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Ep 138: Behind Stern's Doors

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·47m 29s·analyzed·May 25, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Loser Kid visits Stern factory; explores licensing, manufacturing, and John Wick game strategy.

Summary

Josh Roop and Scott Larson of Loser Kid Pinball Podcast recount their visit to Stern Pinball's factory and offices as invited content creators. They discuss the manufacturing process, licensing complexities, bill of materials breakdown, Insider Connected platform growth, team building philosophy, and first impressions of John Wick pinball. The visit was funded by Stern and intended to give content creators insight into behind-the-scenes operations and game development challenges.

Key Claims

  • Stern's timeline from acquiring license to final product is roughly two years with 111 checkpoints

    high confidence · George Gomez disclosed standardized production timeline and checkpoint system during factory visit presentation

  • Licensing is a major constraint in game design, with multiple approval layers and different requirements per licensor

    high confidence · George Gomez provided specific examples (Aston Martin, Bond, ninja booties approval issues) during conference room presentation

  • Stern recorded approximately 50 million plays through Insider Connected and is aiming for over 100 million

    medium confidence · George Gomez presented numbers during Insider Connected discussion, though hosts noted confusion about exact figures

  • John Wick sales have not been 'as robust as other releases'

    medium confidence · Josh acknowledges this publicly while noting Zach Sharp indicated the factory visit was planned pre-John Wick release

  • Stern performed 93 code updates in the previous year

    high confidence · Mentioned as factual statistic during factory visit briefing

  • Tooling costs are game-specific and cannot be amortized across multiple games for licensed properties

    high confidence · George Gomez explained Star Trek insignia example showing game-specific tooling constraints

  • Stern uses two separate manufacturing companies for parts to create redundancy in case of catastrophic failure

    high confidence · Explained during bill of materials discussion as standard manufacturing safety practice

  • Home leaderboards for Insider Connected are under development but may require additional cost due to AWS infrastructure and privacy/licensing complexity

    medium confidence · George Gomez and Gary Stern discussed this as conceptual future feature with cost implications

Notable Quotes

  • “Licensing gets final approval on everything and so and each license is different and there's license upon license.”

    Josh Roop (summarizing George Gomez) @ ~27:00 — Encapsulates the core licensing complexity challenge that drives manufacturing constraints

  • “It's on the poster... the people who made the movie, they're no longer around.”

    Scott Larson (on James Bond ninja booties approval) @ ~31:00 — Illustrates how IP turnover in licensing teams creates friction despite historical accuracy

  • “Every game finds its home.”

    Gary Stern (Papa Stern's philosophy) @ ~48:00 — Core business philosophy justifying three-tier pricing model (Pro/Premium/LE)

  • “It's not like starting Facebook 15 years ago where you invest all your personal information into some random algorithm.”

    Gary Stern (on Insider Connected privacy/licensing complexity) @ ~44:00 — Illustrates why cloud services are not trivial infrastructure decisions for pinball manufacturers

  • “At Stern, they're building a team. It's like literally like a baseball team, right?”

    Josh Roop (on team building philosophy) @ ~50:00 — Describes deliberate departure from Williams' secretive team structure toward cooperative culture

  • “There's a lot of fingers in the pie... it's kind of like building a house where you have all these sub-assembly lines that are going to be involved.”

    Josh Roop (on licensing approval complexity) @ ~25:00 — Captures the systemic complexity of modern licensed pinball game design

  • “They're dealing with people that might not necessarily understand what your product is, even though they're trying to give you a license to make the product.”

    Scott Larson (citing Gary Stern's New York story) @ ~36:00 — Illustrates fundamental education challenge in licensing negotiations with non-gaming executives

  • “He just got hired four days ago... he shot his shot back at Expo... he brought in his resume and gave it to the team there.”

Entities

Stern PinballcompanyGeorge GomezpersonGary SternpersonZach SharppersonDwight SullivanpersonTim SextonpersonElliot EismanpersonJosh Roopperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Insider Connected home leaderboard expansion requires AWS cloud infrastructure with significant ongoing costs for privacy and regulatory compliance, raising questions about feature pricing models

    medium · Gary Stern explained: 'it's a little more complex than that because it's not just like we can create a server room in the back room and put some fans on and call it good. No, there's privacy problems, there's licensing problems.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Stern achieved 50M recorded plays through Insider Connected and is targeting 100M+ plays; platform shows month-over-month growth trajectory

    medium · George Gomez presented stacked bar charts showing growth trajectory, though exact numbers were somewhat garbled in transmission ('36 million... 50 million')

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern deliberately selected diverse content creator cohort (15-30 total) representing different platforms and audiences, including mega-channels like Arcade Matt (1.8M subs)

    high · Josh: 'it was a who's who of the content creation... Nudge Magazine... almost selected as if kind of the best people in their lane'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Licensing creates multi-layer approval bottlenecks; turnover in licensor teams causes knowledge loss and rework; licensor may lack understanding of their own IP history

    high · George Gomez example: Bond ninja booties required licensor approval despite appearing in official movie poster due to personnel turnover at licensor

  • $

    market_signal: John Wick underperformance acknowledged by hosts as motivation for factory outreach, though Stern framed visit as long-planned strategic initiative

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.142

0:00
Thanks for tuning into the Loser Kickin' Ball podcast for episode 138. I am Josh Roop. With me, my co-captain as always. Live and in person, Scott Larson. You know it, man. And it's been kind of a crazy trip so far. But before we get into that, let's talk about our favorite sponsor, Flippin' Out Pinball. Take it off for us, Scott. Yeah, flip it on pinball, contact Zach or Nicole, and they will get you hooked up. And even with possibly the new John Wick, I know there's still some LEs out there available, and we are going to talk about that today. But if you don't want John Wick, there are plenty of other options they have. They can basically fill in anything you need. Yeah. Before we get off on this episode, first off, I don't know how the quality of the audio is going to be. We're sitting in a hotel room outside of Stern. I'm doing this off my typical laptop, and I have my studio mic with me, but we don't have headphones, and this is just kind of – I've got like 40 minutes before I've got to go start heading towards the airport. We're also in the same room, and so there could be some echoing. Yeah, so just fair warning. I know there's a couple people out there, but let's move on. I know a lot of people are interested in what happened at Stern.
1:14
Okay, so first we should actually say, so the background, Stern invited content creators out, and they did pay for us to come out and visit. There were no guidelines of what we could talk about or anything like that, but it was basically a tour to see the factory, see the new game, talk about possible things, their strategies, and really some constraints behind that. So that's, you know, in full disclosure, this was a business trip that was funded by Stern, and now we're reporting on it. Well, another thing I want to point out, too, is a lot of people are saying, well, this is just a knee-jerk reaction to John Wick and maybe poor sales, which they haven't disclosed or undisclosed to us. But really, Zach Sharp had told us that this has been something he's wanted to do way before the pandemic. So for a few years. But it became a, well, the pandemic happened. Well, now we're going into a new factory. and he even talked about he kind of wanted to do this with Jaws, but they had some constraints there, and this John Wick opportunity was the best opportunity. So it was kind of a brewing of a perfect storm, right? Yeah, and to be fair, I don't think it's a secret that John Wick sales have not been as robust as other releases, and so it does make sense for them to invite people out. And to be fair, this is what companies do to get the word out on their product. So it was a lot of things together. We feel lucky then to us that we were able to come out and be invited. But it really was a fun weekend. And in many ways, it confirmed a lot of the stuff that I have been feeling about manufacturing and pinball machines. And also some of the challenges that they see behind the scenes that we don't see as the end user, right? Yeah. Well, let's start from the beginning of the trip. So they flew us out. I flew out of Vernal, my hometown, into Phoenix and then into Chicago. You had a direct flight from Salt Lake. Right. There's literally a hotel across the street. It's the Holiday Inn.

Josh Roop (on hiring new designer) @ ~52:00 — Shows Stern's openness to community talent and willingness to hire from pinball community

Scott Larson
person
Arcade Mattperson
John Wick Pinballgame
Jack Dangerperson
Beatles Pinballgame
James Bond: You Only Live Twice Pinballgame
Nudge Magazineorganization
Insider Connectedproduct
Derekperson
Williamscompany
Aston Martincompany
Papa Sternperson
Flippin' Out Pinballcompany

medium · Scott: 'John Wick sales have not been as robust as other releases' and Josh: 'I don't think it's a secret that John Wick sales have not been as robust as other releases'

  • ?

    community_signal: Stern's culture emphasizes team cooperation and collective game testing across designers; deliberately avoided Williams' secretive inter-team competition model

    high · Scott: 'Everybody plays each other's games, which I think the not so subtle message is at Williams they were secretive.' Josh adds 'He said, dump the bad stuff that happened at Williams. Keep the good stuff.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern is actively recruiting from pinball community; hired new designer four days before factory visit from Expo attendee who submitted resume directly

    high · Josh: 'he shot his shot back at Expo, he brought in his resume and gave it to the team there. He just got hired four days ago.'

  • $

    market_signal: Three-tier model (Pro/Premium/LE) with significant price multipliers (Premium 2-2.5x Pro cost) justified by 'Every game finds its home' philosophy for different market segments

    medium · Josh: 'they can spend two, two and a half times what a Pro is and get a very customized and fancy version of the same game. And there are different markets for each one.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Zach Sharp indicated the factory visit initiative had been planned for years, predating John Wick release, contradicting speculation that it was a knee-jerk response to poor sales

    high · Josh states 'Zach Sharp had told us that this has been something he's wanted to do way before the pandemic... but really, Zach Sharp had told us that this has been something he's wanted to do way before the pandemic. So for a few years.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Manufacturing design philosophy includes game-specific vs reusable tooling; game-specific molds (e.g., Star Trek insignia) drive higher per-unit costs than multipurpose components (pop bumpers, caps)

    high · Scott explains Gomez's tooling discussion: 'you're going to spend a lot more on that versus you know a pop bumper, a cap or something.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Home leaderboards for Insider Connected are in development but face AWS infrastructure and privacy/licensing complexity; may be charged as optional add-on feature

    high · George Gomez and Gary Stern discussed home leaderboards as conceptual development with cost implications; Gary clarified current features will always be free but future services may have fees

  • ?

    product_concern: Stern's manufacturing process is highly structured with 111 checkpoints and redundancy built in (dual supplier relationships for all parts)

    high · Scott: 'It is a well-oiled machine from start to finish. The way that they store products to how they handle it and how they assemble it, it's amazing.'

    • 3:24
    Seriously, you walk to the stoplight and walk across the street and you're at Stern. Hotel was nice. I did have a couple issues the first day checking in, but I'm really not going to get those right now. They fixed them. Yeah, they fixed them, so I'm not really going to harp on them for it.
    3:38
    We got there about 12. So the meeting was at 1. we got there at 1230 cause I wanted to be early. I like to be, uh, ahead of the game, I guess. I don't know. And the content, we were the first ones in and content creators kind of start trickling behind us. First one we got to meet was arcade Matt. I'd never met this guy before. It's funny cause we kind of complained about this. What was it? Two episodes ago or maybe we pointed out, we didn't complain. We didn't complain. What we talked about is it makes sense to reach out and to talk to different venues. It was more of a, an analysis to say, it doesn't have to be an either or it should be a reach out to these people to get the word out to different people yeah but it would also benefit any any pinball company not just stern to reach out to people who regularly talk about pinball because that is a target audience so this seemed to be a little bit of a you know what a realization that they did miss an opportunity of getting content and information to us so we can talk about it on our show. Yep. So they invited Arcade Matt. I don't know if you know this guy. Go check out his YouTube. It's pretty cool. He focuses mostly on the arcades, kind of claw machines, stuff like that. Okay, but like claw machines like getting him out of a claw machine. Yeah, like a giant claw. Yeah, anywho. I mean, dude has 1.8 million subscribers.
    5:00
    And that's top videos, like 12 million views. So he's got some eyeballs on his channel. So that kind of addressed when we were talking about two episodes ago with Davey about maybe they should be reaching out to these kinds of people. And then it was kind of like a who's who of the content creation. It was certainly a critical – it was a selection. Not necessarily – it was a good sampling of podcasters, streamers, other content like bloggers. So it was a big – Nudge Magazine, that's a magazine. Yeah, and so it was almost selected as if kind of the best people in their lane is what I want to say. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, or someone who's, I guess, yeah, you're right. That's a good way to do it. Yeah. So we all got in there. There was probably about 15 to 20 of us in the content creation, and the first thing they did is they showed off the factory. There may have been like another 10. There could have been like 30-something. There was a lot. But we were greeted first by, well, Zach Sharp. Zach came out. He's the one that originally asked us all to be out here. Gary Stern, Seth Davis, George Gomez, Tim Sexton was initially there.
    6:10
    And they were very upfront with saying, okay, we're going to tell you when you can take photos, and then there's going to be areas you cannot take photos. And so we started the tour. If you've never been to the Stern factory, you've got a small open foyer you walk into with a front desk. two lovely women that are sitting there that will guide you through the process of getting checked in their badge enforcers yes you're not getting past those doors without those badge enforcers and so you actually have to have someone that has invited you to stern right um and then they let you in and back if you were there at expo in october it was a giant cubicle farm they have cut out half those cubicles and they they had 20 john wick set up 12 15 okay Yeah, there were 15, and there were also three others. There was a Bond 60. There was an Elvira. There was a Jurassic Park 30. And so we kind of looked at those games a little bit. We didn't get our hands on just yet. They kind of ran us through. They gave us protective eyewear for the factory, and we started doing the factory tour. So if you've been through Expo, you've been through this tour. They did take us into the receiving section, which they did not do at Expo, but where they receive all their materials, all that stuff. and then the line where they put the boards and stuff, this is something you can see on Factory Friday. So I'm not going to really touch on this, because if you're really interested in this, go to Stern's website and check it there. There was a couple funny instances, though, I want to bring up. So Dwight Sullivan was the gentleman that was over our tour. And if you don't know Dwight, he's awesome. He's a very positive dude, and he's got a lot of words, but sometimes... He's enthusiastic. Yeah, he's enthusiastic. But there was a part where, if you've ever bought a new-in-box Stern, and there's like these little foam inserts that go in the box to hold the game into place so it doesn't get damaged in shipping. And they actually make those in-house. It's a foam product. They mix a chemical, send it through these plastic bags, and then they put them in molds and build these. And he had to have a stack that was as tall as him as he's talking, and he turns around and he accidentally knocks over the stack. And he's like, oh, I'm so sorry. He's like trying to pick up these. Then he picked it up and knocked over another stack. Yeah. It's just the guy that's making this. He's like, just, just go.
    8:26
    But it was cool. So we got to see the test. I mean, it was from start to finish how they make the game outside of the actual, you know, building a game, you know, the, the early process, but they also listen to the machine shop. So if you've ever watched Jack danger, did a video on, uh, after he became a designer, he talks about mechanics and like, There's this room where essentially if you have an idea or a concept for a pinball machine, you leave the idea in this room, and it's like magic. And the next morning, it's sitting there on the table for you. It's basically a machine shop. It's a machine shop. If you've seen any manufacturing facilities, there's a lathe, there's a press, there's a bender, a welder. So by this time, we finished the tour. We get into the conference room. They set us all down, and this was very much no pictures. and he said we could talk about some of the stuff and so we're very respectful to Stern. The stuff that we've been asked not to discuss is more personal stories with different stuff behind the scenes. Just channel. Okay, I will say it wasn't the stuff that they just said, yeah, don't, this is just for us. This was more of like historical interactions that they've had with different products and I think it was just more of a, let's just be respectful to the product so we don't damage things in the future, which we're totally on board with. So the first thing they talked about with us, we kind of took notes, right? I did. Okay, but you're jumping ahead. So let's talk about the tour. What jumped out on the assembly line tour and anything that stood out?
    10:04
    I want to say the biggest thing, it's so well done, right? It is a well-oiled machine from start to finish. The way that they store products to how they handle it and how they assemble it, it's amazing. It's a very well-oiled machine. You start off with the cables. So that's the first stop where they're wiring all these harnesses and they check them all. Yeah.
    10:29
    So then they go on to where play field. They're assembling all the play field parts and putting everything in. And then usually, like the wiring is the first thing that goes down into a machine. Yeah. And it heads down the line. And then they put all the inserts, all the bowl, all that kind of stuff. They also, any mechs, like any things they put on there. And then it goes over to a rotisserie that they can check top and bottom. Then they put it in a machine. Well, they also have a separate line for the cabinets. Yeah. So they actually have the cabinets. They use kind of a, it seems like a wet sticker thing. So it's like they spray it and they take a sticker and then they lay it on and put it on. Yeah, so the thought behind that process is you're putting on the sticker wet, so you can actually slide the sticker into place. And then once it's in place, you take a squeegee, you get all the bubbles out. So you have that. And then those things get married at the end. And the playfield gets put in. And then they've already tested the playfield. But even after putting it into the cabinet, they test again because things can get dislodged.
    11:42
    And so then there's that final thing. There's the final assembly. Then they box them up. So that basically the ins and outs of how a machine gets made And so it a really cool process Honestly if you never seen this you planning on coming to Expo I highly recommend Go to the tour. Let's go. It's definitely going to be awesome. So the first thing they sat us down, they talked to us about, I've got all my notes, was licensing. Yeah. And, okay, that seemed to be the driving force. And we have, it basically confirmed what we've talked about before. Yeah. is usually the behind the scenes as an end product when you buy the machine you put in your house and your question is, well, why didn't they do this and why didn't they do that?
    12:29
    They've actually asked the same questions. And he did emphasize that the people who are designing and building the machines, they're enthusiasts themselves. Yeah. So they want the best product. And a lot of times they have had the same questions you do. however the the take-home message that i got was licensing gets final approval on everything and so and each license is different and there's license upon license so one of the examples that george had brought up was the aston martin car on bond so aston martin obviously owns the rights to their car right so he had to do everything to appease aston martin and he he gave us very specific details that we're not going to go into. But once that was done, then they had to give it to the bond people to approve. The bond that Aston Martin approved. Yeah. And it was stuff like that. And they said one of the hurdles that they run into a lot is there can be turnover rates in licensing. So they'll get halfway through a project and the teams might shift on them and all of a sudden they've got all new people that they have to bring up to speed. Just funny stuff of like, I never noticed this, but they pointed it out. and it's as clear as day once you see it, but on the Bond, you only live twice. Yeah. He's wearing ninja booties. Ninja booties, yeah. Basically, I'm going to call everything ninja booties from now on. But the funny part is, originally the licensors said, that's not Bond-esque. He's like, it's on. Yeah, that actually is. It's in the poster. This is interesting that you, okay, this makes sense, though, from like a chronological standpoint. Yeah. The people who made the movie, they're no longer around. No. And so there is a little historical context that is lost sometimes when you move from the people who are controlling the license. And I'm sure they're quite familiar with the license and the way they want their product presented. However, there are aspects that they may not be familiar with themselves. Because I did not know about the Ninja Booties until George Gomez pointed that out. Yeah, there are some elements that even the licensor was less familiar with. So I guess it just goes to show, too, there's stuff that, like, even in the artwork that we don't realize, right? But I think the biggest takeaway was there's a lot of hands in the pot, right? Like, there's a lot of fingers in the pie. I don't know how it's ordered. I would say it's not like there's one chef cooking the meal and everybody else is the workers who do it. There is a project manager, so to speak. But I would argue it's kind of like building a house where you have all these sub-assembly lines that are going to be involved. And these sub-approvals that you have to work on. and it's a lot more challenging than you would anticipate in a in a pinball machine because it's not it's not like a lunchbox yeah like a lunchbox you can you can put a decal on and they can look at and say yeah that's good go ahead and sell it yeah and you're looking at incorporating not only art but you're looking at incorporating um storyline yep you're looking at incorporating call outs. You're looking at incorporating the LCD. You're looking at clips. So everything goes together to tell the story of a pinball machine, which can be quite challenging.
    16:12
    So they kind of drove that fact home with licensing, right? And they said another hard part too is you're dealing with people that might not necessarily what your product is, even though they're trying to give you a license to product. One of the stories was, and this is a really old story, Gary showed up in New York in a high-rise skyscraper and the licensor guy is like, who is this guy? Because he had half a playfield. And he's like, who is this guy in my office with this piece of wood? And Gary's trying to explain what a pinball machine is to this guy. It's just, it's a very complex product. And so, after we talked about licensing, the other thing they really wanted to talk about was bill of materials, because they see a lot of this going on in the community. The community makes speculation of bill of materials. They didn't give us fixed numbers. But I want you to imagine... They didn't give us a timeline, though. They did. So the timeline from start to finish is roughly two years. Yeah. That's from acquiring license all the way up to the final product. And there was stops in there that basically initial approval, which level of code. And obviously these are guidelines. Yeah, it's very fluid as they put it. But there were 111 checkpoints. Is that what it was? It was 111. And it was for an upcoming project, so I think most of us were like, where's the name? Where's the name? And Gomez was scrolling so fast and everything, I didn't catch it. I did look. There wasn't anything. But this is probably a template, though. This is probably a template that they use for every game. Yeah, that's what they said. Goldman said this is like the standard form for a game being created. Because it makes sense. If you're going to be assembling a car or some complex thing, you're going to have to have some sort of guidelines to get you from start to finish. Yeah. So they talked about building materials, and I think the problem is when we talk building materials, we've always seen it as the pinball machine itself, right? Like you look at it and you lump all this stuff together, but they said it's more like a pie chart, and I didn't write down all the pies, the pie slices and the pie chart, but they did licensing is one of the pies, the actual physical cost of the pinball machine, the wood, the screws. And so they talked about how these numbers, you get a general idea of what the final number is, but then there's other varying factors. So they brought up Beatles. There's only 1,964 as requested by the Beatles. and so there all of a sudden that cost becomes different because you're not selling as as great a potential as it could get right if you sold 10 000 of a game yeah so the way i look at it is there is i mean it's a it's a very old analogy that we learned in engineering like how much does it cost to build one stealth flight fighter okay and the answer is like a billion dollars it's a crazy amount and the question is okay how much does it require to build two stealth fighters it's like 1.1 billion yeah and so like obviously each subsequent thing that comes off your initial investment is going to be divided over multiple things and including the license now obviously they're not going to tell us more about how the licenses work but my take and but tell me if you think this is wrong there seems to be like a minimum amount that they have to meet to get a license. And so, okay, this isn't a made-up number here, but let's just say it's a million dollars. Like regardless, if they sell one machine, if they sell a thousand machines, they're still going to at least pay the initial million dollars. And then each machine that goes out also has a licensing tag to it. So each machine, you're still going to be paying the licensing fee with every machine, but that initial startup cost probably gets divided over more machines if you have a higher volume. Is that how you took it? Yeah, and it reminds me of, so I used to book concerts, and as a producer or the promoter, we had to guarantee the band a certain amount of money. Guarantee minimum, yeah. Yep, and then once you hit a certain threshold, I think it was like a 50-50 or whatever. Once you got over that 50%, then you owe them a certain percentage of each ticket sold after that. So it's kind of the same concept. Yeah, I'd say. The one that I really had never thought of, tooling so tooling is the process of when they you know like mecha godzilla you it's making a specific mold for the game that uh i it's its own cost right tooling itself because they they have to make the mold then they ship it off to they have two different companies so that way if if something catastrophic happens with one of the companies they can still get parts so there's always two companies for every one product they make and the interesting part Gomez had brought up too he's like you know there's certain things like the Star Trek insignia yeah I can't use that on anything else besides Star Trek it's basically game specific yeah tooling but he talked about I want to say was the kickback on Foo Fighters well Jack Danger did like a star thing or something yeah but I don't know if it was the kickback or if it was just some sort of uh it was basically a pattern. Just think of it as like a, you know, if you're making cookies and you have a pattern that you can cut out different things, if you're making one that's round, you can use that for multiple, multiple different cookies. If you're making one that looks like Santa Claus, you can only use it for Christmas. Exact. Perfect. Perfect example. And so the cost ends up being a little bit different on those because if it's game specific, they have to include it in the Star Trek. There's no if, ands or buts, but if you can use it across multiple games, Stern can kind of absorb that cost because it's like well this is an investment into the future right so so you're again this is us just breaking it down you're responsible for 25 of this yeah you know just something that can be used for other things i mean yeah okay the black knight mech you can only use that in the black knight yeah exactly so you're going to spend a lot more on that versus you know a pop bumper, a cap or something. Yeah. So that was very eyeopening and different. Um, they didn't give us a ton of specifics on that. Then we talked about insider connected. They threw out some really cool numbers there. Um, just insider connected is about community growth. 22. Uh, they didn't give us a specific number, but it was, they said it was half about 23 million users and, or no, sorry, half of 36 million. and then 23, it was 36 million, 24, 50 million. They hope to be, this is, that was how many plays were done, recorded through Insider Connected. And they're aiming for over 100 million plays. Was it this year or next year? Well, I think in the future. But if you looked at, because they broke it down by month, and you looked at the size of the stack, so they stacked them up next to each other. Yeah. And it did show that there, okay, we all know that Stern's games are going to be played more than other games. Yeah. Right. And even though in our, when we interviewed George Gomez, he talked about having like the biggest footprint in arcades. To be fair I not exactly sure how you would know that because each arcade is a little different Yeah But it makes sense that you going to be using something that can have more and more of a footprint with each game that comes out Yeah. And he even talked about just for operators out there, like some big requests that he gets. They get to talk about home leaderboards. Okay. And they did talk about using AWS. That's Amazon's cloud processing stuff. Yep. And he talked about the cost associated with – there's – obviously, you're paying a volume thing. Yeah. So you have the locations, which are X amount. But home locations are significantly more locations than game locations. And so in order to include that, they would have to spend a lot more money on Amazon. Now, this is something he was talking about in conceptual stuff. Yeah. But there is a possibility that that will cost more over time. And so perhaps that could be an add-on component that you could purchase or invest on your own. Yeah. but they he said it wouldn't be cost effective for them to store all the leaderboards for every single location like every home location when gary made it very clear to that when we talk about because they they said so they said uh insider connected the way it exists right now will always be free everything you have right now that this moment will be what's included with your game but they talked about later on like the services you're talking about could be an added expense and it's not just he talked about like because we're like well it's just server space and gary's like it's a little more complex than that because it's not just like we can create a server room in the back room and put some fans on and call it good no there's privacy problems there's licensing problems they did bring up the privacy thing which i thought was interesting that they had to do everything to comply with laws yes to make sure there were some privacy oh yeah they did talk about the fcc and stuff like that it's a it's not just like starting something up in your backyard and calling it good it's not like starting facebook 15 years ago where you invest you invest all your personal information into some rando algorithm so they talked about that um they talked about the teams that they pick right and they said that the the biggest thing i don't know how they haven't turned this into like peds made sounds terrible but passion experience discipline and sweat that's what they use to create these teams and and gomez had brought up the fact that He cut his teeth at Williams, right? Sure. And very much it was like gangs there. It was team against team. They wanted to get rid of that. It's cooperative. It's very cooperative. Everyone plays each other's games. They all give each other advice. It's very much hands-on with everyone that's on deck, right? He said, dump the bad stuff that happened at Williams. Keep the good stuff. And it did actually seem like people were very cooperative in their approach to games. Yes. He said everybody plays each other's games, which I think the not so subtle message is at Williams they were secretive. Yes. So that's not what's happening here. And I think this brings up a really interesting point of the fact that most jobs, it's essentially you apply for the job, right? They give them the resume. You're qualified. You go in. You're good to go, right? At Stern, they're building a team. It's like literally like a baseball team, right? Yeah. You always hear about like there's the one dude in the locker room that's creating a bad presence. They're looking for good people that are working together for the better of the team. And so I think that's where Stern has an advantage because this community is so filled with people that are passionate about this product. And so they get to kind of handpick those that they feel like would be good for their team. And we just saw it with Derek that came from New England. He was over at Pentastic there on the East Coast. It was great to see him there. there was a gentleman, I can't remember his name, but they said that he shot his shot back at Expo, he brought in his resume and gave it to the team there he just got hired four days ago yeah, he said, I'm graduating, I want to work and so it's cool that they are constantly, they have an open mind to people that are willing to put themselves out in the community and show that they exist and their special skill sets so they did talk about that so if you're looking for a job with Stern we might know a couple people right um they kind of just some other just little tidbits they did 93 code updates last year which was impressive um gary stern says one of the biggest mottos that have ever stuck is his dad so we called him papa stern yeah uh every game finds its home that's kind of a philosophy that they did with these licenses and whatnot which actually makes sense when you think about uh We've talked before about the advantages of having different products. So if people just want an entry-level pro game, they can get that and they can put it in. But you can also spend two, two and a half times what a pro is and get a very customized and fancy version of the same game. And there are different markets for each one. So we finished up the conference, right?
    29:05
    we went to go play John wick. The interesting part at this point, besides seeing John wick on the line, we really need to talk about John wick up to this point. There was no like, this is how you're going to sell it. Like this is, you know what I'm saying? There was this perception of they're bringing us in here to tell us how to talk about this game. And that wasn't the case. But it, okay. I, we have suspected that the reason why they did this is because John wick sales haven't been what they want to be. So in, In many ways, they start with an overarching view of what the pinball marketing manufacturing is. And then it seemed like the second phase was, okay, now let's introduce you to John Wick. Because the only thing that most of us had had exposure to was pictures, maybe some video, maybe some online play. And if you have played the game, it was more likely the pro. And when they had those games all set up, they were all premiums. They were all premiums. We did get to see one Ellie. So at this time, they were trying to rush us in to play the game. And the funny part is Gary's like, whoa, hold on. We've been going at this. It was like three plus hours at this point. The bathroom's over there. The bathroom's right there. Let's take a 10-minute break. And so then they shuffled half of us in the back with Tim Sexton and Ellie Eisman, the designer and the lead coder on this game. They had us all stand around in Ellie. And Tim told us about the code and the excitement for where they're going with it.
    30:31
    So that was cool. We weren't in the first group. We ended up hanging back. I had some personal stuff that had to be resolved. Nothing stupid, but it was... You changed the shirt. I changed the shirt, yeah. Not to make this sound all dramatic, right?
    30:46
    But they were very nice on helping with that. And we sat back and we played John Wick. Quick thoughts. What did you think of the game?
    30:56
    Okay. It was much better than I thought it was going to be. Yeah. The pictures, we all kind of default to the same thing. Okay. It's a fan layout. And I know. We claim to be an easy shooter. I know Dennis will say it's all fan layouts. It's not. But they, there are only certain shots that you can hit from two flippers. Yeah. Okay. And so, but the degree at which the ball interacts and the way it moves, I thought that center shot was going to be a lot harder. It's still a hard shot. Oh, it's a hard shot. It's skinny.
    31:30
    but feed it more of that Chicago deep dish pizza. Widen, widen that show. Okay. But I, it was a, it was a lot faster, but fair. Yes. Then I thought it was going to be, and it was, it was really entertaining. The, the ball path movements, all the little things you could do. Yeah. And, uh, seeing the difference between the pro and the premium, really, if, if you, I, You would be happy with buying any version of this game. There's not a version that's like, oh, go ahead and avoid.
    32:05
    I would really lean toward, if you're thinking about it, I actually was not thinking about this game. Yeah, me either. At all. It just wasn't thinking about it. However, the Pro was really fun. Yeah. And the Premium has a very similar. I described it like Metallica, where a pro and a premium Metallica have a very similar feel. And there's a few more bells and whistles in the premium, but you will not feel like you've missed the boat if you just go with the pro.
    32:40
    It's not like Godzilla, where the building goes up and down. That would be a big part of the game. this felt like the shot selection was very similar and the vibe of the game was really good yeah it really is and i think really if you are in the market for a john wick play both versions i feel like the briefcase you're either gonna love it or you're gonna hate it right i mean it pushes the shot into the playfield by like what two and a half three inches it's a pretty big shot it It contracts it, but it opens and shuts a lot. True.
    33:16
    Yeah. And so it's weird, though, because it was like, if you are going to the right out lane, it's almost like no saving it because the briefcase is kind of blocking. It's weird. I don't know. But overall, it's a good game. It didn't feel like a drain. Like, I actually didn't feel like it was a drain monster. I felt the left out lane was kind of gone. Okay. The left out lane, we lost a lot of balls through that. But I think if you really get out and play this game, seriously, Like it's not what I first expected it to be. Don't judge it on the code because the codes it's too early. It's too early. Okay. This is another funny part too. I got to hurry and toss this in there. So Dwight's giving us the tour, right? Gary's standing there and Dwight's like, you know, there's things that make me nervous. And one of the things that makes me nervous is when we go to launch the code and they asked me where it's at. And I tell him 0.8, even though in my heart of hearts, I know it's 0.7. Okay. And then Gary's like, well, honestly though, code's all subjective. So, like, really, the number is kind of a placeholder. They're going to tinker with the code. Yeah. So this is at 0.8, 0.81. It fell a little earlier. I can see where they're heading, and I like it. No, it's good. And really, the vibe of playing it, even from the Pro to the Premium to the LE, the speaker lights and the expression lighting, that was really immersive. If you felt that if that's your thing and, okay, a big pro that they talked about is the expression lightings and the speaker lights are going to be available for upgrades even for the pro version, which they haven't done before. My speculation is that they buy in bulk and they get a discount for buying in bulk and they are using the same template for pro premium and le cabinets yeah it makes a lot more sense not to be pigeonholed into two cabinet designs so having the option there and if you're gonna get another 800 from someone who wants the speaker light up upgrade and and i i don't really know what the expression lights are going to be costing but you know 500 to 800 to upgrade that and you can put a topper on them too. So they not pigeonholing you to prevent you from putting more money into your game if you get the pro So after we do our whole John Wick thing they give us a swag bag a shirt, jacket, fanny pack full of $10 a quarters. They're telling us after dinner... And a translate. They did do a signed translate. In this really cool room that they set up that's called their showroom. That's where they're going to be streaming from. It's essentially like a marriage between a swag shop, a pinball alley, a bar, and your living room. It was a really cool hangout. This would be the ultimate hang cave. A pinball cave would be great. I actually took pictures because I'm looking at doing some stuff in my basement soon.
    36:21
    Moving on, so we get to play the game. They give us dinner. It was very nice. Deep dish pizza and portalos. Whatever, you know. and then they took us to Logan Arcade their by party bus and we got there played more games out there just chilled, had fun rubbed shoulders all night with the Stern executives and then at 10 o'clock the bus was coming back if you had a ride you could stay but if you wanted to go back you could hop on the bus I was tired and then it's funny because it gets back to Stern it's like 11 o'clock at night and for some odd reason Can we go back into Stern? Some people left their stuff. Oh, people left stuff in Stern and we all kind of walked in and we're like, let's play some more. So we stayed for until midnight, until finally the cleaning lady's like, you've got to go. Like, it's time. So we left and that was kind of the wrap up. I mean, you can kind of see the aftermath on Don's pinball podcast. He did a late show last night.
    37:18
    It was an amazing almost 12 hours of just being, as Gomez put it, invited into his home. and they were very hospitable. They were great hosts.
    37:32
    I guess my takeaway from all this is I feel like I have a better understanding of how things work at Stern. I feel like I got to really scratch the surface and be let in, maybe not 100%, right? There were still walls up because there's obviously stuff they don't want us to know. There's stuff that's still in development. But it was very much like being honest and upfront with us, and they didn't turn down from any of our questions that we asked. It was, it was very good overall. I guess one question I did ask was Dwight when I said, so how do you guys produce? Cause you know, one of the biggest things is leaks and my, my mind goes straight to, well, who makes the prototype games? Because if you're trying to avoid leaks, you wouldn't want to do in this factory where everyone's building them. Cause they're out in the open. Yeah. They don't make them there. They like, they assemble them in a small room somewhere else. So he said that actually, They do use the floor there, but they pretty much lock down the factory. Like no one in. Well, I mean, obviously people go home, but like there's no tours. There's no. And so that was interesting to me. Overall, I just, I felt like it was a really good trip. And like, and I appreciate Stern bringing us out and everything they've done for us on this. It was really guys, you should be giving them the benefit of the doubt. And the reason I say that's because. And I would argue the same thing with all manufacturers. Yes. Like not all manufacturers are created equal, not all, not all.
    38:59
    Yeah, they're they all have different hang ups and the level that you're expecting from Stern. You know, the the second. So Stern is the top. We know that just volume wise and just the organization, you know, you then you then you get into other other things that are producing great products. and they're on that second level. And then you're getting a little more into the hobbyist types. So they all have different things that they're working on, but I would say the approach is going to be very similar from manufacturer to manufacturer. And some weather the storm better than others. And I think the other thing, too, is I'm realizing this more after the last four weeks between us sitting down with Davey, talking first impressions with John Wick, sitting down with Gomez and talking with him, and then having this conference with Seth Davis, Gary Stern, George Gomez, they're all in this room or locked in a room with them for like an hour and a half.
    39:56
    The more I'm realizing is I think the problem is there's a perception that Stern is a very big company because they're dealing with these licenses that are on a massive scale, right? But I'm realizing more and more it's still kind of mom and pop.
    40:10
    It's a higher level, but it's still, you know, these are enthusiasts. They're just as excited about the product as we are.
    40:18
    And they're still trying to figure this out. I mean, really think about it. When we're talking about Gomez, with Gomez, he said he wasn't brought on full time till like ACDC come out. Gary was still doing this kind of subcontracting out and wasn't until things started to really pick up at the beginning in 2010s. And so it's made me realize like this is all brand new regardless. For this last 15 years, it's something that hasn't been done in pinball before because of the home market. Well, to this level. To this level. Because, you know, you're going to get the, you know, the Gottliebs from the past. You're going to get Harry Williams. You're going to get all that kind of, you know, when they were making, you know, 50,000 games. But they were a very basic game. The hoops they have to jump through for these games is not even compared to what they went through for Humpty Dumpty. they didn't have to go to the licensor of Humpty Dumpty and make sure he sat on the wall but I think the process the thing that you need to take away from this is they're just as excited about this as we are but it's it's kind of uncharted territory they're still waiting through to figure a lot of this out and so there's from what can be from a community standpoint of like obvious answers and a lot of keyboard warriors saying hey this is how it should be because I work in marketing or I do this and that, you know, there's just not, some of it feels like there's straight answers. Like, no, this is just like cut and dry. But after hearing yesterday, there's a lot of gray area in a lot of this where it's like, well, you know, you guys are doing the best that you can. And a lot of the aspects may not all of it. Like I will definitely agree with that, but there's just no weird conspiracy of like life brand style equals world domination. like I've literally heard that over the last four weeks of like, yeah. Anyhow. Okay. Here's the bottom line. They are a company. Yeah. And their job is to sell pinball machines. Yep. And so it, it makes sense for them to try to reach all audiences and not to stratify based on political ideologies. Yep. Because that, that's not their business. Um, uh, just a couple of things. There's, they said there was a, 500 direct employees and 12,000 indirects when you add in all the subcontractors and the licensing and everything like that. So it is highly interconnected.
    42:44
    And you're not going to get 12,000 people who agree on anything. Yeah. But you can get 12,000 people to agree that they want to make a product and they want to sell it and they want to make some money. so I think overall I think your bottom line hits it spot on I gotta wrap this up we're actually jetting to the airport yeah so I just wanted to do a quick shout out it was great meeting all the content creators in person, Arcade Matt if you're listening dude it was awesome to meet you we had a great time talking with him Electric Bat was there and Rachel I'm sorry there was a Rachel, there was a Becca and there was a Rebecca so I kind of got confused there for a second Ian with Nudge Magazine you know we had Don from Don's Pinball Podcast Triple Rain Guys Triple Drain Guys, Jeff Teolis Jason Knapp, dude it was great to sit down and talk with you dude like awesome and Colin from Kinesis slash This Week in Pinball we've met before dude, awesome guy like I know that sometimes he gets short end of the stick in the media circle of things but he does a good job he's really good to sit down and talk with also Roper thank you for dealing with us all day. This is a gentleman that works there at Stern and he was just awesome. One more shout out to the, I'm sorry I didn't catch your name, it was a Ben, something like that, the guy that makes the badges. So for your insider connected, you know those sweet badges that you're getting? He was the one that drew Gomez. So like when you got your Gomez badge. You talked to him, I didn't talk to him. Really, really nice dude.
    44:21
    He's so enthusiastic. This is what I love about Stern. And I would say this is probably with every pinball company. The enthusiasm level is through the roof with these employees. That's something I wish I had in my industry. When I work with my company, if I could find people that are – it's hard to get excited about heating and air conditioning, right? But that's an advantage that Stern has and all these manufacturers have. You get people that love, love pinball. And it bleeds through in their personality and what they're saying. And it just – it's awesome. And so any other thoughts before I wrap this up and close this computer? No, I thought I, okay. The bottom line is they're trying to put forth the, the product that's going to sell to the most people and they are dealing with constraints just like any company is going to do, especially when you're dealing with the licensors that have a very jealous hold on the way their products is presented rightfully so. Or might not know exactly how their product has been presented in the past. We've learned that too.
    45:24
    So if you're listening, still listening at this point, thanks for sticking around. And we will do another recap because we do want to talk about our feelings on John Wick. A quick summary. I'd say a thumbs up. Yeah. Thumbs up. It's definitely up. It's, it has a lot of potential and thumbs up for whatever level you want. There wasn't a level that I thought that you would not like if you're on the fence. A pro is a great option because you can buy that, try it out and you could sell it on. I really think personally, speaking from a person from the community that is very price conscious, I think you're very, very happy with the pro if this is a game that you were on the fence with. Right. So go out and get it.
    46:06
    If you want to get ahold of us, we're loser kid pinball podcast at gmail.com on all the socials. It's at loser kid pinball. Remember that's go on YouTube, like subscribe, all that jazz.
    46:19
    Oh, you know what? I keep forgetting to plug. Silver Ball Swag slash Loser Kid. Play a product there if you haven't got sweet shoes. And we wore our shoes today. Yeah. Or yesterday. Yeah. We wore them out. So, hope to see you guys soon and hope to hear your feedback as well. Okay, and if you've played John Wick, let us know. And if you have a different, I want to see how the take changed between when you initially thought about it and then when you played it. Exactly. Alright, man. See you soon.
    46:51
    Thank you.