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Triple Drain Pinball Podcast Episode 63 - UNFILTERED Conversations with Stern Pinball!

Triple Drain Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·3h 1m·held·Apr 19, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.035

TL;DR

Triple Drain at Stern HQ: Keith Elwin discusses King Kong design, mechs, shots, and rules philosophy.

Summary

Triple Drain hosts an on-site conversation at Stern Pinball headquarters featuring Keith Elwin discussing King Kong design, mechanics, and development philosophy. The episode captures candid insights into playtesting, mech calibration, shot design iteration, and rule balancing across Pro/Premium/LE tiers. Includes brief appearance by Chuck Ertz, CG art director, discussing the 3D digital sculpting side of pinball development.

Key Claims

  • King Kong units are rolling down the production line and should start shipping Monday

    high confidence · Keith Elwin stated they were on the production line and Monday shipments expected

  • The upper right flipper U-turn shot was the hardest shot on the entire playfield to dial in

    high confidence · Keith directly stated this was the hardest shot, required lowering the side ramp to solve it

  • King Kong's center post was always planned and George Gomez initially opposed it

    high confidence · Keith stated it was always a plan, George opposed it initially, Jack Danger added to X-Men which validated the design

  • The gong mech uses a coil that pre-winds a spring, then disengages to fire the ball back

    high confidence · Keith explained the mechanical design of the gong in detail

  • Pro version removes the gong mech and requires hitting a sequence of shots instead to light island modes

    high confidence · Keith confirmed Pro has no gong, requires arrangement of shots to light modes

  • The island modes are complete; additional New York modes and wizard mode still in development

    high confidence · Keith stated island modes are done with wizard mode for island, additional New York modes forthcoming

  • Original Kong design featured climbing Empire State Building that was scrapped due to scale issues

    high confidence · Keith explained the original concept and why it was abandoned for current train car design

  • Upper flipper exit uses a cliff strand ramp at an angle with rubber to bounce ball cleanly to flipper

    high confidence · Keith described the mechanical solution that replaced the previous keyhole drop design

  • Joshua Henderson is on the software team alongside Rick Nagel

    high confidence · Keith identified Joshua Henderson as world-class player on software team

Notable Quotes

  • “There's a coil that engages that pre-winds a spring. Okay. And so when you hit the gong, it just puts all the energy in the spring and then fires back at you.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~10:00 — Explains the mechanical design philosophy of the gong mech that creates the 'gong screw' hazard

  • “The hardest shot to get dialed in on this entire playfield was that upper shot from the upper right flipper. It's like a little U-turn. And it was so clunky, so clunky.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~14:30 — Reveals the most challenging design element required lowering the side ramp for magic solution

  • “the whole playfield is designed around the right orbit, not an orbit, whatever it is. It's the punchback back to the upper right flipper.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~20:00 — Core design philosophy: playfield architecture centers on one key shot mechanic

  • “I think it's going to become industry standard at this point. Like, just that return, the way it feeds the flipper and just makes it so much easier.”

    Triple Drain Host @ ~35:00 — Industry impact prediction: the cliff strand flipper exit solution may influence future designs

  • “George is a big fan of the three-ball dump on Godzilla. So he's like, you know, give me something where all the balls just come flying at you.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~28:00 — Reveals George Gomez's design preferences influenced Kong's multiball design

  • “Well, since he hates the gong, that's actually the most viable mode is save and, which we probably need to score balance for the pro.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~44:00 — Indicates potential rule rebalancing needed on Pro tier due to playtesting feedback

  • “It feels good, but it does not feel like anything else out there. It's unique. It's very unique.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~32:00 — Designer confidence in Kong's distinctive playfield design vs. modern conventions

  • “I worked on Mortal Combat for 17 years. Blood and guts and stuff like was my specialty. Physics for intestines flying out of people.”

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonGeorge GomezpersonJack DangerpersonChuck ErtzpersonJoshua HendersonpersonRick NagelpersonHarrisonpersonJeremy Packardperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Triple Drain's on-site recording at Stern headquarters represents strong manufacturer-media relationship and access to designers

    high · Hosts recorded episode at Stern conference table with direct access to Keith Elwin and Chuck Ertz

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Save and mode identified as most viable scoring exploit on Pro tier Kong due to gong removal; potential rebalancing needed

    medium · Keith stated 'since he hates the gong, that's actually the most viable mode is save and, which we probably need to score balance for the pro'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Gong mech on Premium/LE creates significant hazard ('gong screw') that caused playtest feedback concerns about risky shot placement despite landing importance for island modes

    high · Hosts joked about being 'gong screwed' and expressed concern about shot safety despite mechanical elegance

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Kong's upper flipper exit underwent significant redesign from keyhole drop to cliff strand ramp solution based on lesson learned from Avengers inconsistency

    high · Keith explained previous keyhole design problems from Avengers and iterative solution process

  • ?

    design_philosophy: George Gomez's three-ball dump multiball preference from Godzilla directly influenced Kong's train car ball dump design

    high · Keith stated 'George is a big fan of the three-ball dump on Godzilla...why don't we load up a train car with balls'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.544

0:00
We're three guys who like to talk and ball. So we came up with a clever name. We're Joey Travis down the talk and ball. Let's take all of ourselves. Triple drink, triple drink, triple drink. We're triple, triple drink.
0:23
All right, we're here. We are at Stern, sitting literally at their conference table, recording an episode. I didn't ever think this day would come, but we're here. Yeah, there's going to be no technical difficulties for me today. Yes. I haven't seen you since.
0:39
I might have just jinxed it. Let me make absolutely sure. It's all good. Yeah, we're fine. Okay, so we are here, and we're here with Keith. We've played Kong. We're having a lot of fun with that game. That game is awesome. And you were out on the line, right? I was out on the line. And they're rolling down the line now. I think Monday they should start going out. Wow. So when you're on the line, what specifically are you looking for on the games? Are you adjusting, tweaking? Yeah, so pretty much any time there's a mech or a spotlight or something, they don't know where the spotlight goes, how this mech actually is supposed to interact with the ball and everything. And it's a particular case like King Kong Mech at Scruff has a whole bunch of little calibration tweaks you can do. So you want to get maximum movement without smacking into the train or the side. So it's all about dialing that in and teaching the line workers how to do that. Nice. And I know the King Kong neck, it hits the glass. And that's something that's funny is hearing it like tap, tap, tap as you're going is a cool little. Well, see, there's a trick to it. You want it to just barely hit the glass, but you can make it. I think you saw in like one of the flyer photos, the glass wasn't on. His arm was way above it. So that one definitely was not calibrated. So you would not be able to put the glass on if he was like that. And I know you said calibrate the spots. There are two large spotlights on top of the slings. They're kind of hidden there. Yeah. And that illuminates that middle of that play field really well. Yeah. So the combination of those two and the two in the apron, in fact, it was so illuminated that Jack actually taped off the bottom two for the stream. Oh, wow. It was too bright in the middle. Okay. Speaking of too bright, Tom, what are your overall thoughts? on, I mean, Travis played this a bunch. He was texting us in the background. Oh my gosh, this game is S tier. It's so great. Just wait. Because it is. Are you going to say to Keith's face it's not? No, I prefer to make fun of you. It needs a little work. It does.

  • The punchback/kickback shot to upper right flipper was a first-try success with no tweaking needed

    high confidence · Keith stated 'No. No, first try. First try.'

    • Chuck Ertz @ ~65:00 — Background on Stern's CG art director's prior video game experience influences pinball design

  • “You have to see a full gameplay. You have to play it yourself, and it really, really shows it off.”

    Triple Drain Host @ ~31:00 — Observation that Kong's layout is difficult to convey in trailer format, requires play experience

  • “George is against it, and I say, well, I need it for the center ramp. And then Jack's like, dude, if you're putting a center post, I'm putting a center post on X-Men.”

    Keith Elwin @ ~51:00 — Reveals designer decision-making process with CCO and cross-project design influence

    • Travis
    person
    Tomperson
    Joelperson
    King Konggame
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Jawsgame
    Godzillagame
    X-Mengame
    Avengersgame
    Metallicagame
    Iron Maidengame
    Triple Drain Pinball Podcastorganization
    Loser Kid Pinball Podcastorganization
    Mortal Kombatgame
    TPS (Texas Pinball Showdown)event
    Bash at the Beachevent
    ?

    design_philosophy: Keith Elwin centers Kong's playfield architecture around single key mechanic (punchback to upper right flipper) rather than multiple orbits, representing distinctive design approach

    high · Keith emphasized 'the whole playfield is designed around the right orbit...the punchback back to the upper right flipper'

  • ?

    industry_signal: Triple Drain hosts predict Kong's upper flipper exit cliff strand design may become industry standard due to effectiveness

    medium · Hosts stated 'I think it's going to become industry standard at this point...Why do anything other than that now?'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Joshua Henderson confirmed as member of King Kong software team; previously unknown team composition detail revealed

    high · Keith identified Joshua Henderson and Rick Nagel as software team members

  • ?

    announcement: King Kong confirmed shipping; units rolling down production line starting Monday

    high · Keith stated 'I think Monday they should start going out' regarding production line units

  • ?

    product_strategy: King Kong Pro tier removes gong mech entirely and substitutes shot sequence requirement, representing strategic tier differentiation beyond cosmetics

    high · Keith stated Pro has no gong and requires 'an arrangement of shots' to light modes instead

  • ?

    product_strategy: Post-release code updates for Jaws still in progress; potential additional wizard mode and icons being developed

    high · Keith stated 'we're still chipping away at it probably' for Jaws and 'it's not a minor update'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern's 3D CG/digital sculpting department expanded with ex-video game developers, bridging video game design practices into pinball production

    high · Chuck Ertz discussed department composition: 'a lot of us came from video games and digital sculpting' and 'a lot of ex-video game guys that got sick of the grind'

    • 2:39
    I'm just kidding. I will say, though, Travis admits he's scared of the gong. He is scared of the gong. Well, Keith saw what it did to me. We have a term for it, but this is a family-friendly show. It's not a family-friendly show. I don't know. I was told today we have 12-year-olds that listen to this. Oh, okay. Well, shout out to you. You got gong screwed. So what we're saying is the gong on the Premium and LE, because of the way you designed that mech, is it the spring that's pushing back on the ball, or there's a coil that's pulling that gong back towards the ball? There's a coil that engages that pre-winds a spring. Okay. And so when you hit the gong, it just puts all the energy in the spring and then fires back at you. when the coil disengages it ignores the spring entirely and that's what we're saying where if you expect that to be a safe shot and it's a very important shot because the gong shots lead you towards your island modes it's a it's a scary shot it is it is it's a scary shot it is but you know there's no pop bumpers or anything to like throw down the drain so i had to put some riskier shots in there so we got the pit magnet right there and we got the gong right here uh i'm the pro it's going to be a little more work to uh uh light those modes oh travis travis thinks right now it's too easy we're gonna fix it no i like it i i like how the pro how you light it because it's kind of like iron maiden right you played iron maiden before i have okay you shoot around right yeah yeah it's a little too easy now because every shot's late we need to go through and give that another oh so you're gonna do it like the eddie letters it should get more and more difficult but it doesn't because that's something we implemented in the last minute Right. So it's kind of like it's on, like, goal mode right now. Wow. Yeah, it's goal mode. I'm not the one complaining about the gun. I bet the thinner ramp probably spots you, like, three shots, doesn't it? Something like that. Eh, probably screwed. So you're saying, so premium in LE, you hit the gong a few times, then once it's flashing, that's when the next time you hit the gong, it's going to go all the way through, you start your mode. Yeah, there's a little yellow insert, and when that's lit, that means the gong is loaded and locked. It's going to fire back at you. When that insert's not lit, you can shoot through it. Okay. But you're saying on the pro, because there is no gong, you're going to have to hit an arrangement of shots, or a certain number of them, and then it'll be lit. Yes. My worry was, since that feeds the buck right to your right flipper, that tournament players are going to backhand, trap up, backhand gong, trap up. I was like, this is pointless. I'm going to defeat this before it even happens. So, maybe shoot some other shots to light that.
    5:06
    He's a fun hater. I know. Tom, what's your favorite shot? I really like how you made it so, like, the little flipper, you can go up that ramp, it'll come back, and then you can shoot it back. How did you come up with that? I mean, was that, like, preplanned, or did that just kind of come to be? Yeah, that was hopefully my plan. It was really, really tough. The hardest shot to get dialed in on this entire play field was that upper shot from the upper right flipper. It's like a little U-turn. And it was so clunky, so clunky. And we were like, oh, man, we have to cut this shot. Oh, wow. We gave it another try. We lowered the side ramp down a little bit, and that was the magic sauce. It feels really good. So I would encourage – so there's so many really cool shots that if you just step up to this game, you know, what is it that I want to hit? What is it I want to do? but that shot, you know, what Tom was saying was if you can feed that upright flipper, you basically shoot under the ramp, but you don't see it in any of the pictures, but it's a very quick horseshoe and somehow magically feeds that mini flipper on the left well and consistently. And so you can do this kind of crazy figure eight type shot between the ramp and that over and over again, and you have a whole mode based on that. Yeah, so we, you know, I first designed that. We didn't have the diverter in place yet. I was like, oh, this is really fun, but, you know, an expert player can just do this all day. And so when we put the diverter in, it's like, okay, perfect. Now we're going to have certain modes where you can do that. You know, you can't do it all day because you're going to reach the end of the mode.
    6:46
    And so you can experience that a little bit. You know, it was everyone's favorite mode during the process because they can, you know, try to get a perfect going across the log there. And that diverter he's talking about, it pops up the log diverter, is that what you call it? Yeah. It pops up to the left of the mini flipper to feed that. And so you had made a comment on Loser Kids that you feel like that upper area is kind of like a mini play field but not. And it truly does feel like that. You're either up experiencing that kind of situation or the ball goes right by it. And you made even going down the river like a cool visual thing. And the way it feeds the left flipper is smooth and consistent. Yeah. When I was very young, I would play a game called, I think it's Knockout by Dally. Oh, yeah. And it had the little wiggly thing in the middle. And I was like, oh, that's so cool. But then, you know, you play today. He's like, yeah, it's all right. I was like, well, what if this actually served a purpose? What if it actually slows the ball down to where I can shoot the ball in a loop. It'll be flying through there, but it slows down enough that you can actually make another shot. So it's funny. If you actually pull that sculpt out of there and then try to loop like Josh was doing last night, it's so fast. It's impossible. Because, yeah, on Jaws, you just had that straight down. Yeah, yeah. Jaws, I intended that to be super fast. Yeah. Yeah, on this one, you didn't want that. Well, so you said that shot under the ramp, multiple iterations. Yeah. So start all the way back at the beginning, you know. Are we saying Keith is admitting to making a coffee shot? He doesn't need just one whitewood. Yeah. No, no, no. So, I don't know. Start wherever you want on the play field. Certain mechs is this. I mean, obviously, we've experienced the final iteration. but I think you said on Loser Kids there was, at one point, there was a drop in front of the cave. But other than that, everything's in the game. I'm just assuming it took a little while to get to where it's at. So I had to drop target in front of a cave, and it wasn't satisfying because it basically just sent the ball flying over the flipper. And then we needed a second coil for the gong mech, so that was an easy, all right, hit the road. We used that drive to basically move that coil to the gong mech to get more kinetics out of it. the whole playfield is designed around the right orbit, not an orbit, whatever it is. It's the punchback back to the upper right flipper. The whole layout was designed around that, and then I put in the upper left little mini playfield area. And I originally had two pop bumpers kind of in the middle where the biplane ramp is. Really? Yeah. Weird. Would that have fit? so I had more targets going up the middle kind of where the spinner shot is okay I'll have to dig up that CAD file if I can find it yeah it was something like that and I was like I think I'd rather have like a side ramp that just screams down at you so I told Harrison let's make the tallest ramp we can make and have it come flying down a helix you know we'll call it the biplane ramp so we designed that and yeah no regrets there I don't miss the pop bumpers that's the one thing too The pictures don't really show how tall that ramp really is. If you see it in person, it looks like it's going through the glass. And then somehow the ball gets around there. There was a couple of times we got it to the very top, and it almost felt like it wasn't going to quite get there. It kind of stalled for like a few, and then it would just go flying around. Then other times it would just be a perfect feed. And, yeah, it's fast, and it's satisfying. Especially, what is that mode? Save and, I think, is that, to where you've got to hit the kickback, Then it comes back. I just hit the swamp. Is that what it is? Okay, yeah. And then you hit the kickback, and you keep building up the value over and over again to cash it in eventually. Yeah. So when you hit the punchback target, it sends the ball flying to the upper flipper, which I think, in my opinion, makes that ramp really easy to hit because it just screams up and it comes around. Yeah. It's a little bit harder to hit when you do the crossover, and it's coming at a much lower velocity. But it's definitely still there. Well, I wanted to see if I could hit the left orbit shots from the right flipper. And it's tight, but you can do it. It's actually not that tight. It's visually. For Joel, this is the tight shot. Wow, yeah.
    10:57
    It's a visual thing because it's so far in the back and there's so much stuff in front of it. But it's actually one of the biggest shots in the game. Yeah, it's cool because you don't realize how far back it is. And then there was one point where I ricocheted off something and somehow hit, from the right flipper, the back left ramp. And that's such a surprise when that happens as well. That's actually designed that way. It's called the Ricochet Shot. There you go. We just saw it happen. We're like, that's cool as shit. Yeah. What's up? We actually have a rule for that. Seriously? You'll say Ricochet, yeah, and you get $5 million. Oh, hey. It's a text. Yeah, it is. It's a text. That's awesome.
    11:34
    What about, so was Kong always going to be back right? Yeah, Kong was always back right. Originally, I had, he was on an Empire State building, and he was, you know, climbing and climbing and climbing. And when he got to a certain point, he could divert the ball to a lock. The problem was that in order to use Empire State Building, we had to get the proper, you know, scale and everything. And that whole thing just turned into a fiasco. It's like, okay, let's make our own building. But then it was just a scale. You know, George wanted this giant King Kong out there. And in order to have him climb in any kind of building, we had to make him so small. Yeah. It's like, okay, this is extremely underwhelming. He's like, think of something else, guys.
    12:16
    Then we had him pretty much the same size he is, but grabbing a ball, picking it up, and then we were going to try to throw it at the player.
    12:25
    But it's too hard to actually magnetically pick up the ball. And then what? Player two drains, player one comes back up, and he's the wisey-ho in the ball. And it was harder to get rid of the ball out of his hand, and it just wasn't worth it. And George is a big fan of the three-ball dump on Godzilla. So he's like, you know, give me something where all the balls just come flying at you. So Harrison and I was like, well, you know, I know he likes bashing up trains, so why don't we load up a train car with balls and just have them smash it over and they come flying out.
    12:58
    Yeah, we all started, we've all experienced multi-ball. I will say the sweepable drops when you hit it feels good, I assume. I haven't swept them yet. But I find that shot, to hit the drops from the right flipper is a challenge. for me, but yet the fact that you have options, though, backhand with the left or hit the river shot to feed the upper flipper, which you can then cradle and pick it out that way.
    13:25
    I do think that's going to be a challenging multiball for a novice to get, but yet the spider, the beast multiballs are very easy to get. The sweep rule, actually, you only need two targets to initiate the sweep rule. If you hit any of the two targets and the ball goes all the way around to the upper right flipper, and you should buy a plane ramp. You get the sweep combo. So you just need two. The more you sweep at once, the much higher values. If you can do all four and do the super sweep combo, it's like $50 million. Awesome. Yeah. And I know there's a lot in the game right now. Like, that's something that the fact that you can choose your mode. There's five modes, I think, in the game. Is that five total ever, or there's additional modes you're going to add after that, or it's just five island modes? Oh, the island modes? No, we have a bunch of New York modes. The island modes are done. We have a wizard mode for the island. That's it. Then we have a few more New York modes.
    14:17
    Obviously, we have some modes associated with shots. We have biplane mode, the rapids mode. Even the 2X scoring phase is kind of a mode because once 2X is going, you can shoot. There's one random flashing stand-up target. If you shoot that, it's worth points, and that keeps growing. So even if you have nothing running, there's still a mode. Okay, because that's what I was, at least when I was playing in there, It's like, okay, I did an island mode. I've done the Kong multiball. I've done the Beast multiball. At that point, it's like I could focus on Climberos, right, and try to work towards a New York mode. Otherwise, I'm going to keep chipping away at island modes. Yeah, plus, you know, the Climberos are almost always lit, and you're always getting credit towards working towards a Kong letter. So you spell King, it lights the skill shot mode, the Deadeye. You spell King Kong, it lights the T-Rex battle. Yeah. Did either of you experience Deadeye? Yes. Yeah. I did, I think, two of the skill shots. I was, like, trying to find it. I'm like, where is it? You got to bomb it. You can just rapid fire. What's cool is, too, as soon as you get three, right, then you got to go to the rapids. Yeah, I saw that. Super, yeah. That's, like, that's a really cool nuance. There's three targets in the beast area. So any of those will count? Yep. And then in lane or out lane? Yep. Pretty much anything that's a switch on the left-hand side. Yeah, because I was hitting post all day. You can't fail it, Joel. It's designed for you not to fail it. It's awesome. I think it's a really cool mode. Did you fail it or did you complete it? I did not play it. Oh, you haven't played it yet. People on Steam play it. I'm just kidding. You can fail it. I failed it all the time. I was just hoping you played it. So you have to hit three of them, and then it lights the jackpot at the river, but you can keep hitting more if you want before you go for the jackpot? But, you know, in an ideal world, you hit three, you'll get the super jackpot, and then get another three and another super jackpot. Or you can just try to cash in the super jackpot at the end. But I kind of like just cashing the points while they're there other than risking it all. True. You know that Travis gets a lot of joy out of filming gameplay videos of how to break the game. How to break the game. Here's your launch party strategy. Here's all the points. What's the script that he should use on Kong? Do you feel like you already know of a way to break it, or are you thinking through? Well, since he hates the gong, that's actually the most viable mode is save and, which we probably need to score balance for the pro. But, yeah, so save and, the more shots you hit before hitting the gong, the more it's worth. And then at the end, there's a hurry up based on all those values you collected.
    16:55
    We discovered that one earlier. Yeah, so if you're on a pro, that's probably easy. Don't tell Keith that we know it, though. Oh, yeah, he won't move that out. Who's all on software? I know Rick Nagel, but who besides Rick? Joshua Henderson. Okay. Who blew it up on... Yeah, he's a world-class player. He knows what he's doing. So Gieski is not on this? No. Oh, man. Okay. She's dragging dungeons. Okay. She's dragging dungeons. Wow. Well, good for her. But what else we got?
    17:28
    I mean... It's just a great game overall. I mean, playing it, and we've talked about that before, that for you, to me, it's like when I see this layout, it feels like something that's different but familiar to me, right? There's just a lot of callbacks that I see from, like, Bally Williams days, and I see it pulled into the modern era. And to me, that's not something that we typically see for modern pens that works, right? It all still feels like it works. so it doesn't feel like it's Frankenstein together to where you're like, oh, well, I'm not going to do that anymore. It all feels really good. I know it sounds like I'm sucking up to you right now, but I've been very impressed by it. It feels good, but it does not feel like anything else out there. It's unique. It's very unique. And I think people are going to find that out as soon as they start playing it. It's just I haven't seen a layout like this to where it's very difficult to show what this is, like on video, in a trailer. You have to see a full gameplay. You have to play it yourself, and it really, really shows it off. Just the ball pass, the shots, they're smooth. And I love the return to the upper flipper, the right flipper. We've talked about that a lot. He figured it out to where that ball does not spin away. It's clean every time. That makes the game feel so much better because those two shots, the side ramp and then the U-turn, are accessible all the time. You're not reliant anymore on just a good feed. You have a great feed every time. So no excuses now. You got a clean shot. You got a good shot. How much tweaking did that take, that whole? Well, it originally did have a keyhole exit drop off to the upper flipper. And it's just, I remember from Avengers, sometimes it would just drop it nicely. Other times it would throw it, you know, sideways on you. And we took that lesson. And it was like, hey, we need to rethink this. So let's try, you know, let's try this. So somebody pushes it up. and Harrison was like, well, you know, that's not a very steep ramp, but the ball's really slow. We can try it. And then we tried it, and he's like, oh, yeah, this doesn't work. So there's, yeah, the end of the wire form on the, what do you call that wire form? It's the cliff strand. The cliff strand. Okay, so it's at an angle in the way that, and there's a rubber there, so it bounces the ball up. But not only is the feed there really good, but also the feed from the kickback or the punchback, that shot, I'm assuming that took a little bit of tweaking to get that to work. No. No, first try. First try. That's why I think it's going to become industry standard at this point. Like, just that return, the way it feeds the flipper and just makes it so much easier. Yeah. I mean, why do anything other than that now? I mean, it only works on something like that. You're not going to feed the bottom flipper like that. Right, right. But, I mean, up there, it makes sense, right? Yeah. So, I don't know. I know if I design a pin, I'm still in that. I'm putting that, like, in five different spots because it works, right? Yeah. So the left orbit, it only is an orbit from the left side. Is there a, I'm assuming it's elevated? Yeah. So it kind of falls. It jumps, yeah, it jumps over, lands underneath Kong, and then wraps around to the upper right flipper.
    20:36
    That's awesome. Okay. Have we decided what we're going to call the upper flipper yet with the log? Can we call it flip log or log flip? No, we haven't patented that. I don't want to keep saying the diverter up by the mini flipper. Like, we've got to have a term for it. There's no term yet. Well, because in the story, they're crossing a chasm on a log that had fallen across the chasm. Okay. So chasm flipper? That doesn't roll off the tongue as well. You have a few actual patented things being you patented flip block, right? Probably. Oh, yeah. I'm curious if there's something here in Kong that you patented. It's not what our American pinball is like. We're bringing it back. gets over now. I don't know because the legal department looks over it and they decide all that stuff. Tom did ask me yesterday, he asked, do you wish Joel that Kong had extra flipper buttons that enabled you to tap pass? And I was curious if you thought of adding those into your game.
    21:42
    Because Joel needs them. That's all tournament players need. He's like, yeah, let's make this easier.
    21:49
    What else? I do feel like I need to apologize. We have brought attention to the size of your calves. I think you're aware of that.
    21:58
    Everybody's coming up to Travis. Why are you apologizing to Keith for? He should be apologizing. He's got to walk around with those every day. And people Google him. You wear pants now.
    22:11
    He's never wearing shorts again. I wore shorts for one day at TPS. You took like a dozen pictures of those people. Everybody. So, bash at the beach, you're wearing pants.
    22:24
    Next year, I'm going to wear a thong, Tom. I don't care. We're going to go all in. Well, do you guys have anything else for Keith? He's a busy man. I don't want to slow him down from getting the L. He's off the line. Post pass. You can do it. I've done it. You can. I did it. So, this is the major departure from all my other games. The flippers are offset to the right, and the swings are closer together than anything I've done. Well, there's one other major departure. Center post. Yes. Center post. Was that always a plan, or when did you throw that in there? Yeah. Always a plan. Yeah. George is against it, and I say, well, I need it for the center ramp. And then Jack's like, dude, if you're putting a center post, I'm putting a center post on X-Men.
    23:03
    And then, yeah, after X-Men went out with the center post, I was like, yep, this house is there. Yeah. I was surprised that I hit something in the back left and still. I bet you were, buddy. I bet you were. I was like, I trusted that center post. That ball went the entire length of the play field and somehow I drained. There is a target. It's on the bottom edge of the drafts. I think it's called Power Up. Yes. What does that do? Nothing yet. Oh, okay. There you go. You found it, though. I did. It's in a very unique spot. You might be like one of five people that even realizes it's there. I looked at the play field. I know you only look at the first six inches of the play field, but I looked at all of it. Okay. I love center posts. I always have. Really? It just adds an element, you know, being able to knock the ball back. The very first pinball machine I ever owned was a Zenon, and it wasn't a center post, but it did have a post that was kind of angled up, a ramp reject at a weird angle, but it worked. You know, if the ball's coming down at that angle, you can use that post to get it back up. It's a skill. Yeah, and I saw, I forget who did it, but over on the left side, the fact that you have in lane, out lane, in lane, essentially, I saw somehow the ball went down the out lane, but you added a post down there that they were able to nudge it back in. And it's way harder than the nudge on Jaws. I mean, but it looks doable, and I'm excited to see somebody pull that out in a tournament to hit their ball. It's intentionally a bit harder than the one on Jaws, but it's there. Okay. The other cool thing with the center post, if you drain just right, it hits the center post, goes up the left out lane, and then through the gate. well Jaws I know you mentioned it on Loser Kid that you're still clipping Jaws videos so you're there's more to do there yeah yeah no we're still chipping away at it probably it's a you know it's not a minor update yeah so it's not something we want to rush out and just alright it's done it's the final wizard mode right oh there's two okay alright and then we made icons That's good enough for me No that's awesome More to come I know Loser Kid asked you about accessories So we're curious to see about that I'm looking forward to streaming it You'll be making content Once the LE is coming out Tom wants like 5 LEs Have you committed to an LE? Last night you didn't seem like you had committed I was committed He was playing it up for the crowd I was like Tom's about to buy a pro on this game I didn't think so Tom might get a pro premium and a lead. Just get them all. You're going to get a premium and take out the gong because you're scared of it. I don't mind the gong. It's the spider that freaks me out. The spider freaks you out? Well, yeah. Have you ever seen Arachnophobia? Yeah. So you're scared of spiders? Well. You know it's not a real spider, right? But I like John Goodman, though. Oh, okay. Yeah. You need a really good accessory of a different something to put. I just need to put googly eyes on. Does Monica kill the spiders for you, Trevor? Oh, yeah. He cheated on me.
    26:12
    Well, Keith, we appreciate it, man. I don't want to take any more of your time. I'm not trying to kick you out, but you said 15 minutes, and we're at 26. We're rocking it. Yeah. No, this game's awesome. I'm excited for people to play it. I think George is looking for you, too.
    26:25
    Oh, yeah. He wants you to get back to work. But, no, Home Run is overused, but our initial impressions are nothing but positive. And I have no doubt that people are going to enjoy this game. Great. Awesome. All right.
    26:39
    We're back. Tom feels we've taken over Stern. We've taken over Stern. It was awesome talking to Keith. And we said, Keith, who else should we interview? And you were the first person he thought of. He said, you should talk to Chuck. The very first one. You were the very first one. And we said, okay. That sounds good. So this is Chuck Ertz. He is the CG art director. Yeah, video art director. Not to be mistaken for the cabinet, play field, banners, everything else that's 2D that you see in the hallways at the trade shows. all that stuff that's handled by Jeremy Packard's division now. Yeah. And I handle the graphics. But we're kind of a catch-all for, you know, we do some of the stuff for promotional, like, you know, marketing.
    27:24
    And we also do a lot of the sculpts that you see on the play field. Yeah. Because a lot of us came from video games and digital sculpting and model making for, you know, characters, design, and stuff like that. So it kind of all overlaps. So whenever we get into a situation, we'll get a model from the licensor and go, like, hey, here's the model, and you've got to pose them and get them to work in a different environment. We'll generally do that in my department.
    27:51
    Anything that's 3D kind of falls into our camp. Yeah, so a lot of ex-video game guys that got sick of the grind. Yeah. And also the fact that they make a product that is on a phone. and you know you like what do you do i do this thing hold on it's in the app store you know it's not the same as a giant cabinet that you can point and go i made this thing you know so it's it's a it's a good job for people that are just sick of working 95 hours a week making in my case i worked it i worked on um mortal combat for 17 years blood and guts and stuff like was my specialty physics for intestines flying out of people. So you were my entire childhood. Yeah, pretty much.
    28:38
    Yeah, so working on this, it's a little different. Every game is different. We make three to four products a year, so it's not the same grind over and over. It's always a variety. It's a lot of problem solving. So you're over all the games then? Yeah, I have my hand in everything. So obviously we're here. We just played King Kong, had a great time with it. So this is one of those situations, though, where you're, I'm assuming you were given nothing. Everything on the screen was all you guys. And it looks like 3D animation is consistent throughout the whole. Yeah, so we try to mix it up between games. Like, you know, if you see like we did on Foo Fighters, that was like kind of our, I don't know, we call our Scooby-Doo game kind of thing where it was all like animated characters and stuff. So we got an ex-Warner Brothers animator that works on my team now that helped on that. That's awesome. He pulled in a couple of his friends that he worked with in the past to help get that game done.
    29:37
    But, yeah, generally we try to do a variety. We don't always want it to look the same. You don't want two games next to each other to look like it was kind of the same world. So we try to switch it up. And then a lot of licenses we get, they have video clips like Jaws. So we have to kind of do the in-between parts between those movie clips. and make it look like it kind of still belongs in that world. Yeah. And sometimes you can't, so then you have to go way outside of it to, like, this is pinball world and that's video world kind of thing. Yeah. But every game has got its own challenges, licensor challenges. In this game, there wasn't a licensor. But then when there isn't a licensor, you have a lot of people that are like, cool, I have ideas too. And you're like, oh, I wish we had a licensor.
    30:19
    So who makes the final say? Is that you or is it Keith? two weeks of final save and animation that makes it into... Generally, Keith's opinions or Keith's wants are higher priority than anybody else's, the designer. But usually there's a lot of back and forth where somebody will show you, like, I want to do this scene from Independence Day where he blows up the White House and you're like, cool, not going to happen.
    30:45
    We could kind of... It's all about picking your battles. We want Godzilla to step through the city and destroy everything. And you're like, those are simulations of buildings coming down. How about his tail just does this? And then the building comes down, and then we don't have to show all of the street with all the cars and that kind of stuff. So we kind of do a lot of that implied destruction.
    31:13
    You know, like big, you know, like I remember working on Black Knight and Steve Ritchie wanted a million soldiers coming up over a hill. and I'm like how about we don't do that and you know so it's like you do a close-up of like horse hooves and soldier's feet and then you know it's like the old-timey you know movies where you just show the same six people going by and you're like cool there's your million there's a million people you know so it's so you have to do like a storyboard or anything yeah so we it's um it's very much like a movie production in that you start with storyboards, and then you kind of pick and choose how they, and then you animatic them, and then you, you know, you just kind of get them timed out. And then sometimes at that point, you do the animatics, you're like, this is not going to work at all. So at least you, you know, you made a mistake. You made mistakes, cheat mistakes, we call it, like, you know, early, instead of trying to render out all this stuff and then finding out it doesn't work.
    32:10
    And then even then, we get stuff to the finished state, and Keith will go like, yeah, I see this a lot on the screen. One particular scene, you'll see it on King Kong where he throws the car, then he throws the car, then he throws the car. After you see it in the game, you're like, yeah, we need probably about four more of those. So we're not seeing the same shot over and over again. Some of that stuff comes after the game is boxed up because you can't really predict how often it will be on the screen until it is. And then you go, oh, this is totally not working here. How do you balance... Travis here has openly admitted that he hates LCD screens and he doesn't look at them.
    32:48
    Well, no he does. That's what I'm saying. Not invalidating everything you do. I like the information on it. He just needs numbers.
    32:59
    Keith's very much a numbers guy. You'll see Keith's games where it's like he's not trying to tell some crazy story. It's like Hulk smash, Kong smash, Godzilla smash and then score. That's usually the extent of like, this is all I want on the screen. And then you got other designers that were like, I want everybody to follow the storyline crests. And then you got a conclusion, and then in the end, nobody cares. So you're like, thanks.
    33:28
    I'm saying, do you almost prioritize, like, how do you find that balance of knowing, okay, you know, the graphics that are displaying during a multiball, that's probably not a moment they're looking at the screen because of the chaos of the multiball. but yet there are other situations where you land that jackpot shot or mode select, you know, like obviously you're prioritizing moments where the ball is stalled. Right, yeah. Versus chaos, you know. Or you get those situations of overlapping animations where it's like the ball's finally stalled and then you have four animations to work through. So I'm assuming circling that is a challenge. Yeah, so we, the programmers, you know, our operating system, our pinball operating system has like a priority, and you can weight things that are in there like each scene or each effect. We just call everything an effect. Each effect has a weight on it like what's more important and by default jackpots are higher priority than spinner award or whatever.
    34:25
    Those things will just nuke the other effect out or if it's really three or four things that are the same priority or same importance, it'll wait until each one's done and then just play it I've got to make sure the person saw that they got the thing.
    34:40
    But if you know Heath's games, he does a lot of throws out everything except for the full screen effects and maybe the score frame.
    34:47
    Some of the other games look like there's only this much video on the screen because it's just got so much data.
    34:54
    And he tries to avoid the data. I always make the joke, I'm like, yeah, man, we should get some more text on there because kids love to read.
    35:02
    Just put more, let's read some more because pinball sucks. You need to read. I like reading. What's the solution? Because I know, like, we've brainstormed before. Like, I just love DMD animations. I just think the art form of a DMD is really cool. But, like, screen, like, would it make your job easier if the size of the screen was, like, wider and thinner? Or having dedicated screens, you know, like you have Bond 60th that has the screen in the middle of the game? Or would you want more screens in a game? Would you want... No, okay. What would be, like, do you want more screens? Pinball was really fun when the screen had no data on it. I mean, it was fun. That's why we all got into pinball. Not quite the 14-segment displays, but the dots, they were so fun. You go play Creatures from the Last Black Lagoon, you're like, oh, this was an awesome game. Or one of my favorite packages is Circus Voltaire.
    35:59
    It's just an art piece, but also just a simple display. So we're trying to get back to that because, like, once you add the screen, everybody wants to play video games on it or, you know, or, you know, like, they just, you know, like, we could do so much now. And I'm like, the game's under the glass, like, over and over again. And that's Travis's argument. That's his biggest argument. No, I agree. Sounds like Chuck and me are on the same page.
    36:25
    Two directories on your page. No, I'd rather have less higher quality stuff than, you know, just a ton of whatever we can get done in four months. Because that's about how long we get for each game. How many animators are actually working on a title? We have ten in our department. Ten in variety, right? They're not all animators. So we got a lot of 2D, and we got technical guys, and then we got, you know, stuff. We get 10 people, and we generate hours of content a year, which is like, you know, if you look at, like, Hollywood's budgets for 10 minutes of content, it's like, you know, $20 million for 10 minutes for the computer graphics, and we take, you know, two hours for, you know, 10 people's salaries for a year. Yeah, I keep trying to get more people.
    37:14
    We don't have enough people. Were you involved with Stranger Things? Yeah. So that premium LE situation with the projector and the projection mapping. That was a pain in the butt. Because you had all the display. So you had to code it for a pro, but then you had all the additional data for premium LE that you somehow magically had to work. Yeah. So that one, I tried it. It's one of those things where whenever we spitball on ideas, you're like, this sounds like a really bad idea. And you're like, no, it's not that bad. And then at the end, you're like, I told you it was a bad idea. It's a lot of work. So it was like basically one and a half times pinball machines. Yeah. You know, like it's, you had to create for another screen, and then if it was just that, it would be fine. But then somehow get that data up on the display and not have it step on top of everything was, that was a nightmare. And then on top of the whole thing with like, you got a projector, what does the projector see from that angle? You know? Oh, yeah. So we had to take the CAD files in, and I had to basically mimic where the projector was in 3D, figure out what the field of view was, and then project registration lines on everything, and then figure out where all of those, because the ramps are all on there, everything's on there, everything lights up, and then to get that all to line up. Because all your rendered content is distorted. Pre-distorted. It'll be undistorted once it's out. So it's rendered from the view, it's projected from this view and recorded from this view. You know, like, so it's like you want to, you know, like the chevrons and stuff all have to look like chevrons. Yeah. If you actually see the rendered videos, they're just totally, like, totally distorted. That sounds like a whole lot of work. Yeah, it was, right? Well, I don't know if this makes you feel good or not, but that sounds like so much work for Stranger Things, but Travis did participate in an entire tournament where he was playing a premium and didn't even realize it was a premium. He never even looked. He never even looked up. Well, okay, here's why, to my defense. In my defense, the projector works really well if there's no lights overhead. But if there's a ton of light coming in. And if you're doing a broadcast or the recording, they tend to have lights on. Oh, yeah, exactly. The media for that must be the movie. You poor a-holes. I'm going to start a podcast with Chuck.
    39:30
    So how upset do you get when Brian Eddy and Dwight come in and say, guess what we put in our next topper? Because they keep putting screens in their toppers. Right. Which means more work for you. Yeah, so I got in a heated argument about that, actually, because D&D was probably twice the amount of content we've ever put in a game, period, hands down.
    39:55
    It does look amazing, though. Yeah. And I've told this to many people before. I'm like, listen, I don't think you understand the fan base for D&D is not going to like, you can't sell them D&D light or what you think D&D is. Like movies do.
    40:16
    That's why I'm like, Minecraft could have been the worst thing ever happened because it's like that crowd, they don't want you to be condescending to their thing that they're really into. And I played D&D when I was in middle school, back in the 70s. and then my daughters both play D&D now. So it's an age range from 60 down to 10 playing D&D.
    40:44
    So I was like, you've got to be faithful to the game. Dwight's a big D&D guy, so we need to have a variety of monsters. If you're just fighting the same monster over and over again, you've got Doom. At that point, it's like the four monsters in Doom. So I'm like, you can't do that. So when he's pitched like a lot of creatures, management went, whoa, cut it down to nothing. And I'm like, that's not this game. Yeah, yeah. In the future, let's cut things. But this one here has to be all in. It'll probably be the last game for a while that is that big because there was a lot of people upset about it. But it was even supposed to be bigger because Dwight wanted another screen on the play field that had all your stats on it. Oh, wow. A stat screen. And I'm like, yeah, because kids love to read. And then kids again with the reading. I love that. So I was like, no.
    41:37
    Because every time we do another screen, I try to explain to them that it's like – I used to have uncomfortable meetings with accounting when they go, what happened? And I'm like, you added another screen. So then they go, don't do that. And I'm like, that sounds like not my pay grade to tell people what they can and can't do. So anyway, so like we add another screen and I go, this is Star Wars. It's like another screen. And it's like, it's just not doing anything. I'm like, yeah. Yeah. You know, because it's a screen. It should do stuff. So then you do the thing for the screen and everybody gets like, then they're like, anyway, so then we're not doing another screen. We're not doing another screen. And then it's like, Stranger Things comes out. I'm like, we said no screen. There was a projector. Right. Well, Brian Heddy was like, I wasn't here for that when you said that.
    42:23
    And then we get done with that. And then it's like, you know, in the case of like, you know, the Venom topper, you know, that wasn't supposed to be a screen. So I was not involved in said topper until it was no longer feasible and then I turned into a screen. So I'm like, stop with the screens. So, yeah, it's. Well, you know, Dwight listens to this podcast. So, you know, if he hasn't heard it before. Yeah, no. He's heard it again. And I've had a billion times of them and he laughs. And he's like, his joke is like, all right, we got four screens in the next. Yeah. No.
    42:56
    But I also think screens are kind of a cop-out, right? Like, I couldn't come up with a... This guy's on your page, man. I couldn't come up with a cool mech, you know, so I put a screen there, you know, and I'm like, no, come up with something that does something. You know, I like to think of the play field as like if you could shrink yourself down, like the coolest carnival ride ever kind of a thing. And when you've got screens all over everything, it's like, TV, you know, more TV. Data is fine, but I want to see something spin or crash or fold or collapse or that kind of thing. You want pinball to be pinball. It's a mechanical game. I never quite understood the whole, you know, I don't know, whatever the company said, have the whole screen as the play field and it's digital, and it's just missing. Sounds like you want a job there. No.
    43:50
    Because kids like the read. Because Kenny loves it, right? I think that's awesome. Yeah. Do you have a, I know, Kong, I'm enjoying what I'm seeing in there. I know that's a very, is it self-made? It's not done yet. But you're rendering, there's a, not cartoony, but kind of a self-made style to it. Yeah. So we try not to, okay, so I don't know if you guys have heard the term uncanny valley, where it's like stuff is photo real, but the human eye goes, ew, something's wrong, right? And, like, that's what, like, whenever you, like, that's why Pixar looks so cartoony, because as soon as you get into that, like, Tron, you know, Flynn in Tron, where you're like, ah, wax museum from hell kind of a thing. So we try to kind of stay in the cartoony world. We try to get it to match the cabinet, or at least get close to whatever the cabinet's displaying. Obviously, if it's a clip license, that's hard. But when, like, when, you know, Jeremy draws something, we're trying to kind of, like, look at that and go, He's always got a hard light, hard fill light, that kind of thing. We try to replicate that. And a lot of times that ends up looking like claymation or something along those lines where it looks like the renders are kind of real, but the characters aren't kind of thing.
    45:04
    And we try to stay away from humans because humans are the first thing that everybody flips out and goes, ah, creepy humans, right? You get like they make realistic humans for movies and they spend million on it and you still go like I don like that at all Yeah we we don have million We don have that kind of budget so we just kind of skip the fight Yeah. I know Turtles is one of my favorite games. It's a dream team of mine, and I have zero complaints with the animations, but some people, April, that's the only one. You have all the stuff in the game. All that in the game. April was the. They're like, April. And also, the licensor made us make changes, so we didn't have a lot of control. A lot of people don't realize. Yeah. Yeah, they go like, no, no, it's got to look more like this. And also that whole crowd has some weird fetish thing with April. There's a little bit of that, like, why don't you make sexy April?
    45:57
    Stop. What's wrong with you? It's probably the kids that don't want to read. That's what they can't read. Deadpool. I know Deadpool has a crazy animation style. It was some interview that said you essentially rendered everything out in 3D and then applied some sort of 8-bit. No, we re-grew it. Oh, wow. Yeah, so, and that was another one. The licensure went, you could do anything with this. It just can't look like the video game that was canceled. Okay. It can't look like the movie. Yep. It can't look like the cartoon, because there was a cartoon or something in front. And it can't look, so anything that you could draw, it can't look like, or do 3D. But anything else, you could do anything you want. So I was driving home after that meeting, and I was losing my mind. And I was like, how are we going to do this? And I called George. It was like at 9 o'clock at night, and I was contemplating going just straight to a bar.
    46:51
    And I was like, I'm like, George, I'm like, I got an idea. He's like, okay, you know, hit me. I go, 16-bit Deadpool. Doesn't look like the modern video game. Yeah. But also, and he goes, where are we going to find artists to do that? and I just what happened my daughter who was just graduating college for art her whole uh I don't know what you call a thesis or senior project or whatever was pixel art like she went and did she tripped off the old block she's a big pixel pixel art is like everything kind of thing and so I'm like well I got one of the best you know he's like who I got my daughter he's like oh of course yeah so anyways it was so I um I got a couple of the other artists and like up to speed in our in And if you guys can look up the software, it's not a secret. It's called ProMotion. It's by Cosmogo. Anyways, it's the pixel animation software that if you were doing, like, Game Boy Advance and that kind of stuff. So it's real. We use the real software that you make real pixel games with, you know. And so we basically needed to kind of block out all the animations with, like, 3D models. And then we went in and drew over them to get the pixel look because you needed – I didn't want it to look like you put some crappy filter on it. It needed to look real 1989 pixel artwork kind of thing. And then the result was hundreds of hand-painted frames for each character. And so it was mine, which killed me, because you get on Pinside, and Pinside's like, Stern totally skimped out and cheaped out and went off easy on making this. Whatever, I'm like, he has no idea. It was four times harder. It's cost per pixel. clearly. Yeah. If it was 3D, it would have been done in half the time. Wow. But we wanted it to look like it was hand-drawn and so we hand-drew it and everything you see in there is all hand-drawn. There's no filters. There's no, you know, anything crazy in there and I'm really proud of that because it flew through the licensors in two seconds because they were like, perfect. Yeah. It doesn't look like anything out there, you know, and then, and also it had that nerd factor and then, you know, then George was like, well, if it's, you got to have 1980 sound effects in there, you know, So he's got like a little bit of, you could hear a little bit of, you know, asteroids and, you know, Defender and stuff is in there a little bit. He snuck in stuff everywhere in there, which was a callbacks. And it kind of worked because Deadpool was kind of, he's living in that whole wham, you know. The 80s was his time period. Well, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but is there a, I mean, with all the different styles and all the different games that you've done, And is there a game that you're like, thank God it's over? Or is there one you don't, like, which was so challenging or just so much work? So every game, I'm, thank God it's over.
    49:40
    And you can even talk to, like, George will confirm this, too. When he's done working on a game, a lot of times he's like, I don't want to see that game again. And then a year later, you're like, oh, yeah, that was fun.
    49:49
    I liken it to, like, that's why there's more than one child in every family. You know, like, immediately after giving birth, you know, like, I'm never doing that again. And then a year later, oh, it wasn't too bad. And then you're like, oh, I've got two kids now. Oh, that's right. I'm never doing this again, you know. But, yeah, there was just a few moments where it was just like, and we're much better now. Like, everybody else is, everybody's seasoned, and we've got some designers that are not insane. And so it's a lot better now where everybody's kind of like, just tell me what you can do, and then we'll work around that. where, you know, when I started here 10 years ago, it was like, I'm the, you know, this is how we make this. You need to do what I tell you to do. And I'm like, it's never going to ship. And then you're going to be the guy that didn't ship the game. Yeah. So I don't want to have to answer to, like, management. I'm like, why the game didn't ship, but you will, you know. So, yeah, it's, every game is a challenge. But, like I said before, it's every game is different. So I'm not, you're not doing the same, you know, like Mortal Kombat. I did blood and guts, then blood and guts, and then blood and guts. And my joke is if you saw my search history at work, you'd call the police. It's just like, you know, gore all day. You know, like, what is this? You know, skulls, you know, forensic files, you know, stuff like that. And you're like, this guy's got a problem.
    51:18
    But, yeah, no, it's, you know, all of them have, like, a challenge, which is a blessing from just not getting bored with what you do, but also sometimes it's hard. But I also like figuring out the workaround. Like, this is never going to work. How do you make it work? And then sometimes it comes to you, like, in the morning, you're like, hey, what if we just not do that and do this other thing and it'll be the same result? So a lot of times I'll ask the designer, like, what's the point of the mode? And it's just like, I just need Kong, you know, like in the case of Godzilla. Godzilla smashes this whole mode, she's smashing I'm like, what is he smashing? he's like, you're the artist, you make him smash stuff, I don't care, whatever I'm like, alright, so we gotta smash the bridge, smash the whatever, smash whatever and in this case, you want them to take out the bridge and it was like, at first it was like Kong and then the bridge and then train and all this stuff, and I'm like you know, how do we do this in like three days? It's like you put the camera in the train, and then you foot. Yeah. And then you're, I got to foot in this shot, and building's doing this, and it's all over. Instead of having to create this world that takes 16 hours to render, it's all taken care of in two days' worth of work. So sometimes when you come up with a solution, you're like, oh, okay. And then nobody knows that the crazy scene that you had planned. And so that's kind of nice. Until you do one of these podcasts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're drinking Jack. Wow.
    52:53
    It's 3.20 in the afternoon, everybody, if you want to. Smiling the speakers. Elvira. Elvira, you had, was this the last, I think I had heard that there was like one of the last times that she had, Cassandra had become Elvira, and you got film footage of that. Oh, yeah, yeah. And then you guys, so were you, are you a part of any of that, like the filming of any of that? No, so Paul Chemnankit, another guy that worked on Mortal Kombat back in the day, I pulled him in. I sucked him into this world.
    53:24
    That was one of the first projects he was on here, and he flew down. Was it Texas? I forgot where it was. But anyways, wherever she lives. And they had a studio nearby, and she put on an outfit and did the whole thing. She had something like 1,800 lines or something like that. And she's the most professional, like, hands down, like, the most professional performer. She just went, she just cranked, like, through these lines. And then, like, every once in a while, a plane would fly over. And she'd go, all right. And then she would just hit it again. Like, she was directing herself. And Paul was, like, directing her on, like, you know, I need to, you know, this, whatever. So, but it turns out she was supposed to be, like, on the couch, you know. It turns out that the couch got auctioned off or cut up into pieces and sold. It doesn't exist. It was cut up and shipped with the SD. Yeah. Well, I think it was already cut up by then, right? So we didn't have the couch. So we 3D rendered the couch and then composited her on the couch. And so that whole thing is fake. So she was just on a green screen, just on a big, you know, on a couch with green screen tarp over it. And we filmed her on that. For 1800 lines. Yes. But, yes, that was still one of my favorite games just because of the simplicity.
    54:46
    It's a really well-designed game, and Lyman, you know, killed it. And Greg Ferreris is, you know, one of my favorite artists. Very clean, you know. His artwork was very clean on the side of the cabinet. It was very much a Zalvira spiral, you know, nothing going crazy.
    55:03
    You know, I think it's just a really good art piece, too, you know. Good. And also because she was so involved in it, all the audio call-outs and all the video content was from her. It's all not open source. It's a public domain video that she put in her own DVDs as like a Mystery Science Theater 3000 kind of thing. So we just used the same videos, same movies that she used, and then had her do commentary the way she did on the DVDs but in the game. so yeah that was fun and I know so many people that have the first two L-Virus and they're like I got the first two I have to have the third and they have to be in a row you know so I bet you we sold probably a hundred to just people that had the two other ones sight unseen just because they needed all three yeah well maybe we'll just end on unless you guys have any specific questions but what's your do you have a favorite animation or a favorite clip or something that pops up on one of your games that just makes you smile every time you see it?
    56:09
    We just saw Kong eat the ball. You get an extra ball. You want to eat the ball. Now everybody's got to eat the ball now. No, no.
    56:18
    Thanks, T-Rex. He's got to eat the ball because everybody throws a fit about the ball now. Sharks got to eat the ball. Everything's got to eat the ball. I think the one I'm probably the animation, and I didn't do it. But Alex Borre is another artist that I go way back with. He freelances every once in a while on projects with us. He's the one that did it. But it was Fourth Wall Deadpool. Yeah. That was a static image. Oh. And it was all puppeted with vertices. Like if you guys are on top of the whole 3D thing, it was because of memory constraints. we couldn't play flip books that were as big as the screen, you know, as big as that thing would have to have been. And so it was basically just a puppeted single image that looked like it was 3D, you know, and it was such a trick that it was, like, it solved so many problems because this thing had to stay in memory and come up whenever it was called. So it took a, you know, if it was an animation, it would have taken up, like, too much memory and it wouldn't have worked. and so I came up with the idea of making it like a puppeted thing and then Alex was like I could crank that out and then he has something like 600 call outs that it's all synced to and animated to that one and then the other one again because nobody watches the screen is the if you look at Aerosmith everything is synced it's all lip synced to the songs everything on there, because nobody wanted to see, like, Aerosmith today. They want to see Aerosmith like they remember him, you know, back in the day. And so when it came down to we couldn't get any video footage of them in concert. Like, they don't own it. Like, other companies bought it and that kind of thing. So we had to put something on the screen, and that's when I was just like, we're going to do cartoon Aerosmith. and Gary was just like, no, no, no more Scooby-Doo. Nobody wants to see Scooby-Doo. So it was, but we ended up doing it and everybody was like, this is going to be a nightmare and nobody's going to care. And then the end result was like, everybody was like, thank God you didn't put Steven Tyler all over this. He did Revolution X, his last game he was in and that was like 30 years ago. So I'm like, but that one there, from a technical standpoint, to get all those animations to be synced and all the band and the guitar to kind of look like they were actually playing the instruments for a bunch of people that don't play instruments. That was quite a feat. Wrote some custom tools and Python scripts and stuff to make that happen, and it worked. Of course, that was one of the very first video effects that we did on the screen, and then everybody wanted to see everything on the screen. So it was a lot of pressure. that and Batman 66 were the two first Spike 2 screen games this was back in 2017 or sometime around that yeah 2017 I lied I have one more question for you which is we're good friends with Ray Day or I assume we're friends but I know Ray whenever I message Ray it's like how do I do this and he's like read the freaking screen because he's like I do all this work to put the text on the screen yeah he does the text he fills the screen with text he does but I do need to give him a shout out because everything that he's done in Metallica is fantastic. And I will say the art direction that you went, like, I like DMD, so I like Metallica's animation. Oh, right. But the fact that you took the DMD animations, made them 3D, but made them stylized in this black and white gritty style, fantastic. Total accident. Really? Yeah. How was that a total accident? Well, okay, so Reese Cooper did the art, right? Yeah. And the way he does art, he does all the art pen and ink. And then at the last minute, he decides what the colors are. Okay. He doesn't finish a piece and then finish a piece. It's all this holistic approach to the art thing. Right. Which is, that's his art style and that's how he does it. Great. But that doesn't give us anything to work on. So when we started that project, all I had was black and white pen and ink. Oh, wow. And I'm like, what's the color scheme? And they're like, man, we haven't decided yet. I'm like, oh, Jesus. I'm like, okay, we're going to go black and white for now, and then we'll color it when you color it. And then I'm like, but until then, like, a lot of times when we show stuff in production, you get a lot of people that don't understand, like, process. They'll go like, is this going to be colored? You know, they'll always ask stuff. So you're always, whenever we show work-in-progress stuff, it's always kind of a hit or miss, depending on who the audience is. And in that case, we had all black and white in the game, and everybody lost their minds and went, that looks done. I'm like, yeah.
    61:14
    That's exactly what we were going for with the done. And then we have a couple of color things that pop up on it, but just rarely to accentuate certain things. But, yeah, we went with that. And the whole idea was like kind of your Frank Miller, you know, the war of Sin City kind of a vibe. And we had to do it all 3D because there were two game stacks on top of each other, so we had to split the team. and so half of us were working on X-Men and half of us were working on Metallica and so we went all 3D because X-Men was a 2D nightmare. You know, we had no content for X-Men. The licensure gave us nothing so we all had to learn how to draw comics. Which is a shame because that latest animated show just came out which was fantastic. So I know, I'm a huge X-Men fan so I was like, oh if they get X-Men nope. You know when they told us specifically don't make it look like that because that's separate license. That's, X-Men 97 was its own thing. Well, according to Pinside, it's all the same. Yeah, yeah, according to Pinside. Oh my God, oh my God, I love Pinside. Yeah. It was like, there's, everybody there is a pro. Like, the joke I always tell is like, you know, like, that Pinside, they're like, Stern is so stupid. Why didn't they get, you know, why didn't they get the whatever, like, in Aerosmith. Why didn't they get Dream On? It's a no-brainer. I'm like, did Dream On cost, just this song cost entire other license with all the other music, just one, and they don't own it. It's Sony or whatever. So I'm like, I don't come to Best Buy and tell you how to do your job. The little bit that I've learned in a few years of doing this is most decisions that pinsiders have, you guys already had that idea, and it's typically a licensure or a cost, like a license. It's always related to license. Pinside is license-free. That's the difference. They forget that part. They're license-free. they have no budget constraints. Right, no. They have unlimited labor. But they're also super mad if the cost, if you're like, cool, we got DreamOn, now your pinball machine is 12 grand. Yeah. And they're like, there's a cash grab or whatever. No, really, now it's a cash grab. I mean, if we actually had to pay for all the ideas you guys had, you couldn't afford this. We were very cautious about the decisions we make to try to keep the games as affordable as we can. Sure. And it gets harder and harder now with, you know, steel costs and everything's gone crazy. So, you know, we try to keep it, you know, in that realm of, like, not everything in the kitchen is sank. That's why you don't have four screens like Dwight was. You only have the one screen. Well, you know, ironically, the screens are cheaper than the Macs. So that's why they're like, you know, they blow their budget. And they're like, I got $30 left over. Screen. You know, you're like, no. No, no. How about just don't just. Can the screen be a solid color at all times? On the pro. It'll be a piece of plastic with a sticker on it, and then everyone will go like, no, don't do this. Stop with the stickers. Well, we very much appreciate your time. I don't know what Keith told you, how long you'd be. No, he's just just getting in there. Oh, well, thank you. I just do whatever Keith asks. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. He's the goat. Yeah. No, and everything, I mean, everything we're seeing so far in King Kong looks fantastic, and obviously you've been a part of Stern for a long time, so congrats on the whole catalog.
    64:39
    I was just telling the gang, when you see all the machines in one, generally we don't have, like at the previous building we didn't have a room to have everything we made out there, and you walk past it and you're like, you know, I've worked on over 30 titles in 10 years, you know, compared to the video game world where you work on one every like three years, you know so it would be like three titles this is like ten times that you know and sometimes I'll see an animation I did and I don't remember it of like actually making it you know I'm like oh that's right oh I totally forgot I did that you know so it's that kind of stuff where you get called to a meeting and you're like remember that thing you did and I'm like no I don't remember was it good are you going to yell at me because then I don't well it's something to be proud of for sure that's an awesome collection of work but no appreciate you coming on and sticking around for pizza yeah That's the only reason people are coming They're like I came here for the ball picture And then the pizza Awesome Good meeting you Thank you Until next time Okay I have no idea how I'm going to end this together It doesn't matter We're just Pulling more people in And Look who we found Yeah, we found Dobby Eddy, Jeremy Packer. First and foremost, congrats on the promotion. Thank you. Your new title is your director of... Studio Art Director. Studio Art Director, okay. Which sounds great because it has, like, more words.
    66:12
    What it really means... But no range. Yeah, what it really means... Well, now I... You don't say that, but... No, what it really means is that I now have to manage fires from the top of the buildings as opposed to the bottom of the building. Yeah. So I know Chuck clarified that he basically, he is the, what was it, CG art director? So it's basically everything graphics on the screen. Yeah, all the motion stuff. So you are print. Is that correct? Well, 2D art is what they call it, and we work together.
    66:45
    Obviously, like, there's times on all projects where 2D art and 3D need to meet up and stuff. And I've always had a good working relationship with Chuck. And on my projects, I would always contribute if they needed me. And I'm hoping that all the artists that I hire and work with are as capable in that regard. Sure. Because that would be fantastic. So I know, obviously, if you look at, like, X-Men. X-Men was a ton of, like he was saying, all the graphics there are essentially 2D graphics. Yeah. So a ton of hand-drawn art. Yeah. You obviously designed, you did all the art on the play field, you did all the art on the cabinet. How much of your art was brought into the screen as well? So, I don't know if you know this or not, but the way things work here is we're always working on 3 billion games at a time. Okay, 3 billion. And at this time, we were working on 4 billion. Oh, wow. No, it wasn't quite that many. But what happened was when I got done with the actual game art, Chuck was, their team was in need of some stuff. Yeah. And so I actually took like a three or four week period where they would sort of throw me animatics and different things like, hey, we need this pose, we need this pose, whatever, for this character, that character. As to what is mine versus theirs, boy, that's a tough one. Not a lot, I would say, because they had had a lot done before I got into it. There was just, you know, a few holes here and there and stuff they wanted to match up a little better and stuff like that. But you essentially established the style guide of that game, right? Yeah. Most of the games that I work on, that's sort of one of the things that I get to do. And obviously Marvel's been really nice because I've never had any revisions from them. They've always been really, really kind. And that's, I think, probably why I've done as many Marvel games as I have. Which is both good and bad, I read on Pinside.
    68:50
    Everybody here loves Pinside. We established earlier that Pinside is fantastic. They know everything. No, I'll be honest with you. It helps me tremendously. Because I can find out exactly what people want. apparently very desaturated and simple play field. Simple play field. Okay, let's stop. Obviously, we're here for the King Kong media day.
    69:19
    And first and foremost, the game is fantastic. Not only does it shoot great, the rules are up, but visually, we all love the game. So I know this is a unique situation because it's three artists on it. So do you want to clarify? Tell us which parts you did so we can tell you which parts we actually love. We're going to make sure. So before I answer this question, because I get asked this quite a bit now that people are seeing the game. First off, what didn't you like? And then I'll tell you what I did. That whole side of the cabinet? Yeah. That wasn't me. No.
    69:52
    I personally, I love the color purple. Like, I genuinely love the color purple. I love the color purple. So when X-Men rolls out with all the purple, I'm like, this is so great. And then to see this, I was worried that King Kong was going to be greens and blacks and browns. So this is funny. This is funny. Like, if you look at what I've done, and I know a lot of people don't appreciate it,
    70:17
    but what I set out to do when I did Ghostbusters, they were still using Photoshop style. Yeah. And cabinet sides were real simple. And I said, oh, man, these people are paying a lot of money. I had gotten, you know, I'd been working with, you know, John Papaduke and all that failed stuff. And I go, here's my shot. I want to prove that we can do this. And now there were limitations. I came in very late and I had very little time. And that's why, like, the back glass and trans lights are kind of variations of each other. Also due to licensing approvals, it was very difficult.
    70:54
    Bill Murray doesn't have an agent. Trying to track him down. We're like, we got one shot. We got one shot. Anyway, so, like, my whole goal in pinball all along was to try to elevate the quality of the art, whether people like the style is another story. But so over the years, whenever I work on a new game, I try to set myself up. I go, well, I'm going to try something a little different here. But my mindset, because I was moving so quickly from game to game, like, there's some overlap, right? And there's some things that I like personally, and I come from the gig poster world. which is silkscreen, which is why I always loved the visuals of pinball pre-Photoshop, was because it was all silkscreen. And that process sort of creates a little bit of the style. And what happened over time, in my opinion, was some of my games would have this little seed of something that I just got either stuck on or I really liked, I can't determine which now. And they would make their way over. For instance, what was the game that I did right before Godzilla? And everyone goes, well, it was Avengers, right? Infinity Quest? It wasn't. Even though it came out, it was Turtles. So Godzilla being green was all because of the turtles, and people don't realize that.
    72:25
    That's a lie. I was hoping I could come up with more for that line. No, I was like, there's no way that that's the only... But in actuality, what I was getting at was the fact that there are things you will see that do cross over. And in particular, when I was working on X-Men, I was trying to do a love letter to 90s X-Men that I grew up with. Oh, yeah. And a lot of those covers and palettes, and a lot of that was due to the printing process limitations at the time, had those beautiful, you know, purples and magentas and everything. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm definitely going to lean into that. Yeah. And then what happened is when I came into Kong, here's the thing. I didn't even come up with the palettes for Kong. Yeah. That was done by Kevin O'Connor. And Kevin O'Connor had gone through and done all of this fantastic legwork to sort of get the game and create this world. But they brought me in because they were still kind of uncertain on, you know, a certain, I don't know, you know, like, how do we approach Kong and set in the other? And so Kevin and I worked together on the LE back glass, and that's sort of where everything started to click a little bit. And then all of a sudden, you know, we went forward. But having said that, the smoke on the premium, very magentas and purples, that was part of the palette, but I purposely chose it because I knew it was going to be a large swath of it as sort of this, you know, just reaction to having my brain still attuned to how I was working on X-Men. Interesting. It's just a bizarre thing that in hindsight you get away from it and you look back and then you go, oh, that's why people hate me. Well, no.
    74:16
    I think it's, I don't know. Art is so subjective. Now, obviously, there's a challenge with pinball art, specifically on the play field, that not only does the art need to look cool, but it also needs to communicate what you're doing.
    74:32
    Do you have any art on the play field of Kong, or that's all? The Kong heads. The Kong heads are mine. There's a few other things, little things, some bananas.
    74:45
    Are you the 2.43? Well, so Greg had actually done that area. And then Keith had like a change. Like he's like, oh, wait a minute. He's like, I want to do this. And so he wanted me to make a few changes or whatever. And so there's actually – okay, this is going to sound bad. I don't know if I'll get fired for this.
    75:04
    You know the homage to the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, but it's a banana mobile? Did you see that on the play field? I have not. It's on that right side. You've got to find it. Anyway, Greg had this trail of smoke that was coming out of the back of the car that looked like banana splooge. Oh, okay. All right. There we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And can we say, anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. And so I'm not sure if this is supposed to be official marketing talk, but banana splooge. And so what ended up happening was that we're like, and I actually was the one who brought it up as a joke. I'm like, do we really want the banana splooge? And then all of a sudden, everyone's fixated on it. They're like, oh, yeah, that doesn't look right.
    75:51
    So anyway, up that shot, I think he talked about it. When you hit that orbit, and if it doesn't have enough momentum, it can drop down to get that. So right around that area, I put a banana peel with some banana sploosh to signify that you slipped and missed it. If you go to, whatever. But that was actually for Greg, because I had to take a sploosh out of it. I don't know what to look for. I don't know what to go out there and look for. But having said that, the play field was Greg. Yeah. And by the way, it made sense to me, too, because this has the most inserts of a Keith game, in my opinion. Okay. And so I looked at it, and even his arrangements, and I think, you know, obviously it was intentional based on his love for the games of the era, because he really wanted to kind of do this as like a, you know, homage to, I used homage twice. You did. He used glutes like four times. Yeah. Get rid of the storage. We were told earlier that Stern, because of this license, that Stern can actually possibly make T-shirts. Oh, yeah.
    77:12
    Banana sploogs. And toys. I don't know if we're going to make a banana sploog for boys. Maybe they're going to be toys for an older demographic.
    77:25
    That's not a good idea. No, this either way. That's the first thing. It's been fun being the art director for, well, until today.
    77:37
    Probably fired, but devoted. No, it's awesome. Yeah, so Greg, the play field is really Greg's. And I think, you know, he did an amazing job. Yeah. And I heard somebody say it looks like Elvira. And I'm like, yes, of course, it looks exactly like Elvira. No, it doesn't look like Elvira. Yeah. But I get it. It's just the style choice and everything else. I know we don't have a ton of time, but I've always wanted to ask an artist, the keychains. At what point in your design of a cabinet do you start thinking about the graphics you're going to put on a keychain? Because yours are pretty creative. Well, it depends. It depends. By the way, I wanted to see if I could actually get one. So, on the LE, and you guys didn't get to see the LE, and I apologize. That's my fault because there was a change. Yeah, I have one in order. What's going on? There's a change to the cabinet front.
    78:34
    It's the right change, but because we didn't have one that we could build up with the right cabinet front, they didn't want to show it. Sure, sure. And I get that. But at the same time, you've got to see it because it is – all the art looks way better. No, no, no. I'm not saying it looks better. See, this is why I'm going to get fired. No, no. No, but it really makes things look like a million bucks. And so, now I got off track there. What was it? Keychains. The keychains. Well, I didn't ask, but he wants to know about keychains. So, when it comes to plastic, I've got to get one of these for you, but the LE is going to have an actual lockdown bar plastic decal to give instruction. Now, why only the LE? I don't, listen, I could, I don't know. But having said that, I mean, I guess it's because it's the LE, you know, you get extra stuff. But I was working with Keith over the weekend, and, like, I'm, like, passing stuff back to him, and I'm, like, you know, like, what's it supposed to say? Like, you know, what's the instruction here? Like, what is it or whatever? And so I just, I work one up, and I'll send it to you guys. and it's basically just use action button to fling poo. And it's got a Kong flinging poo at you. Anyway, we didn't go with that one. No, that was... But having said that, that's sort of how keychains come about, too. It's just sort of we toss things around. Sometimes there's ideas that, you know, requests.
    80:14
    Lots of times, you know, but Jack always has certain requests, and then others were like, do what you want. And so it just kind of happens naturally. Usually I'm exhausted by the time we even get to those, so it depends. Well, I know I appreciate them. I know there's plenty of people that just leave them in the goody bag, but I look at that as those are the Easter eggs, those are the fun little things. I like them. Maybe one more question because I know you have to go. Designing for a mirrored back glass. I know Tom over there, he's a fan of the LEs. I know he loves, the mirrored back glass are incredible. I wish you sold them separate. I understand why you don't. But designing with a mirror in mind, how challenging is that, or incorporating that type of effect into the art? It's actually, for me, I don't consider it terribly challenging, but only because I've done so many now, and I kind of have a really good gauge on certain things that I know will work and won't work. The thing you have to keep in mind is mirror is either going to be reflective and bright and light, or it's going to be black. So when you think about that, keeping it, and you'll see this a lot, and this is the way they've done it for years, is a lot of times you'll see sort of a stroke around line art. Yep. Because essentially you're just extending the line art, and you know that's going to work. So that's, not that I don't put a lot of thought into it. I'm just saying, like, as a baseline, you know that will work, so you start there. Then you try to find interesting areas where you can create glints or fills where you can be, oh, I want more mirror, I want more mirror. And obviously logos always, you know, get strokes and things like that. But, like, for instance, I plan LEs that way. So, like, and I know we're supposed to be talking about Kong, but, like, for instance, on X-Men, I said, okay, this is going to be Danger Room because Danger Room will allow me to get more metallics. Okay, I'm going to have Colossus right up front because he's metallic. I mean, you know, you kind of try to plan things that way. And right now, stepping into the new role, I'm working with a cadre of artists for different projects of various stages. And I'm kind of trying to impart that onto these. And some of them have never done pinball art before, for instance. And so it's really kind of a fun thing to analyze and look back on that I haven't. I've just sort of been running for, you know, the last 10 years forward and not, you know, I think things through in my head, but I don't necessarily communicate them. So it's just one of those things. Now it's interesting I get to kind of look at it differently. Sure.
    82:57
    And, of course, remind them to make sure there's very little color. Yeah, more color. Make sure that you simplify art on the play field because people don't want that. I read it. Yeah. Keep it simple.
    83:12
    I've also requested from the designers no more than three inserts. Oh, I see. So with your new role, though, does that mean, I mean, are you going to be drawing less or no? For a little while, probably, yeah. Okay. Until, you know, I can, you know, get a good sort of, I guess, control over everything and trust. Because I'm not going to take anything on that I can't do the way I'm going to do it. Like, when I do something, like, I'll give you an example. When I came into Kong, I did not take an evening or weekend off until this past weekend. Wow. And when I came into it, it was right around the holidays. So I am exhausted and need a vacation right now, which I hear tomorrow is Good Friday. That's a start.
    84:09
    But I go deep. And that's why, honestly, to be honest, I realize art is subjective. Yeah. The only reason I ever let anything get to me at all is because of the fact that I literally make myself miserable while I work on these things. So to see that some people are not, you know, like enthralled, like I don't care if they go, like, it's not my cup of tea. But when they go, not only is it not my cup of tea, but it's the worst thing I've ever seen and I hope he dies. Then I go, well, wait a minute, that seems a little bit much. Yeah, that's a little strong. Yeah. Well, yeah. Sorry to those few Pinside guys that get that upset. Few? I can, I'm telling you they're growing. Well, the three of us aren't in that crowd. No, no, listen, listen. You don't have to love everything I do, right? You don't have to love everything everyone does. I mean, if you do, you're probably a very nice person. I'd like to be your friend. But, yeah, no, it is what it is. I only bring it up now because, like, now is, like, we're under a magnifying glass and all of the most, you know, vile comments are out there, and we pass them around to each other. I know Tom and I talked about this last night on stream that, you know, Godzilla, when Godzilla came out, it caught a lot of shade for the art. But fast forward, nobody talks about that anymore. They talk about how great Godzilla is. Everyone on pin side. I guess it was fantastic when it turned black and white, though. Yeah. I know.
    85:43
    Now everything's going to be black and white. I read that. I read that out. And just for black and white art packages, I mean, you just open up the file. You just go to color mode black and white. It's done, right? You don't have to redraw anything. No, there's actually quite a bit of work that goes into it. And a lot more on that one initially. And I actually tried to, on that one, I tried to do some embossed and matte layer on the package. And I'm like, this is going to be beautiful. we get all this stuff you know and and then we saw it next to the metallic like the all metallic we go damn it it looks better all this extra work to try to make this thing like next level and i'm like oh man the all metallic looks way better yeah i don't know why it just is this the way it turns out but um but yeah uh uh to answer uh the fact that you did not ask a question there I'm tired and I know you've got a long drive ahead of you so hey we appreciate you thanks for doing what you're doing congrats again on the new job yeah more color my goal is to and by the way I think this is why they hired me as art director is to get me out of the way they're like yeah so when Marvel calls Oh, he's not an option anymore. He's a director. Yeah, no, yeah. Hey, by the way, all you people who hate my guts, good luck on them style guide Marvel games, whatever those are. I don't know. Honestly, I don't think there's any Marvel games going on right now. Good luck. Good luck with those. I hope you enjoy them. No, yeah, no, no, no. My goal really is to try to facilitate and bring some new blood here that I think can elevate things in ways that I couldn't. My goal is to make people better than I was. So, well, I hope it happens. Yeah. That sounds awesome. Yeah. And no easy feat, for sure. No, it's not. But, you know, thankfully I've worked with CERN for 10 years, and before that with John Papaduke, which is, I mean, that's like the worst thing in the world.
    88:03
    And so, like, when I came to CERN, I'm like, this is great by comparison. and the little that I know, it's also awful. No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. But Pinball is just not a straightforward process. And so what I want to do is take my knowledge and insight from the last 10 years and try to help ease people in that may not have been able to do it because of the schedules or because of, you know, whatever it is, and just, you know, find the shortcuts to help them, you know, free up and do good work. Yeah. We'll see if it happens, and maybe you guys will be back sometime, and you'll be like, it didn't happen, what's up? Yeah, yeah. When were you starting that process? Or it hasn't happened yet. Yeah, or you'll be here talking to my replacement. Yeah.
    88:55
    Next week. Yeah. Well, hey, we appreciate you. Keep up the great work. Thanks for coming on this and chatting it up. I know you've got to start a drive, but yeah. Your artwork is great. Well, I appreciate that. Well said, Tom. I appreciate that you think that. All right, we'll see you. Take care, guys.
    89:12
    Okay, well, we just keep finding, we're just moving up. We just keep finding more and more people to talk to. And, yeah, thank you so much for joining this little conversation. We have Matthew and Gary, and we're loving Kong. So really, we're, I mean, how many weeks have you been here? I've been here three and a half weeks. Three and a half weeks, and you've been here how many years? Well, I've been in the pinball business, I tell everyone, for 78 years because my father got in the pinball business. He started as a game operator, then a game distributor, and he went to – he was in Philadelphia and went to see a 35-year-old punk kid. I can say that because I'm turning 80. He went to see his supplier, Harry Williams, in 1947, sat behind Harry's desk, kidding around, put his feet up on the desk, said, why don't you sell me the company? So Harry flew around this city in his little Bonanza airplane for three hours, came down and sold Sam half the business. So I'd say that I've been in it 78 years. This company started, as you all know, Date East Pinball in 1986. He died in 84, so I didn't get to see this. And then we sold it to Sega and then myself and my associates bought it back And since then Dave Peterson joined us But you know I done all this stuff before But Matthew's joined us. We're going to talk a little bit about his marketing, why it's so important for us to enlarge that and what his background is. But, you know, you've asked me, you know, some question.
    91:04
    But you guys, by the way, you don't have to ask me a question. You guys know I just will talk. But tell us, tell your audience, let's talk about why are you here and what have you seen and has this been good and have you enjoyed it? And we're going to interview you guys. Tell me about this. I was just going to do some simple math to say collectively we're at a little over 78 years of pinball experience. Well, that's right. But he's got lots of game experience. Talk about your game experience. I've been in the video game business for 24 years, 25 years. Started at Activision. Worked on really big brands like Marvel and Disney. Then I moved into working at Warner Brothers Games, which has a lot of big IP as well. You know, the DC Comics, like Batman Arkham series. Nice. Original IPs like Mortal Kombat. And then also more family-friendly titles like Lego and Harry Potter. So I worked on a lot of big brands at Warner Brothers. And then I was at WWE overseeing and running their video game business. So I worked specifically just on the WWE IP. But, yeah, I've been collectively in the video game business for 25 years, working on console and mobile games and PC as well. So a wide variety of platforms, a wide variety of IP, primarily in the entertainment space. Zach has done a great job for us Joe with Zach has done a great job largely with the community but also passed it into just general publication and so forth and some of the like the CES show or trade shows and Zach speaks well of pinball and makes a great presentation we need to enlarge the community and when I say enlarge the community the games I used to make years ago we're a lot different than today. You guys are gamers. You guys grew up as gamers. We had to have simple things for people like me to make it easy for me to get multi-ball, but deep rules for you guys. Let these games go to do things that I will never get to see unless I stand next to Keith while he's playing or something like that. So we need to market to a broader audience of gamers.
    93:17
    I was just at Gary Con, which says that to me because I'm Gary but Gary Gygax created Dungeons and Dragons so we were up there I go up there had a nice few days with 3,800 real gamers many of whom the game itself of course Dwight really designed it for Dungeons and Dragons players and so these people loved it we had six games up there we are Kingpin was with us and they're going to go to more. Chris is going to go to more of these kind of shows. But that's important that we market to other gamers and enlarge our gaming community with other gamers. And thus, this gentleman has joined us. And I just digress with that because I asked you guys a question. Tell me about today's event. Tell me how you liked it, what was so great besides the game. Tell me about it. Well, I think one of the things that we talked about, we talked about this earlier, Tom, when we were doing the factory tour. It's magnificent to see manufacturing like that because I think a lot of people underestimate what goes into these types of games and how many people truly it involves overall. And I think that's because it's like anything else. You see promo videos. You might see like the designer, the artist. You might see George or even yourself, Gary. and people underestimate just how many people are a part of these projects, just the conceptualization of it, the ideation of it. And then once you get to the manufacturing part, just going from start to finish. It's amazing to see something like that, especially here in the U.S. Like just U.S. manufacturing has just always fascinated me. We've always been U.S. manufacturers, proud to be that regardless of the politics. We are U.S. manufacturers. We are dependent on a lot of other local manufacturers and local suppliers and some things that aren't so local.
    95:27
    We've always made them here. And partly one reason we never went offshore is, A, we're American manufacturers. I don't want to live offshore.
    95:38
    But also, you know, we like our engineers and designers to be right there with the product. But having said all that, we manufacture the product. It's important that we make it. We are manufactured, but we're really game designers. And if you look at our creed on the wall, vision, manufacture is not in there. We are game designers, and that's what these guys do, and that whole studio of George's does. They design games, and it's all about gaming. It's all about games. So I think that, and that begs the question. Which is where he comes in. Right, exactly. So when you see something like this, because I remember the first time we met just yesterday, and I recognize you immediately. And you haven't forgotten that. It's only been a day. I remember it. But we were talking about WWE momentarily. So when you see something like this and you're pulling in from your previous experience, how do you apply that to pinball in general in order to grow it to the type of audience that Gary just alluded to? Yeah, I mean, like there's over 14 million people in the U.S. that are considered pinball players. And so there's a huge audience that we can look at and tap into from a social perspective. So to me, it all starts with the community and really just focusing on building that community out, showing them what they like, you know, showing the amazing games that we make as a company. And so really focusing on the community is what is really the first part of the marketing process and approach. you start there and then you just grow from there with other activations that you can do in marketing whether that be like user acquisition or email marketing and some of the other tools that we have in our toolkit but at the end of the day it just comes down to really catering to the community and building that core audience and then growing it into the more mass market which is where video game experience really comes into play because there's hundreds of millions of video game players in the world and so being able to convert some of them That's obviously the goal that I came on board to really focus on is to really drive conversion of those players, just given how broad it is from a global perspective. Right. And do you find that at some way you find the segmentation between getting a new player or somebody new to enjoy pinball, to enjoy it on a location? Is that the goal to kind of get them like more coin drops for location and then eventually convert them to a buying customer of just wanting a game in their home? Is that kind of like overall? Yeah, I think the location is critical, you know, getting people playing the game. Like the more we can get people playing pinball, we win in the long run. So, Jared, I don't know if you want to admit that. On a narrow sense, we have a cycle. And the cycle is that, you know, the 20-somethings are playing in the bar arcades or the breweries are just the local bar.
    98:33
    Rebecca's sister and brother-in-law have a pool hall that they've put a big game section into. Maybe that's a good set of locations. I don't know. For pinball to have more people see it. Okay. Now that 20, 30-year-old gets to be 35, 45, and he wants a game for the home. And we want him to have played our game in the streets so he buys it instead of buying an iPhone, you know, 30 years from now. Because, you know, they're playing games there, too. So, you know, that's how you get your first-time buyer is he knew what pinball was. And everybody knows what pinball is. A lot of people still say they still make them, but everybody knows what they are.
    99:20
    30, 40% of the first-time buyers buy a second game. If they buy more games, they become, like you all, enthusiasts, collectors, whatever you want to say. Yes. So we go from playing in the street, which is our free advertising, you could say, for the games, to buying a game for home, hopefully not waiting for another COVID,
    99:48
    and to buying more games at home. So maybe having so many games, you don't know what to do with them, so you go put them out on the street. And the head of the AMOA, the just retired president of the AMOA, he started with one pinball machine. He went to a bowling alley and said, hey, you don't have a pinball. How about putting mine in? This was 20 years ago. Now he's got thousands of games in operation, and that's his main business. And a lot of the new game operators are pinball enthusiasts who decided to operate the street a couple of their games. Yeah. So it's all part of a cycle. And by the way, when those new operators put games on the street, and they probably put them pretty good games in pretty good shape, and who's playing them? The 20, 30-year-olds? Who's going to, in another 10, 20 years, buy one for the home? It's a cycle that we create, and he's going to enlarge to a whole new group of players. Exactly. I think you hit the nail on the head earlier that it's about, like, there's a full demographic out there, millions of people, that they may say something to the extent of, I didn't realize pinball was still around. But yet we see it growing location-wise. So it's almost like, how do you go about finding those people if they're not necessarily just going to a location to find it? How do we go about finding those? because that will be the lifeblood eventually for them to, you know, convert. I mean, I think, again, it first starts with the building the community out. So folks need more of our resources on building content that caters to the community so then they understand, you know, where Pinball is at and they acknowledge that it's there. And so starting with the community. But then, you know, there's other levers we can pull, you know, specifically when it comes to traditional marketing. So, you know, like user acquisition, you know, going on Google and Meta and some of these platforms and advertising our games on those channels, I think, plays a huge role from a global perspective. We also have a very large email distribution list, too. So just making sure we tap into our audiences that we already know through Insider Connected platform. I think that's a huge critical marketing application that we have to leverage going forward. And we're going to build a lot of really cool programs for Insider Connected. Now, I'm an absolutely horrible interviewer because I started with you guys telling us about the event. And so we're going to go back to that. First, you can tell us how great the game is because we all know that. It really is fantastic. But then talk about the event. The other influencers are here, the people you meet that you know already or that you haven't. Tell us something about the event.
    102:27
    It's basically a community. We're here with the pinball community. It's great to interact with different content creators. You know, I do a lot of tournament streaming. You know, somebody else like Joel does a lot of streaming at home.
    102:47
    You know, other people do publications. It's good to interact. But as far as the game goes, the game's phenomenal.
    102:56
    You know, Keith Elwin, you know, I always say this about Keith. Every time he makes a game, he hits a home run. You know, the game just flows great. It shoots great. I mean, it's awesome. Yeah, and these media days, this is my third, and I think this is probably fourth for you guys.
    103:20
    They're fantastic. Not only, you know, in the creator space, a lot of us know each other because we're all making very similar content, and we're friends, but also just the openness, you know, to be able to pull in people like yourself interview you guys, interview the design team, really get firsthand experience of these games. Super grateful for the overall media days. Well, right, and I think one of the key parts to days like today is when you guys at Stern pull back the curtains and you guys give us a ton of access, and what that allows, I think there's a lot of people here that are learning just more and more, and then they can pull that into their content, and then therefore other people learn even more from there. And I think that's the key. It really comes to just further education on, like, what is all this, right? Because everybody has their mind made up or in their head what pinball actually is, but then when you see it up close with the experts, with the people that live it day in and day out that are super passionate about it, that have a few years' experience in the industry, it's definitely fantastic just to be around that for sure. I know we certainly appreciate you all taking the time and coming in here and past today or other days like this to having the interest in pinball and in growing pinball and educating pinball and telling pinball that, hey, it's fun and we're here. Because that's all it is about is fun.
    104:49
    Well, so you're three weeks in, three and a half, three and a half weeks in. Many years marketing a video game. I know other content creators compare, you know, we compare pinball to video games a lot, but one of the core concepts is, one, a video game takes up this much space on your shelf, and it costs $60. Pinball machine takes up the corner of your room, $7,000-plus. I mean, that alone, that challenge alone is something I'm assuming you've obviously recognized in the last three weeks. Oh, yeah. Where do you even start on that? How do you, you know, this is a, to buy a video game at this point, you can download it, right? But like a pinball machine, there are people that are having to rent a U-Haul to get it to their house. So, I mean, I assume this is a whole new level of challenges that you're going to have to market around. It's definitely a different challenge from a pricing perspective because, like, a mobile game that's free to play versus, you know, spending $10,000 on a pinball machine, it's definitely different. But at the core, it's entertainment. Sure. And so, you know, people love entertaining. And, you know, with disposable income, they'll be able to buy, you know, a pinball machine. and that's what we're really focused on is finding all those people that either aren't aware that they're available and easy to access to, you know, the big fans that have been repeat purchasers as well. So we're looking at everybody right now and figuring out how best to target them, how to get them as excited as possible.
    106:11
    And to your point about having the space, you know, in your house, that obviously plays a pretty critical role. But as Seth says, you know, what's cool about having a gray box under your TV versus having this big, beautiful piece of art in your house? You know, it made a statement, you know, makes a statement about you, the owner. It makes a statement in general. But two things to point to.
    106:40
    First thing is, and one of the things that we learned with some of our market research, is because it is big and because it's expensive,
    106:49
    people who want to think about buying a pinball, their friend has a pinball, they think about it, and they're scared.
    107:00
    Am I making a good choice? Is this smart? Am I going to be able to take care of it? And what they need is for you all, in particular, to be their Sherpas, to help them, to guide them, to hold their hand. If you have a friend and tell the people listening to your podcast, if they have a friend playing pinball at their house that may be interested in it, tell them don't be afraid. Help them. Show them that you can get the game fixed and the game has value and you're not going to blow it and your wife's not going to think you're an idiot. She's actually going to have fun with the game. People need their hand held a little bit. They need a Sherpa. so that's the one thing that you guys can really do with your listening uh public is tell them you want to enlarge your community enlarge it do it yourselves not just not just for uh matthew to do each of you is a is an ambassador and it can be a sherpa for somebody who wants a game and the other thing that we just would be remiss if we didn't mention it's insider connected oh yeah which is connectivity is the future of the world uh without connectivity it's a box on four legs and yes some people like other other games from other small manufacturers but they're not connected and you can't build a community without connectivity he can't build a community if we didn't have connectivity and that's to me That is the major future of this product. I just got in Vail, my apartment, I got a gas fireplace. I put wood in it, it's dirty and all that, and got a gas fireplace very late. Everybody else had one.
    108:42
    I've got a thermostat that when I'm going to come up the mountain, my phone tells it to turn the heat on. Yeah. I go online to do my Zoom meetings, whatever, and fail.
    108:58
    I hit my, you know, connect my, whatever it calls, you know, Gary Blop Blop sign-in. The next one is Samsung dryer. There's somebody with a Samsung dryer that is talking to them in my building. Because that's the future of everything. And the same is true with these games. And you guys know what we've done with it and can do with it. that's the future. Yeah, Gary's touching on a really important point, which is social. Like when I come from a video game background, like it's all about social interactivity. That's where, you know, everyone's playing. They want to play with their friends and their families. And so that, I think, is another thing that I can look from a marketing perspective, from video game, traditional video games, into the pinball community as well. Meanwhile, you guys are watching your watches. You want to throw this off and do somebody else? Oh, no, no, no. You're perfectly fine. No. We're making sure we're not going to run out of time. Because we thought we had until 6. I think we're only going until 5 today. What? I think, right? For pizza, or are we going until 6? No, I think we're going. We're going as long as you guys want to be here. Nobody tells me anything.
    110:04
    They just wind me up and tell me to show up or don't show up as I might want to. No, we appreciate you guys being here. It's a fun time, so you guys can be here as long as you want. There's no set time. So what I'm hearing is we can stay here 24 hours a day. Yes, you can. There won't be anybody here tomorrow to monitor you because it's Good Friday. And for us, that's a business holiday here. I better not then. I'll get stuck in the thing. I got WrestleMania this weekend. I got to watch, too. Are you really? Oh, yeah, really? I'm into wrestling. That's why I recognize you. It's in my hometown this year, yeah, in Vegas. Oh, yeah. Are you going back to it? I'm actually not attending this year. Yeah, this will be the first year that I haven't attended. I've been to the last few. Oh, wow. Jody and I went one year when we were doing the wrestling game. And some people thought, who's the wrestler with the big white head of hair? Oh, wow. The player? No, no, no, no, no. There's some guy who's a bad guy. I'm not sure. Anyway, they thought I was him or something walking around. It's just I'm a little like him. Did you just tell them you're the Gary Stern? You should have did, right? I'm kidding.
    111:15
    No, that's awesome. But, I don't know, three and a half weeks in, I feel like I don't want to ask you too much. Like, I know it's still, it's probably drinking out of a fire hose, you know? I'm learning every day, absorbing as much as I can about the industry, about the people, the players. You were at TPF, too. So that was probably an open experience. That was awesome. You know, I was really happy to see a lot of families and a lot of diversity in the audience that was there. So that was really cool to see everyone playing the games and, you know, super excited to be there. The pinball community is honestly something special. I don't know anybody that – everybody I know that owns a pinball machine wants to share it with other people. And then when they find other people that are just as passionate or excited to play it, that's why I love going to shows. Because every single person that bought a ticket to go to that show is so pumped to play whatever game is coming out and geek out about the shots, the rules, the whatever. It's pretty amazing. I'm learning that they're super passionate, which is really cool and very powerful too. Yeah. to see that type of, you know, fandom, you know, in the pinball industry. It's really cool to see. So I'm excited to learn more and, you know, keep on doing what we're doing. Well, you joined a great team. The catalog that's out there of games is incredible. It's incredible. We just interviewed Keith, obviously, who's made some amazing games, Chuck Ernst, for him to talk about all the graphics that he's done for that entire catalog. I mean, it's – and Tom Bietti, what he's brought to the table. I mean, you have an amazing team here at Stern.
    112:44
    Thank you. but they're absolutely great guys and very passionate about what they do. They live and breathe this. Yeah. And I think, too, before we let you, I've got to ask, too.
    112:55
    Getting into pinball, obviously we talked about just kind of the barriers and everything, but did you realize that we were all going to be just this batshit crazy?
    113:05
    Like the people that are just so – you know what I mean? Because people are so passionate about the games. I love it. Like I said, the limited time I've been here, It's been a phenomenal experience just meeting you guys and meeting everybody. Like, the passion just bleeds passion, which is really important. I think it's really important for the business. It's definitely the lifeblood of it. It definitely is. I think what we all enjoy about it. We all have our opinions, and there's some people with opinions more than others, but what's hilarious about pinball is we all believe we're right. Right? So I think we all realize what we're doing is insane, having all these machines and playing, but yet we love it so much. It's fun. And we just like to play with other people. Well, we appreciate everything that you guys are doing. Thank you. I have, you know, I don't have a lot of pinball machines. I have a lot of pinball machines over here.
    113:55
    But it's, you know, insane. I have four Harleys and a Ducati. Okay. So it's the same kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. You know, the same price range. Yeah, yeah. You know, same kind of thing. Yeah. And I have two boats. You know, it's just don't get rid of one. You just keep them. Yeah. So once they have it. So you're saying the motorcycles are the same as the pinball machines? They multiply quick? Because my wife's been wanting me to get a motorcycle for about 20 years. And I told her as soon as I get to 50, I'll consider it. Really? She wants you to get one. I think your wife just wants you to be cool.
    114:31
    It hasn't happened yet. But it's the same thing. It's the same kind of enthusiasm. What would be a motorcycle I could get that my wife would be happy with? She wants a two-seater. Not like the little sidecar, but something to keep your eye on. I was in the last week in the Daytona Bike Week because we have bike things, too, besides pinball things. I'm very busy. And I was there with Ed Vanderveen from formerly Texas Pinball. Now he's involved with Pinball at the Beach. and one of my friends in Vail had the game operator. He had the same thing. Ed's got a Ural, which is a Russian sidecar motorcycle, which I tried to drive and it's impossible because it doesn't steer right if you ask me. But, yeah, he's got a sidecar bike, a motorcycle. So there you go. That's not what you want. Do you look cool while riding one of those? I don't know. A lot of people stopped to look at it. A lot of people had to look at it. We all know if you had a sidecar, Monica would be the one driving and you'd be in the sidecar. We all know. Probably true. There you go. Get yourself, I mean, I say get a Harley. So I'm going to get a Harley. And next year at Pinball at the Beach, I'm going to ride with Gary. We're going to pull up when the fire alarm goes off again. That's it. That's what we're going to do. Yeah. And we better tell Ed to bring a bike, too. Yeah. That's awesome. We can bike and play pinball. You know, it's all good. Yeah. Well, I'll admit. I did more drinking than pinball probably. Pinball at the beach because the whole beach was right there. Well, you know, it's pinball and beer go together. That's one of my marketing phrases. Just a little bit, yeah.
    116:19
    Yeah. Cool. Well, very much appreciate you guys sitting down. And we didn't know who all we're talking to over the last few hours. Everybody. It's been a great time. It's been tremendous. I'm glad that you asked this, and I'm glad that Matthew came in and saw that you guys want to hear what he's got to say. Yeah, we actually are happy that you're in the industry. Well, I'm really excited to be here. Yes, because pinball needs growth, more of it, and just sustainability long-term. So that's great. That's the plan. Awesome. Thank you, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming. Thanks for having us. Yeah, no problem.
    116:55
    Well, the fun continues. The fun continues. And we've got George Gomez. George Gomez is on. Hey, guys. We're having a lot of fun with this. Now, I'm excited to interview you. There is a piece of pizza in front of Tom, though, that I know he's pretty excited about, too. My blood sugar was dropping. What am I supposed to do? Pretty good pizza, too. I don't know. We'll get to it. You know, priorities. But, George, what I love about you is you're all about the hard questions. You're all about the hard questions. So we'll start easy. Yeah. Start easy. Yeah, yeah. And maybe we'll ramp them up a little bit. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I've told you guys lots of times. I tell most of the people that interview me, it's part of my job. I've asked me the hard ones.
    117:34
    A lot of my guys, you know, I think in order to not put them on the spot and not have somebody troll them, I always tell guys, I say, you know, here's how I want you to handle this. Here's how I don't want you to handle this. But for me, you know, you guys can come at me.
    117:56
    It's like, you know, it comes with the territory. Here's an easy one. What's the next three games? You know what they say about triple drain. We ask the hard-hitting questions. Yeah, that's true. We're in the Super Series podcast. You're on it.
    118:12
    Okay, so obviously we're here for Kong. Yeah. Honestly, the three of us are all loving what we're seeing in Kong. You've seen a whole lot of play field layouts in your life. So Keith presents you that with the ridiculous ball pass that it has. I don't know, like, for all your years of experience, it's probably hard to surprise you, but, like, that's something special. Yeah, you know, I love it. I love the young guys are bringing it, right? They recognize, you know, they sort of recognize and respect where, you know, where design, where pinball design has been. they know it really well especially you know when you're talking about guys like Keith and Jack they they're really great players on top of it so they bring you know they bring that level of experience to the things that they do and and you know I run the studio with the notion that we want to make games that we want to play yeah I mean it begins with satisfying ourselves that's that's all every game i've ever made my whole life i've made for myself so to some extent it it's kind of uh i think it's a really good way to do it because you know you want to be happy with the thing you make so um so yeah those guys are bringing it you know i mean look i think i think we opened some eyes with the x-men play field and by the way you know we're we're hardly done with that game we're still you know we're i mean it's it's funny because there was a a trick four of us were actually literally working on the next code, some of the rules things for the next code today, and nobody noticed this, but the X-Men game that was in the studio there, there was like, you know, Wayson, Jack, Mike Vinacore, myself, parked in front of that game for an hour, and nobody noticed. Really?
    120:04
    And I said, and we were kidding amongst ourselves. We were going, if somebody took a picture of this, you know, it would prove to them that, hey, we are actively working on this. Yeah, which is awesome. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, we are hardly, we've hardly abandoned it. It's a question of, like right now, we're not exactly, you know, I'm going to give you a tip. We're not exactly happy with where the future is, and we're working a lot on the future. And we want to make the future accessible and a really cool thing for the average player. We also have to design some depth into it that, you know, it's going to be interesting for advanced players when they get into the future, right? Right now, we're not happy with what it's doing. And so we've been going around and around with trying different things. And we think we have something. Right now, we're prototyping. So we build the rule with just representative icons for things. And we don't worry too much about the feedback stuff. And then we start dialing in the feedback stuff. Because at the end of the day, if the feedback stuff's not there, the sound effects, the visuals, the light shows, et cetera, you're not feeling it. It doesn't matter that this rule is there. Right. People don't realize that. Everybody thinks it's about the rule. Yes, yes. It's about the rule. The rule doesn't really come to life until you have all the bits and pieces connected to it. Because that's what you actually feel. Yeah. Right. You see the light flashing, you make the shot, and there's an associated sound effect, some transformation on a play field, a timer running, something that's happening that's some tension creator, whether it's music, whatever it is. That's the stuff, right? And that is incredibly painful from the standpoint that you have to iterate and iterate and iterate until you get it right.
    121:54
    But yeah, I think the young guys are bringing it. I love the fact that they look at each other's work but everybody's doing their own stuff and everybody's got Keith is no one, no designer no new designer and he's not new anymore but even Jack's new and no new designer has a signature until they've done some stuff you don't have a style you think you have a style everybody everyone begins influenced by some style right i was influenced by steve richie um you know i think keith was influenced by pat lawler you know everybody's influenced by somebody and that person you take that person's work as a starting point and then you riff you know and eventually you become a thing you become you get a style you start doing your thing right and so So, you know, my early games, I was all about trying to emulate the flow thing and the speed thing, you know. It's like, you know, play a Johnny Mnemonics, incredibly fast, really flowing, right? That's where I was trying to go. But what was my influence? My influence was Terminator 2, right? So it's kind of like, you know, I've got a crossing ramp rule in that game, very much influenced by Payback Time, right? And so it's like that's the beginnings, right? You start, you know, that was my second game out of the chute, right? And so Keith has developed a style. He now has a style. He's taken some of the things that I think that have been, you know, like years ago I told him, I said, dude, you got to put ramps on your game. And the ramps in and of themselves are a toy. So play, create a toy with the ramp. And he took it to heart. Yeah. Right. And so that's a lot of what you're seeing, right? Everybody, you know, we talk a lot about novice players getting a novice into the game. You know, when's the first multiball from the button, right? We work from button up, right? We start from the button up, which is why when you see a game like this and he tells you that, hey, the wizard modes aren't in it, the wizard modes aren't in yet, the X-Men wizard modes aren't in yet. Yeah, that's right, because we work from the button up. And so it's like advanced guys, you've got to wait a little longer. Sure. Well, it's not like they're going anywhere either. I haven't met a high-level pinball player yet that's been like, well, this game doesn't have a wizard mode. I'm just never playing it again. They eventually come back around to it either way. I mean, you would know this, right, Joel? Sure, yeah. I don't, you know, my high level. But, I mean, I understand there are plenty of buyers, though, that they get anti. It's always, you know, when you guys are still good at releasing another game three to four months later. So when they buy one and then they feel – I also think – let's be honest. I think here's my opportunity to say hard things. Go for it. I think there's a lot of people that – they can't play at the level that they claim they're missing.
    125:07
    I mean, come on. Let's be real. So, I mean, it's like, wait, you heard on some forum that this thing is missing, and now you're obsessed with this thing that's missing. The reality is it's not a – you can't play at that level, or you don't get to that thing, or you don't even know – you know, it's like when people pick up the, oh, the code's young yet. That's like a thing because you have to say a thing. You have to sound intelligent so you can say, you know. It's funny you're mentioning this because we've talked about this, especially Tom and I, all podcasts, that oftentimes we wonder if somebody says, well, the code's not there yet. It's like, okay, you ask them, okay, what's the code? Like, what does that mean? To an individual, does that mean the rules aren't there yet? The call-outs aren't there yet? Every game we release. Every game we release, 100% of the time, if that, you know, .8, guys are talking about, oh, it's going to get better. It's going to be better. You know, and it's interesting. there's also this the notion of the design team has a vision for what they imagine the game was going to be and the internet has a different vision for what they think the game is going to be and those two visions sometimes they're they come together and sometimes they don't sure so you may have we may have scenarios where we go no we thought we were done with that you know and i mean you know and it's not one of the not something real obvious but there are situations where you go, yeah, I don't know. You know, it's like they're inventing some missing thing that they don't think is a missing thing. Yeah. No, that's fair. And I mean, we've all just spent a little bit of time on Kong and it's incredible to see what's already in the game. Yeah. But it is very clear. I mean, Keith was very clear about what his plans are too. So it's like, I'm going to, you know, the first five, 10 minutes of that game is there, it's fleshed out. And that's what the vast majority of people are. Yeah. It feels complete. It's super, super tight. Yeah. But yet, you know, you look at that Empire State Building and it's like there's four or five levels in there. And it's like, so the fact they only have one coded in right now, maybe two, I don't know. But it's like, yeah, I'm not complaining because I'm not going to see that for quite a while. Yeah, our, you know, the other challenge we face is that complete, when we talk about, you know, we talk about what's the feedback, right? So you got, you know, what are the visuals on screen? What are the sound effects? Yep. What choreography with the lights and the devices and stuff like that. And then the integration to what's a rule that's going to be compelling to you, what's a setup in a play event that's going to be compelling to you, that's going to keep you coming back, right? Those are the things that come with time, right? And they also, I think you really do want us to release at .8, knowing we're going to finish, because we're going to make a lot of changes based on watching you play. Yeah, right. He said that exact thing many times. He's like, I want to release the game here because he wants to see somebody at my skill level and then somebody at Carl D'Angelo's skill level to see how we play the game. It's totally real. Right. And we're listening, we're watching, we're hearing, and we're bringing it back, and we're evolving with it. And so that's real. So I've got to ask the question then, like, who, when you're using that strategy, Like what type of player are you really zeroing in on that represents the proper avatar? So honestly, we're watching everybody. We're watching everybody. Because, yeah, because George says it's everybody. We design for everybody. So we want everybody. We want to please everybody. We want, you know, easy to master, hard to, or I'm sorry, easy to learn, hard to master. We want, and again, we're talking about, remember I said, you know, we try to place our interactive toys in a place that's accessible to every player. Yeah. We want a player, you know, a player to walk up, look under the glass, see something compelling, the curb appeal. I want to, I got to play this thing. I got to see what King Kong does. I got to play this thing. I got to see what that spider does, whatever. and we want that interaction for a novice player to be as eventful as it is for someone that's geeking out on I got to start that multi-ball while I'm in this mode in order to complete that mode right and I got to stack these things or I'm gonna I'm trying to I'm trying to pick an optimal path to optimize my score and there's multiple ways to try and so so we have to watch everybody We have to watch, you know, we have to watch Gary Stern. Did you get to the multi-ball, right? And that, and it, you know, and when it doesn't happen, then we start thinking about, hey, maybe we should spot him two targets. Maybe we should, you know, what do we do? We, you know, maybe it's not five shots, maybe it's three, right? Now, have you found like the rise in tournament play with content online like Tom does or seeing so many different YouTube videos, a gameplay or Twitch? Have you found that that has helped along the way, kind of speed up that process of recognizing those gaps that you need to fill? I think we're growing better players every day because the problem is the hobby. I watch the – so on my games, I've been watching what I call a billionaire's club, right? I've been watching the Bond billionaire's club. I've been watching the Deadpool billionaire's club. Nice. And I'm thinking to myself, man, we're growing a lot of players. Yeah, and you're able to use Insider Connected to do that. Yeah, yeah, and I'm watching this. I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, yeah, I mean, the skill levels of everyone are – the more pinball we get in the world, the more people interact, the more tournament play happens, the better people get. And that's real. That's like – and I'm seeing it because I'm like, you know, I know what it was to get a – you know, I've never done it. I know what it was to watch people get a billion points on Bond when we launched. And now, every third week, there's some guy going, I got a billion.
    131:16
    So, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. No, it's, I don't know. There's a lot here to be excited about. I know one of the things that I'm excited about is Kong.
    131:30
    I know Kong is licensed, but it doesn't feel licensed. It feels like you gave Keith the opening. It's really not licensed. We're the, you know, like the joke around here is Seth and I were the licensors. So, you know, like the team, one day these guys were screwing around. They said to me, they said, yeah, we got a licensing meeting this afternoon. I said, with who? And he says, with the licensor. And I'm like, what meeting is that? And he says, meeting with you.
    131:58
    Like, are you guys going to show me what you're doing? Yeah, yeah, you're the licensor. And you've voiced, I mean, there's a lot of complaints, or a lot of times when people complain about what's in or not in a game, it usually comes back to a licensure decision. A lot, yeah. So when you have games like Deadpool, where it feels like you have free reign, or you have like this, that's why I'm excited about Kong, because I feel like you essentially have free reign. This is total free reign, right? So this is basically, the constraints here are you've got a property that's been interpreted by everybody a million times. And as a company, we want a point of distinction. We want, what's our point of difference? Like, how do we make Kong with a point of difference that is uniquely Stern Pinballs and that we can then do things with, by the way. We can create toys, licensed T-shirts, whatever it is. Sure. Because it's essentially our interpretation of an IP that is unprotected and free out there. and everybody's interpreted in a different way. It's like, okay, those guys did Skull Island. Okay, what's our island called? It's called Terror Island. And what's the look of our island? Well, theirs is like this. Well, ours is going to be Aztec ruins.
    133:18
    It's funny because people are giving Jeremy a hard time about the Jeremy color palette. The reality is on this one, it worked backwards. Jeremy was working on a different project and Kevin was doing composition for the game. When you have something like this, where you're trying to envision a new version of King Kong, some of that early work is just like pre-visiting. You know, it's just like if a movie company tomorrow said, we're making King Kong, but our King Kong has to be different than all the other movie King Kongs that have been done. And so what are we creating in our world? And so they go through a pre-vis period where they, you know, pre-visualize everything, every element of the sets and, you know, how you're dressing the star and, you know, what does Kong look like? We've seen lots of different Kongs. What does he look like? And what does New York City look like? And what time period are we in? And, you know, what are the goals? I mean, you know, is, you know, Ann Darrow, you know, Thumb Fatale, is she a helpless, you know, captive of Kongs? Who is she? Yeah. And so you essentially take every character, you develop the backstory on every character, develop the backstory on the goals of the game. You know, what's this expedition doing when they go to Terror Island? And all that stuff had to be created. And one of the very first things was how do we make Kong uniquely stern pinballs so that people want, you know, our Kong is cooler, bigger, you know. So our Kong is pretty ripped, right? He's very muscular. Right. He's, you know, you notice that, right? He's got a unique look. But one of the very first things that happened was the lighting. The lighting, how we lit the images was key. And so that spawned the color palette. and then you know it was almost accidental that hey this color palette jeremy can really pick up on these magentas yeah hot oranges you know uh we can we can pick up you know new york city and you haven't even seen all of it yet because it's some of us not in there yet but you know the way we're going to light it is consistent with that look and that was part of defining our own Kong, right? So it was a lot of fun. It was also a lot of work because a lot of times this stuff is handed to you. You know, here's the style guide. That what I was about to ask Do you find working with something like Kong what was your I guess what was obviously the pro is you have a lot more freedom But with that too with that freedom it comes if you not operating within certain constraints that are known It's kind of like a whole blank canvas. Sometimes you feel like creatively that that's hard to sometimes just get out of the gate like that. So, you know, I've always said, like, creativity comes from being in a sandbox, right, from limitations. Limitations drive creativity.
    136:22
    So you can't – and there are limitations in this in that you sit down to talk about King Kong and is it King Kong in outer space? Yeah. King Kong – are there aliens in this King Kong? Did the aliens come to the island and discover Kong? So you got to contain – you got to create a sandbox in some way. and that sandbox spurs creativity, right? And so, yeah, the challenge was we have to pre-visualize everything. We have to create a backstory for everything. We have to invent, you know, what does Jack Driscoll look like? What's he wearing? How does he sound? What's his voice? What's his character? You know, and so we had to do all of that in all of the environments that we're going to show. Sure. And, you know, we said, hey, you know, the original stuff in the 30s, Art Deco, you know, we went there. And we said, okay, you know, we got to make it our own, but we're going there, right?
    137:32
    Empire State was, you know, potentially an issue only from a time standpoint. We weren't afraid to license it, but we were like, okay, what happens if we have to iterate on Empire State? you know so all right let's make a new skyscraper yeah right and and so um and you know the joke around here is that you know you know drake investments yeah um from from kong right and yeah right and i love that too because it feels like you're taking the theme and you're pulling the theme into pinball yeah instead of taking pinball and pulling into the theme i think That's like an important differentiation that I think if a lot of people can see that, once they can tell that, that's really what creates a great pinball game because it feels like pinball, you know, as opposed to something else. So when I saw Kong, one of my first thoughts, and I know I wasn't the only one, is my thought was like, man, that's going to look good right next to Godzilla. Yeah. And it's because they're, I mean, same designer, but it's the same overall concept. Huge monster. Yeah. When Godzilla came out, did you have any idea it was going to be as successful as it was going to be? Yes. So you knew. You knew. You were like, this is going to be. Yeah, because, again, so there's a thread here, right? You mentioned Deadpool, and the thread is, yes, there's a licensor. Yes, there are constraints, but there's a tremendous amount of freedom, creative freedom within those constraints, right, to build these worlds. And Godzilla was like that. Godzilla was kind of like, it's Godzilla, he's got to look like Godzilla, and he's got to exist in the world he came from, but that's it. So, yeah, go ahead, create, render the monsters the way you want, render the characters of the monsters.
    139:30
    There was no one there to say, I got an idea for a collapsing building. No one was there to say, no, you can't have a collapsed building. So I think freedom within the context of a theme. And what does the theme buy you? Well, the theme buys you instant recognition from the audience. Sure. Everyone knows Godzilla. They don't know our interpretation of Godzilla. Right. Everyone knows King Kong. They don't know our interpretation of King Kong. That's a great way to put it. Yeah. And maybe this is something you can clarify because there are so many people that speculate when you get a bigger license, there's a cost there. So people assume that cost is you have to take that somewhere. So people assume the bomb on the hardware, the bomb of the physical pinball machine is less because the cost of the license is more. Well, I mean, I'll tell you that for sure, I'll tell you that the cost of a license, at least in this company, I don't know about other companies, but in this company's impacts, you know, I mean, it's a business deal. Yeah. So you have to envision that at some point in time I have to amortize the cost of the license. I have to amortize just like I have to figure out just like no different than amortizing tooling or anything else. Right. So it's kind of like when somebody pays a million dollars for something, you have to divide it by something. You have to anticipate that I'm going to sell this number of these things. and that adds whatever it is, $100, $200, whatever it is, to the price of that game.
    141:06
    So it's not, it doesn't go unnoticed. You know, I mean, it's a business decision like all the other business decisions that we make. But does that mean because Keith has been given essentially an unlicensed game, or I don't know, I don't know what the cost of that was. Does he have the ability to put more in the game because of that? No, so there's a lot of misunderstanding about how we handle the bombs, right? The bombs are our target that the teams are given. They're based on some speculation.
    141:33
    In some ways, speculation, I say this because it's very analyzed and thought through speculation. It's all built around the business plan of the company. The business plan of the company says, we anticipate that we're going to make X number of games this year, and these are the titles that it's going to be split across. And therefore, and this is the overhead of the company and this is this and this is that, and therefore the target for us to be profitable means that we are going to create a target bill of materials for each team that they're going to try to hit. But the reality is that when you get into a project, everybody thinks that Keith has a bigger budget than the other designers. That's not true at all. Yeah. They all, they're all given the same target and, and, and we see what they bring to the party. Like no one, you know, no one tells, you know, somebody, you know, uh, like, you know, you have to, uh, um, you have to add, you know, you have to add or remove unless, if it doesn't make sense, it's gotta make sense. And I, I'm the first, I'm the first line of defense, right? They bring me a thing, and they say, you know, this is super cool, and we really don't want to take it out. And then I look at it and go. But it's going to cost us an extra million dollars. Well, I'm going to say, yeah, it's going to cost this much, and we have the conversation. Hey, what's it worth to you? Is it worth this? And if I think it's super cool, then I go upstairs and I go, you guys got to look at this thing because, honestly, I can't envision this game without it. Right. So Keith had two – Keith's actually given you two examples of that on his games. One is the Helix Ramp on Godzilla. You said that needs to be in the game. But then he just told us today, you didn't like the center post on Kong. He said, you don't want the center post on Kong. Right, right, right. So center post, let's talk about center post. Yeah. So in the era that I came up in, a center post was a Band-Aid. Oh. It was a thing that a designer did at the 11th hour when his game was too drainy and horrible. Interesting. And so, like, if you talk to guys and you talk to guys from, you know, there I came up in, game goes on the streets, got to make money, number one. and that means like a lot of conscious design management of your ball times. Sure. Like really proactive, you know, how many controlled flipper feeds am I getting? You know, so all my ramps come, if everything feeds back to a controlled flipper feed of the ramp, my ball times are going to go up. If my, you know, what's the design of my drain lanes? What am I designing my slingshots? what you know uh what am i am i using back in those days literally it was like am i in white rubbers or black rubbers because black rubbers you have way more control could because the they're you know harder rubber so there's less bounce and white rubbers you get a lot of bounce and and so you know you get more randomness less control and and this is you know this is why i I mean, it's like, you know, and I don't mean to, I'm a firm believer that you bought a pinball machine, you do with your pinball machine whatever it is you want. Sure. And so it's kind of like, you know, you want to put a piece of plastic on top of the play field and ruin the kinetics that we spent hours and hours, you know, perfecting. Have a good time. I don't, I won't do that to my game. But, and, you know, and the same thing with like the urethane rubbers on, you know, they are pretty, they light up great. there isn't a designer in this building that's got those on his personal games. Right, yeah. And so it's like, but I totally respect your right to do whatever you want with your game. You want to close down my in lanes because I ship my games so they earn money on the street? You want to close, put rubbers on my Deadpool out lanes? Have at it. I feel like he's talking directly to you right now. No, I don't do that. I leave the game to start. But the reason I brought up the center post is because your last three games, X went out of center post. Yeah. He had a shield. Yeah. And now this has a center post. So the shield was different, though. Yeah. The shield was not really designed that way. The shield was designed as a sort of, hey, isn't it cool? I can put the shield there and make the shield. The shield's going to help me make the shot. Yeah. So it was a different animal. Sure. And it was also in keeping with that theme, right, of, you know, earn a shield. Oh, it's an awesome idea. All that kind of stuff. So Jack and I had the discussion before Keith and I had the discussion. Okay. And I said to Jack, I said, listen, that's like a Band-Aid. That's like a bad designer Band-Aid from the 90s. His center post. Yeah. And he said, dude, you've got to flip it. And so we flipped it together.
    146:43
    And then I said, okay, all right, you can have it. And actually, one of the things that he did is his center post is very playable. Like, I find that it's a play feature. Right. Sure, yeah. And how it's a play feature is I know it's there. I'm going to try to leverage it. And sometimes I drain because I tried to leverage it. Yeah. I tried to nudge it. I tried to use it. You know, I saw it coming for the post, and I let it come for the post. Yep. Right? I didn't do a slap save. I let it come for the post because I thought I was good enough to nudge it, and I was wrong. So, you know, so that's, instantly, that's a play feature, and that's how you convince me, right? So when I saw it on Keith's game, I had, you know, I had the same sort of natural 90s designer reaction, you know? Were you like, Keith, what broke shot do you have in here, right?
    147:43
    What's draining me now? The gong. Oh, God. Right, right. And, you know, he proved it to me. So I said, okay, yeah, you got to do it. No, I like it. No, and I'm fine. You know, I am fine with it. And like you said, if somebody got it home and was like, I don't need this, they could take it off. They could take it off. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, look, part of my job is to challenge these guys. Sure. Right? And to make sure that we really have made the right choice. and so I ask you know we talk about hard questions I ask them hard questions good yeah right and I think it makes the games I think our collective internal critique we're harder than you guys are on our stuff yeah because we think that's what makes it better yeah so I don't want any I don't want anybody pulling punches about what your game whether your game's good or not I want people in the building to tell us that the game's not, and then, okay, what don't you like, and let's go work it, and let's figure it out, right? Yeah, and I think that leads me to the next question that we've talked about right before the podcast started, that, you know, obviously it's gotten out there that Tim Sexton, who was the lead on John Wick, is no longer with the company, and there's a lot of people that have been asking about code updates for a little while now, and so, like, what state is that game in now moving forward? Yeah, so it's hardly abandoned just because Tim left. First of all, there was a plan. There was an approved plan, meaning that, you know, there was a, you know, Tim said, I want to do this, this and this and this. And a bunch of people got in room and looked it over and talked about it and said, OK, you know, let's try it. Let's try these things because we need to do these things to complete it. And and we're executing on it with or without Tim. There's also other eyes in the building, right? So it's kind of like, and there's guys that, there's young guys that are not lead capable yet. And that would be a perfect, you know, perfect scenario. I mean, and we've got young guys that have become lead capable with projects like that. Yeah. And I'll, you know, I present to you Metallica Remastered. Yeah. With Ray, right, who the next time you see Ray, he's going to be in the front seat. Right. But how did he get into the front seat? Well, he took Metallica Remastered, and he did a great thing with it. He really did. Yeah. So he did. That's the road. And there's going to be someone like that on the Wick product probably. Do you find that Wick is just going to have some slight adjustments, or is this the potential, kind of like what happened with Ghostbusters in Game of Thrones to where there was a considerable, I don't know if I'd want to say overhaul, but there was a considerable change. I don't think anything's getting turned upside down. I think you're going to see extensions of things that are there. There's going to be a really cool factions rule. There's going to be, there's more, there's basically, it's an opportunity to take a step back and look at everything you had planned and everything that you're going to do and say, okay, how do we make this even cooler? How do we make this even better? right so um yeah i mean you know you talk about like uh sometimes a game like you know elliot didn't like i didn't strip anything from elliot elliot brought me a playfield he had the idea for the car idea for all those toys elliot and tim and and i i was like yeah that's cool let's do that i mean if that's what you want to do that's what we're going to do and so it's kind of like had Elliot, you know, it's not like the game is like that because we took something out of it, you know, it's like that's the game they wanted to make and we thought hey, you know, interestingly enough I hear all these people talk about how hard that game is to shoot and when I step up to that game I make every shot, I don't know you know, it's like I don't, I'm not that great I think the ramps are tighter but I mean you can definitely combo those ramps, I mean we just tell people just think of it like Cactus Canyon. And once you think of it like that, like, because the shots are in a similar spot, but Cactus Canyon, everybody... You just have to find the shots. Yeah. And once you do, like... It flows. I mean, it's fast. It's like Johnny in the mind. It is like Johnny. Yeah. And I was going to say that. I'm glad you saw that, because I actually think that my Johnny ramps are easier, but the speed is on Johnny level, right? And that's another, you know, that's like the very first time you ever set foot on a tennis court, you thought that ball was going 90 miles an hour. And your mind's eye has to accommodate, like, you know, that velocity, right? And it's like until your mind's eye gets used to it, forget about it. Sure. You know, I think that not every, one of the things I'm really happy about is that I don't have guys cloning styles. I have guys developing their own styles, and I have guys building the games they want to make. And I think success lies in let's make the games we want to make. And chances are, because you guys live, eat, and dream pinball, you're going to come up with something that other people that live, eat, and dream pinball. And you bring up a good point because, I mean, it seemed like some of the games were coming out and they kind of mirrored some other games, but it seems like lately none of these games mirror anything. No, I mean, I think that, yeah, they don't. And they say it about my stuff all the time, and I really want to take, it's like I want to do a PowerPoint presentation where I take play field layouts and I overlay on them so that you see. They're not exactly close.
    153:50
    Right? So it's kind of like, it's another seven shot of Ray. It's another fan. Okay. Right. Let me show you the differences in fan to fan. Let me show you the differences.
    154:01
    I think, you know, it's funny because I hear this a lot about Sea Witch and Beatles. And I want to take a Sea Witch and I want to show you where I started and I want to show you where I ended. And I was purposely, you know, trying to respect Sea Wedge and say, okay, this is a well-loved game, and I'm, you know, I'm not going to, you know, I don't, like, as a matter of fact, they asked me to, you know, put my name on it. I was like, no, it's Mike's work. I evolved it. I don't want to, you know, it's like I'll own it. I designed it. I just don't, I want to respect it. And I think that I talked, you know, I talked to Keith. I talked to Zach. Those guys had shot that thing a million times in tournaments. And they said to me, you know what? The most frustrating thing about this game is how hard it is. It's impossible to access the top of the game from the bottom of the flippers. And, you know, it was different thinking in that era, right? And when I started playing the game, I thought I was going to emulate the floaty flippers of the time. Oh, really? I had soft flippers, it was floaty and stuff. and Elwin played it. And, you know, he came in, he came right into my office and he goes, dude, you got to do something about those flippers. I was like, really? And he goes, yeah, oh, yeah. He says, we just, there's been too much water under the bridge. We can't go back to that.
    155:25
    So, speaking of flippers, like, it's funny how you guys made that change with the bushing when you redid Stranger Things. And ever since then, you already had the snappiest flippers, but they've got so much more snappiness. Yeah, it was just about fixing the tool, really. The tool was getting worn out, so there was, like, a little bit too much slop in the bearing. Yeah. So we fixed that.
    155:48
    But, you know, the snappiness comes from some voodoo we do with how we control them that nobody else has figured out yet. Well, and that's the biggest thing, too. I mean, a pinball player will always tell you the flippers have to feel good. Yeah. And how we got it. We got there because when we were building the very first iteration of Spike,
    156:16
    and we had the very first prototypes running, I had Lyman come to see me, and he goes, you've got to fix the flippers. And I was like, wait, what's wrong with them? And so a player at my level couldn't tell the difference. A player at his level could instantly tell the difference. So I had a bunch of guys come in, and everybody was like, yeah, no, no, no, no. Okay, all right.
    156:44
    And then we started analyzing it, analyzing it, analyzing it. And literally, I called the electrical engineers, and we're looking at this, and everybody's like, no, it's impossible. And okay, no, it's not impossible. They're feeling it. So we went back, and we screwed around and screwed around, screwed around. until we had to do the blind Pepsi Coke test, right? We were like, okay, guys, come on in and play these games. Tell us which ones are right. And they go, oh, no, they're all right now. Oh, okay. So we got it.
    157:21
    Nice. Well, see, I would have thought you were just, like, putting them exactly the same and saying, yeah, we changed them. Just check it out. See how you feel. No, I mean, I had them. It was super important because those guys, you know, look, man, Lyman was a tough judge.
    157:43
    If you, you know, I worked with him on many games, right? And, you know, the man had, like, super high standards for everything, right? So it's like, first of all, you know, like, if you weren't, you know, if you weren't on, you know, if you weren't getting it right, he was the first guy that was in your face about you not getting it right. And so you could not have sort of let something like that go, especially as critical as it is, which is why, by the way, I struggle with everyone else's games. I struggle, especially you know, I mean, I just struggle with everyone else's games, because meaning games that are built outside this building. Because I just can't. I mean, it's like I'm just used to all day long I play these, right? And I just can't deal with it. So, that's going to lead me to another question I know you're going to love, but Spike 3. I know there's a lot of people that assume Metallica was going to be a Spike 3, and then they're going to release it with Keith, just like inside of Connect, but Spike 3. So are you in an iterative... Just trying to get it right. So you're in that testing because you're saying... Yeah, that's exactly where we are. We're iterating. And it's not stuff like flippers. The system is evolutionary. So it's a better processor, better display, some cool features that you've been asking for that we haven't been able to get you. Lots of better sound package, better everything, you know, cool new other lighting things that you haven't seen yet, and just more power.
    159:30
    We're not, you know, it's interesting. I was listening to Retro Ralph, and he was talking about, man, those guys, they've got to be, you know, the processor has to be, like, you know, like, bottomed out with Kong and stuff. It's like, we're not processor-bound. We are, the system's eight years old. We do so much pre-rendering. Yeah. And we've gotten so good at manipulating that tech that we can do anything with that system. That, you know, it's like the – you want to see – what's interesting is I was talking to Chuck Ernst. You guys talked to Chuck, right? Yeah, yeah. And I was talking to Chuck, and I said, Chuck, can you think of a game where we struggled with the performance of the system? And he said, yeah. And I said, what game was that? And he said, Aerosmith. And I said, why? He says, well, because it was the second game that we built on the system, and we didn't know what the hell we were doing. Yeah. And so, you know, we were figuring it out. And the system today has no more power than it did when we did Aerosmith. And yet, I shouldn't say that. We have a bigger SD card because so much of our content is stored on the SD card that, you know, at some point in time we had to go to a bigger SD card. But other than that, it's the same processor. and you're going to see not only a processor, more powerful stuff, but also part of the thing that's taking time is that with all this, you have to develop a new tool chain. So our ability to put content in the games, the set of tools that we use to do that and to do all the things that we need to do in every way, that's all new. That's coming with the cool new power. Is that like software tools? Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. So like, so for example, you know, how we put video content in the game, there's a there's a tool chain that we use now. And, and, you know, the current system is is very much flash based. And that's, that's an unsupported technology. And it's a proprietary, the engine that does that is proprietary. Anyway, we built it. So we have to, we have to redo all that stuff, you know, and so we have to or or find something else that does it and then manipulate it to do it. do what we do, right? Because we're not, everybody thinks like, like when I get a new programmer and he comes from the video game world, he thinks he knows what's up. Yeah. And the reality is that our world is a lot different. I mean, it's a good start. It was a good education. But now let me introduce you to real world physics and let me introduce you to another control layer that's way more complex than the control layer that you're used to because all this stuff has to talk to each other. So my animations, my sounds, et cetera, have to be in sync with the device. I mean, you guys heard the most interesting sort of weird evolution of this is the fact that animations created in our software tools are now driving our, you know, Kong's mechanics. Yeah, exactly. That was one of the standout things that we heard, too. You know, that's a pretty cool piece of unique tech that, you know, that comes out of things like that, right? So that's part of, you know, when you build tool chains and when we built Spike, we said, okay, you know, we don't know what we don't know. So it should be modular so it can evolve with us, right? I didn't know in, you know, whatever it was, you know, nine years ago, I didn't know I was going to need a QR reader. I didn't know guys like Harrison Drake were going to go I need a thing with three servos okay somebody else wants to put a display on the play field we need speaker lights okay I didn't know any of that stuff so you have to build a system that allows you to add to it without turning the world upside down It's essentially what Spike's done. It's what Spike 3 is going to continue to do, right? The node architecture is going to remain. There's going to be a lot of backward compatibility because that makes the manufacturing side of things a lot cleaner and easier, and the transition is easier and all that stuff, right? So we have new challenges, right? I mean, we have the tariff challenge we're facing now. We're fighting that fight. You know, and, you know, I don't know if you spent any time with Seth Davis, but, you know, we're in that right now. We're trying to figure out which way's up. Yeah. But we're also doing our damnest, right? We help costs on Kronk. Yeah, we appreciate that, for sure. But that's what we, I say we, but it's like the power supply in Metallica is different. Yeah. So it's like, oh, they're heading, like, we're just, this is one more step closer to 23. That's right. Exactly right. We feel like we're working there. Power supply, you know, we wanted to solve the silence thing. Yeah. We wanted to, you know, we're going to need more power. So you got both of those. We're actually trying to create a kit. So if you want to upgrade your old Spike 2 stuff with the new power supply, you'll be able to. Oh, cool. And so, you know, we're hoping that, you know, that's a kit you buy as an accessory. And, you know, it's quiet your game down, give you more power, more reliability, et cetera. But I think those are sort of quality of life improvements that are always going on. It's hard sometimes to focus on them because we've got to make gains. Yeah, yeah. And so if you have an engineering team, both mechanical and electrical, that's focused on the next cornerstone or the next release, sometimes it's tough to find time to fix a thing or improve a thing. Yeah. But we're always trying. We're always trying. I guess, well, one of the questions I want to ask about Spike 3, just real quick. Did you guys think that the way that everybody is talking about Spike 3 and speculating about it, did you think it was going to be that big of a deal to the pinball buyer base and to the pinball community? No. Just be a change like that? No. We, I mean, we love platform changes because they give us more power and, you know, Yeah, it's a nice marketing bullet and stuff, but I didn't think there was going to be so much anticipation for it. I think that because I always think players are focused on the games, and that's a piece of technology that, for the most part, it's transparent. If it does its job right, it's working, and it's transparent. We just improved the menu system. You'll see it on Kong. And we saw – we also did a lot of – we're starting to pay a lot of attention to the out-of-box experience, you know, the unboxing experience. Yep. And that comes from our experience with the Costco product, right? Okay. Because we have to go into – you know, we're going more and more every day. People that don't know how to fix a pinball machine, they don't know anything about a pinball machine. They don't know they have to take the glass off with the balls in the pinball machine. They don't know any of that stuff. Sure. so and that's really our costco buyer and so we said hey you know we got to think about what the out-of-box experience is how does this guy set the game up what are the things that he's doing um and so that and that touched so many things right like in in the last iteration of costco games you guys don't even know this but you can put the balls in the game without taking the glass off you can i didn't know that i saw that yeah yeah you can do that yeah you can do You know, the menu selections, right, and, you know, we're probably going to upset some operators, but the menu selections were done with the – so over time, menus had evolved to be what they were. Yeah. And so, you know, you may have guys that remember, you know, adjustment number 35 or whatever is this. But the reality is that adjustment number 35 might be a thing that everybody does when they get the game and they set up the game. Right. Shouldn't that be in the first top ten? Yeah. Exactly. Or at least clustered together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's the top ten things people do at home? So we're doing a lot of that, right? So we spend a lot of time just looking and, you know, just sort of leveraging our own consumer product experiences, right? You know, you buy a Sony television, you take it out of the box, and those guys have thought through every step, right? Here's the thing. You point your QR code at this thing. There's not even a manual anymore. or you point your truck at this thing, and then it's going to tell you to do this and this and this and this. And so we just thought a lot about that experience, and we're trying to, over time, we're slowly migrating it into the commercial product because, you know, we did it for the Costco product. We have another, you know, there's another iteration of Costco product coming this coming fall. And so, you know, we're getting, that's even evolving. you know that product's getting better um because we learned we learned a bunch of things you know we learned oh little kids are doing this in the store when they're trying to play it and so i guess what what would be the most surprising thing that you learned from that first costco game um interest interestingly enough most of the things that we learned were things about the in-store experience okay just them coming in like it's a storefront just being in store experience Right. That was the first learning curve because it's a different environment.
    169:06
    And, you know, you've got a game set up to play and you've got some games ready to go in boxes. And and, you know, but you're talking to an audience that is unfamiliar with the product. They don't even know where to start. They don't know where to start. Yeah. So. So, again, you know, speaking to the notion of we got to do this. And it's a great lesson because it's a lesson that translates into if we're selling 70% of the games into the home, I got to tell you that a bigger number than you'd think is first-time buyers, first-time anything with a pinball machine. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right? So, you know, when I see a post on Facebook and the guy's like, I plugged my game in, but nothing's happened. He doesn't understand that there's a switch you can turn on. And I literally saw that, right? You guys, I don't know. It's famous. It's out there, right?
    170:01
    I've had to tell people you have to plug the game in to even get power to it. So what I'm hearing for Spike 3 is you need to make it like a folding chair where the head goes up and the legs just automatically come down. Just one go, you know. One of the cool things, too, about the Costco game that I noticed was just the box that it came in, too. You had a full picture of the play field right there. And that was, I assume it was intentional because of where it was going. Yeah, intentional because we knew, hey, we're going into a new environment. And this wasn't even a Costco demand. This was us. Okay, yeah. This was us saying, we're going into a new environment, and how do we communicate to people what's in this box? Sure. Because the box doesn't look like the pit bull machine fits in it. Yeah, right. So, you know, it's like we start there, right? And I think you guys know I'm an industrial designer by trade, right?
    170:56
    My formal education was a lot about how humans relate to products, right? What does it feel like? What does it touch? How do I convey a feeling with the product? And so I'm a big driver of that stuff. Sure. it because that, you know, it's, it's, it's, that is the, that is the world I come from. So that's, you know, that, that world still lives inside of me. And I, and I bring it to everything. I, by the way, I bring it to my games too. But, but, but I think that, that that's the thinking. The thinking is how do humans relate to this and how do they, you know, what, how do I make the experience better? How do I make them love these things the way you love great products that you own you know what I don't know what it is whether it's your android phone your iphone or whatever it is your your ipad whatever it is that you're in love with that you think does everything really well is like we need to bring this to a product that's going to be touching new hands new people you know and we we you know we you heard this from us before I'll say it again we are you know sometimes the hardcore community gets upset with us when they see us pursuing things like Costco, we're all about growing the world of pinball. We really don't care. We hope that those people are as passionate as our core audience, you know, three years from now, five years from now. We pray that they are, right? That's the future. We're building our own future. We're trying to build our own future. We're trying to say, you know, my dad brought, you know, We want little Johnny to say when he was 12, his dad brought home a Costco pinball machine, and that thing was out in the basement, and he played it and everything else. And then he went to college, and he said, yeah, I want to go to Barcades and play pinball. And it becomes a natural part of his entertainment life. And someday he's going to have a house and a car and kids, and he's going to want a pinball machine, and we hope he's a buyer. So that's the long game. That's playing the long game. Not too many American companies do that. We do. We are playing the long game. And we want to grow pinball. Yeah. And it doesn't mean, you know, it's like everybody's, ah, you know, they sold a thousand of those things. It's a failure. No, it's not a failure, man. It's like, you know, the longest journey begins with but a single step. Yeah. And that's the deal, you know.
    173:31
    And so that's what we're doing. We're trying to grow pinball every way. We want to support, you know, that's what Insider. Connect is about. That's what, you know, that's what tournaments are about. That's what Stern Army's about. Yeah. It's about growing the world of pinball so that, you know, when I'm, you know, I'm 70 years old in June, when I'm 90, I don't want to hear they still make those things. You know, if I did my job right, if I did my job right, I won't hear that, right? Right. That's what's kind of cool in a way that, I mean, even this week alone, on Tuesday, there was another manufacturer that released a game. And it's just like the fact that any game that gets out there, a pinball machine, regardless of who makes it, gets in somebody's house, is going to grow. And now all of a sudden, we all know as pinball enthusiasts, once you get one, you're already looking for what's your next one. Or you've got to figure out a way when the new cooler one comes out, you've got to figure out a way to trade that one out and get the new one in, right? Some people, not everybody's got the resources. Not everybody's got the – that's why we're concerned about the resale. We hear you about the resale value and stuff. And by the way, I mean, as it is, pinball still has incredible resale value.
    174:45
    I can't think of too many other products that have as much – that retain their value. Yeah, my car that I used for 15 years, I can't sell it for over the value I paid for it. I'm going to try to get my PlayStation 5 over to GameStop pretty soon. Well, that works out. Good luck with that. Well, we've already taken essentially an hour of your time, which is awesome. And I know Tom's pizza is beyond cold at this point. You could have eaten that pizza. I'm trying to think of, I mean, you addressed Spike 3. So X-Men code is coming. John Wick code is coming. X-Men accessories?
    175:25
    On the verge of happening. And then DMV accessories, right? Yeah, yeah. So we – one of the things that's on my plate from the company, it's a big, big problem that I have to solve, is I want to launch accessories when I launch games. Sure. And so I have to get to that. And it's certainly a challenge. It's a resource challenge. It's a licensing challenge. It's, you know, sometimes a manufacturing challenge. It's going to become a manufacturing challenge now with some of this tariff stuff. But, I mean, I have to solve that problem. That's a big, big problem. And you'll see me focused on that this coming year. I'm going to try. You know, you may – I have, like, stuff that's in flight. It's hard for me to do anything about. But stuff that I'm starting up, I have a much better chance. You know, like Jack's next game, I have a much better chance. Borg's next game, I have a much better chance. Of it all coming out of one. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And so I'm trying really hard. Nice. That's awesome. Well, I appreciate you. I appreciate everything you do. Thank you so much, obviously, for being on this. Was there anything else that you – No, I mean, I hope you guys enjoyed the time. Oh, absolutely. We love having you here. We love doing this. I've heard so many positive comments from people about just the notion of opening the doors and letting people come and play pinball all day and hang out with us and get to know us.
    176:51
    We don't want to be the faceless. You know, we want to put a human face to the stuff we do. I remember very clearly I interviewed you when Bond had first come out. And I remember you could tell it. You could hear it in your voice. You just said, just be patient. Trust me. Yeah. I'm going to, like, and it was so obvious. It's like, man, he really cares. And then, I mean, congrats to where Bond is today because that game is fantastic. But it's very clear you guys care. We put our names on them, right? We put our names on them. And if we're going to put our names on them, we've got to get them right. Yeah. We're not perfect. We're far from perfect. We fuck stuff up all the time.
    177:32
    But that doesn't mean we don't. We always try to fix it. I think you definitely are more successful than you are not. So, yes, I don't know. It's easy to scrutinize, but today, everything we saw today out of Kong is incredible. and yeah it's a pretty pretty amazing game yeah we've known for some time right we knew we had you know like um you know games get a buzz right yeah well pretty soon the rest of the world's gonna know yeah yeah yeah this weekend we're at Pimbata Zoo in Kalamazoo and there's gonna be a bunch of us out there I'm driving out on Saturday Gary's going out Seth's gonna be out Zombie Yeti's going to be out. Elwin's going to be out. So, if you're in that vicinity, if you're in Michigan or whatever, you know, take a ride.
    178:28
    I think we have, I believe we're going to have five pros and five premiums out there. And I think some of the younger guys, Michael Grant's going to be doing his usual thing out there, and Alex Eddy, a bunch of guys. So, we will have a presence, and hopefully expose people to the game and they can see what we've been seeing.
    178:52
    But yeah, I think that those guys are on a roll. It's funny, somebody was saying, you know, you had your all-win moment. I said, yeah, I had a couple of years there when I could do no wrong.
    179:09
    But it's one of those things where you just get on, you go with it and stuff happens. Well, yeah, and that's what I was just telling somebody just the other day, that, you know, as much as people scrutinize things, at least from a design standpoint or anything like that, we're going to look back 20, 30 years from now and realize there's three, four, five pinball machines being released each year. Yeah. You know, with high-level themes, with high-level call-outs, high-level design, and it's consistent. And the manufacturing is consistent as well. It's not like these games are being announced and nothing for 12 months, you know, just like we walked the line today. Kong's everywhere. Yeah. The factory, I wish more people could see what you guys saw today, right? You know, we're for real. Yeah. It's funny because I read on the Internet every other day, I read that I'm going out of business. And I was like, you know, I was like, man, I guess I guess, do I have to sell my car? I don't think people realize how big the Stern operation truly is for what's going on here. It's amazing. It's like I see these speculators. Oh, that factory, that was a white elephant. Now they're going to go out of business. Well, you know, I just seem to understand. It's like we're doing more business because of that. Yes, exactly. But, no, it's great. Great talking to you guys. And we love having people over and showing you what we do. Yeah. Well, I hope you're ready to make a lot of Kongs. I hope you're ready. Yeah, we are. The operations guys are gearing up. And so it's, yeah, I mean, like, let's pray that this tariff thing doesn't beat us up too bad. Yeah. And, you know, because, you know, we want to continue to make games and lots of them. Sure. Well, thanks again. Thank you so much, George. Thank you. Appreciate it. Now you're getting me hungry. I have to go. Yeah, let's go. Sorry. Thank you.