Let's go, Benji. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to episode two of the Dirty Pool podcast. I keep calling it Dirty Pool podcast. Someone said pool cast and I thought that was an excellent idea. Uh, I'm super excited about today. If you can see right over here, I'm gonna keep pointing the wrong direction. We have Bone Karens. I couldn't be more happy. Look at it. It's real. He's right there. It's Bow and Karens and we're talking pinball rule sets among other things. What's going on? Hey, it's great to be with you tonight. Uh, and I I love just geeking out about this stuff and I'm excited for the the kind of specifics of your audience compared to the the typical uh pinbally crowd. And uh it's been great to to I've worked on Bows of Fun with Labyrinth and with Dune now and excited for just all sorts of things in pinball. It's great. Life is good. Well, we have a very specific audience here, but pretty much everybody's just a pinball lover, which is really what matters. Uh I think a lot of things that people may not know about you, just to give a little bit of of history. Uh you started streaming with Papa maybe 12, 13 years ago. I remember at least 10 years ago, I was watching tournament play and tutorials that you were putting up on papa.org. Um, what what started when when did you sit there and you're like, you know what, I need to grab a camera and hang it over a piece of glass potentially shattering into a playfield and start putting this on the internet. Yeah. So, the history of Turney Cam uh actually goes to uh Keith Elwin and his brother Randy Elwin. uh they brought a top- down camera to uh mainly the California area tournaments in this was around 2010 2011. Uh Papa then purchased a a rig or I think three rigs to uh to put on top of their games in order to show the tournament footage live to the people that were in the audience. Uh there really wasn't any initial thought of like broadcasting that stuff either live on the internet or even to record it for the for YouTube or anything like that. It was just here's a camera. We're going to point it down at the game and we're going to put it live on these vertical monitors that are on either side of the game. Did Twitch even have a presence for Pinball Broadcast at that point or YouTube? No, they definitely did not. Uh, and uh, at that time what was amazing was if you were in a tournament final and it was broadcast, not broadcast, but it was just put on these cameras next to the game, the experience for the players was totally different. And for the audience, like if you wanted to see a skill move in a tournament final before, you had to basically like just cram your head and look at somebody's butt and try to see the corner of a flipper and hope to see what they were doing. And all of a sudden that changed. Um, there's a video uh recorded from Papa 13 of me making a a save on an Adams family machine and it was somebody's camera phone pointed at the monitor in the next to the Adams family. And so this this Jimmy shake which normally would have been like, "Oh yeah, that was a cool thing. I remember kind of doing that." All of a sudden became a a moment where the crowd erupted. Sure. You've got sports replay moments all of a sudden on a on a competition that generally never had a broadcast audience. Um we joked a little bit about I was Satan how important you were for kind of the the whatever origin of of pinball broadcasts and you're so humble about it but really I mean there was no other place to watch pinball. It's true. I the the real credit goes to Kevin Martin and Mark Steinman uh at Papa were uh setting up building acquiring that equipment and then uh I just I happened to become the face of this mainly because I was working in Pittsburgh off and on and so I I work in Pittsburgh and then at at night we just kind of go like all right what are we going to do and let's go let's go over to Papa and let's let's play some pinball and maybe record something And we we tried some some experimental things like we played the the four player game on Monster Bash and just yell at each other while we're playing it. But what emerged as fun or the most the most watchable was um what it is now the tutorials of me just playing one game live. Not live like live on Twitch, but just sure no no edits, no no edits, no recording, no part of the game where I open up the glass and start pushing buttons for 10 minutes. That's all boring. Uh and just playing through those games. And the first the first uh video of that kind was was posted at the end of 2011 uh Family Guy and we're now over 100 machines in I think and still making them. We just we just did a Spanish eyes as the last one and we've got a space station video in the can ready to go in the next few weeks. And at this point I'm recording them locally with uh Taiua uh of Pops Pinball as he's responsible for all the camera work and all the editing. And then we use uh Patreon to uh gather a little bit of money so I that I can pay him for the camera work and then I can pay both of us for the time we have to take to to do it. You'll have to give me that link so I can post it in the description. If you're if you're watching this and you have enjoyed watching Papa Tutorials forever and a half ago, man, help support the people. Man, setting up camera gear and doing all this stuff takes a lot of time and effort. And it certainly it certainly would be nice to help make that hurt a little bit less in the wallet for people dedicating that time. Uh, speaking of, I do want to roll back. Archimedes is saying, "Hi, dirty and high bone." Archimedes is a special shout out for this situation because Archimedes just got his PhD in mathematics and many people may not know that you have you have a bachelor's degree in math and that you have a a master's in teaching uh from uh from out from out on the east coast. how to We'll get into the rules stuff, but I'm curious if you think that getting a degree on teaching children helps make rules because you're kind of just teaching someone how to play a game through play. Oh, it absolutely does. Uh, and I mean, you can see in the tutorial videos, too, that that the first three minutes of a of a tutorial video are like, if I can only talk to you for 3 minutes, what am I going to say about how to play Family Guy? And that's that's what we do. And if I only have 10 minutes to tell you what to do, what am I going to do? And pinball is is that as well. When someone, my favorite example for this is World Cup soccer. If someone walks up to World Cup soccer and they've never played pinball before, they can look at the playfield and go like, "Oh, there's a cool goal looking thing over there. Wouldn't it be cool to send the ball there and see what happens?" Uh, and then they get that positive feedback for doing so. Then they also get these other experiences of of going for cities or going for goals or going for ultra modes or the other things that are in the game. Uh you have to grow those organically because that's all there is. There isn't there are videos. Sure. If I want to watch online how to how to play King Kong, that's great, but I don't want that. I want to go up and play a King Kong and just start beating the ball around and learn learn how to play from my own experience. Do you think there's a there's a correlation to user interface? You know, Apple products are a good example where the whole point of it visually is to help guide the user through that experience. Do you do you feel that rules a good rule set involves kind of that unspoken handholding uh transparent handholding I guess for lack of a better word? Oh yeah, absolutely. And uh furthermore, there have to be layers. Like there can't just be one layer of learning or someone will get bored with a game really fast. But there do have to be really clear things to do right from go that are also associated with the physical game. So it isn't even just the rules. It is the physical way that the the game is showing itself to you for the first time. It's like here's a giant dummy and its mouth opens. Oh, good. Maybe I should try to hit the Maybe I should try to hit the dummy in the mouth and see what happens. Oh, that cool thing happens. Now I'm going to play tons and tons of pinball trying to hit the ball in the mouth. And the mouth opens and just stays open when you when you get to midnight. Oh man, there's there's even another layer and another layer, another layer of this. The best games are able to explain themselves. Uh, and the worst games are the ones where you see something happen and there's either no feedback from the game about it or the feedback is confusing or it just just makes you go like I I don't know what what's going on here. And that that is the opposite experience. You're just like, goodness, why would I play this again? I hate it. I don't want to do this again. Unfortunately, there are games like that. That's hilarious. Speaking of speaking of games having errors, Dn D just crashed. Uh, amazing. Uh, yikes. Uh, I I don't want to use the term perfect, but do you feel that that the classic eras of games has an example of what you would consider a perfect rule set or one that is just so enjoyable that it really stands out among the others? Well, it's kind of hard to know what you mean by classic, but but if I look at say that the say up to early 90s. Yeah, like anything system 11 and early early uh you know matrix display games. Yeah, I mean in the '90s machines we're looking at things like Adam's family or um World Cup Soccer Attack from Mars games where everything is is understandable to you just from from the way and the from the lights and the and the inserts and the labels. Everything is clear. They're colorful. They're inter. They're very interactive. When I hit something and do something on those games, I get to I get to hear it. I feel it. I know that something happened. Now, as a rule set designer, are you responsible for inserts and other kind of like potential art assets to help direct the player? Uh, yes. Uh yeah, Phil Phil Grimaldi is the lead on rules on Dune and we all talked multiple times about what the potential was for how many arrows would be on each shot, where those arrows will be located, what the shape of the arrows is going to be, what the color of the arrows is going to be. Um if you if you get a chance to see the Dune artwork, like the the We can pull that up right now. fact, there's a very clear first there's there's also a very clear blue and orange um in the artwork and that is deliberately meant to tease out the nighttime daytime cycle of the world and the night the nighttime daytime cycle of the world is big in the rules. You advance the days. You can only do certain things during the daytime and certain things can only happen at night time. Um and furthermore, there are layers of this that were part of our process. cuz we like, "Oh, wouldn't it be nice to do this or have have a thing that also did this?" And then we we end up realizing that's too complicated or too hard to understand or too many layers. Uh, and you you wind up writing more rules than you think you actually than you're going to need and you then roll them back to a simpler version. So, so for example, using your daytime nighttime cycle as a element, right? Do you come up with this grander idea and then build the fundamentals underneath it or do you lay the fundamental rule sets down and then add a game specific unique one that goes on top? No, it goes the first way. Um I mean not every not every designer is going to do it that way. Uh but in my mind what you want to do is is take your take your environment your license and say all right what what are the really unique things about this license? So in Dune, it's the world. And what does the world have? It has these these worms that you have to uh carefully uh like respect, but try not to die, but also use them to your advantage. Uh it has the different times of day where where very different things happen and the entire planet looks completely different uh at at morning at night and uh what the activities these people follow and the way they use their resources is very careful. Uh all of that stuff then dictated the the fundamental rules. Um, do you wait until you know what the IP is and before diving into kind of what the like logic behind it is or do you kind of have ideas of kind of like this would make a cool rule system for something and then see if it can be kind of squeezed into the to the next project? Oh, it's never the second thing for me. But again, it's this is this is different for different people. Um, for me it's always like what have we got? And okay, we've got like one of my favorite examples of this is working on Rick and Morty several years ago for Spooky. We actually had a a problem uh that got solved by rules. The problem was that we weren't going to necessarily be able to have uh all of the different modes and adventures loaded into the game when it first went out and then Rick and Morty would have another season uh and then we would be able to maybe load in more. So, normally a playfield like an Adams family has all of the modes just labeled and inserts on the game like these are all the modes you're ever going to be able to play. And we're like, we clearly cannot do this because the nature of the IP and the nature of the way we are using the IP prevents us from doing this. So, what do we do? We want to have something in the middle of the game that represents progress, but it can't be individual uh individual adventures and event and the eventual result was the the Morty card. Uh and the Morty card would show you whether you won or lost a mode. Uh, and then as you progressed and filled up your Morty card, the last the last the tenth stamp was your stamp and allowed you to pick your adventure. And again, that's consistent with what happens in the actual show. Every 10th adventure is Mort's choice instead of Rick's choice. But every other time, Morty has no choice. And if you as a player are Morty, then you say, "I'm going to start an adventure." And And you don't get to choose your adventure. Rick chooses the adventure. Uh, so it will it will tell you you're doing this now, you're doing this now, you're doing this now. But when you get all 10, then you have access to choosing the adventure and you can pick any of the adventures in the entire game, including some that are only available for you in that moment because Rick would never like take you to prom. Uh, I don't know, man. If he drank enough, maybe he would. So that this is what I mean when you so I I think that good rules design is like that you you look at what you're working with and you say all right what what structures can we bring to bear that are interesting that are inspired by this this uh world that we're going to be sure motivated by the actual IP uh which is this is a good leadin because uh I would roller coasters who's a big fan of the show and a huge fan of of pinball and you demanded that I ask a question and I It's It's a little bit balanced here. He says, "How do you balance the order of events in a movie with the events the players take in the order of the game?" So, for example, he says like Jaws and Labyrinth have five or seven mid-mov modes, but how do you know what's critical to the order of the events to follow and do you try to follow what the events are in the movie? Okay, so the short answer here is you can't just follow the events of the movie in the order they happen. And the reason for that is that it's boring. the players will never see things that happen at the end of the movie because they they won't they'll be stuck doing the thing that's at the beginning of the mo movie over and over and over again. Um, and a pinball example of this is Dirty Harry. Now, Dirty Harry is set so that there there are seven modes, but they are played from bottom to top. And so, when you start your first mode, it is always um barroom roll and the second mode is always car chase. And what what and what happens with this is you have basically this the same overall gameplay every time you play Dirty Harry. And I think it's bad. It's boring for sure. It's boring and you will never you will not most players will generally not see the later modes. Whether those modes are more interesting or not is not really relevant. A good example of the opposite of that would be Indiana Jones Adventure, the the '9s one, where you've got all three movies are broken down into brackets of modes on the playfield, but there is enough randomization where you explore all of them kind of in any order. Sure. And within within Indiana Jones, there are four adventures per movie. And the the adventures are presented in in the movie order from left to right along the row, but nobody cares because they're able to access any of the 12 adventures. And it still respects the IP visually, too, which I think uh, you know, is neat. Mhm. Lord of the Rings did two two modes from each movie. Uh what was interesting at the time with the g when the game came out the third movie I don't think had come out yet. Uh and so like they it they had Attack of Shebop in there and that hadn't happened. Nobody knew what that actually was. Uh but and then when the movie happened they were able to then add the graphics to that because they they knew it was the the spider attack. I think I think Lord of the Rings is also a good example and this is to tie into Dune and then I want to reel it back because I have another question that's unrelated to Dune before we dive into that but uh in in Lord of the Rings for example the ward battle mode uh in the movie you know they have this one ward that kind of comes over the hill and they kill it and then all of a sudden a ton of wards come over it and in the game there's one mode lit on the left ramp that I'm sorry one shot lit on the left ramp where you kill that one wg and as soon as you kill that one then all of a sudden every shot on the playfield turns into a warg there that shows a type of synergy between what's going on in the game to respect the movie franchise or whatever the IP is. Is there do do you find that have you put things like that in in Labyrinth and in the other games? I mean, you've also worked on I think that not to to pull it too far away from my question, but you've also developed Final Resistance was a game you designed, which a lot of people say is Multimorphic's best game. I've heard it a few times. Um, which is subjective, I suppose, but in any event, did did you design I mean, I'll I'll agree with you on that, but every everything you do in the rules design, especially when it comes to to modes and battles and things like that, you have to be really carefully respectful to the IP both because these are the tightest places where people experience what the movie or what the the TV show or whatever it is that they have to offer. Um, so giving you an example from uh from Dune, there is a there is a mode called survive. Modes are just that they're just short short names, but they're the first half of that mode is uh Paul finding the voice when they're stuck in the helicopter and going to be killed by the hard harones. Um, and so each shot is a different pitched voice. And then if you if you if you're way off on your pitch, then the game will indicate like, okay, this entire side is wrong. So it's kind of like find the correct shot at its core, but it also is like, okay, you shot that, so all of these are wrong. Now go go that way, go higher, go lower, uh, more than anything else. And then once you find the correct shot, you you use the voice and then you're able to hit one more shot to escape. That's neat. This is the mode also that has the green lights when they're on the ornithopter, I believe. I think I saw this in one of the preview videos and a real example, you know, to plug some of Barrel's technology where the howlights and such really do. People have complained that the playfield is too brown, but I'm like the color is coming from a lot of what's going on with the dayight cycle and a lot of what the howlights are doing. And I think that whole sequence that they showed in brief was just really impressive. So I'm I'm curious to check that out for sure. Yeah, that's all right. We We use the colors uh we use the colors accurate to what's actually in that scene. Like if you if you look at the corresponding scene, uh the the color choices there are identical maybe, but they're they're really close to what the real colors are. Um, for sure. And so in this in the second half of that same that same mode and the way that the structure of uh modes there I like this I want the modes to be untimed but I hate the system of of untimed modes and time modes. I hate both time modes. You have the problem of people just saying I'm not interested and I'm just going to hold the ball on a flipper and wait 30 seconds. Timing out is the worst is the worst design thing a game can have is timing a mode out for sure. or people now timing out the Guardians of the Galaxy modes which are 150 seconds long each. It's uh it's a choice. Um so our so our choice is untimed, but then the problem with the untimed mode is you can get stuck in it. you can get halfway through a mode and and feel like you're not getting making any progress or that you're uh you're unable to finish it and you know you're going to be done with this and you're just you're just sick of it. Uh so we have every mode has two halves. There's a first the the first half is relatively simple. So the the voice you find the voice make find the one shot that's correct and then escape. Then it will offer you a cash jackpot, uh, a cash out or a chance to do the harder second half. And, uh, the second half in that same scene in the movie, they take over the hornopter and then they're they're but it's really low to the ground and they're in a storm and they have to they have to pilot it uh, even though part of it is broken to gain altitude and escape the storm. So that's the second half. You making ravs to escape the storm. make ramps as combos that you get more altitude than if you just make ramps. But um it plays a little like Flight of Icarus. Okay, once you once you've gain the altitude and again it's untimed you can cash it out for uh a big payout instead of a little payout. Um and if a player does get if the player does get stuck in the second half, well that that's you know you chose to be there sucker. So it doesn't feel as like I hate pinball and then all right I hate pinball but I I opted in. True. Uh I mean I feel like this is a pretty uh uh opt to segue into you keep mentioning about cashing out jackpots. I'm just kind of curious what it was like to be on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Well um the short answer is I had more hair and less more hair hair less hair here. Uh but also it's shockingly equal to what you think it's going to be like. The music you hear, it's there. The The sort of uh emptiness of the center where it is just you and just Regis and very little lighting. That's exactly what it feels like. And um also you're you're in this ridiculous adrenaline situation where you just you just want to to get up and scream or something like that, but you you can't cuz you're stuck in the chair. And my goal was to try to just make sure that I did as well as I did if I was at home. So you chose to cash out at the $32,000 mark. What was the question that you were like, I cannot do this? Well, you don't. I didn't actually because 32,000 is a safety a safety zone. So, okay, you I correctly answered questions to reach 32,000 which means which locks that in as a guarantee. And then at the 10th question, you can see the white there. Um the 11th question I got wrong. So, uh question was about so I got to keep my guarantee. It was like amazing as that was how much how much did you study for it? I guess is is an interesting interesting question. How do you even begin to study for for something like this? The answer is zero. There is no studying for who wants to be a millionaire. You can study for Jeopardy because you have an archive of 100,000 questions that Jeopardy has has played and they basically ask the same kind of questions over and over again. Millionaire uh at the time that I was on it, I was the 105th contestant. Oh wow. That's really early in the cycle. times times an average of 10 questions per player maybe. So there were a thousand questions ever asked on Millionaire at the time that I was on that show. Um so expecting to see like okay I know they're going to ask a question about this. I mean they are the the but I know they're going to ask a question about science. I know they're going to ask a question about math. I know they're going to ask a question about literature. I know they're going to question about uh Scully from the XFiles. No, you can't. you just you just go right um just yolo it and hope that it's on a topic that you think you can cover. Um so I had done a little research but you had you had covered in our like kind of pre-talk that uh you actually work as a statician and help help the people that are designing these games make sure that they're fair I guess isn't probably the right word but can you talk a little bit about your involvement in helping game shows be game shows? Yeah. So, I I work now um uh for about 25 different TV game shows uh for all the networks and the most recent being Deal and Ode Deal Island, which was on NBC. It's been on two seasons and a show for CBS called Loia Loca, both of which you can actually see in streaming now if you want to. And my job is to build the game and uh then mathematically analyze the game to make sure that it works the way they want it to. So they'll have they'll have a structure. Well, then I have a deal or no deal question because I have absolutely seen dealer no deal island. Do Do the producers do the producers know the value that there is there any math equation that they use to determine what offer they're going to give the player once they reach an offer point? Yes, that's my that's me. I made those. I made those. So, yes. Amazing. Yes, there is. That's amazing. And well, I mean, they need to have it live because I mean, do they have like uh milestones that they know the player is going to be at? And I guess they don't because they don't know what cases they're going to pick. Yeah. So, there's two answers for this particular question. one is that in the regular episodes uh where there were 12 cases they run basically a shortened version of of uh deal and no deal and there is a percentage of expected value at each level. So when you get to the first deal offer they're going to offer I I can't remember what the exact number are but I would guess it was around 25% of of expected value for the board then 50% of expected value for the board in the second try or whatever it is. Um the there is flexibility. So you don't have to actually offer the exact number that the computer spits up as this is this is what we recommend uh either to round it off or to use what happened in other games. So, for example, at one point an offer was supposed to be maybe 950,000 to a player uh and uh that that the producer decided, okay, we're going to offer $999,999 uh as as a call back to an earlier episode where someone had banked $1 for the entire That's that was an excellent episode. And I love that that became a gag through the rest of the episodes. Yep. And then later in the season when they were like, you know, I really liked it when everybody was saying blah blah $1. They actually offered later on it was like 950,000 and and $1 just just to be like cheeky about it and to bring that back. Um, and how can you not be cheeky reality TV? the flexibility the flexibility of the producer that the producers have to make those offers to be what they want and then also the the mathematics behind it to say this is what it approximately should be. my my job is as much about what those cases are and and yeah, I got to basically help them decide what's in each case for each episode for all 12 episodes, each season. Uh but also to manage the expectations of how players are going to behave when they're offered something that may give them a greater or lesser chance of surviving in the game. Sure. uh and to model the the predicted behaviors we see based either on what happened in other TV shows or what's happened in other seasons of this show or just our own guesses about what we think might happen. Sure. So then two follow-up questions on that. Are the cases actually randomized or do the producers like how do they determine where they place cases? Um, so I don't I don't know if I am allowed to say the exact answer to that, but the results is that no one knows anything. No one knows what is in any case number at any time in any episode. And there there were that otherwise he's right. You could tune the deals to say and then and then people watching the show and posting on Reddit are often they they just act like it's the opposite like oh they only offered them 400,000 because they knew the million was over there. It's like well they didn't know the million was over there. Reddit has a lot of opinions on things. That's why they gave them the choice to switch between these two cases because they knew this one had the million and then they were going to make them switch so that they would definitely lose. Everybody has a good one. The host doesn't know. The host doesn't know. The producers don't know. There's no way for the contestants to know. And I mean there's no one there isn't even there isn't even like any person who's involved in the process of setting that up that knows. That's crazy. So there's no there's no hope. Truly Truly double blind. I mean, it would ruin the game if it would ruin the game if somebody knew on some level because it would leak at some point. I mean, I've been involved in projects where stuff has been leaked and and it dangerously ruins either the reputation or the experience for the people involved. Um, I do have a pop quiz for you, though. Do you know what music video actress Courtney Cox appeared in? With which one of these rock stars? Yeah, this is this is you know what this the terrible thing about this question is I knew she was on Friends. I even knew she was on Misfits of Science, which come on man, nobody knows that. Um, but I was not an MTV kid. Like, so if you ask me anything about like uh all of that '8s music, I'm dead in the world. You don't want your MTV is what you're saying. I did want my MTV. I had family members who did not want me to have my MTV and then I I asked them to pay the difference in getting this question wrong and they Yeah, that's fair. They owe you. But you didn't get it wrong. Yeah. Um but I I had a phone call and I called someone who absolutely knew the answer to this, a uh a a guy who uh taught a course in American pop culture at a at uh the high school in Newton, Mass. And I was like, "All right, he's gotten your memory is shockingly good." As someone whose memory is not good at all, I'm I'm impressed that you remember this moment and what answer for which question it was. Was it such a memorable experience that you were just like it's like burned into your brain in terms of Yeah. I mean, this thing doesn't h it's been 25 years and I'm never going to gain any true perspective on it. Uh, like 30 million people watched me answer these questions all at the same time. Um, that's not right. That's just not a thing that even happens anymore except the Super Bowl. Um, I I had my picture on the front page of the New York Times 3 days later because they were doing an a a story about this brand new trend in reality TV shows like this new show that was coming out called Survivor next next summer. I think a few people have probably heard of Survivor. Like Like the the depth to which this thing happened uh was was insane. It's still insane and it's never going to really be understandable by me or uh it feels very surreal and I know it happened cuz I was there. But uh the one of the really odd things about it too was how fast it was that I found out that I would be on Millionaire on Monday. I flew to New York on Tuesday. It air it uh taped on Thursday and it aired on Sunday. Wow. Seven days. That's a wild That's a ride for a whole week. Hard to finish. Uh and just completely nuts. Uh that's really wild and what a what a not strange. Someone asked uh how do you even get into a job like that? Oh, Archimedes did in terms of being involved in uh game show statistics. Uh you know a guy who already works in game show statistics is basically the answer. My friend David Hammet in Los Angeles was a math teacher. I'd known him for over a decade. He worked on shows like Lingo and Greed and tons of other shows. Eventually, he was asked to work on a show that was going to going to need some computer simulation. And he told them that he didn't know how to do it, but he knew someone who could. And they brought me in to work on this show called National Bingo Night, which was awful, but you can see it on YouTube. But the statistics were great, right? The statistics were great for the parts where they actually did what they said they were going to do. Like we we worked on a couple of games there where here's the statistics and then they did an entirely different game that wasn't the game they told us they were going to do and then acted like the results we gave them were going to match. They're like they put up the game like oh yeah whoever's doing this game they're going to win because this is this is busted. And then they won. So yeah, I've been So I've been doing that uh on and off for I guess it's it's over 15 years now. And it's all just word of mouth. So what mainly gets me these jobs is my connections through to to specific production companies and specific people that I've worked for before. A new show comes along and they're like, "We need somebody to do this." And And someone says, "Oh, I know. I know. we worked with this person on this show and they did well so let's let's again amazing splickity splity jokes that so the same way you get any job then which is absolutely true it's who you know as long as you have the experience to back it up uh Archimedes also says sorry for derailing the pinball conversation you're not this is a conversation about Bowen and this is Bowen's life and that's that's what this absolutely is about we will get back to Dune in a second or pinball in general uh but uh all right what's then we'll we'll peace out. We're not going to talk We're not going to talk about the guy winning all that money on deal no deal island and how that happened. We can That was wild. Uh so if you don't know for dealer no deal island uh my wife watches a lot of trash TV and uh I get dragged into that and I've started to really embrace the game show aspect of it but uh this guy who had won Survivor Australia basically kept refusing the money deal when uh it was clearly the statistically right choice to get away with any money and instead he just kept kept not taking it to get more and more money. It was unbelievable. It really was. Uh, and he convinced he convinced himself that the money, the big money would either be in uh, case 18 or case seven. And these these number choices were very clear to him. Like he has a giant 18 tattooed on his back. Wow. Before he went in? No. Before he went in. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's like it was the the birth date of uh several of his kids and had a connection with his father as well. A lot of the people on that show use family member dates and stuff like that to to do their case selection. I've wondered if the producers had thought about that and and took the time, but knowing now that it's totally randomized, it kind of answers that it's completely randomized. That is the problem here. So his other his other case that the one the other case that he was convinced of was was case seven, which you know everybody has kind of lucky number seven effect. So seven is generally considered a lucky number. He during during his run in that finale said that seven was God's number to him. Mhm. I I didn't I don't know what that connection meant, but earlier in the season he had picked number seven as his personal case when he was playing the 1 through 12 games. He didn't pick 18 because there was no 18. Um but seven and 18 were his like go. And basically picture a person who just says it's going to be one of these two and that's it. Right. He's so he's so blindered tunnel vision on those two cases that it just is irrelevant what any of the other cases provide in terms of value. That player has a 2 in 26 chance of having that strategy succeed. Two in 20 26 being 1 in 13 is roughly uh 8%. A little less which is not terrible in terms of gambling but that's wild to risk that much money. Mhm. Well, when he's when he's that deep into it, it's not 8% anymore. It's It's 25% or the 33% or 50%. Because you you uh you only have certain outs, but from the very beginning of the game, it's 8% for that for one of those two to be the maximum case uh right from go. And that's just what he did. He He was like, I'm the golden god. I'm going to win this game. I'm going to take it all down and here we go. And he did it. So, and and he got his 8%. So, um and then interestingly when it got down to whether it's going to be 18 or seven, he just kind of said, "I'm not sure which one it is between these two, so I'm I'm done." Sure. Um but if if he were forced to pick one, I would guess he would probably pick 18, the one that tattooed on his back. And uh it turned out not to be that one. So the fact that that random process that deal no deal goes through put the big money in case number seven just coincidentally right wild statistically wild is exactly what led to this happening. Um all right so back to pinball fascinating by the way uh not knowing this depth I just love that you were specifically did that show just as something that I do know a handful about. Uh, Archimedes asks, he says, "Can you be the guy that I know so I can send you my email and get math TV gigs?" He did get his D PhD in applied math and watches a bunch of trash TV. I feel like I would do a disservice to one of the first Illuminati members of the cult of pinball by not asking you that. Sure. I don't know what I'll do with you'd have to you'd have to be good at something that I can't do though. So, sorry. There you go, Archimedes. There's your future job right there. Uh, Splickity is asking, "Is there more code coming for Labyrinth? Um, I don't know, but I'm I'm curious what you would have what you would expect because Labyrinth has six main modes, uh, four different wizard modes, uh, different multiballs, a special mode called Barrel Ball people can do to have a social a social fun game instead of playing playing individual pinball. We play barrel ball pretty often at on tilt when the tournaments are ending and people that have lost are waiting to do something. So it is it is a used mode for sure at on tilt. I can tell you for sure. Uh it's pretty neat. It involves going into scoops and trading players. It's It's pretty crazy. Yeah. It's inspired by Stall and uh Jess Donardo, one of one of the uh employees at uh uh AB Barrels and Eric Brookie, the programmer. And then we also worked in Tim Kitzrow, the voice of NBA Jam, who shouts at you while you're playing that game. It uh it works out. It's really fun. Totally. I think the friendship multiball has one of my favorite types of mechanics, which is where you can build and add multiple layers to the main multiball and then it changes how big it is once you initiate it. Um, definitely a favorite element of Labyrinth for me. Uh, would you consider that was a that was a cool rule to to build up where you're like, okay, we've got three jackpots in this mode and they're going to be built by the by the different characters. How do we want to build these so that it can grow? and we're like, "Oh, we could make them we can make the deck by one, two, three, four million if you're if you're uh at the levels." Like, that's not enough. When do you walk away from a game and be like, "The code's complete." Like, there's just this is there's nothing more I can do to this. How do you know? Um, this is this is a general rule for anyone working on any project. You don't at some point the project just says or the company just says or whatever the world just says, right? That's it. You don't get to do any more with this. If you get to a place where you're like, I'm satisfied and this is there's no more good work to be done here, then you messed up. You didn't do enough and you don't have enough good ideas to drive the project. We're not going to finish Dune because I mean, we are going to finish Dune, but we're not going to get everything that I want be in Dune and the other people want to be in Dune. We're never going to finish uh the projects other than to say, "All right, that's that's all the time you have on this. Let's get it done. Let's get it out the door so we can go back to working on Toy Story 5. So, it's funny you say that because I feel like Nice plug. I feel that it's funny the way you say that because that's the perspective of of a creative application, right? But you're working on something that is technical. It's mathematics. So, it's funny to me that I think that rules design is something that is a mathematical technical thing, but is also inherently a creative like application. I think it's far more of a creative application than people think of it think it is. Um, and you can look at games you love and games you hate and see the creative decisions being made in those games regarding rules and feedback and progression and uh see the positives and the negatives. So like there's there's a game from Stern from maybe 5 years ago now uh called with the Star Wars and people have a lovehate relation. Some people adore Star Wars. So it is a Steie playfield. So you got the fast flowing ramps and loops and it actually looks and feels a lot like AC/DC. It's AC/DC with a with a U-turn behind the left ramp. AC/DC in space. Spacey DC. spicy spicy I don't know high space um so divisible error is asking uh but uh oh sorry go ahead no I just mention about that is that the rules design there by Dwight Sullivan is about uh playfield uh shot multipliers and the shot multipliers are driven by hitting a target bank and increasing the multiplier and then and then using your action button to decide where to place the multiplier by turning it on turning it off moving it around. The shot multipliers are so valuable that they dictate everything that the player does. If you are not using the shot multipliers, you are going to lose to someone who is using the shot multipliers properly. So much so that the tournament mode had to limit how much the multiplier goes up. And a lot of players don't know that you can actually move the shots once you turn off the actual multiplier and to red. But it's clear that he must have taken or the rules designer based the entire application of the game around that concept to to our earlier point where you talked about coming up with a grand idea and then building the bottom layer. I'm assuming that must have been this. Yeah. And to me those grand ideas have to come from from the the IP itself. like there isn't anything that I associate with Star Wars and and attached to that that shot multiplier structure. I'm not saying it's a bad structure, but what I am saying is that it it ties the game to doing things in a particular way that are being pushed onto the player by the rules. And that that's going to happen in every game. So, like when you play Dune, I'm going to push you to play the game a certain way because of the day night cycle that's in there. You can only battle harvesters during the day. You can only do prophecy modes at night and vice versa. So, uh there is always going to be some pressing from the game to say what you can and can't accomplish, right? Uh but in some cases that is that is like pretty ownorous. Uh, and it can affect whether you enjoy that game or not. Uh, it's scary. You're making a decision early on. Like, like Dwight is one of the greatest pinball programmers of all time because of creativity in games is is just there. It's on point. It's always there. He did Sopranos. He did WHO dunnit? Uh, he's done he did Game of Thrones. He's done so many games with so much detail and in the concept and execution uh that that no one else is doing. Uh, and those things can be big swings. Uh, and if the big swing works, it's amazing. And if the big swing doesn't work, it can make people so pissed off at playing that machine that they won't want to come back and do it again. Sure. Um, I'm going to I'm going to plant this idea in your head from divisible error and then ask you a a question before that happens. So, Divisible is asking if you could walk us through what it is, thinking of a rule, implementing it, and then some of the like coding level uh process of that. just like what code looks like for not like super technical. You don't need to go into like C++ or C, you know, details. Uh but but before we get into that, I am curious what is is it a uh is the pressure on when you come up with that grand idea and you see that the game is going to be that direction, right? And you wonder like is this going to be accessible for a certain type of player? Am I excluding extremely good players or am I excluding extremely, you know, amateur players like Brass League gaming? Uh, is there just a way when you're designing it that when you've committed to the to the design concept? At what point are you like, this is where it's coming? Like the dayight cycle, this is going to be a feature, a baseline element of the game and we're running with it. Like I don't that's what everything's going to be based around and if they don't like it, they don't like the game. So, first of all, it's not just me. we got the whole team of people uh other creatives, other rules designers, other programmers, uh everybody else who is helping to make those decisions. So I think some of the grander uh weirdnesses that people propose, they don't make it because the other people on the team are like, are you sure you want to do this? Couldn't we do this? And hopefully you come up with an idea that's better than any any individual could by uh by collaborating. Um, ultimately though, you're exactly right. You can put structures in the machine that are a little divisive and can make people think that that they don't like the game. And uh, I I want to avoid that if I can. U, but ultimately, you do have to do things that are part of the IP like um, sorry about that. Like the giant prolapsed anus worm. Well, if you don't have a worm eating your pinball in the in the Dune pinball machine, you mess people are going to complain. That's That's it's got to be there. And And if you don't have good rules around that, like I'm able to call a thumper. I can call a thumper myself by using the action button as long as I've earned a thumper. But the thumper also happens automatically at other times. So the players who don't know or want to use the action buttons can still get that experience. Imagine if it was only on the action button and someone just said, "What does this button do?" I don't know. I'm not touching that. They would never see the worm. That would be a terrible decision. And I think the worm is really well integrated. It works off a mechanic that people are familiar with. I mean, it's similar to the Circus Voltater's uh ring master uh if you're not familiar with that game. Um also, it solves the problem of eating the ball. It allows the ball to move around the playfield in unique ways. I mean, it really is. You know, I don't think pinball should be that serious anyways. So, I think it's pretty funny that the the worm, it kind of looks like a butthole, but there's a lot of butthole games that I really love. Lord of the R, if we're going top three butthole games, Lord of the Rings, you know, Rush is up there. And I guess, you know, Tales of Arabian Knight, do you count that magnet as a butthole? What What happened? You forgot the best the best of all. You got the ship from Nero from the Star Trek. There you go. the by far the best butthole. Uh, all right. So, reeling it back. Let's Let's go through the code thing for Divisible before he unsubs. So, you hate my You're going to hate my answer about code. My answer about code is I don't care because I don't code. Uh, I go to Eric and I say, "Hey, hey, Eric, can we do this, please?" And then and then we and then we get it in the game and we test it and play it and we see what happens. So that's the best that's the best position to be in is you tell someone else to do it. Eric has been Eric is a fantastic programmer and he did I worked with him on Rick and Morty on Labyrinth on Dune and uh his quality of work is unparalleled. Um I think that I mean I have a picture of what it's going to what it's going to be like with the rules as implemented. But I think one of one of the things you don't anticipate is how a new rule might interact with the existing rules you already put into the machine and you might end up with some something that either blows up the score because two things together just just feed to each other or more likely they get confusing because you shoot a thing and it's supposed to be this thing but it's actually that thing and people are going to think it's that thing because it's got the same effect as this other version of that thing earlier and you realize you have to do it a different way with a different shot because the players are expecting the left ramp to always behave this way. So, one thing I've really One thing I've really loved about Barrel's games, and uh I don't know, please tell me if this is something that you're responsible for, but uh to me, Barrel's games look like they have a certain level of simplicity to them, but when you start playing them, you start to reveal like all of these shots that are both not necessarily hidden, but the pathways of the ball are way more complex than the game seems from initially like just looking at it. At least that definitely Labyrinth is like that. And from what I've seen him doing, I haven't played it yet. We just got it on till two days ago. I'm playing it tonight in three hours or less. So, I'm pretty excited. No, No, it is that way. Uh, we have a whole area. The entire right side of the game is pretty much um tied into the the siege mountain that uh the the Fman live in. One of the most threedimensional sculpts. I'm sorry, just to interrupt real quick. These sculpts are the best sculpts on any pinball machine. There is a level of three-dimensionality and depth and underglass feeling that no other game has. And this this is not a paid sponsorship at all. Since Since Flintstones since best rock since Flintstones, you've heard it right here. Uh, sorry. Continue. Um, I don't Oh, yeah. So, the right side has all these different shots that have multiple pathways to them. And so you'll shoot a ball through there and it'll come out somewhere perhaps unexpected. Uh, and it feels it feels good when that happens. You want there to be flow, but you also want there to be unusual things happening at regularly until you really get used to where everything is. Labyrinth was better at that than Dune is just simply because Labyrinth had these these maze-like pathways everywhere. Well, like if you look at the top right, the top right has all these different areas for the ball to travel through, and it's unclear where they're going to go in, where they're going to come out. And we can trap the ball there, too, with uh there's actually three different locking areas in that right side. Uh there's uh there's a lock in the mountain at the top of the ramp. Uh there's or a stop stopper anyway. There's a lock inside the little battlefields. And there's a there's a lock around the orbit where Manny can grab and drop the ball. It's funny. It's funny you mentioned that. I there was in the behind the scenes video that was produced that you guys did that's much longer. We did it on a live breakdown of it. And there's a part where they do the mountain's gone and you can see it. And I specifically call out I was like, "Oh my god, there's a magnet. There's a diverter in there. There's a there's a stopping pin." Like there's just so many ways to control the ball's path out of what seems like one shot. I just that's that's neat. I like that. Yeah, you want that. And it's not that hard to do, but you have to commit to it from the outset. Um, the thing that actually makes that that implementation the hardest is where are you going to put all of the optos, uh, all of the things that that trigger the poppers, any kind of solenoids that are that are back there, any kind of magnets that are back there, where where are they? Everything has to physically fit in the space. And uh simulation tools uh like uh Solid Works do a really good job of allowing us to figure out like, oh, okay, this is actually buildable using these tools. And we use just off-the-shelf tools. We're using the same tools that Williams was using in the in the '9s to make their games. I mean, some of the greatest pinball machines ever made from are from the 90s. So, if it worked, it should work now. We can eat the ball like Totan and we can jump the ball in the air like like Circus where Totan two great. We can also if you get the chance to we can we can pop the the worm up about halfway and with the ball held so it's not going anywhere and then use it as a bash toy. So there is there is uh more since that is since that is a spiral mechanic. It's a it's a rotary drive, right? Is Is there a risk of that mechanic becoming sternified? That's what I'm calling stuff that isn't properly tested and then breaks later uh when people are actually playing it. I don't know the exact number of cycles for testing, but I am extremely confident uh that there the testing on these things is is ridiculous in a good way. That's what it has to be cuz you're No one's going to buy this game unless they trust us to make it well and to make it work. Why should they? It's a lot of money. Uh that we need to prove ourselves every time. I couldn't agree more and I' I've been very vocal on the channel talking about how I think the inclusion of all of the stuff that uh David has chosen to include in the game in terms of like the halo lights, the expression system, the upgraded speakers, the fact that you get two LCD panels, the clear coating, I mean all the difference the topper like for the amount of money that is more and the fact that there is only one version of the game. I think it's a very consumerfriendly model and I think it's one that's one of the reasons why I was like I'm going to buy a Dune. I like the books and I really think that this company has people in in mind first about making really really quality pinball machines. So, but I'm looking forward to seeing if that's true. Now, the people working on this game, you got me and Phil Grimaldi from Houston uh on the rules. You've got Eric on the programming, the mechanical design uh from from Travis and everybody else in the team is uh the Q the QC of the people making the machines like this is this is that's really where it matters the most. You have we have a team of full-time dedicated people whose entire job is to make make Dune pinballs. So those are the same the same people who who had full-time job making the labyrinth pinballs. So one criticism I know that has existed from Labyrinth was that the flippers felt kind of soft or squishy and I remember feeling this at onilt. Do is the mechanism that is in Dune the exact same flipper mechanism or is that something that is people are just it's in their head and that the solenoids are the same as William solenoids? So yeah, the solenoids are the same as William solenoids. uh and we are continuing to work because there are multiple there are multiple ways that things like that can happen whether it's temperature whether it's board sure I mean the pulse the pulse length for how long the charges boards we have we have a lot of controls we have a lot of controls in the software for how it's going to work um and so so you can change the software but also one of the things that I think we attended to on Dune is not having uh super tall ramp shots. Uh so in Labyrinth, the left ramp is very tall. The right ramp is not as tall, but it's still taller than anything in Dune. And this allows us a couple things. One is you you don't have to have as much flipper strength to make all the shots. And two, you have more visibility on that second lower screen. So, you have more real estate there to do uh interactions with the ball, which I think that lower screen is such an awesome thing. A lot of people are like, why aren't other pinball manufacturers doing it? And my answer to that was like, well, this was designed from the ground up for barrels games. Like that that was just how their machines were designed and and just forcing a second screen into a pinball machine isn't like you just can't just throw it in there. like that would have to be designed in and those mysteries of what problems that causes would need to be resolved. So, it's definitely a thing that really sets the barrels games apart visually for sure. Uh, which is funny since I believe it was just on here. You can see it using as an example where it blows up one of the harvesters. Oh no, don't do it, man. Don't do it. This is a little past that. Yeah, this is this is worus out of me. There we go. It's It's still It's still guard time. Yeah, this one. But yeah, there's an example of it exploding after and then it explodes and then boom, it explodes onto the screen as well. Um, has there ever been a rule or a concept where you were just like, "Man, this is so cool." And it just didn't get implemented? Like, do you have a favorite rule set idea that just hit the floor? It just wasn't feasible based on the game's design, man. Um yeah. yeah. Well, I haven't done it yet, but uh I want to do it, which is um increasing the challenge of choosing to increase the challenge or payoff of things at the potential expense of losing losing your ball outright. Uh so, I thought the hand the box hand would make you lose your ball for real if you failed it. I'll play this mode for 10 million or play it for 100 million, but if I don't get the 100 million, I I die. And uh yeah, the well the the box thing is more like an outlane save uh issue kind of similar to the old um like like the the stuff on Wizard of Oz. So, you would have died otherwise and you have a chance to uh to make it up. Okay, cool. Um let's see. Let me check my notes real quick. And we've covered so much stuff. I love that we went from TV game shows back to Arachus. Um, what do you what makes a what makes a rule fun to watch versus fun to play? I think is an interesting concept. Don't know that. Um, for example, like there's there's rules that force you to do shots on the playfield that may like look neat, but they just aren't fun to execute because you're not getting points. And I have a question based on scoring too in terms of doing balanced scoring. And I think you could probably tie that one in cuz I mean getting points makes you feel good, right? But it's all an illusion other than the fact that you're gaining points. So what is it about? How do you balance a score around making it fun? Okay. So, I mean, I've got my own way ways on this. I'm sure everybody does differently, but I tend to to create a little pie and go like, "All right, let's imagine that this is the pie of someone getting just just getting to the replay score. How How did they get this pie?" And then use that to to try to balance the scoring for modes versus the scoring for multiballs versus the scoring skill shots versus the different aspects of scoring. Um, but one of the things that makes Iron Maiden is maybe the best example of this. Uh, you can play a mode on Iron Maiden and do terrible, but you can also play in a mode on any mode on Iron Maiden and just completely blow it up and pull off a great score in a fast way. And two ways that happens in Iron Maiden is one, the different shots can be worth different values depending on what else you've done. So you can in fear of the dark, you can make low value spinners, but you can also make really high value spinners. The sec the second being the um end of mode payoff for the uh soul shard where you can earn a bunch of the points back and then you combine all of that with having playfield multipliers and you can just break things open uh really well. So it all piggybacks together, but the the chance of there being some high reward for high risk is all part of that calculation. So and I think blowing a game up is really the ultimate ultimate pinball feels. When you do something and you just feel like, ah, yeah, I feel good. It can be associated not just with the points you got, but the sound effects, the the musical cues, the display cues, all those things can super work together in your favor uh right at that moment. And then you just end up remembering it because that was like but you have to do it yourself. It has to be something that the player caused to happen, not the game just kind of handed it to you. Like you never get that that happiness from a random award. You get that happiness from blasting blasting a uh a saucer. Sure. And I I don't think a lot of people realize that the moments that uh happen in pinball machines that give you those huge serotonin rushes are really like orchestrated moments. Like everything is designed around trying to give you that maximum payoff field, but you've worked for it. Unlike, you know, a casino machine where you're just putting quarters in and pulling it. like you've you've navigated and learned an entire list of rules and built up to try to get to this moment. Uh Archimedes asked a really good question. I do want to I know I know we're hitting a little over an hour, but I want to I want to ask this too. Uh he said, "Was there ever a discussion about using the Lynch film versus uh the Davidu one when it came to Dune as the IP choice for Dune?" Um I don't I don't know that. Um, I David Venice and uh Brian Savage were the ones who helped set up the relationship that we have now with Legendary Pictures. And uh I think I personally if I were to choose between those I would choose the Villanova films all the way. Interesting. Um okay both because that just the breadth of who's in these movies and we have access to everyone. Uh, so you're you're going to see you can see the back glass like we have all of these actors on the back glass and all of these all these folks are in the game uh with their their voice and their likeness. Um, and I mean, yeah, Patrick Stewart's great, but uh, Sting is cool, too, but we can make a Sting pinball machine. Sting's more than cool. That's right. Uh there's also just more to pick from in terms of action and excitement in the no way of films. Uh there there's uh I I don't know if I can say they're objectively better because that's not true. Anybody can decide that the Lynch films are fun, but if I were to say who who's going to buy an experience, I think more people are likely to to come in with the the new experience than with the old experience. Sure. I also don't know if Barrels wants to be known as the 80s pin manufacturer picking IPs that were only like childhood, you know, film franchises. Maybe Toy Story. Sure. I mean, we're going to do Gem and the Holograms next, right? Yeah. Bone joked about before anybody leaves here being like, "Oh, we got to confirm this, confirm that." Bone was joking about throwing a bunch of random fake fake news out there. Well, I'm just nipping it in the butt. There's no Toy Story 5. There's no gem in the holograms. Whoa. All snorks. This game actually has a Snork. So, I do love the details that exist in the barrels of fun games are really great. Like having the full fieries pop their head out and stuff on on Labyrinth. It's just that the details really matter in in when you're building an a piece of artwork like this. And I don't know. I think that's I mean lots of other companies make games that have details like that. I'm not exclusively saying Barrels is the only one that does it, but it shows that when a company is putting little details like that in there, like those mechanics took time and needed sculpts for it and artwork for it. It's not like they were just like, "Oh let's put this in." Well, that's that's the experience that people don't really think about. And And when I I've said this in some other interviews, when something is going right in pinball or in some other piece of of media like a video game, when something's going right, you don't think about any of it. It just goes it goes really right. when something's going wrong, it it in instantly registers to you that that it's not right. Uh and there can be a lot of different possibilities. It can be the video, it can be the audio, it can be the gameplay, it can be uh it could be just something particular about the the disconnection to the IP or something like that. It can be anything at all. Uh, so for a pinball machine to do a good job, all of those multiple aspects all have to be really right for you to get that that good experience. Full experience. Yeah, I'm grateful. How close do you think Dune is to that experience? Oh, we already have many of those experiences in the game. We just need more. Um, and we're continuing to add add finish out all the modes. Um, we haven't we haven't put uh we haven't opened up to the world that the work we're doing on the the wizard modes, but um I think things are going in the in the the really right direction and they're going to be complete in in the way that that Labyrinth has been complete. Yeah, there's no complete but of course of course do you I I feel like this is better improvements. I I feel like this is not an answerable question, but how do you have an idea when the final modes for the wizard mode would go in after the release of the game? Uh oh, I think we lost him. He dodged the question by cutting it. He He left. Uhoh. We'll see if we can get him back. Well, uh I guess I can hear you. All right. Yeah, it says my connection is unstable and I'm not sure why, but uh I don't know, but I you're back now. I think we're good. Answer to answer your question. I the the battle Jarth mode in Labyrinth went in probably about 6 months after the the initial uh the initial release of the game. So, that would be a reasonable guessable timeline, but uh I I don't know. Uh and then we we continue to to change and support support the game and do more for another six to nine months after that. So uh it's it is it is just something that's ongoing. Like sure if if the game that's out there now is the only version that anybody gets to play, I'm I'm kind of okay with that. It's got it's got a lot of good good action and the biggest things that happen like the worm and the battlefield and the different locks and the pain box and the fedaken like all of that stuff is in the game. Um, nice. It's just a matter of tuning and adding the details and a lot of those details are going to come from the modes and the audio and the video clips and so forth. Okay. As a sound designer, I totally get how important sound is and I feel like I'm so glad that Barrels is putting five and a quarter inch speakers in from the get-go. Um, all right. So, I I have two more questions for you and then uh thank you again so much for your time. If you don't know who this is, we're talking to Bow and Karen. I don't know why I'm doing the introduction so late in the in the broadcast, but we've got a whole boatload of people here that are listening and learning all about pinball rules. and I appreciate every single one of them have come and thank you Bowen for being a excellent excellent second guest on what is hopefully a future series of more more pinball interviews. Um, I asked Colin about the state of code coming out in games these days and about how the internet has created a both solution and a problem where by being able to update your game anywhere instead of having to burn new ROMs for it or you know UV wipe a ROM and redo it that people are being used as not beta testers for the game but to that they're being shipped an incomplete product and alternatively posted the idea that also you're giving the game out so that thousands or hundreds of people can experience it and then take those that feedback and shape the game to make it an even better product. Something that would never happen in the past where the game is basically shipped and it's done. So I'm curious, there's no wrong or right answer, but just what's your what's your opinion on that? Both just I know that you work for m multiple companies and this isn't a slight on barrels, but you know there's a lot of games coming out that have a lot of things that aren't in it. Sure. Uh, and the part of this nature is the is the nature of a production cycle versus a code cycle. So, how long are we going to be making Dunes for? The answer is a year. I mean, we've committed to to making all of them by the end of 2025. So, that's I read eight months. Uh, so we're going to be making Dunes for eight months. Now we can just we can write our code and work and sit on it for eight months and then just let it let it go then. But why do that? Like why not release new code every every month instead of releasing new code once at the end of 8 months? Um what actually happened like the Williams era is they would make prototype games. They would send the prototype games around and they would get feedback from arcades about how the prototype games were behaving and then make some mild changes to what the games were doing and then release those as the uh L1 which would be the uh the first uh release version of the games. Um the thing I don't think people really get a sense of is how much more complicated today's games are than the games from the '90s. Like if you go take a take a game that's from the 90s that people thought was really complicated which is Twilight Zone which I own and look at and look at it. Think about the software that's in Twilight Zone. How much is in there and how many different types of things are there to do and how long would it take to program all that and then release all obviously it's way more difficult because the the environment that the folks coding in the 90s were working in. Sure. It was way harder to build that game, but there's not that much. No, I mean you're looking at essentially 12 modes. You're looking at the one major wizard mode of enter the zone and you have your playfield for uh battling the power. Um but there's not a lot of interaction. You can bring modes the the power the the power fast lock multiball power ball multiball and then uh there's that one side channel uh super skill shot thing that is a little a little different than how the rest of the game operates. But yeah, the complexity for games is absolutely undeniable now compared to 10 20 years ago. So the so the complexity that people expect and the is just it's not possible to deliver a 100% complete experience if and people have been complaining about this for a long time. In fact about 15 years ago Stern listened to that they were the only manufacturer and they made games with less complicated rules and you got games like uh Iron Man. The depth of rules on Iron Man is is not there. There isn't any depth. No. And that whole period of games is criticized big time. I mean, first Avatar was Indiana Jones, the original Avatar, and I'm not Look, some of those games are really good. I love playing Iron Man, but the depth of code and the depth of the depth of work there was definitely influenced by uh the amount of time expected to take to ship a game, but also people saying like that they were angry about not getting code complete from from Go. And if people want games that are code complete from Go, they're going to get they're going to get that, but they're not going to be happy with it. Sure, I say just buy your game a year later. It's just pretend it gets released a year later and the problem magically disappears. You know, it's just not an issue. There There is a related issue which is that some games come out they're not complete and when you buy them you have sort of this tacit agreement that the game is going to become complete and then sometimes it doesn't because of factors like the game not selling very well or the I think people are worried about that with uh with Tim Ston leaving Stern. I mean, there's a few projects there that have been left kind of up in the air, and that's just I mean, people don't have to keep a job forever to finish a project. That's just life. So, but I that's a legit concern for a lot of people. You're committing that uh you're putting hope in that the project's going to be completed to your satisfaction without any kind of confirmation or guarantee. Uh yeah, and it's it's just a ton of effort. It really is. And I don't think there's a good answer to that. And I can speaking as someone working for barrels, all I can say is it's it's a huge trust issue. There's no reason for people to trust barrels. Just Just let us work and we'll do it. Um I mean, I think of that with Labyrinth to a large degree. That with Labyrinth, we proven that we're going to do it and we're proving that we're going to do it again. I I don't know. I but if if someone wants to wait a month or two months or whatever to buy a game, that's a totally reasonable decision that uh but I I do think people should buy Dune immediately right now. I mean, I got mine on the way. While there are while there are still Dunes, um because it is a limited run and uh but no, we we we're absolutely committed to doing good work with every game we make. Does every game need to be designed to have a 45 minute play like every Elwin game where it's just X just so long? Like I feel like there's a Yeah, that's I'm getting there. I feel like the idea that a short playing game can be fun is somehow being like squashed in the industry right now and I'm as a rules designer. How do you feel about that? Oh, abs. Yeah, it's Well, you just saw my facial reaction. Um, it was great. By the way, for people watching this as a podcast later, it looked like your mustache was like had a mind of its own. There's definitely some value in in recording an 80minute game of Godzilla and posting on the Papa channel, but value in playing for 10 minutes, feeling like you got somewhere and that satisfying things happened. There has to be depth because people who purchase games that cost $11,000 are going to expect depth. And that depth needs to be there. But at the same time, like the grind to try to get there is not fun. And we can make we can make choices in our rules design to try and reduce the amount of grind that happens or feel like things are happening for good reasons instead of just because you have to do this eight times. There you go. Awesome. Um, all right. I think I have other questions, but honestly, it's been this has been a nice long interview and I hope that maybe I can entice you to come back in the future when you're working on other projects and we can dive even more into the world of of rules design. Uh, I do have one question that we always kind of end the stream on. I'm assuming you have a collection of pinball machines. I have World Cup soccer. Nice. One is all you need. Well, if you were going to add another pinball machine to your collection, out of these three titles, which of these would you add? Hard body. Hard body. H. Well, as long as I can get my hands on a hard body, uh, that sounds good. Um, I have I have played a significant amount of hardbody at, uh, Chuck Webster's place in Wakefield, Mass. So, I will I will play a game of Hardbody for you tomorrow. I do have a quick second follow-up question. Do you think Thunderbirds is worse than Raven? Um, yes. All right. Unfortunately, because like Thunderbirds has one thing going for it and then it turns out it doesn't do anything. By the way, Thunderbirds and spelling International Rescue is the direct inspiration for Rick and Morty spelling Pirates of the Pancreas, which you one letter, which is one letter longer. So, it's 20 20 shots, I believe, instead of 19. It's 20 shots instead of 19. And it is possible to make all 20 shots within the time frame because it gives you a little extra time every time you make one. A good example of a rule that uh you know, works in the favor of completing the mode so the player doesn't get frustrated. Um, no, it doesn't it doesn't complete the mode, don't worry. Uh, amazing. Again, thank you so much for being a part of the second episode of our podcast. Bowen, I don't know if there's anything that you want to say or plug that uh you got going on in your life that you think is relevant for the pinball community or people that are fans of of you and your work. Take it away. Oh, it's just a it's an absolute pleasure to be able to work at Barrels of Fun. The team is amazing and I just like people that bear in mind how many different roles people have to play for a project like like ours to be successful. It is so many people deep so such variety of expertise. Uh but even to build even do things like building the assembly line properly like that matters that matters so much to the to the eventual quality of the games people receive and we have the right people doing those those roles. So my role is way simpler than what a lot of the folks at Barrels are doing and I'm proud well I think a lot of people here would be curious about some of those aspects. So, if uh if there's other people at Barrels that are interested in talking about the marketing or the line production of it, uh I' I'd want to talk to them. Awesome. So, all right, chat, you got a This is your last chance. Anybody want to ask a question? Also, would you consider yourself part of the pinball Illuminati now? Bowen, Illuminati. Yeah, that's our thing on the channel. We're the cult of pinball. Oh, I think. Would you like a bath? Yes. Yes. Give him a bath. Somebody give him a bath. Every time somebody follows or likes, we give them a bath. So, we're going to do a send off bath and then I'm going to hit the stop streaming button. Again, thank you so much again to Barrels of Fun and Bo and Karens for being on the stream. Thank you everybody who watched and uh enjoyed this. This will be available on video on demand. There's your bath right there hiding in the eyeball secretly hidden as a reward in the background. Welcome to the cult of pinball. Uh okay, have a great one.