Today I went online, apparently a lot of people don't like me. There's no cell phone to rehab, and that's where I'm going, so come find me. Sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up, sit up. Welcome everybody to Canada's Pinball Podcast. The first Monday of the new year where I am sitting down and I have to go back to work. and I have this feeling of this is going to be the most creative fun I have all day long. The topic of this show, I'm not going to mince words anymore. I am going to say something on this show that is my belief, my opinion from what I've gathered from people I've spoken to over the last few months. It's also I'm coming to this conclusion by things that have happened to me by said personnel over at said organization. I'm also gathering the reality of end of the year pinball awards show and the world's biggest pinball company with the most people got zero awards. And I had someone on Facebook being like, Kaneda now hates Stern. And I was like, I don't hate Stern, but tell me which award you would have given to Stern. And there was no reply. And I just want to say, this makes me sad because what has happened to Stern Pinball isn't an isolated thing at Stern. It is what is happening all over the world. Companies are losing their identity. They are losing their culture and they are losing their creativity in the name of one thing, in the name of growth. For us to grow, we have to become bigger. We have to become more than what we were to the people that made us who we are. You know, now that they're no longer a client of mine, I can talk openly about Jameson. When I worked on Jameson, the world's number one Irish whiskey, the reason the world loves Jameson Irish whiskey is because it's from Ireland and it represents the people of the Irish Republic that people relate to. they export joy to the world they export music singing dancing the crack as they would say not crack like drugs okay it's spelled differently and so you have this brand that got really big and there's a reason why because the world loved it for what it was and it grew organically without any sort of like ad campaign that was trying to create sizzle and sex. And in the end, by the time I had been done working on them, every time I would bring an idea that was rooted in Irish culture, they wanted nothing to do with it. They thought to grow, we have to make the world's number one Irish whiskey more appealing to other cultures that might not even like whiskey. And what that does is it destroys who you are. It destroys the very fiber of your culture. And I'm saying what's happened at Stern Pinball, and it's so obvious, they have brought in outside people. And did those outside people, did they become a member of the community? Did they listen and hear from us? Did they listen for the first few years to operators and collectors and this? No. And now what we're seeing now in 2026 is the impact of bringing in outside individuals who don't really know pinball. And they didn't have a vision for pinball when they went and got their MBAs, when they went and worked over here. Maybe it was Disney. Maybe it was the WWE. This is a really, really unique and special industry. It's a really, really unique and special product. And in my entire journey through pinball, I have realized watching all of these companies, some have succeeded, some have failed, but it all comes down to one thing. The companies with the greatest culture will be the companies that people are excited to wake up every day, go through the door and create magic. If the company is obsessed with growth and finding new customers despite their existing customers or making marketing moves that absolutely cannibalize their own market, not only that, but also crap on the very people that got your company to where it's at. You know, when you keep remaking things you said you'd never remake, when you raise the prices and you strip out the features, when you start making your cabinets look like Ikea pieces of furniture, it gets to a point where there's only so many times you can tell your buyers, your significant volume of owners, there's only so many times they're going to forgive you. And there's only so many times you're going to test their patience. And so here we are It is the beginning of a new year And I look at so many of these pinball companies with optimism with energy and they have momentum And then I hearing from people that I know are intimately intimately connected at Stern Pinball And it makes me sad because I've been through this in my own career. And I know what happens when this happens, when you get the executives barking at everybody, how come sales aren't where they're at. Do you think Seth and George are seeing eye to eye on the vision of this company? Have you even seen in almost a year the chief marketing officer over at Stern? Have you heard from him once? To me, that says everything. The CMO should be out there. He should be out there, out and about. No, you haven't. What we've witnessed is people who love this hobby so much getting burnt out by the culture over there. You know, it's a point now, it's kind of like, you know, it's their house, right? They work in Chicago, they've got that big building. And it's like, think about your own family. Sometimes it's easy to keep the turmoil hidden from everybody else. Because in your family, you're not like making a product. But look, if your family dynamic and your family culture is negative and toxic, you know who's going to notice it? The teachers when your kids go to school or your coworkers when you go into work. Like we're going to notice the change in the individual. Have you seen a change in George Gomez doing all these damage control tours? Does he look like he's having a good time answering silly questions all the time because he's got to like defend the poor sales of these games and then hide behind licensure issues? Wow, none of those issues at JJP, none of those issues at Spooky Pinball, but all of a sudden, oh, licensure approval. Okay, sure, but where's the great game? Where's the magic? Where's the mechs? Where's all the stuff? Where's the stuff that's worth $13,000? Where's the topper? How come the topper looks like that nobody had any common sense you put c-3po decapitated in front of who knows what is happening behind him and you're supposed to say that you're creative and everyone's inspired and that looks like an inspiring creative item no we're at this point now where we've taken people that have absolutely loved this hobby like zombie eddie we've taken people like Jack Danger. We've seen people leaving Stern Pinball going other places, like Tom Capera goes over to JJP. These are huge losses. And, you know, these were the people that built Stern and made Stern great and made us love Stern Pinball. It's like, how many times can we now ignore the fact that they're not able to keep this turmoil inside their own house, that people inside that house are now dying for a little help because they're not going to get it unless people know. And you could sense it and you could feel it. And I'm here to tell you right now that I've heard now from a variety of people that Pokemon pinball will be the ultimate, and I mean this, the ultimate disappointment in what Stern Pinball has become. Star Wars was a humongous disappointment, one of the biggest, greatest IPs of all time, and they butchered it. And now what you're going to get in Pokemon, which is the biggest IP in the entire world by a lot. And so well, you have Stern Pinball with the biggest IP in the history of pinball. And did they design this game as an organization and collaborate as an organization? You would think it would be all hands on deck to make this game. But no, what this company has turned into is the toxic culture that was Bally Williams back in the day, where teams were isolated from each other, where internal politics is what drove the sort of development of each title, where it wasn't about as a company coming together to make the best possible game we can make. How do we make the best possible Pokemon game ever? Keith, Elwin, you love Pokemon, you're in it. Jack, you got some great ideas. Jack, James, you're awesome. Let's get everybody in a room and make this the greatest game ever and put all of our resources into it. Nope. It's like your homework assignment is this Jack Danger. Your homework assignment is this Keith Elwin. Your homework assignment is this John Borg. We need you to do three games in one year. They're all going to be half-baked and they're all going to fail and then everyone's going to blame you. And this is the other part that sucks for all of these people over there that are creatives because in the end, in the end it's like you're not blaming Seth Davis you're not blaming the CMO you're blaming John Borg you're gonna blame Jack Danger you're gonna blame George Gomez you're gonna blame Keith Elwin if the games aren't where you want them to be you're gonna blame Zombie Yeti because it's such a very personal product that's what's so unique about it right when you buy a car do you know who designed the car do you know who designed the look of it no do you know who designed the engine? No. Do you know who designed anything about it? No. All you know is I bought a Porsche. I bought a BMW. But this is very personal. You didn't buy Foo Fighters. You bought Jack Danger's Foo Fighters. You didn't buy Godzilla. You bought Keith Elwin's Godzilla. They are more like movie directors than they are A whole team of people is known and only the brand is what you associate with the game And because of that because it very hyper personal that is the problem Stern is facing today is they have lost And I mean, I hear this from so many people. They have lost the personal enthusiasm to go through the door every day. and I'm hearing it from people that are there. No one's going to go on the record. Nobody, but you can witness this. I've heard it from other pinball companies in the area who tell me, hey, Kaneda, you know how many Stern resumes are landing on my desk right now? Oh, so they're making that up? No, I don't think they are. I always said Stern to me had it all. They had it all. It was the place to be. If you were a creative, you want to go somewhere where you can execute consistently and your creation comes out every year. If you work for the other companies, you got to get to the end of the line after your game comes out. And it might be two to three years before your next game gets executed. But here's what's happening in pinball. That these designers and these creators and these mechanical engineers and these electrical engineers and these line workers, they would rather work in a culture that was slower to get to their items that's not toxic than work in a toxic culture that is always rushing, that is always putting pressure on everybody, that is trying to grow to a level that pinball will never grow to. And you're not gonna grow it this way with subpar products. How do you release Star Wars, The Walking Dead and expect to grow? What was the strategy there? And you got to now start to point fingers and make people accountable. Like Seth, you were the CEO that greenlit the remastering of The Walking Dead. You know what that shows me? You never surveyed the community. I think you probably just spoke to a few of your big dealers who were like, yeah, we'll sell more. Of course, those dealers are going to tell you that because they don't care, bro. You're giving them a margin and profit. Of course, they're just going to tell you what you want to hear. Any new Stern, they want to have it from you. But if you actually went out there and looked at a few things, which you probably didn't. Did you go to the Pinside Marketplace, Seth and new CMO, whatever his name is? Did you guys go to the Pinside Marketplace and look at how easy it is to get a walking dead? Did you look at the prices that used walking deads were selling for? and then you still marched in and said, yep, we're gonna make a $13,000 version of this game and it's gonna do fine. No, you didn't. And now look where you're at. And I know people wanna blame Kaneda. This is just simple stuff, guys. And yeah, I have a little bit, when I say it's personal, I have a little bit of a personal chip on my shoulder because I marched into that company, not as Kaneda, as Chris, a dude with 25 years of marketing experience. and I cared. They didn't even expect anything from me. I spent so long making an entire deck and an observation and an analysis of their company. They didn't even ask for it. I did it because I thought it was the right thing to do. And I did it because I cared and I cared about their company and I cared about their future and I cared about the real issues at their door and they ignored every single thing I said and they just kept going down the same road, making boneheaded move after boneheaded move in the name of growth. So am I not, as a person, allowed to have a little bit of a personal sort of like annoyance with this company? When I talk to Bug and Luke, they're always like, Chris, we want to hear your ideas. We want to hear what you have to say. We take everything you say into consideration. And I can see it, you know? It's like when Bug and Luke make show games and I destroy them from a marketing standpoint from that. Like, that's terrible. what's the next thing out of Luke's mouth? We're never making show games again. They listen. They know. And I say that not because I think Bug and Luke are morons for doing show games. They just got caught up in it. And the only reason they're doing it is they wanted to feed the dealers in the distros who were crying to them that they wanted more games because the game was so hot. We all know that. And they're good people and they don't want to upset anybody so they gave in. But they're not going to give in again and that's the right move. And that's how you become great. You make decisions, you take some risks. Sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. And also you become great because you don't put growth and profit above everything else. You know, when you look at it and you just Google, like if a company becomes too big, does it lose itself? You know, and I know this is a little bit of an AI answer, but let me read this. And as I read this, tell me this does not feel like Stern Pinball right now. Getting too big can ruin a creative company by slowing down decision making, diluting unique culture, creating bureaucracy and losing the agility that fuels innovation, turning passionate individuals into cogs in a machine through unsustainable growth and a focus on process over people. Though this can be mitigated by codifying expertise and maintaining core values. Okay, this sounds exactly what has happened over at Stern. And as I've been saying, and I said it to George, I said to Seth, and I'll say to each and every one of you right now, when I went into Stern, that was my main message. You have to get back to what made what made your game so special What made not just your LE so special what made your brand so special It not insider connected It not stupid badges It's not saying publicly, we only had eight months to make this game. It's not saying publicly, well, because of licensor issues, we couldn't put guns on John Wick. It's not saying publicly, we're never going to make more LEs. And then you make three, four different versions of Elvira. You make the Jaws premium 50th nicer than the LE. All this stuff, all this stuff. You think you can just keep shoveling this stuff out to the pinball buying community and we're just going to keep gobbling it up? And then I look at the other companies, man, I know exactly what's happening at every other boutique. And the stuff they're coming with is the complete opposite. it. Look at like Barrels of Fun, for example, growth. No, David David Van Es just needs to make great games. And he knows, he knows like, see Dune, making Dune is like the result of picking a theme you think is going to be successful because of how big it is. And think about how crazy this is. You take a multi-billion dollar movie franchise and it can barely sell. And then you go to this obscure, unique, culturally interesting place called Winchester's Mystery House. This is the thing. The Winchester Mystery House story, the actual fact that it's out there in the real world and why it exists is so interesting and weird that it struck a nerve with our little subculture. We're dune with Timothy Shama Lama Ding Dong dating Kylie Jenner. He's like the poster child for vanity and all the garbage of the world we're trying to escape. No wonder people don't want it. And that's it. That's what this hobby will always be. You find the things that make our subculture tick and you make a passionate interpretation of that thing and we will buy. And your growth will be incredible. and you won't have to bring in all these outside people that think they know better because they have some MBA where they studied other industries on how to grow. And then they come into the board rooms and they crack the whips and they're like, where are my results? Where are my sales? I'm going to bring in a new sales guy. I'm going to bring in a new CMO. I'm going to bring in a million and a half dollars of all new salaries. And that's going to make this company grow. No, no, that's never going to make it work. And I think when you see Pokemon, I mean this, I've heard it from many people now, when you see Pokemon, it is going to be the ultimate representation of a company that is fractured, a company that's not collaborating. It's going to be way more George Gomez than it is Jack Danger. This isn't an everyone get in the room and let's make the world's biggest IP and let's make it magical and let's show everybody what we're capable of as a company that works together. It is going to be a siloed, bureaucratic, made in a vacuum game. It's going to be soulless to the pinheads. It'll still sell well because of the IP. Mark my words, my belief when we see this game, it's going to be another pretty uninspired, empty, pretty barren game that they're going to blame the cost of the license as the reason why what's under the glass isn't nearly as special as a game like Lord of the Rings that came out freaking 22 years ago. And Stern Pinball, if they need to call a board meeting, they need to call a board meeting and reset the entire damn operation and get back to their core values so that people want to walk through that door and do somersaults into that job because it should be the greatest job on the planet. You are taking people that love pinball more than anything and you've found a way to make a culture that is toxic enough where they don't even wanna go in. They don't even wanna go in. They clock in their hours and they're out the door. They've made it a simple transactional place to be for all of these super talented and super creative people and it's not gonna work out. They made their millions, they got so big, but they don't need to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Why? Why? What benefit does that have to the product? It doesn't work. everybody. I love you. If there's someone who deserves more growth, it's freaking Canadian Spinball Podcast. At $5 a month, I'm going to put this show up for free. And I just want to say to everybody else out there, if more people spoke up, it would force Stern to change. Yeah, don't buy these mediocre games. They're going to have to make games better. Look at Beetlejuice. Look at Winchester. Look at Evil Dead. Look at Harry Potter, man. These games are amazing and they're just going to keep getting better. And then you look at Star Wars, a glow worm. You look at these new cabinets. You look at all the stuff they're doing. And trust me, when you see Pokemon, I'm almost like 95% sure those of you who love Pokemon, if I were to ask you, who would you want to make your dream theme now in 2026? How many of you are saying Stern number one? How many? None. None. And I'm telling you right now, you're gonna be like, damn it, Kaneda was right. Then Iceman and Levy and Neil McRae are going to have to go on pin side. Yeah, man, I don't really like him, but he was kind of right about Pokemon. Kind of right about everything. Half the time, people. Peace out. you