Thank you all. So I know probably one of my most famous lines is pinball is easy. Anyone still believe me on that one? What about you all up here? Okay. So pinball is easy is just everything that goes into pinball is complex and hard. So we'll talk a little bit about that tonight. First off, we thank you for coming out and supporting, you know, Pinball Expo here in Illinois, and I'm thankful to be joined here by a lot of great people. And we hope to give you little insights to what we're doing in the same way that I have up until now, and that is not to give too much away, but I hope to leave with you a sense of passion that we have behind the scenes at Deep Root. And with that, let's sort of get started, and the first thing I want to talk about is the people that aren't up here. We have tens, maybe even scores now, we're hiring so fast, of people behind the scenes working very hard. They're all rock stars, and you will know very soon how much of rock stars they are in all the innovations that we have coming into the entire new Deep Root Standard platform that we have for pinball. You might know a couple of the people up here. I'm going to let each of them introduce themselves. But I want to kind of introduce a couple of people that are not up here. We have some deeper people over here, Sean, Craig, Daniel, Patrick, who run a lot of the leadership behind the scenes. We have Stephen, our head tech, back in Texas leading all the technicians and getting all the prototypes and what's done, getting the quad assembly or octo assembly, however you want to look at it, all set up and going and ready for us to start manufacturing here very quickly. And then we have our creative studio in Utah run by Nate and Johnny. and we have some of the most amazing talent, people coming from feature films, coming from AAA video games. They're going to blow your socks off with the quality of sort of the video and animation and audio that we're going to be doing. We also have David Thiel. I don't know if David's in here or not. There he is. Thank you, David, for coming. We also have another Pimble Audio artist in the Creative Studio in Utah named Lance and so we're very happy to have all these great and talented people. So with that said, let's get to some quick introductions, and then we can get to some questions. Barry, why don't you start us off, and we'll go down the line. Well, I'm Barry Osler, and I spent 26 years at Williams working on games and a couple years at Highway working part-time designing a few games and then moved down to Texas in January to work for Deep Root, and I've got several games in the process right now. John. My name is John Papadiuk. I started at Bally in the 80s, actually working with Dennis Nordman. And then over at Williams, I was able to work with a really talented group of designers and artists, programmers, management. So I got through some games, Circus Voltaire, Theater of Magic, World Cup Soccer, and continued on in pinball. And currently I'm at Deep Root working on some very cool secret projects, some not so secret. And we continue again the next cycle of pinball making. So I'm Quinn Johnson. So I am the in-house writer. I work on design. characters, voice lines, that kind of a thing. Basically just trying to help the experience of these awesome games really be very interactive, very engaging for the player. I came from a background writing for comic books. I started off writing for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book and then some others since then. Worked on the Disney Infinity video game series and kind of did story level design with that. And now I get to work with tons of incredibly really amazingly talented people and pinball legends and it's just crazy that I work in the same place and they bring in donuts sometimes and I'm like, these are famous people and I get to eat their donuts. So that's cool. My name is Jon Norris and I started in pinball in the 1970s as a player and enthusiast before there was even a hobby. I thought I was the only person in the whole world who loved pinball machines and started actually getting old games from the 1960s and tried to learn how to become a really good player and then into the early 80s was playing what little competitive pinball there was and came to the first pinball expo and questioned the panel discussion, the panel in a similar situation as this. How could I get into pinball? And within a year I was hired at Gottlieb as a junior designer and worked there for ten years and designed many playfields and many more rule sets for the playfields, especially during the dot matrix era. And after Gottlieb Premier closed, I went over to Sega Pinball slash Stern Pinball And now I have the honor of working for DeepRoot Pinball. I'm working on a project right now for DeepRoot Pinball. And I just think what I've seen over there is really awesome. I'm Dennis Nordman, and I've been designing games on and off for the last 30 years, I guess. And I've been laid off about from every company too. Apparently I'm not smart enough to get into another industry because I keep coming back to pinball. But it's just a fun project, a fun theme thing to work on. I just enjoy all parts of it. And I'm really happy being here at Deep Root because I'm working on two original themes that I created. And with Quinn's help, they've been very well developed. And I'm really excited for these games to come out. And Paul Faris is going to be the artist on my game and some other games. I've never actually worked with Paul. I've worked mostly with John Yousi and Greg Freres, so we're excited that we're working together finally. My name is Steven Bowden and I've been a pinball league and tournament player since 2004, I believe. Currently ranked top 12 or 13 in the world in the IFPA for those of you who care about that type of thing. And my involvement with league and tournament play has really gotten me enthusiastic about rule sets and how they interact with each other as far as multiple layers for the beginner, the intermediate, and the advanced and tournament player, just like those tournament players who are fighting it out down the hall right now to try to qualify. So what's been going on here? It's got this Jersey boy to move down to San Antonio. So So it's my honor to be up on this stage with you gentlemen. And just to think, last year I was sitting right where you are, and now I've crossed the Rubicon. So, and it's the best decision I've ever made, I think. Yeah. Thank you. Thank each one of you. Great introductions. A little bit about myself, just to kind of round things out. I have no place here, really. I grew up loving video games and not pinball. I have nothing to do with pinball, nothing to do with manufacturing. I just, after having a successful, you know, legal career, decided to unleash myself and created a family of companies now with a lot of blessings along the way where I can do some things that I'm passionate about. I've talked before on a podcast a little bit about how I got passionate about pinball a couple years ago. And that was really from 3D Space Cadet, which came with Windows 95. And then that kind of moved into, I wonder how much a pinball machine costs. And a month later, I was buying a massive, very well-restored collection of about 15 Williams Bally games. And I had a Jersey Jack in there and one Stern in there as well. So then I got connected with Jack and Charlie and Dennis and Greg Freres. And we all were talking about what we were going to do, and things just didn't work out at the time. and we kind of came back. I started building a team in 2016, end of 2016, and we just have been picking up the most amazing talent, mostly outside of pinball, but also in pinball since. And I can't wait to show you what we're doing, but unfortunately we're going to need a little bit longer to get things the way that we want them, and we will be on time. I know there's a lot of talk about that. TPF, Ed is here. Thank you very much for allowing us to come out at TPF next March, and we have a lot of very cool things to show you. So what we're going to do today, or tonight, is talk a little bit about our methodology and our process more than I've talked about publicly up until now. And I want to go through each of the panelists here and kind of get their idea about some of the things we've been doing, and then we'll turn it over to questions, which hopefully we'll have some good answers for. So I want to start with Quinn first because Quinn came in and one of the main things that we want to do at Deep Root that's different from everywhere else is we actually want to create IP. We want to create narratives. We want to create stories that drive the pinball versus slapping a license on there that everyone kind of knows sort of what's going on. And that's really driven a lot of our projects up to date. So, Quinn, why don't you talk about coming real quick from the comic book world and your transition to pinball. What was the first 30 days like? And then a little bit about what you do day to day. Okay. So, yeah. So one of the things that fascinates me about storytelling in general is that people can get so drawn into an experience. And really, that's what I love about, you know, that's what I loved about comic books, video games, and now pinball is really being able to not only make it just fun, but make it something that you get really involved in. You're like, okay, so there's actually like a storyline going through this thing and I want to do what it takes to reveal the next big cool thing and which is an exciting challenge with pinball because like with movies and, you know, books and stuff like that, you have tons of room typically to really lay it all out. But with Pinball, you know, it's just a very unique medium. And so you're like, okay, so what can we do with this unique medium and still tell a story that's going to be really cool? And so it's been really exciting for, it was actually funny because when I first saw the job posting that they were looking for a narrative designer, I was like, oh, story for Pinball. That sounds interesting and I'll just apply and see what happens. And so then it came, it ended up all working out really well. And then so I got put in the awesome position where they're like, figure it out and make it something really cool. So it was very cool because I came from, I feel like because I came from kind of the more video game comic book world and not the pinball world, I didn't know what the limitations should be. And so I was able to just work with everybody and come up with some, just really let my imagination go wild and we all collaborated and came up with some really awesome ideas. And so I think the stuff that we're putting together is stuff that no one's ever really, from what I'm finding out, the more and more I get into it, the more and more I'm learning all the time. It's kind of stuff that people have never seen before with pinball and so it's going to be super exciting. So the first 30 days, I guess, were just lots of just brainstorming and writing and just working with everybody to come up with some super cool stuff and it's been exciting to see at the stage we're at now where it's like, wow, this stuff is, it's happening. This stuff is like really happening in a physical form and we're so excited to share it with everybody else and anyway, show everybody what we've been working on all this time, so. Hello? Thank you, Quinn. I think narrative driving pinball instead of the pinball driving the narrative is exactly the way we want to go. And especially with a creative studio in Utah with a lot of people who have done a lot of film work and other IP work, it's going to allow us to do a lot more with pinball to get pinball out there and tell the world about the story. And pinball is a nice way to bridge that gap and transition it to bring more people into pinball. So I think it's going to be really fun. One of the phrases or slogans we've used, we've used a couple, like every family needs a pinball, every pinball needs a family. One of the other ones we've been using is pinball for the masses. And what I want to do real quick is I want to ask Barry, John, John and Dennis what they think and the designs they've been doing, without giving too much away, of course, how pinball for the masses applies to their philosophy of making, you know, great themes and layouts. We'll start with you, Barry. What does pinball for the masses mean to you when you're designing games? I'm trying to design different themes, something that appeals to everybody, like I did in the past. I do a carnival game, or I do a sci-fi game, or a monster game like Dracula. I'm trying to keep the same thing going here. I'm working on several different projects, and every one of them is different. I mean, there's nothing that connects any of them together as far as themes. So, I mean, something that would appeal to everybody, to the masses, I guess. That's a loaded question. So those of us that started in pinball, the games were designed to earn money, to coin drop, coin box. So if you could have a chipmunk running around on the play field and it would earn $500 a week, then our managers would be very happy. and things started to change, and today it's kind of flipped over, so we have more of a collector audience, more husbands and wives, more families. So back then, the mass was designing for, and I call my, and these guys always hear it all the time, I'm kind of like a middle-of-the-road designer, so I don't have all the high-end, or I won't put in, you know, initially, all the high-end rules and super combos and all, you know, those types of things. and I'll come up with a vehicle or on the team we'll come up with a vehicle something to get the game started the player understands after playing a game or two what they're supposed to do and I think that's a Nintendo philosophy if you read any of the work from Miyamoto they'll talk about the use of colors and design shapes, characters and kind of go that way so for me the mass hasn't changed as much I feel like I'm designing for the same type of player. I think what's different is that the people that are bringing the games into their home, they're requiring or they're demanding a different level of something in the game. So it might be play-filled artwork. It might be an extra mechanism. It might be something hidden underneath a play-filled plastic. It might be a really interesting ramp design they haven't seen before. are. So I find in the games that we're building now, you know, they're not so much overly complex, but they have a certain level of sophistication or complexity in them because I believe now the mass kind of requires that from the designers and the story and programming and artwork and manufacture just like a little extra something in it to make it, you know, they would want to buy, but then enjoy it once you get it home. You know, everybody's bought a pinball game, you bring it home after a month or two, it's like, hmm, who can we sell this game to? And so I like to do it the other way is, if I can, is, you know, once you get the game home, you don't want to sell it. You want people wanting it to be bought from you. So I think in the work I do, and I drive everybody crazy with details and drawing extra things and making sure, you know, mechanisms or brackets are working or we have some new device and kind of go from there. So I think in many cases, as a designer, from my standpoint, obviously I like doing original themes because we have more control. We can do more with it. We can pretty well, you know, create all the characters. There's a lovely poster in the Pinball Expo book, which I just saw today. And, yeah, so, I mean, I was like, wow, so I know the characters, but, I mean, it was like, ooh, okay. So it was like, hmm, so kind of like that. That's where the sophistication, the complexity is, is that there's a whole story just behind that poster. And, you know, people may just flip the book and not really think of it. But, you know, we talk about it all day long, the characters. And, you know, they kind of start to live. Like they become real where you're like, wow, that character doesn't do that. Well, yeah, she does. So it becomes a little bit ridiculous. And I think that's the passion for pinball. And again I learned that at Valley you know we were very passionate it But when we got to Williams you know they were in the 90s you know the people there And so Barry was there you know Larry DeMar was there Steve Ritchie A lot of people were there that had made these incredible games. And they taught us to kind of have that passion and think about the mass, think about the person you're designing for. And it was very hard for them because when you get there, you don't know anything. And they're trying to explain it to you. You do this and that. And you're always battling on stuff. But now when you look back, you're like, you know, these people were really genius people and they did their best to kind of impart with you that special knowledge that you can make these games now to appeal to a wide variety of player, or in this case, it's now home player, it's family, it's collector. It's much different. So I think, you know, from my viewpoint, it's kind of gotten harder. And then we're trying to simplify it in that the games have, you know, you only have so much time to develop it that you have to get to manufacture. So part of the problem is you can't work on a game for four years and not finish it. You have to finish it in a reasonable amount of time, cut it off, move forward, take all that, those extra ideas and, you know, put them on the next game and the next game and kind of keep it going. Because people don't want to wait like five years for a game. It's just, you know, it needs to be done in a more finite thing. So for me, I find it really exciting and very challenging. And I, you know, I've so many new game ideas, meaning to bring forth, bring within the team. We're teaching a lot of new people, never done pinball before like Robert said. So kind of the way that I was taught and the term I use is hands like wood. You come in and you have hands like wood. You can't do anything. You're kind of hopeless case. So, but those people had the patience and the time to help me and to mentor me. So, you know, I do my best to mentor and kind of move it along that way without annoying people too much. But to kind of say, you know, let's think about this, let's try this, and this may not work, but let's do it anyway and, you know, kind of have the same type of learning and open road that we had, you know, when I was kind of learning bimbo. So for the masses, yeah, I think it's a real, it's easy in one regard, but then it's also, it's very complex, it's very passionate, there's a lot of heart and soul that goes into the games. Everything that you do, you really feel it, oh, you know, move the post over, they want to rename something and it's like, oh, why are they doing that? But, you know, you just have to kind of let it go. Because everybody has the same passion on your team, which you forget. You're not the only passionate person. It starts from the top of the company all the way through. Everybody has the same passion, but everybody has kind of a certain role to play. So you have to make sure you're being, you know, positive and helpful and all of those in what you do well and then let the other people what they do well. And yeah, so it's very exciting and, you know, I think hopefully people will be very happy once they start to see what we're doing and the new design and a lot of new technology and things coming forth that's never been done in pinball before. So it'll be pretty interesting moving forward. Thank you, Jeff. Okay, designing for the masses. That's an interesting one. Let's go back to back when I was at Gottlieb. And as Jay Pop was saying about the coin-op days and you cared about revenue. But what I would do is I would go. We used to place games out on test for the weekend in a bowling alley called Gala Lanes and Carroll Stream. And I would go in there, like on a Friday night, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with our game on test, watch, you know, not play the game, but get kind of where I could watch the game and watch the player come up and obviously play it for the first time they've ever played it. You know, they'll put, you know, probably enough money in it for maybe two or three plays. And then when they're, when it looks like they're totally done, you, I would walk up to them pretending like they're the expert. Oh, what are you supposed to do? What's the object of the game. I wanted to make sure that they got the main object of the game without, and obviously they didn't read the instruction card because they only ever read the instruction card until they're totally perplexed and then they try to decipher three or four paragraphs which really don't tell you much. My mission was to make sure that they got it. How to get to the main multiball, the main object of the game. That they got it. Well, now the customer, and that's still true today because people who walk up to the game even as beginner players, you still have to be able to get it with the game has to tell you in a way, navigate you as a player how to get it. But the challenge with for the masses today is because so many games are going into the home put on free play that the game has to... It's really important now that the game appeals to all skill levels of players because the gauntlet philosophy back in the 90s was just for the casual player. We don't care about the 1% tournament level players because they're not the ones putting the most money into the game, just average casual players. Today, it's important that we design a game that will appeal in the rule set, play field shots, entertainment value for anybody who is from that seven-year-old kid who's hitting both flippers at the same time playing their first game all the way up to a Steve-level tournament player and every other pinball collector who may not be a really great player. They may collect pinball because they love the art or love the interaction of the play field toys or whatever. That is what our mission is, to design for everybody. Pinball for the masses. That was a new one to me because I'm not down there at Deep Root every day. I work here in Chicago. So when I design a game, I design a game to please me because if it pleases me and I'm passionate about it, then a lot of other people are going to love it too. If I'm not happy working on a theme or it doesn't please me or challenge me to work on it, then probably not many people are going to like it either. So the name of my first game, oh, I can't tell you that. But my second game is, no, I can't tell you that either. Would anybody like to see Whitewater 2? I'm not going to do that. So for my first game, this is the first experience. Now, Greg and I used to work a lot on storyline and rules when we worked together, and I've never actually had anybody like Quinn to work with. So I had a basic idea of what I wanted my first game to be, and Quinn and I worked together and really fleshed out the theme. And it's going to be something that you can understand when you walk up to the game. It's going to make sense, and it's going to be fun. And I've built a couple of models of devices that are going to be in the game and in the artwork, so that really helped Paul Faris see my vision for what I wanted on the back glass. And that's it. Yeah, I wanted to jump on that question as well, of the concept of Pimp Off of the Masses was an important word in that is the concept of layering. Those of you who may not know a lot about me, in a former life I used to be a high school teacher at a public school district in the inner city and those of you who are in the education business are aware of the term called scaffolding, wherein you use a previous idea to build on the next idea for your students and you use that idea to build on another idea and by the time you get to the end of the semester they've learned all of these things. So in the sense that builds a sense of layering so that you can have a spot for the new player to jump on, ride your story to the end so that they become more of a veteran player and also have the depth so that the veteran and the pro player, like myself, will be able to want to show the effort to work through the entire story. So in that way, providing multiple junction points to get onto the story so that all types of players will jump on, stay motivated, buy, purchase, put more money in, and so forth. So that's how I'm seeing it. Thank you, Steve. I really appreciate that. I was actually going to follow up the the next question for you. There's a lot of very good programmers and rule set designers that have graced pinball over the decades. And I can only imagine how daunting it was for you to come outside of pinball in many ways, pinball design, and come into a unique environment with a lot of questions until you came down and saw what we were doing and to just jumping on rule sets. And I can, I think I've posted on Pinsight and I'll state to hear is that I don't think the pinball world has ever seen a rule set designer yet at the level that Steve has come in and just pounded things out. I'm very grateful that you took a plunge and came down to Texas and joined the team and the interaction. I guess one of the big things that a lot of the panel members have talked about is really Deep Root is about collaboration. We don't want people going off and locking themselves up and having secrets internally. It's every day, it's just a constant collaboration between a lot of different people, even with Dennis and John, and John as well, not being there all the time. There's still a lot of collaboration back and forth about it. So in coming in, Steve, then, and working on rule sets and kind of having a wide open territory, what philosophies did you kind of come to terms with immediately about how you were going to start that very daunting task. Oh, yeah. Testing, yeah. When I came in, I knew I had to hit the ground running. I mean, especially when I was anticipating my arrival at Deep Root. And then when I came in, and maybe I can talk about my first 30 days, that's essentially what it's been, you know, coming in and seeing the creative team I was joining and, you know, having a look at what Quinn had produced, which has been totally awesome. awesome. I mean, what you've done and using that and essentially making sure what Quint has produced works in a pinball way. Okay? And so that's basically as far as I'll go with that. So those of you who don't know kind of understand what that means. I mean, there are certain things that you can do that, but you have to boil it down to can this work in a physical environment and then still go through the story as that we want to do. Okay? So in that way, you know, trying to make sure that I formulate the plan to also follow what we want and also make it work so that it will work and make sense as you play the game. Because at the end of the day, the player has control of the ball, so they have control of the story, really. So it's their dollar or it's their whatever they spent for the game. So at that point, it's their story at the end. So that's really it. Is it okay if I jump in real quick and just comment? Yes, but I'm going to tell a quick story about that before I forget, and I'll have you jump in, Quinn. Absolutely. So I'm not the best pinball player, and I think a lot of us at Deep Root are very embarrassed that when Steve came in, all the high scores were suddenly all gone. In fact, I haven't invited Steve over to my house yet to play in my pinball machines just because I don't want all my high scores gone, and there will probably be nothing to you. But anyway, one of the first things that Steve taught me in how to become a better pinball player was, it's your ball, don't waste it, right? And so holding on the flippers and patience and stuff. And it's a perfect corollary to the type of rule sets and narratives we're working on is to allow the user finally to be able to get into that immersive world under glass, as it's been often called, and to become a part of the narrative and story as well. And we're doing some really cool mechanical and electrical things as well as some rule set and audio visual things to immerse the player even more. Quinn? I was going to say it's just really, really cool. I mean, it's awesome working with everybody, but I share an office with Steve and we're talking like every day and I'm just like, I love working with this guy because he's just so cool and so friendly. And I love how he's like, like he said, he's taking all these ideas that I've been working on for all this time. And then he's taking them and saying, and now we're going to translate that into all the details of like this, this, this, this, this. And it's so funny because he totally has this, I'm surprised that your brain isn't like five times bigger than it is because you have so much pinball knowledge in there. And he's like, oh, then we can totally do this and this, which reminds me of this other thing and this and this and this. And then the math could, and I'm just like, I believe everything you're saying. I don't understand, but I believe that it will be awesome. And so it's just really, really cool. Another thing that I've learned from Steve about playing pinball, because again, this is something that I was starting to get new into, I was always raised with the idea that you don't shake babies and you don't shake old people, but I'm learning that it's okay to shake pinball machines and that's actually how you win if you can shake it skillfully. And he's amazing. I actually wish that there was a tournament for people that could drain the fastest because then I would be the champion and not this guy. I think that goes to show that you don't have to be a really good pinball player to be a good designer because I've seen what y'all have done behind the scenes. And I can't wait to show the rest of y'all. Real quick, we're going to kind of go through one more kind of big question. And for everyone, I'll let everyone give a sort of a brief answer and And then we'll get to questions. So what I want to ask each one of you basically, how are you designing pinball differently? So we'll go through the four designers first. How are you designing pinball differently now at Deep Root than you did prior with other companies? list one or two just brief things that are different in your philosophy and actually designing it. And then I have another question for Quinn and Steve. Barry, you want to go ahead and start that? How has deeper... Let me do a little bit on Claire. How has deeper changed the way that you design for pinball? I don't get to stay home for snow days anymore. I mean a lot of the design is pretty much the same concept as it's always been is that we can do more now with all the animation the video screens on the back and just the technology but the basic concept I'm still doing it the same way I start drawing on a drafting table and then I transfer it into a computer because I like to look at the full size game on a drafting table first just to get all the main shots down I mean that's my way Just on Robert's comment that he thought he's not a good player, actually, Robert's, he's like my secret tester. I have a few people at Deep Root that I'll call in and I'll just watch them play and I won't say anything because if Robert feels he's not a good player, which I don't agree, but he can make some of the shots and have some fun and make some loops and this and that, then that's a good sign for, again, for that average type of a playfield design. Designing different for DeepRoot. I think two things have happened. One, when I was at Williams, I had an engineer, Jack Scalin, that used to engineer all my games. So he passed away relatively recently. So currently, I design and engineer all the games. And what I'm doing now differently is that as I'm working, I'm thinking about how can this be teachable, meaning how mechanisms are put together, how they're assembled, to that along and also bill of material costs. How much is this going to cost? So obviously every pinball designer or every design team wants to glob it up with, you know, let's have 16 motors and 12 magnets and all this type of things. But when you get to bill of material time and actually cost the game out, you're going to be way over. So part of it is that as we work on the game, we always have discussions. Well, so on one game we're doing, Quinn wanted like a magnetic diverter. We didn't have one on this one ramp that split into three ramps. And so we talked about it. And so we didn't do something else so we could get that coil, get it up there. We came up with a new type of a diverter system that kind of hasn't been done. But again, it's the give and take that we know when it comes at the end, we're going to have to go through costs of everything and we have to kind of determine, well, what is the feature, how much is it going to cost, can we keep it in, how easy it is to assemble, because we're teaching new people to assemble pinball games, new technicians, all of that. So when I'm just laying something out, I'm actually thinking a little bit farther down the road, how can someone assemble this quickly, how can it cost not too much, but then how can it look super cool or function in a really, really, you know, awesome way on the play field to the player so they're not going to notice all that thought that goes in underneath, but actually a lot of thought does go in underneath, so when you have kind of a new mechanism on the game, it's actually, you know, it's the right mechanism. It there for a reason It really been thought about Everybody kind of agrees it works and we kind of move that way So definitely designing a deep root it just not well here it is and just kind of make it There actually more thought that goes in And then it actually been easier for me because I share room with Barry, so I just copy everything he does and then I put it on my game. So it saves me time. The biggest difference for me is the support team that Deep Root is giving. When I was at Gottlieb, we had, like, the artists would determine the story and do all that, but since they were already busy doing the art, they didn't have time to devote to doing things such as developing a story or even using dot matrix display to display it. And then also the time to do a game, or the gauntlet we typically have, three or four months to do a game from beginning to end. And I've had that much time just to tweak shots on my play field. But, you know, the whole way that Deep Root approaching this with Quinn and now Steve being able to shoot the game and help balance and tweak the rules and make suggestions on the rules that, oh, this necessarily sucks, whatever. That's something we never had before. When you have a whole engineering department of 12 to 15 people, you're just trying to get games to the assembly line about 20 years ago. In this day and age now with Deep Root, in all of the support, the personnel that Deep Root is giving us, tools, talented people, that makes a huge difference. The biggest difference for me is that I work from home now, which can be both good and bad, because when I worked in the office, you can concentrate all day long with nobody bothering you. And when I'm at home, my wife, I'm in the basement working, trying to figure out a problem. Something isn't going to fit, and it's driving me crazy. And I hear, Dennis, Dennis. What? Can you come up here a minute? So I have to deal with that all day. So then I come upstairs, can you get the cat off the roof? Stuff like that. But the other thing is that Robert's letting us do whatever we want in our games up to a point. He hasn't told me yet I can't put something in. So, I mean, my first game was really loaded with cool stuff. I don't know how much might come out of it in the future, but right now it's pretty interesting. All right, thank you all very much. And then sort of the same but a little different take for Quinn and Steve. We'll start with Quinn first. So originally, and there's been a lot of confusion on this, originally I wanted the name of this seminar to be Last Words with Deep Root Pinball as sort of a play on some things that I said prior. And for some reason, without me being involved, it turned into Future Worlds, and then recently it turned into Last Words again. And so I'm going to kind of take that and use that and ask, what do you think, what does future worlds with what we're doing behind the scenes, what does that mean to you as you're going into the narrative and then the rule sets? How does that drive your passion and your direction for creating this? I would say that one of the awesomest things about working with DeepRoot is that we are breaking a lot of molds and we're shifting a lot of paradigms. And so it's opening up a whole, I mean, the way I look at it, it's opening up a whole new era, I guess you could say. I know that sounds super dramatic, but I mean, it's opening up a whole new era of what pinball now can become. A lot of the limitations are being taken away. And so it opens up so many new avenues for these pinball games to be these really amazing, awesome experiences that were never possible before. So for someone like me who wants to try to make it as big as possible, it's really liberating and really super cool. Talking about future worlds, I mean, in a sense, D. Rue Pinball is my future world now. I mean, so in a sense, what I've been doing is, you know, using my rules enthusiasm that I've built up over the years and in a sense, yes, this is my first rules design job in the industry, but being that, you know, I've been a fan of many of these gentlemen's games for years, you know, and inhaling, you know, what are the best, most efficient ways to play their games and also how they break down to the different level of players and how they were able to do that with each game and then also taking that idea and bringing that into our new concepts which we're looking to put out very soon. So get ready. That's all I'll say. I like that, get ready. I'm going to steal that from you. Thank you all very much. We'll take some questions now and we'll see. Just one thing, Robert. Did you want to discuss a little bit about the facility, what we're setting up, the size, or leave it for future? Because it's pretty cool, like the gig that we got going and people kind of don't have any idea. I'm going to assume most people kind of have read This Week in Pinball, have listened to some of the podcasts at least and kind of know some of that. but thanks for trying to get me to disclose some things we're not ready to disclose yet what I will say is this is what what is deep root schedule right I think that's a little bit more important so we're working hard behind the scenes we're really behind on some things so we're really ahead on others it's sort of like a horse race and but we have this this huge focal point this real call it a deadline but it's it's a day of excitement for us coming at TPF in March. And we're going to have some amazing things. So while I don't want to steal the thunder from Rob's Pinball Expo here, we really hope to see all of you in Texas in March because we want you to see everything we've been working so hard on. In fact, Sean, our VP of operations, has put up a deadline clock now in the E area, which is our break area, which is counting down by second or by minute, I don't know which. Yes. There you go. When we need to have things done. So we're going to do it and we're going to do it right the first time. And with that, let's take some questions. Daniel, if you want to...we don't have wireless, but I think we have a microphone that at least reach a little bit, so...and if you can't reach the microphone, just shout it out and I'll repeat and we'll direct it to whoever needs. Male Speaker 1 This is probably for the designers. So we've heard a lot of talk just now about more of the cerebral side of pinball, but you have all worked with some great mechanics people in the past. Can you talk a little bit about you might break new ground in mechanics or some great mechanical people you have on the team right now? Any? Male Speaker 1 I'll answer that one. If anyone wants to pop in, you can pop in. But I think it's been very clear that we're focusing more on the Williams Valley type of standard but going our own direction with that. I think each one of the designers has put a lot of effort without any thought to cost or complexity into a lot of different, a lot of different mix. I know the famous one for John Papadiuk is, you know, shipping out magic girls without the ball floating in midair. And it might seem like an easy thing to do, but it's never been done before in pinball because it's almost impossible to do, trust us. Until DeepRoot got their hands on it and I'm very, very happy to say that we have a very good solution to that and it's really good but it's no different than each one of the other designers. I think each one of the games now has something never done before in pinball. And I'm very impressed with the designers coming up with these crazy ideas and then our mechanical engineers going out and actually making it reality. So, do you want anything else? All right, they're going to play it safe, so we'll go to the next question. Thank you. Robert, I've heard you talk about quad process and the oct process. Could you tell us exactly what you mean by those terms? Yes and no. First, they're cool terms, but they do have realistic meaning behind the scenes and they have to do with how to the maximum efficiency in the smallest amount of space. And we currently have a great consultant doing the documentation for those processes. And we're very excited to get them marked out on the floor and start testing them out. And this is right about the time that we need to be doing it if we want to have games ready to ship by our deadline next year. It has not only, just to give you a little tidbit, it has not just something to do with the number of people working, but it has to do with the actual process for how the cabinet playfields assembly are actually put together. And we have a lot of very unique things in our package and I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. Again, I'll just let you pick. Are your games going to have single games per price or a tiered price? More like Stern has three prices now. That's all. Yeah. Tiered pricing or single pricing? So the question was whether we were going to have tiered price or single price tiered such as like Stern. I guess the positive way to spin it is I don't believe in selling the same product for a much higher price and just slapping different artwork on it. So we will be going with one tiered model, one tiered price. Thank you. I will say, I'll add to that about prices. We would love to get prices lower than any pinball company has ever done, but with more quality and toys in it than any pinball company has ever done. But we also have some higher end games planned as well. So we're going to have quite a range that should fit any budget on any theme. My question is for Quinn. So you've done comic books and so forth. So my question is now you've actually probably seen some artwork from Paul Faris on your work. So can you comment, not telling us anything about it, but what do you think of Paul Faris and his artwork and what do you think about it? Really, really good. He's awesome. Actually, it was really cool. So when I met Paul, it was when Dennis and Paul and I were talking about Dennis' new game and, I mean, it was just awesome. Like, the creativity was just exploding and so yeah. I mean, and then meeting this guy that's like a legendary artist that's been doing some of these crazy famous games with just incredible artwork is just super, super cool. And I love art. I'm an artist as well but so I appreciate art even though these guys are way better than anything I could ever do and it's just really thrilling, really cool. I know that you're trying to reach the deadline of TPF, but are you going to have game multiple titles available for sale by your deadline date of June 30th? Yes, we will release more titles in 2019 than any pinball company in history. In fact, we'll also release more than most of the entire industry released in one year given any given year. So stay tuned. If you're willing to divulge, are any of your titles based off of Zidware's designs, the games that were supposed to be provided by Zidware? I will say that there have been a lot of hints here. I know everyone probably did some subtle ones, but we actually gave a lot of hints to some of the games we're going to be doing already. And I would direct you to Jeff Patterson's This Week in Pinball. He has a list of some of the ones that have been announced and confirmed, and we'll sort of leave it with that right now. So this is more of a business-related question, so I guess it will be primarily to you, Robert. But it could be also relevant to the designers in the sense of diversifying what Deep Root does. I'm wondering, you know, in order to make the business profitable, you've had your hand in a bunch of things in the past. Is Deep Root pinball under its label diversifying in any way? because we've seen pinball designers traditionally doing slot machines and other things. Are your programmers going to diversify in video games and stuff? And I think one more tidbit of a question. Do you think that in the long term a pinball company can be successful as a publicly traded company? I'll answer the last one first. No. Pinball Company will probably never be successful as a publicly traded company because of the regulations that go into and the amount of disclosure that goes into filing. To answer your other question, I'll just leave it at this is that I'm not worried whether something is very profitable or not on a per title basis. The way we've designed everything internally is that any pinball machine sold will be profitable internally and that gives us a lot of room to deal with not worrying about bomb costs and things like that, but still to give the best bang for the buck for y'all who are going to be spending a lot of money on these games and you deserve to get the most value possible for every dollar you put into it. It's a very different concept and I think very shortly you're going to start seeing why it's not going to be whether or not, you know, it's Deep Root or something else. It's like, it's more going to be more of a question of why would I not buy a Deep Root machine with the value in it even if I happen to like the latest, you know, theme or license from another company. And so we want to make that value argument to each and every one of you and everyone else in pinball. Oh, just to add, I worry about bomb cost always. But at Williams, you know, we were taught, just to get back to the value for price, I think having a low price game that is really feature rich is a great way to go. That's how we kind of learned, you know, as we went, we would just do one game and you had a certain amount of time and you had, you felt kind of, not so much guilty, but you had an obligation to really do as much as you can before, you know, they take away your game to get it to manufacturing for the customer. So I think I can't, I don't, my brain doesn't work, like how can I design a game but take that part off and then charge the person more later to put that in. It's just kind of anti-something, I don't know what. But definitely having a great price point and having, you know, one selection, this is the game, this is the title, everybody on the DeepRoot team has really worked hard to make this the best game, you know, for you to purchase, I think that's a really good philosophy and definitely, you know, you'll see it in the games as they start to appear. Cost-driven or time-driven, would you say, Mark? They're irrelevant. Good. I'll give you kudos for good, you know, for trying, but we're looking at everything very differently at Deep Root than any other company and we have the capital to do so. And not trying to rub it in any other company's face, but if we have that ability, why not use it for our benefit annuals? Hi, my question is going to be focused on distribution. So when you announce 2019, a lot of games coming available, what is the model for how will consumers purchase the games? Is your model a direct consumer base? Is it with standard distributors? Is it something different? And are you preparing for the tech support that will be needed for a lot of games, which is exciting, but we've seen other companies have issues, and then making sure that customers are going to be able to have issues work through when they receive those products. I'll cover the tech support question first. We would prefer distributors not deal with our games. We have a philosophy of making our games accessible to even someone who can't even operate a remote. We put a lot of engineering into making that happen. With that said, you know, pinball machines are complex and things do break down from time to time. And so we want, we're the best ones who know about our standard and what needs to be done, so it makes more sense to use modern technology and the ability we have to reach out to the customer, customer reaching out to us and to help them with their problems as quick and efficiently as possible whereas a distributor might not have that benefit with such very small margins The other part of the question was about distribution There are some big talks going on and I don want to make any comments that might offend one over another, but all of the above. Our games will be accessible, and we would love for people who connect with one or more of our games to be able to purchase them as easily as possible and to get it in their hands as quick as possible. I know highway kind of ruined the two weeks quote before I even knew that was a quote, but our goal is still to be able to sell a game and get it to a customer in two weeks or less. You've put together an incredible all-star staff here. I'm going to ask Stephen and Barry, who've relocated. I mean, Stephen from New Jersey giving up a career. Barry, you're missing all the great pasta here in the Midwest. What was it for you two that made you decide Deep Root was the company I'm going to relocate? Well, the number one thing was getting back into doing pinball full-time again. And the Carl Weathers's a lot better. I'm sick of Chicago Carl Weathers. I spent my whole life here. But, yeah, I do miss the pizza and the pasta. But there's still a few places I get some decent stuff there. If not, I make my own. I'm half Italian, so I know how to cook. The fact that 50 degrees is cold, what? Okay, whatever. But really, going down there and seeing what I saw, that's point blank. I'll just say that and that's it. Like I said, it's the best decision I've ever made. Thank you, guys. Yeah, go ahead, Dennis. I just wanted to add something to that as to why I went with Deep Root. After I met the people there, and they have a lot of young, passionate, smart people, and Deep Root is going to make it, and we're going to surprise you with some cool stuff. And that's the main reason I went there, because I saw the passion in all of the people that are there. They've got a lot of smart engineers and programmers, and we're going to do cool stuff. Yeah, I was, I really didn't know anything about deep root pinball a year ago. I hadn't ever heard of them. And I've always been, you know, one thing is when you're in pinball, it's in your blood for the rest of your life. I'm sorry. You may go off and do some other career and you leave pinball and you make money and generate income. This is pinball. This is pinball. That's why I'm here. And it's great to be with people who are doing pinball because they love pinball, not just because it's a business that can produce black ink. That's why I'm here. Thank you, John. To be interchangeable, like the Pinball 2000 series from Williams, so you have one cabinet you can put, like, for each new game, you can just swap out a play field into it. No, there's not going to be any gimmicks in our machines. Very interesting, very tantalizing presentation. If I was a Deep Root customer, say, two years from now, and I bought my game on the secondary market, and I knew which end of the screwdriver went in the screw and which end of the soldering iron you hold, would I be able to fix the game and would I be able to afford to fix the game? I'll answer the same way I did before and maybe add just a little extra is that we've spent a considerable... If all we had to do was just take what everyone else has done and spit out a pinball machine, et cetera, whether it's, you know, one of John's games or the other games we would have already launched a long time ago. A lot of the magic that's happening behind the scenes is relooking at every piece of the pinball machine and the pinball experience and redesigning it to create more value, make it easier, doing a lot of cool things that have never been done or probably never even thought of. And I don't know about y'all, but I live, breathe pinball. Despite running 17 other businesses, I live, breathe pinball 24-7. I can't get it out of my mind and it's a curse and I know a lot of the people here and back at the two offices that we have have the same curse and we're coming up with some of the craziest zaniest things ever and then making them reality. So one of the focuses directly to answer your question is making that that pinball experience more inviting when it comes to diagnosing and then fixing issues with the pinball machine. And I would love to see our machines last 50 to 100 years, as some are. They're even graced in these halls right now with minimal amounts of repairs. Now, there's always going to be wear and tear items on every machine. It's just part of life. But making those easier to get in the future and standardizing them are one of the things that we've done. And I would like, just real quick, can Patrick and Craig and Sean and Daniel here, These guys are doing magic. You stand up real quick, Daniel. I want to also recognize these guys. These guys are all mechanical engineers. We don't have any electricals here, unfortunately, but these guys are rock stars. They knew nothing about pinball, but I think when you see what they've done in March, I think these guys are going to be just as much rock stars as these guys up here, and there's a lot of really cool stuff coming your way. So thank you all very much as well. Robert, you'd mentioned that, just kind of follow up to the previous question, you'd said before something along the lines of you could take a sledgehammer to the play field, it's not going to break. What can you disclose? Is it going to be made of wood? Can you tell us now? Or is this coming? Sean, can you stand up? No. Okay. So I just want to make sure. We're going to take a sledgehammer to the play field and it's going to be okay, right? I'm not saying I don't believe you. I just want to know what it's made of. Define sledgehammer. Yeah, define sledgehammer, right? Define substrate. So Sean, this is Sean's pet project. And I know that he was quite surprised when I said sledgehammer. Maybe it was a little hyperbole, maybe not. But our playfields will be made out of wood. There's nothing, the problem with going a different substrate for the play field, it changes everything else about the gameplay and maintenance, and it introduces a whole lot of other problems. And that's why wood will probably for a long time be the surface that pinball machine playfields will be made out of. Good question. I got a question about the electronics in the game. Are you designing your own boards, own circuit boards? Are they surface mount technology or is it the old through hole? Is it somebody that is designing your boards in the pinball community or was it a new entity? There's nothing novel about anything in pinball. Pinball is basically just a hunk and heap of a bunch of different parts that many of them could be used in many other industries. So there's nothing special about having anyone in pinball design boards. And in fact, what I wanted to create a team was with people outside of pinball when it came to that sort of stuff. Designing, a little different. I'm very grateful to have the great pinball, legendary pinball designers who I just want to say are not old and washed up and they only came to Duke for a paycheck. I see every day that these guys are passionate. They'd be here for free if it really came to that, but it doesn't, so we're good. So about boards. Our electrical engineers, we have some amazing ones. Josue and Matt are the main ones, and we have some techs. The reason why, when we talk about the five days of DeepRoot, we will go through the entire process for that, and it will be very entertaining on where we started and where we ended up with all of our electrical system. I'll say this for now is that we will have our own boards. There's not going to be anything crazy about them. It's going to be very simple for the end user, whether they know anything about electronics or not, to maintain them and upkeep them. And they're going to be very reliable. That's why we just recently, as Jeff announced in his DeepRoot tour, we just put in an SMT line because we want to make sure that we have the best boards available for our pinball machines and make sure that they're right the first time. Thank you. This question is for Dennis Nordman. Are you going to do green water? Blue water? Red water? Dish water. Red water? Okay, just curious. And Barry, can you make another comic game? Hi, John. That's it. Thank you. Thank you, Steve. I haven't had the pleasure to meet you yet, but I appreciate that levity, et cetera. All right. Yes. Are those circuit boards going to have batteries that are going to piss all over the board and destroy it? Considering most of my Williams Valley at home require batteries still and I haven't bothered to change them out for something more reasonable with modern tech, no I think most of what Deep Root was started on was me dealing with Williams Bally games and being pissed off about a lot of things especially as a newcomer into pinball and not wanting to be an engineer all the time. And so I think that what we've tried to do is resolve not only those old issues, but even issues that haven't even been thought of yet that need to be reengineered and improved. You can just shout out. I'm curious, as a manufacturer, have you had anything that you think that you might have underestimated coming into the market, or have you had any setbacks that you didn't understand? You asked specifically about manufacturing. I think... I'm not perfect in knowing it deeper it is. I think we face many of the same challenges every pinball startup has done. I think that I didn't anticipate the level of taking on the ZIDWARE process and taking care of those people and we hope we've done a good job of helping those who have wanted help. I think from a manufacturing standpoint, I don't think we've underestimated anything yet, but we're going to have the same problems every new manufacturer has in getting a line up and going. We're going to have a lot of successes, we're going to have some challenges and we're going to work through them. I think what's really helped us a lot is that we've been talking about them from the beginning for years. And while it's a different thing and planning as best as you can to actually start manufacturing where still things are going to pop up that you can't even imagine or think of beforehand, I think that we've got some great talent in our engineering and technician department and come rain or shine when we get to March, people are going to be able to buy pinball machines from Deep Root and put them in their home. Well thank you all very much for attending. I know we've got another seminar coming up so we want to do that. I just want to go down the line real quick and thank you all very much for coming on and sharing this great journey by Deep Root. I'm going to give each one of you maybe, what, 30 seconds? And with any last thoughts, if you have any or maybe not. We're going to try to make the best damn games we can so come March get ready to buy them. Just two quick things. One it's great to see Rob Burke have his show this year and get all his ducks in a row and get everything's organized the way that he wants wanted and obviously to invite us to be part of it. So it's nice to see that. And also, a small anecdote, Barry and I worked together at Williams for seven or eight years, never went to lunch. He'd go in his room, I'd go in my room. So it's been really a pleasure to work with him. He's just an amazing designer. He's done a lot of games and a lot of innovation. And he's ready to go every morning and works very fast. And so it's real exciting to watch him work because I never got to watch him work. I got to watch Steve work a little bit, some of the other designers, but not Barry. So it's been a real treat for me to watch another designer kind of ply his craft. Dennis won't show me anything. So... Yeah, it's just a really exciting journey to be a part of this whole thing. And, you know, I think a lot of us, when we started, we had some idea of what we thought we maybe we're getting into and just to see it become even more amazing is really awesome. It's just really, really cool. And I really love the opportunity to work with Deep Root Pinball and all of the talented people who come from outside the pinball industry. I work closely with Quinn. He's storyboarding the game and he'll throw an idea at me and I had most of the rules set pretty well written for the game and then, oh, what if we work this into the game? That's really awesome. And it's like I'm sitting at home like four hours a night or four days to get it into the game and then I finally get to, oh, I've updated the storyboard and I'm all excited and the game is like evolving and going, and that's just something, an experience I've never, ever had a chance to do, and it's really great. Yeah, I have similar feelings. I'm just thankful to Robert and Deep Root for allowing me to do two original themes, which is something I've wanted to do for years and years and years, so I'm really happy to be able to be doing that. Get ready. Thank you for levity there, Steve. One last thing. No one asked about it, but I'll give you all one more tidbit for those of you who stayed to the end. The ad is a very special game. Yeah, it's a movie poster style that you might have seen in the expo ad guide. And does anyone want to take a guess at what game they think that is going to be? Okay, we got a couple. Just shout it out real quick. Okay, what do you think? Is there someone else over here? Cosmic Chaos. Cosmic Chaos. Okay. Any other guesses? Okay, well one of those was correct, so we'll leave it at that. Thank you all very much. Thank you. you you you