um the ifa tournament that i just got back from you know that's awesome tournament because you know you're just head to head you know you and your opponent picking games and there's skill to picking games you know something you're good on stuff you know they're bad on uh those are the kind of tournaments that i love i still love playing in those today but uh if it's one of these woodshop tournaments where you're just pumping and dumping and try to get to the finals and then the finals happen they just kind of shove you through the door uh it's just not as fun for me anymore yeah no but it makes sense i yeah it's i get involved in tournament conversation just because once again triple drain with with tom and travis and and hearing about it it's in the different formats it's very clear some people really like some formats some people really don't like the others that that's a hard balance uh i think we all agreed what was it that josh has changed the new whopper points specifically to screw over tom graff i think that was the goal um i think he even admitted it but no it's i don't know it's i find it fascinating but i know it's not something i participate in and and to see somebody like yourself that you hop into certain tournaments and you always do well you always you clearly have skill um but yeah modern rules are insane i mean i know like godfather like i'm still trying to just digest this game and i love that they you know if this is focused entirely for the home market that they're giving you a game that you that will take you years to explore that's really cool but i also know that really turns off another demographic of people that just want to step up and play a game and um yeah we talked about that on triple drain that somehow godzilla has found a good balance there and um hopefully you're i don't know i'm excited to see you carry that whatever however that that magic formula that you've you've figured out hopefully to carry that into the next the next game i i think i have so we'll see yeah well you admit you mentioned earlier that you said the next game is designed was fully designed from your end before bond so that thing's just sitting there i'm assuming it's being programmed right now yes getting ready to go so you are currently in the design phase of your next title is that right yeah which are you kind of the kind of the cad phase okay cad phase of that was there anything um any any older game that you've played recently that stirred up some uh inspiration for you of like cool layout or cool because i know when we talked about godzilla there was that shot over on the right and you had you had a tail whip deadly whipping yeah yeah and uh no but you know what it's funny you mentioned that because every time I do go to a show or a tournament, I play all these games. Some games I haven't seen in years, other games that I've never seen. I was like, yeah, that's a pretty cool idea. You start getting thoughts in your head. I haven't had one of those in a while, but I did have this, I think is a really cool ramp idea that I'm trying to get working. It'll be different than anything that I've seen. Awesome. It was slightly based on something I saw at InDisc. So we'll see how that goes.
    59:51
    Now everybody's going to look at what games did Keith play at InDisc. No, I saw it at InDisc. Oh, saw it at InDisc. Perfect. Okay. Well, cool. Well, that's basically all I have. Is there anything particular that you want to talk about? I don't know. I know this has been an interesting year for you because now that Stern is just doing two games a year, basically, we knew coming into 2023. it's like, well, Jack's game is going to come out and then Brian Eddy's going to come out. So everybody's kind of waiting, waiting to see what's, you know, rumors are into the year for you. And I know some people are already saving up money, you know, in Elwynn we trust, that kind of thing. I don't know. How is this year for you?
    60:32
    It's actually not. I won't lie. I like being busy, but it's been nice. It's been nice to reset my brain because I can design play fields all day long. I did it with Bond 60th. I told George, hey, I'll design this play field, but I want nothing to do with the rules because designing rules is way harder than unless you're actually a rule designer. That's way harder than you probably imagine.
    60:57
    It's just so many collisions and you got to figure out so many. Oh, how does this interact with this? And it is mind numbing.
    61:08
    It's just not something that I can just do all the time. So I really appreciated to kind of this break for not just me, but like Rick, who's just been like seemingly behind on every project because, you know, it's always on the next, on to the next, on to the next. He never gets to finish the previous. So it's been kind of a nice, you know, I wouldn't say it's a year off because I'm definitely working. It's nice not having this got to have all these rules written at this time and have them ready to submit. And it hasn't been that way. So it's been awesome. Because the rules is that process of you think of an idea and then do you run the idea past the licensor before you code it or you have to start coding it to then demo it? I mean, what's the... No, the licensors don't care about rules. They care about assets.
    61:55
    So, you know, we would have to show how we would use the assets. But as far as the actual rules, they generally don't care. it's it's like you know try to try right in a fun a fun mode in your head and then say okay well how's this going to interact with anything else that's running and you're like oh yeah that's there's like a collision of lamps here we can't can't do that and it it's it's kind of taxing i know some people won't be surprised to hear it but it's way easier to design a play field than it is a rule set yeah no i i think that makes sense and i know you you're not the guy that's actually coding it so that probably i'm assuming you've had thoughts that you've thrown at rick and rick's like that's not possible or like like that well yeah rick's awesome he usually finds a way but um sometimes you'll say yeah i don't know if that's possible but usually you know 99 of the time when i say um like the whole escape nublar thing because we had never done like a three ball mini game within a game. So he was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. So he looked at, he looked at that for a while. He looked at the code and he's like, okay, I think I can, I think I can do this. So that's an example of like, you know, I have an idea, uh, before I take it too far, I'll have to pitch it to Rick. Is this possible? And then I get an answer. Yeah, no, that's great. Well, I'm excited. I'm excited to see what's, what's to come. Cause I know, I, I know Godzilla is pretty much done. You said you have some more ideas or you'd said more challenge modes, potentially in the future. So yeah, if this was done, if you said this was done, you know, all wrapped up in a bow, I'm a happy camper. But if there's more to come, why not? Like that sounds awesome. And I know IC has kind of brought some new things for some of your older games, like new challenges or whatnot for people to play. And that's awesome that they're available. People can buy Iron Maiden right now. People can buy Jurassic Park. They're readily available. that's exciting Godzilla obviously some people are getting those in stock so yeah it's there's a lot of fun Keith Elwin pinball out there right now so thank you for that we're a team man come on oh yeah Keith Elwin team Harrison Drake everybody yep you've got a good thing going you've got a good thing going but no we're excited I know there's nothing it's it's a big question mark but apparently you know we're hoping into the year we're hoping to see what's coming out next with you, but I knew I wanted to catch up and just kind of talk about some of the new stuff that you added in Godzilla and then go over Bond 60th. And just, that was a fun game. It was a really fun game that I've had. And, um, I really hope more people have a chance to play it. I still, whenever I have like, I got 15 minutes to kill, I'm going to play Bond 60th. So yeah. Is that in your apartment? You have one there? Yeah. I still have the photo shoot game here. So what else, what else is in the apartment that you can play? I have my photo shoot Godzilla game I have a Walking Dead I have Jurassic Park and then I have Frontier I forgot that Frontier is like you're a fan of that that's the game that got me hooked man never going to sell it that's awesome well cool well thanks again for doing this I really appreciate that this should be hopefully people enjoy the conversation It was good catching up with you. And I know hopefully you'll be at, what is it, Expo in October? Oh, definitely. I'll be there. Yeah, it'll be good. And I know you have a Triple Drain shirt, so I'm glad you're a fan of that podcast as well.
    65:26
    But yeah, I just like that you guys make fun of Travis. So it's really easy. It's very easy to do. But hey, once again, thank you, Keith. And yeah, we'll have to catch up again soon. All right. Sounds good. All right. See ya.