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Episode 57 - Chuck Ernst (Stern Pinball)

Special When Lit·podcast_episode·1h 16m·analyzed·Jun 18, 2019
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TL;DR

Chuck Ernst discusses his path from Mortal Kombat to Stern as CG Art Director building pinball's visual effects team.

Summary

Chuck Ernst, CG Art Director at Stern Pinball, discusses his career trajectory from early computer graphics and video game development (Atari, Midway/Mortal Kombat) to joining Stern to build their motion graphics and animation team. He details how George Gomez recruited him to develop compelling screen content for pinball machines, his first projects (WWE, KISS), and his philosophy on integrating LCD displays without overshadowing the physical game experience.

Key Claims

  • Chuck Ernst is the CG Art Director at Stern Pinball, leading a team in motion graphics and animation for pinball screens

    high confidence · Chuck Ernst directly states this role early in the interview; he distinguishes it from traditional print art direction due to different skill sets

  • WWE was Stern's first playfield color screen, initially displaying only 'Stern' with plans to remove it until Ernst generated 14 movie clips for it

    high confidence · Chuck Ernst describes the WWE project as his first task at Stern, explaining how he created content to justify keeping the screen

  • George Gomez recruited Chuck Ernst directly after learning about his skills and Mortal Kombat experience, calling him back within 3-4 days with a job offer

    high confidence · Chuck Ernst recounts the phone conversation with George Gomez where he offered to build a team; Gomez called back days later with an offer

  • Chuck Ernst quit Mortal Kombat in February, forgoing spring bonuses that were a significant portion of game developer income

    high confidence · Ernst states: 'I quit in February. Oh, yeah. So I'm like, not the best time.'

  • Chuck Ernst spent 17 years working on Mortal Kombat, with his last work being early on Mortal Kombat 10

    high confidence · Ernst states: 'last one I worked on was Mortal Kombat 10' and earlier 'i ended up working on mortal kombat for 17 years'

  • George Gomez had been calling Ernst periodically since 1998 to discuss hiring criteria for screen animation talent

    high confidence · Ernst describes: 'I've known George since the beginning of Midway' in 1998, and 'he would call me up every once in a while'

  • There was significant gaming industry consolidation in Chicago in the 1980s-90s, with companies like Capcom, Data East, Konami, and others present before the industry dried up in the early 1990s

    medium confidence · Ernst and host discuss Chicago as a hub: 'every single game company in the planet was here' and 'like 20 that were here at one time'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'm the CG art director, for lack of a better term. And the reason that there is a separate term than art director is because there's two different, completely different skill sets at Stern. One is print and all the knowledge that goes into that, and it's institutional knowledge.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~10:00 — Defines his role and the distinction between print/mechanical art and computer graphics animation at Stern

  • “I've always loved pinball. I'm not good at it, but to me it's a fascinating world, right? You have toys. You've got engineering, crazy engineering...And it's an art piece, so it's like furniture that's art. It triggers all the buttons in my head of, like, this is something really neat.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~42:00 — Explains his attraction to pinball and why he pitched himself to George Gomez despite lack of pinball industry experience

  • “You could hire this guy. You might have to hire this guy or somebody with the skills, or you could just hire me and I will build you a team of people that can do it.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~43:30 — His pitch to George Gomez at Stern, offering to build a complete CG/animation team rather than just filling one position

  • “There was just a bonus in not working 80 hours a week. At the end of every game, it was like four months of just stupid.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~47:30 — Contrasts the brutal work culture of AAA game development with his transition to pinball

  • “The funny thing was, is I'm just used to doing this all the time. Editing videos, putting motion graphics and stuff. I'm like, that's what I do. And then people would come in and see the screen just, and they were like, it's magic. Look it, that's Hulk Hogan. He's on a little screen. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, this job's going to be easy. 20-hour work week, here we come.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~59:00 — Reflects on initial optimism working on WWE screen content before realizing scope was larger

  • “It wasn't just like, I drew this thing up, now you guys run with it. It was like he was out there spot welding. John Borg is out there with the spot welder.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~54:00 — Observes the hands-on design philosophy of pinball machine designers, contrasting with video game development

Entities

Chuck ErnstpersonGeorge GomezpersonStern PinballcompanyMidway GamescompanyMortal KombatproductAtaricompanyBanana Developmentcompany

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: George Gomez recruited Chuck Ernst from Mortal Kombat to build Stern's motion graphics and animation team; Ernst describes his role as building a team of specialists rather than filling a single position

    high · Ernst pitched: 'you could just hire me and I will build you a team of people that can do it' and George called back 3-4 days later with an offer

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern's intentional philosophy to prioritize game-under-glass aesthetic over immersive display-centric design; George Gomez was instrumental in this design decision

    high · Ernst states: 'Stern, in my opinion, did the right thing with the displays in that it wasn't all about the display...the game is under the glass. Let's not beat somebody over the head with it.'

  • ?

    product_launch: WWE was Stern's first playfield color LCD screen; initially designed to be removed due to lack of content until Ernst created 14 movie clips to justify its inclusion

    high · Ernst: 'the very first color screen they put on anything was on WWE, and it was on the play field. And it was doing nothing. It just said Stern on it...I ended up generating like 14 movie clips and things that could be put on the screen.'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Chicago was a major gaming industry hub in the 1980s-90s with approximately 20 companies including Capcom, Data East, Konami, and others; industry dried up in early 1990s

    medium · Ernst and host discuss: 'every single game company in the planet was here it was like capcom data east...there was like 20 that were here at one time'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern transitioned from DMD (dot matrix display) to LCD screens; KISS was still DMD era while WWE introduced playfield LCD

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.230

0:00
On episode number 57 of the Special When Lit Pinball Podcast, we sit down with Chuck Ernst from Stern Pinball. He's the computer graphics art director there, and we had a great time with Chuck. Very fun guy, very fun conversation, so sit back and relax. We're just getting started. Thanks for listening to Special When Lit Pinball Podcast. coming at you out of st charles illinois the special when lit pinball podcast starts now special when the pinball podcast is welcoming into the studio a very special guest bill absolutely right now this gentleman he didn't start in pinball he started on the gaming side things but he's got a lot of funny stories and he's got a lot of history he came over to stern pinball uh you know years ago but not not too long ago and right now he is the computer graphics art director at stern pinball special one lit pinball podcast welcomes mr chuck ernst to the show chuck thanks for coming in man welcome yep thanks for having me yeah good times how's it coincidence i was just in the neighborhood you're just just hanging out in st charles well you were driving by you saw some pinball machines in the driveway and you're like what I work on this stuff.
1:17
He's like the Google driver on a spare time for maps. He's just going up and down the streets. There's a discount liquor, and I'm like, oh, wait. Every time I move a place, it's close to a discount liquor. It's amazing. I think, Bill, you're close to one, too. Four houses away. Discount liquor is to Illinois as cigarette outlet store is to Indiana. Or fireworks outlet store, right? It's like, hey, whatever we can take. Throw a rock and you should hit it. Interestingly enough, you're not an Illinois resident right now, right? No. You live just across the border to the east of us. Yeah, to the Cheesest. Or to the west of us. The other east.
1:57
It's the opposite of east. Right. But, yeah, no, I lived in Illinois for 30 years, and four years of that was in Chicago, and then I moved down to the suburbs and did the family suburban thing.

Stern's approach to LCD displays prioritizes game-under-glass aesthetic and information conveyance over large immersive screens, with George Gomez instrumental in this design philosophy

high confidence · Ernst praises Stern's restraint: 'it wasn't all about the display...the game is under the glass' and 'George was instrumental in making that call'

  • “Stern, in my opinion, did the right thing with the displays in that it wasn't all about the display. It wasn't like, let's see how big of a TV we could get in the back box. It was very much like it's the convey the information, but the game is under the glass.”

    Chuck Ernst @ ~55:00 — Explains Stern's design philosophy for integrating displays while preserving the pinball aesthetic

    • WWEproduct
    KISSproduct
    John Borgperson
    Medieval Madnessproduct
    Brian Eddyperson
    Special When Lit Pinball Podcastorganization
    Greg Ferrisperson
    Steve Martinperson

    medium · Ernst: 'And for those that might not know, DMD stands for dot matrix display...and it was prior to what you see now with the LCDs to display scoring and animation' and notes KISS was 'still doing the DMD'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Chuck Ernst's expertise spans three distinct disciplines for pinball screens: motion graphics (flying fonts/logos), animation (creatures/characters), and high-res 2D interface design; Ernst built team to cover all three

    high · Ernst explains the skill set breakdown: 'there's motion graphics, then there's animation...then you have your just your your high-res 2d art like you know interfaces and things like that'

  • ?

    content_signal: Special When Lit Pinball Podcast Episode 57 featuring Chuck Ernst; informal long-form discussion of career and Stern operations

    high · Episode title and content structure; recorded in St. Charles, Illinois

  • ?

    industry_signal: Stern's approach to building the CG/animation team involved recruiting from outside pinball (video game industry); Ernst describes the challenge of identifying and recruiting specialists from multiple disciplines

    high · Ernst to George: 'you'd have to pluck somebody from a game company and kind of get them to do that kind of thing' before offering to build the entire team

  • ?

    gameplay_signal: Chuck Ernst, despite video game background, discovered pinball's rule depth and mode stacking rivaled video game complexity; was initially unaware of the sophisticated rule logic underlying modern pinball design

    high · Ernst: 'when I finally kind of caught on to like they were explaining all these rules and the modes and the sub modes and then the stacking of the modes. And I'm like, this is way deeper.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Chuck Ernst left Mortal Kombat at 17 years tenure due to unsustainable 80-hour work weeks and burnout; work-life quality and stability motivated pinball industry transition

    high · Ernst: 'There was just a bonus in not working 80 hours a week...And then shortly after that it's like we're back to discs' and 'My wife is like, Oh my God, you're so much happier.'

    • 2:13
    And then at one point my daughter decided she wanted to go to college in Madison, Wisconsin. And we're like, oh, okay. Well, my wife went to Madison, so she's like, oh, that's a great school. And then we found out that in-state and out-of-state tuitions are drastically different. Oh, yeah. So we were like, do we give the university a bunch of money or do we put it towards a house? Yeah. So I was driving home from work one day and went, I'm stuck in the traffic we were talking about going nowhere. And I went, I could be stuck in traffic and coming from Wisconsin, I could do this. So then we basically just moved right over the border and found a little community that's pretty laid back. Save a little on the college tuition as a Wisconsin resident. $20,000 a year. Oh, man, that's a couple of LEs.
    3:07
    Couples turn LEs, right? That's like a super LE Batman. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Well, and the thing about that is I'm sure your commute time didn't change a whole heck of a lot either by making that transition, depending on where you're at in Chicago. So, yeah. No, it pretty much is the same. Yeah. Or two Supreme machines. Oh, I don't know. Is it two? Can you get two Supremes for $20,000? Well, it'd be $80,000 over four years. Oh, yeah. That's two Supreme machines. How many of those do you have at your place?
    3:36
    I'm like doing the – do you remember – was that a Johnny Cash? Who's the one that did the – he worked at the auto plant, the song, where he's like smuggled out. He had a Cadillac. He had a 51, 52, 53 Cadillac, 54, 55, 56 Cadillac. So the story in the song is he worked at the GM plant for 10 years and smuggled out a Cadillac. Well, I left Kentucky back in 49 and went to Detroit working on assembly line. The first year they had me putting wheels on Cadillacs.
    4:07
    Every day I'd watch them beauties roll by and sometimes I'd hang my head and cry because I always wanted me one that was long and black.
    4:17
    One day I devised myself a plan that should be the envy of most any man. I'd sneak it out of there in the lunchbox in my hand. Now getting caught meant getting fired But I figured I'd have it all by the time I retired I'd have me a car worth at least a hundred grand I'd get it one piece at a time And it wouldn't cost me A piece at a time? A piece at a time. I'm like, I've got to do that with the Supreme. Just slowly, pockets full of Supreme parts. It's not a bad idea, actually. Hey, you're walking with kind of a hunch. I got this board to keep my back straight because I pulled it the other day. Because, I mean, you hear the stories of like a lot of that, and we're going to get into a little bit of your background career and then what's going on with you at Stern right now. But you hear stories of like machines being assembled by leftover parts at manufacturers before a company closed down. So I guess, Chuck, if you're smart, if you can just tour the line every couple weeks. Right, right. Get your mechs in place. Hey, look over there. Yeah, assemble at home. Shove the thing in a duffel bag. That's one heck of a lunch bag you have there. I feel guilty taking new flipper rubbers. Oh, yeah, right. Do I invoice these or whatever? That's a work expense. It's like a stapler that accidentally goes home with you. It's the flipper rubbers. Inventory shrinkage. Well, I mean, you're using it on games that you're coding and stuff. So, I mean, it's not really. Yeah. It is what it is. Repairing my machines at home. So let me ask you this, and we're going to do this in a couple parts. One, because this is a pinball podcast. can you let everybody know what it is that you do at Stern currently? Then we'll go into your past, and then we'll bring everybody up to speed as to what you've been working on. Okay. Well, I'm the CG art director, for lack of a better term.
    6:07
    And the reason that there is a separate term than art director is because there's two different, completely different skill sets at Stern. One is print and all the knowledge that goes into that, and it's institutional knowledge. There's no books. You know, everything is in Greg Ferris and Steve Martin's heads. They can look at something and go, oh, no, that's never going to work. We need this, and it needs to be trapped, or all the terms they have for that.
    6:32
    My specialty is the motion graphics that you see on the screens. Yes. And I have a long background with computer graphics, you know, 3D before anybody knew what 3D was, in animating and flying logos, you know, back in the... Oh, yeah. Back in the early 90s where everything was a flying logo and a lens flare. I was on that train. Yeah. Chicks dig it.
    6:59
    All the cool chicks dig it. What do you do? See this? It's curl. They love the long ball and 3D graphics like spinners. Look, sparks. Right.
    7:11
    And I came on board with Stern to kind of build a team of people that could do that, and I can identify people that are capable of doing that, or I know people that are, you know, so it's not just hiring people, but I know a ton of people in industry that I can contact and go, is this all, you know, I need this effect done. You know, what are you doing this weekend? And I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah, I can, I can do that or whatever. So it's, um, it's just basically just knowing how to get those things done is kind of why Stern, Stern hired me. So you're in the building, you're at Stern, but prior to getting hired there, I mean, you've got a pretty illustrious career that has been transpiring and unfolding over years and years and years, right? Quite the background. Yeah, it was – yeah.
    7:55
    As he laughs. Yeah. He has us all fooled. It's one of those things where like nothing – I'm going through this with my daughters right now. Like I'm trying not to worry because it was like, I don't know, man. I could go to prison or maybe make video games. It's one of those things. I love your choices there. Prison or living. Extremes, though. Like, okay, all right. No, but it was – so I was in college and working part-time at a car wash or something. And a friend of mine approached me and said, hey, are you still doing the computer thing? Because I was super geek in high school and wrote games and stuff in assembly language in my own time. This is a similar story to Dwight. He used to work – Very similar. Right, right. Well, actually, we're all – Dwight Sullivan. Yeah, we're all very similar stories, which is pretty funny. It's all self-taught. There wasn't books. So you just kind of like magazines and just tried stuff until you figured it out, and you're like, oh, I get it. So I'm like, oh, yeah, it sounds interesting. This company is hiring somebody. They're porting games from the Super Famicom to the PC and the Amiga and some other hardware that was out. And I'm like, oh, cool. So I had to write a demo to get the job. so i basically wrote a game to get get the job what company was it for do you remember uh yeah actually it was a company called banana development oh yeah banana the banana right interesting yeah the owner thought it was he read some bs marketing book where it's like three syllable companies take off it's a banana okay yeah that's perfect and the color yellow is good for marketing so i just blended everything in so i'm just like okay i don't you know self-help books and he was all about these you know tony robbins fly by night kind of deal yeah yeah tony robbins crap you know what does that guy know yeah what does that guy know anyways yeah but uh but yeah so i i i worked there i was coding and i was putting myself through school um through the art school uh i was gonna be an artist and then about a couple years into that i realized that artists there's a reason why they call them starving artists they they starve literally you It's like, I don't know if I want to live in a basement of a factory someplace.
    10:10
    I mean, you're planning for the absolute worst-case scenario. No, I am. He stayed out of jail to risk starvation. To live in a cardboard box somewhere. I get it. I like the art end of things, but I was looking at things like I've got to pay for cars and insurance and teeth.
    10:29
    Responsibilities. so so i ended up programming for a while and uh and i found myself at atari um which used to be located here in lombard in illinois um back when every single game company in the planet was here it was like capcom data east uh you know uh jellico you know konami jellico i forgot about jellico i remember bases loaded playing that game right yeah they were here in northbrook it's amazing when you think about all the companies that have come out of gaming coming out of Chicago. There was like 20 that were here at one time. Like, so whenever you needed to get a contract or something, you could always find a company here. Yeah. And then, um, and then like the early nineties, everything dried up and, uh, and they were all here because a lot of the, the original arcade companies were here because of the transportation hub that is Chicago. And so they all just moved here because that's where people knew how to make games. and um and so then after that i um i was working at atari and i started to kind of see that the future was 3d and we were doing a lot of fake i was doing programming the atari links and we were doing a lot of fake 3d on that a lot of like doom ash doomish kind of the links was the handheld system right handheld system still still to this day a far superior handheld system it was amazing It is amazing. And it was Atari's thing to lose. They were so ahead, but they were just so screwed up. Yeah. But yeah, and then I realized, I'm like, sorry, I started playing around with 3D animation, and then all of a sudden, everything changed. The PlayStation came out, and everybody was like, how do we do 3D? And I just happened to know how to do 3D. So I switched over for programming over to complete 3D animation, modeling, and that kind of thing. And then I had to train people on how to do it. So there was no schools. There was no books. There was nothing. It was all just like, no, it's all 3D. Go. And the companies didn't do anything to help. So you're a tremendous asset at that point because you're able to train or develop a protege, so to speak, with your knowledge? Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like UV mapping and things like that. I don't know if you guys are super familiar with that at all, but there was whole – it was all just like Wild West. Like nobody knew how to do anything. So whatever way you did it and if it looked good on the screen, you were successful. Yeah. And the other thing is I spoke programmer too. So like artists would like not have a clue and I could explain it like how the computer thinks and looks at your thing. Okay. This is why we do it this way because on the screen it needs to do this and you have to do this and there's too much math. So you need to get the number of polygons down to, you know, like just that kind of kind of thing.
    13:17
    Yeah. So then then and then shortly after there, there's there's a couple other companies like THQ and a couple other. I bounced around for a while. Sega.
    13:27
    What Sega was trying really hard to hold on to the whole game industry. And then in 1998, I had an opportunity to work for Midway to make arcade machines. Right. Wow. And so that's like Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam kind of territory, right? Right. Right. Just a little after, right? No, it was. Well, yeah, it was right after NBA Jam. But Mortal Kombat 4 just came out. Yeah. Yeah. And and, you know, it's one of those things where like, you know, never meet your heroes kind of thing. Like when I was a kid, I'm like, oh, my God, these guys are geniuses. And you show up and they're like, just as screwed up as you are. I've had that happen in pinball, actually. You're like, oh, we're hesitant to meet you tonight, Chuck. I'm not going to lie to you. You haven't disappointed yet, though. They're like, oh, my God, nobody knows what they're doing? This is great. I'm going to fit right in. That's awesome.
    14:17
    This is Island of Misfit Toys, and I'm here. It's perfect. Yeah, no, it was cool because you made a thing, like a big thing you sat in, and it rumbled, and it had cool sound, and it did all kinds of cool stuff. Things that you can't put on a console or a handheld game. Now you're creating like an environment almost. Right. And the lights, it's really important for readability on the dashboard. Like the game I worked on was called Cart Fury. It was a cart racing.
    14:46
    And it was cool because four people were playing against each other. And it was a really special time where I'm like, this is a cool thing. Like finally grandma would understand what I do for a living. If I was like, grandma, I made this thing. Oh, that's a thing. Where I used to be like, I made this disc. Right, what the hell is that? you know right it's a coaster right right and then sure enough shortly after that it's like we're back to discs yeah you know that's true you know the arcade thing just dried up and it was an interesting um it was an interesting going from where you make a game on the playstation and there was you know all these marketing guys ago you have to have 40 hours of gameplay otherwise people would consider it a a loss of money right it was just like this this game was garbage because I only you know I beat it in 30 hours or something where arcade was like it has to suck a quarter every two minutes yeah and but you know no longer than two and a half minutes but get it close to two minutes because anything under that like you know the the dad racing his son is like this game's just stealing me stealing money exactly so there's a psychological stuff that was you know just years of of of research that they put into you know the psychology of of stealing quarters from people it's it's a it's interesting though i mean because as somebody that grew up like in arcades and stuff like that i mean absolutely was right like if you had games that were just too hard you walked away from them if you did if that quarter did not give you enjoyment for at least a couple minutes um yeah and were you always gravitated to the machine that you got the most bang for buck out of yeah for sure oh yeah yeah for me that was uh my favorite game uh was gravitar which nobody would play yeah so it was always open yeah but i was actually fairly good at it um i don't you know tanya kleiss yeah tanya's been i've got his gravitar uh in my in my house oh yeah that's awesome you want to would you store it for me i'm like absolutely i'll store the hell out of that thing yeah they'll have new joysticks when you come back but you know hey man i'll be well taken care of and loved tanya's got extra pins laying around he needs to be fostered i've got i got some extra slots over here too so i think he's got a asteroids deluxe in his garage that he doesn't want out there, so you might want to hit him up for that. Ooh, I don't know if I want an Asteroid. That's a big game, man. Asteroid Deluxe. We tried moving it, and I'm like, guess what? This is staying here. Yeah, no, that's when you sell the house. Asteroid Deluxe is the bonus. And the pool table. Yeah, pool table. Under a cover, though. Yeah, you don't want, you know. I love some boxes back there. Don't worry about it. I was always into, like, the sport games, so I liked an NBA Jam. I liked an Arch Rivals. I liked a Cyberball, like those kinds of games where it's like you almost felt like because you were good with hand-eye coordination and knew the rules that you could extend your playing time even longer and i'm sure it wasn't the case it just made me feel better about myself because it was sports and i was in the sports well well did you play against other people no i would always play against the computer the computer yeah yeah because didn't have a lot of friends there chuck that's why so i was in the arcades funny i had to play the computer solitaire is the loneliest game but uh no the there was there was also another completely when they when they could get as many people playing the one machine as possible a completely different um economic math came into play with that like a super off-road or a teenage mutant turtles yeah if you could get four people in one and a half arcade machine space oh they were like oh this is bonus and then they would actually do that they would throw a bone they would they would extend the gameplay because they could because there's four people basically playing one machine right so those were the games that were perceived as like oh i could play you know forever on this game well yeah because you're you're milking somebody yeah right exactly you know and uh and and it's funny because i um i i whenever you're playing a game like mortal combat and some 12 year old kid comes up just mops you yep i'm like that's it you know i'm not playing it ever again don't get me started you know that happens if i join like screw you yeah it's like see right mortal combat was popular when i was growing up the original one then street fighter to you know i mean right now they're big yeah um but i sucked at both of them and there was an adams family um at the store next door so i always went next door and played pinball because everyone kicked my ass and fighting right now i'm i'm terrible at it which is funny because i ended up working on mortal kombat for 17 years do you are you a fan of mortal kombat now like can you sit down in front of like a mortal kombat 4 and and take care of some business no no no i know i I worse at that than I am at Black Knight So this is funny It sad Sort of rage But I have a lot of respect for that whole I mean they invented and I sure when they were doing it they were just like like Ged Boone and Tobias and those guys were all like God I hope this sells So they're like, so what's the story? I don't know. I'll make it up on the way to work. Yeah, like there was no, they were just basically kind of spoofing every B-movie ever made, and then it just took off. So, and then it's just been, it's just a juggernaut. That thing is just. It's like catching lightning in a bottle, so to speak. Oh, right. Right? I mean, you just, you come up with this concept, and it just takes off. I mean, and how many, you're looking now on the consoles, you're at like Mortal Kombat 10. 11. 11, yeah. So, I mean, it's been around for a long, long time. Yeah, last one I worked on was Mortal Kombat 10. Wow. Okay. And I was just really early on that when I left.
    20:07
    But, yeah, so I guess we'll segue into – because pretty much Mortal Kombat was the last game I worked on. So why was that the last game? Why did you transition out of video gaming?
    20:18
    One, I've known George since the beginning of Midway. And that's George Gomez. George Gomez from 98. And George basically, like, clued me in really early on and said, hey, we're putting these screens on these things. and we need compelling content for these screens. And, you know, there were some people that were like, well, it's just colored dots. You know, like, no, it's not. It requires more than, you know, that same skill set. So he would call me up every once in a while and go like, hey, so, like, what am I looking for when I want to hire somebody to do this? You know, he had basically had a little pixel pushers that he's dealt with, you know, over the years and, um, what I call pixel pushers, they call them dot guys. But, um, so I, I would just, I would, I would talk to him every couple of weeks. I would talk to him about like, you know, there's, there's motion graphics, then there's animation. And that's not the same thing. Motion graphics is a lot of flying fonts and, you know, logos and things like that. That's considered motion graphics. And then you have animation, which is like your Jurassic park stuff or, you know, you know, creatures and things that I see on the screen sure and then you have your just your your high-res 2d art like you know interfaces and things like that so there's interface design it's a little bit different than these other things so you kind of have you have to find people that are good at all of these things and you know and you know after talking to them or multiple right right right because i don't think you'd find anyone that was truly good at all three right off the bat right so so after i was talking to him about it And in the middle of the conversation, I'm like, God, I feel like this is – you know, like George is like kind of screwed because you just – it's hard to hire people to do that and to ask them to go to pinball. Like, you know, it's like you'd have to pluck somebody from a game company and kind of get them to do that kind of thing. And I've always loved pinball. I'm not good at it, but to me it's a fascinating world, right? You have toys. You've got engineering, crazy engineering. A lot of people don't really appreciate the engineering that goes into it. And it's an art piece, so it's like furniture that's art. It triggers all the buttons in my head of, like, this is something really neat. Yeah. And so I finally said to George, I'm like, you could hire this guy. You might have to hire this guy or somebody with the skills, or you could just hire me and I will build you a team of people that can do it. And he was like, are you serious? I'm like, yeah. He's like, all right, let me get on the phone with some people and I'll call you right back. Like a jackpot. Just made his hiring process simple. Three or four days later, he called me up and he said, all right, we've got to make this happen. Like just when can you start kind of thing. Yeah. Which was kind of bad timing because a good portion of Mortal Kombat's income from that game is based on bonuses.
    23:14
    And so bonuses come in the spring. and I quit in February. Oh, yeah. So I'm like, not the best time. So I was like, God, dude, that kind of sucked. That does suck. You had to negotiate that bonus package into your hiring package with Stern, right? With George? But there was just a bonus in not working 80 hours a week. At the end of every game, it was like four months of just stupid. And my job on Mortal Kombat was pretty – I did a lot of blood and guts. was my thing you know physics of it like oh no you know he's got a jump rope his intestines okay i'll do the intestine jump rope trick and the and the and the splats and the blood and the whatever uh organs falling out of people things like that so um it just came naturally to you chuck right well i knew how to do all the physics simulations and you know and and rigging and that kind of thing so i did a lot of my my job is mostly technical um you know technical art taking somebody else's art and then making it work. Um, and then towards the end, I ended up doing a lot of like, it was a lot of outsourcing, handling outsourcers kind of thing. Um, but the, the upside of this is, you know, my wife is like, Oh my God, you're so much happier. Yeah. Good. Cause I wasn't killing myself. Right. Uh, and I was getting too old too. It was like, you know, sleeping under your desk in your fifties is just, it's not ideal. No, it's not uncomfortable it's not a good it's not a good look um but uh but yeah so sleeping under a podcast table in your 40s isn't the best thing for you either i'll tell you that much but sometimes you can make it work yeah sometimes you have to make it work yeah with or without vomit right it depends that's a personal preference just depending on the night that's exactly right yeah so yeah so it's um so basically i came to stern and and like i was telling you earlier the very first thing and I kind of walk in, and they were like, the very first color screen they put on anything was on WWE, and it was on the play field. And it was doing nothing. It just said Stern on it. And they were like, yeah, they're going to take the screen out because there's nothing to put on the screen, so it's kind of looking dumb. And they were like, can you see what you can do with this? So I ended up generating like 14 movie clips and things that could be put on the screen. Right, right. And then it was like, oh, okay, so everybody kind of saw the future. Yeah. But it took us a while to get started, to get the LCD screen and the hardware right.
    25:41
    Stern, in my opinion, did the right thing with the displays in that it wasn't all about the display. It wasn't like, let's see how big of a TV we could get in the back box. It was very much like it's the convey the information, but the game is under the glass. Let's not beat somebody over the head with it. And you still retain the glass art aesthetic because it is an art piece of furniture. So when you turn off all the lights, you still want to see some art and not just a big black surface. And so George was instrumental in making that call. But when you got on WWE, I mean, when was the last time you had been in front of a pinball machine? Was it like 90s Bally Williams type games? Yeah, it was like mid-90s, easily. It was a while. So what did you think of how pinball had transformed or arguably evolved to WWE? Yeah, probably the game that I remember the most was Medieval Madness. Oh, yeah. A little Brian Eddy design. Yeah, and that was one of the things where I'm like, oh, my gosh, the castle. You knock the castle down.
    26:49
    One of the funnest things in pinball to do, right? Right, yeah. So I was kind of aware of the whole – a lot of the gimmicky parts of it. But what I wasn't aware of is all of the rules. Like I shoot the lights, and that's my thing. Right, and you flip the survive and aim at what's blinking, right? Right, exactly. And then when I finally kind of caught on to like they were explaining all these rules and the modes and the sub modes and then the stacking of the modes. And I'm like, this is way deeper. Like, yeah, this is like video game level logic, not just, you know, whatever, you know. So it was that that was fascinating to me that there was this whole other thing I knew nothing about. And that's what took a while to kind of get up to speed. Right. And and it was interesting in that they would you'd see a pinball machine and not like and you see the development of the pinball machine. and you would see the actual designer taking up pliers and bending things. It wasn't just like, I drew this thing up, now you guys run with it. It was like he was out there spot welding. John Borg is out there with the spot welder.
    28:01
    And then he's putting pieces together. Tweaking. Yeah, no, it was like, actually, you could lose fingers. It's been a while since. I'm like, my dad would have been proud if I would have lost my finger at my new job.
    28:14
    He worked as a machinist. So, so what WWE, so you, you did the small screen on WWE. Right. And so when that's done, are you like, I knocked it out of the park here? What do you think? Well, I was just like, I shouldn't say this, but the guys will laugh actually. Cause I've said it, I've said it to them, but I'm like, the funny thing was, is I'm just used to doing this all the time. Editing videos, putting motion graphics and stuff. I'm like, that's what I do. And then people would come in and see the screen just, and they were like, it's magic. Look it, that's Hulk Hogan. He's on a little screen. Yeah. And I'm like, wow, this job's going to be easy.
    28:55
    20-hour work week, here we come. Right, right. Just pulling this one right in. But it wasn't easy for long. And then the next thing I worked on was KISS. Yeah. The KISS was down. And we're still in the DMD era at this point with KISS. Yeah, we're still doing the DMD. And for those that might not know, DMD stands for dot matrix display. and it was prior to what you see now with the LCDs to display scoring and animation. It's a big red dot. And the jingling of ice you're hearing is we're all partaking in beverages here. So this is our laid-back interview. We're bringing you better content. We're bringing Friday to Monday.
    29:32
    This will upload in two weeks when we all wake up from under the table. That's awesome. But, yeah, so, no, KISS was interesting in that it was one of these accelerated schedule things. It was like, you know, when I got there, Stern had a lot of plates spinning, you know, like pinball was just starting to take off again. We were trying to manufacture as many machines as possible, and it was a lot of – and our office space was cramped. There was like five of us in a 20-by-20 room, you know, or not even 20-by-20, probably 14-by-14 or whatever just packed in there.
    30:06
    Because you were back in Melrose Park. Yeah. It wasn't the new Elk Grove facility. Yeah. Yeah, it was like basically I didn't have – my desk was three feet wide, so there wasn't room to put another monitor side by side, so you just go vertical. So there would be just monitors doing this. Picture on a picture. Yeah, it was like you're in a cockpit just going up and over. But what with the KISS machine was interesting in that because it was an accelerated schedule, we had to get approvals from KISS on a machine that wasn't real yet. So they had to see something. So the second thing I did that was probably really what I do is I did a virtual pinball machine. I took the kiss head that you saw that sculpt from Dave Link, and I 3D scanned it at home and placed it on a play field, and basically extruded a CAD file of the play field and imported parts and everything and just kind of skinned it to kind of show what gameplay, how the rules would operate things and how the ball would come out and how to light lights. Was this a working virtual pin that you made, or was it just more like CAD drawing 3D renderings? It was all just 3D renderings. Okay, I got you. But I had to fake the ball, so I'd do physics bouncing off of stuff. Yeah. And just so they kind of had no idea what we were making because it was like, I'm like, see, this display effect ties to this thing that happened in the play field. So I would have to show them a fake DMD display with a fake play field to kind of show how things, you know, when we say this, it causes this to happen. Right. Not something that's still being worked out, and you don't know if that's actually going to transpire or not. You're just rolling the dice and hoping for the best. Right. There was no production parts of, you know, of the star chamber area or how the magnet would carry the ball. None of that stuff existed yet. So I kind of mocked up like a fake version of it. So everybody goes, oh, I get what we're doing here, you know. So I recently showed the new guys at work that piece, and they were like, that's crazy, just for an approval? It was like a week and a half, two weeks worth of work just to have somebody go, oh, and then that was it. We're learning more and more now with licensors that can get extremely complicated and finicky, so I get it. The tough thing with the licensure thing is 20 years ago, they looked at it like it was advertising. You put a Dodge Ram, like, hey, can we put your Dodge Ram truck in our video game? And they're like, cool, somebody likes our Dodge Ram. Yeah. And now everybody wants a piece of everything. They think that if it's on a screen, it's making millions of dollars. And so licensing has gotten really complicated.
    32:44
    And everybody, like, you know, recording artists, they're not making money selling albums anymore. So everything is all like, oh, yeah, like, where's my cut? Show me the money. Yeah, exactly. So licensing music is terrible now. now it's just you know whenever you know it's funny when you read like some of the online stuff where he's like why didn't they get the whatever song i'm like because that cost more than the whole game you know like right you know it's like it's frustrating just you know and i don't and i want to chime in because it's not it's like whatever but uh but the uh it is it is really frustrating to watch a lot of those conversations happen with like you know the string guys are so stupid i would have done this i'm like yeah well we thought of that and that didn't happen because of this, this, this. You can't explain it. It's not that you're stupid. It's that your hands are tied. Right, right. Nothing you can do about it. We're dumb, but we're not that dumb. Monetary limits dictate a lot of that stuff. I mean, you guys still got to make money. You got lights and payroll, and anyone that's walked through the factory, you got people to pay. Right. Yeah, exactly. And microwaves to run. That's true. I mean, that's a wall of microwaves. Yeah. That was my wife's favorite takeaway when she first toured the planet. She's like, that's a lot of microwaves. That's a lot. Yeah, it's a well-oiled machine there. that whole the the assembly line is is the craziest thing like things are like manufactured in america like that thing is being built and shipped out you know and it was just so it's all hand done i mean there's not any real automation going on there with with assembly on the line and coming from an industry where your game only sells for four weeks and then it's pirated in russia yeah in two seconds it was like go ahead pirate that one yeah right yeah pirate this whole thing i dare you you know it's like it costs you more just to buy the parts at like home depot just the wood yeah that's it would exactly like yeah no it's not that it's it's it's got a built-in you know copy protection in the fact that it's impossible to make one right there are no knockoff kiss le's coming from overseas right k-i-s-s-s kaias kaias le yeah so but yeah Yeah, it's an interesting thing to make something. And we're making – it's – like I'm used to working on games for two years, two and a half years. Like there's – a lot of guys have worked on two games in ten years because they'll work on a game and EA will kill it after three years. And they're like, that's not working. Right. You know, whatever the designer – or they'll give up on it because all of a sudden, first-person shooters are dead. We've got to work on something else. or, you know, like there was 10,000 SimCity, you know, knockoffs, and then all of a sudden the whole, you know, SimCity thing died and then all those games got canceled. So these guys will spend, you know, their whole career maybe make three games where we're, you know, in our department, we're probably pumping out four to five titles in a year. Yep. You know, like just, you know, cranking through things and trying to make everything look different than the previous game. You know, we're trying to, like, you know, spice it up. Yeah, you guys are jumping back and forth between all these different avenues of games. Yeah, I can just imagine how crazy that would be. Well, I think it's safe to say that we are seeing the evolution of the utilization of the LCD at Stern over the past few titles. Before we talk about that, though, in your opinion, what's more challenging from an animation standpoint when you're using computer graphics? I mean, is it the DMD display or is it the full LCD? Because, I mean, I would imagine they're two completely different approaches? Well, the funny thing about the DMD display is the skill set involved in that is the skill set I developed in 1987. Okay. It's a little antiquated a little bit. It was antiquated, but the funny thing is now there isn't people that can do it. Like everybody, like those guys are all my age and I don't know. Doing different things. Hung themselves or something. They're not around anymore. Because they're sick of it. They hung themselves. They got run through the ringer on there. Chuck's the sole survivor of that era. I win. But, yeah, no, like when we decided to go with the – and Pixels are easier to get approvals through licensors because if it's a super stylized anything, they'll go, oh, good. It doesn't look like other products. The big worry with the licensors are that your product will look like another product they have in somewhere. Okay. And they don't want the other person that paid for the license to get mad at them. And so you really have to really carve out a niche and a look. And so like in the case of Deadpool. I was just going to bring up Deadpool because it's the case where now you're taking LCD technology and you're retroing it back to 16-bit pixel graphics. Yeah. So that one was interesting in that we were going to go like 2D, 2D cell animated kind of thing. And we did some tests internal. And I'm actually a fairly good cell animator. And I have some friends that are pretty good cell animators still. What does that mean? What's a cell animator? Like, you know, cell animation like old Disney. Oh, okay. I got you. Lion King. I thought it was more important than fancy. No, no. It's like what everybody considers real animation. Gotcha. And so we were going to go that route for a while. And it just, you know, there was like Deadpool cartoon was coming out. And, you know, they were all just kind of worried that it was going to be too much work and it was going to look like somebody else's product so we were trying to come up with something that was definitely not like anybody else's stuff and uh and and uh tanya and george and i talked about it and and i like you know we could just do a completely retro because this whole thing is kind of like he in a wham 90s kind of thing and it kind of works right Yeah He would be the kind of guy that would have hung out in arcades when he was a kid Deadpool So we decided to do the pixel thing, and we worked out a pipeline for it. And at the same time, it's kind of funny, is pixels are big with the kids now. Yes. The kids love the retro 80s pixel artwork. My daughter is probably one of the best pixel animator artists. In fact, she just graduated from college, and one of her pieces was a big animated pixel thing. Oh, that is awesome, man. Very cool. So I'm like, okay. Congratulations. So George is like, where do we find people to do this? I'm like, I know just the person. So I call my daughter up. I'm like, here's what we need. Really? Yeah, so she actually did a bunch of the artwork that's in Deadpool. I did not know that, man. That's awesome. That's a great story. My daughter Mimi. Mimi, nicely done. Deadpool's one of my favorite games, legit. It's one of my favorite games, too. It doesn't make me yell F-bombs too much, so that's good. Right.
    39:22
    And that game's missing F-bombs, I think, just in general. Right, we didn't take the F-bombs out. So we did the pixel thing on that, and that was also another one of those games that was really fun. So she just comes in and freelances a little bit? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she came in a couple days a week, and then she would clean up artwork and draw the juggernaut background. That was all her background, and she did the spaceship background and all that, hand-drawn. Very cool.
    39:52
    But yeah, so the funny thing with that game was when we released it, we had people go like, oh, they cheaped out, man. They didn't have any money. That's why they did it like this. And I'm like, whoa, this costs twice as much as if we would have just animated it. Because we had to animate it and then pixelate it. Please comment on that. Because it's not like you decided you were going to use outdated software to go ahead and come up with some pixel. They didn't have a discount at the pixelation store. Right, right. The effort for retro ended up costing more time and resources than if you were to go something that looked more modernized. Yeah, hands down. And also, good luck finding. Like I would challenge anybody else to even try it because it wouldn't happen. You know, like if anybody else was like, oh, no, we could totally do that. I'm like, all right, let's start. You start and we'll start and we'll see who finishes first. Yeah. Because I just happen to have I happen to know people that know how to do it. And and we also still had the guys that did the pixels from the DMD days. So that stuff translated, you know, it wasn't like it was it was really I mean, it was a really cool look and it was really fun to work on. And it was really hard. And it's so hard not to comment when people go like, yeah. You know what, though? Honestly, Chuck, I think that was like a vocal minority. Because what you end up seeing in a pinball, and I don't have to tell you this, like on social media websites, there's that vocal view. It's the same six guys. Right, that have something critical to say about every single release. I think what's nice about Deadpool is that, especially the fighting scenes and the pixels, it did appeal to a lot of people. And that retro vibe was a positive. and then with the evolution of the rule set with Tanya's been able to do to that game you're looking at something that was solid that's become incredible as a whole piece, as a whole pinball machine and I love that they decided to take that whole what we try to do with the graphics and just went with the audio that way the whole 90's audio it was very cool Jerry Thompson is and then George goes, let's press a bunch of albums for the LE guys. Some vinyl. Yeah, so it was like, you know,
    42:01
    I have to go buy a record player, but hey. Well, they would never get spun at my house, but it'd be mint condition, mint in the box. Right, no, mine's on a stand at home. But yeah, that was a lot of fun to work on that game. And what's nice about that is, and this is just in general my opinion of pinball, not just our pinball, but pinball in general, is at some point pinball became very serious.
    42:27
    How do you mean? Well, just like the licensing. Licensors don't like it if you try to poke fun at their license. So that was what was great about Deadpool. Deadpool, you make fun of himself, and then it's just more Deadpool. That's a very Deadpool thing to do is just make fun of himself. So what I liked about that was it was that kind of a thing where you can kind of do tongue-in-cheek jokes and just silly animations. And I always bring up like Monster Bash or Medieval Madness, those kind of funny little quips and the humor. Right, exactly. And there's kind of throwback stuff. And there's some risky stuff going on in the humor that you don't see nowadays just because everybody's so offended. Right, exactly. So I would love to see a pin that pays homage to that kind of genre of pinball machines. And so I'm hoping, I mean, and I know you can't comment on this, but I would think if any game is going to push that envelope that's coming out of Stern, Elvira 3 would make sense that you'll see something that might be a little bit more, you know, not as tame. And time will tell with that, too. Yeah, when I first started at Stern was right when we finished Ronelli. Oh, yeah. And the grief that that game brought to so many people. What do you mean grief? There was just like – because that one's truly a throwback to like the golden age of pinball. And some people got it. Some people that know pinball went, oh, that's kind of like making fun of the days of like pinbot and those kind of things. Yep, yep. And then other people were like, those guys are all pigs. Well, we're pigs, but not for the reasons – Pinball pigs. We're pinball pigs. Right. It's a different level. So we got, like, it was totally opposite ends of the spectrum. We either got, like, rave, like, thank God somebody made a machine that kind of, modern technology I don't have to fix, but it still feels like, you know, the old EM machines or whatever. And then you had, like, hate mail. And Greg Ferrer has got the brunt of it. Well, Greg and Dennis are partners in crime on that Wisdom release. Greg's like, oh, I got another hate mail today.
    44:38
    And Greg's so nice to it. Right. That's the guy's probably under his desk with a bottle of Jack Daniels at the end of the quarter for every time he quit.
    44:48
    A lot of quitting going on. It's 30 days. I'm never doing this again. See you tomorrow, Greg. He's done. Well, Beatles was another pin that was like retro modern style. Yeah. Taking that sea witch and updating the play field and putting in a modern machine, which was which I thought was fun. When we talk about taking something that's kind of retro and modernizing it, when we think about the Stern Vault editions that come out.
    45:11
    And I want to ask you this question, and I don't know if it's on it. We might have talked about this months ago, I think, when we first met. Do you ever think that there would be an opportunity for Stern to vault a DMD pin and implement LCD animations on that type of a release? No, there's actually – no, yeah, it's the way our hardware is set up. It actually – it was meant to transition. It wasn't completely one camp or the other camp. We have, you know, and you can see it when you boot up the machine and you go into your utility menus. The dot system still exists in there. Right. So there's a way to, there are ways to do that. We can do color dots games. Like we can put an LCD in and do like, you know, kind of like the medieval madness where you kind of, you know, screen off the areas you don't want to see and make like a 1.5, like version 1.5 kind of thing. Yeah, okay. um and and uh and what's nice about that is if we do that approvals through the licensors and things like that's a little easier because they already proved it right you know if we colorized it it's not like it's a quantum leap out of there um but you know you got guys at work who are like no if we're gonna colorize it just you know we're gonna put a display in there just go nuts i'm like you mean like make all our work again yeah so you're talking about updating the dots yeah because we have like like for instance with like kiss we have the footage right that's all color footage from a real concert you know from kiss sure so that would not be that hard whereas in the case of um if we just updated and colorize the dots for let's say tron we would catch endless crap because that movie was beautiful and it was meant to like that just is begging for a display you know right so that's where i was going like could you ever see for instance um let's say like a Tron or a Star Trek or even a Ghostbusters? Could you see an LCD in a re-release with actual movie clips and a graphical overlay and something like you would see now on like a Black Knight Sword of Rage or a Munsters? Each machine had different requirements. Like, for instance, like on Tron, they actually required you to use clips from the movie. They didn't let you animate anything. Okay. So that machine would be a little bit easier in that because of the licensure restrictions, you would have to dig up those clips again and then realize them and build an interface. So that one would be not to – it's a no-brainer, but it would be closer to a no-brainer. So that would be easier to implement with movie clips on an LCD. Right. KISS would be easier. On a hypothetical re-release. I'm not holding you to anything. No, no, no, no. I know. But this always fascinated me. And the funny thing is how many people – like I've seen people quote that game is coming out. You're like, oh, I have really good information that it's coming out next March. I'm like, oh, really? That's news to me. I was in there and I saw the game on the line and it's ready to go. Right. Yeah, dude, I got a picture of it. I'm like, that's shot. But yeah, there's some of those. But like Kiss would be pretty – would be easier, let's say. But like Ghostbusters, the deal with Ghostbusters because of the licensing, we couldn't really show any people from the show, from the movie. Sure. Because every one of those people, they get first right of refusal to – they have to sign off on the thing. And it gets even harder when some of them are dead because now then you've got relatives that are all like, where's my piece?
    48:38
    Handling the estate, so to speak. It's nightmarish. But Elvis made a pin, so it's okay. Right. but uh but uh yeah so so like ghostbusters would be harder um we did a lot of that in 3d and then down res'd it and made it pixel so we would probably just like revisit all those files and kind of george lucas them i mean would you be a fan of doing something like that i mean is that something you you would be interested in doing yeah is there something you think stern would ever be interested in doing and i know you can't speak for the company no no no i know i Yeah, no, what I can say is the designers, every time you finish a product, and this is even on my end, every time you finish it, you hate the thing you just shipped because there was these things you wanted in it or there's this goofy thing happened and nobody noticed, but you notice it every time you play the game. There's certain things in there. Designers are always like, yeah, man, I wish I could have just, if I could have moved those two posts and did the other thing, this would have been great. You know, so the Vault Edition, in a lot of ways, it enables, you know, like whoever designed the original play field to kind of go in and fix the thing that was driving them nuts.
    49:49
    It's like a do-over to a certain extent. Yeah, or even address some of the reliability things. Like, you know, this thing keeps hitting this post until it comes loose. You know, if I could just reinforce it with a whatever, you know. And we're talking like, you know, Tron being used, being eight years or nine years old in the field. You know, that kind of abuse, not in your basement. Right. It's like if you have the 10,000th play, finally this thing is starting to go. The cycle testing only went to 9,999. Right. And we cycle test the snot out of everything. Yeah, I know you do. For the life of me, I can't figure out how end users can figure out, like, just – I mean, like, you play Dr. Dude and the ball is sitting up on a – just balancing on a thing. you're like, really? Like, I just, first time I played it, and I got a ball jam. What are the odds? Right? That's not possible, right? You know, and they're like, yeah, nobody's ever seen that before. So 20 years after Dr. Dude comes out, you're like, that thing has still got all kinds of problems. And there's no vaults going on for that. Yeah, and they used to test the snot out of those. That's, you know, that's Beck Williams money, where they, you know, they had the ability to just, you know, they sold 20,000 or 15,000 or 10,000 machines a year. so they would just go like, we'll build 20 of these in the clack room and just beat the snot out of them.
    51:08
    It's strange how these guys can't anticipate anything, and every time you finish something, you just want to go back and fix it. You would actually work on the game for three or four years if you could, just because you'd want to get everything in there. Well, but you've got like two or three months probably. At any given time, how many games do you have your hands on? Well, right now we have three going on simultaneously. So you personally are kind of shifting between three different games. Yeah, it used to be. So generally how the production goes is usually have like an earlier artist kind of get involved with the team to kind of think of like interface and that kind of thing like six or seven months out from the game. Okay. To kind of think of like, well, can we do something cool with the display? Or can we do something cool with this? I have this idea. and then usually the last four months is when all the code is solidified and then you're just kind of implementing those designs so it's it's kind of um it's usually you know three or four guys on the game for the last four months and then there's usually one one guy that's on for three or four months before that and are you working like with the designer are you working with the programmer like who are you in cahoots with as far as both okay yeah i always tell people my job is to talk everybody out of everything and then and then work doing a good job work our way backwards you know like so you know don't don't get mad but okay i have this idea i want a crowd of 10 000 soldiers coming over a hill i'm like not gonna happen it's like what next idea this is lord of the rings uh animation studios and i'm not gonna name names see richie right but uh steve will be in here next week actually is he yeah stream a little sword of rage i'll make sure let them know that yeah no yeah no and and and we had our we had our we had our arguments uh i'm like there's there's and and here's a typical situation where i'm like um and and this is where uh this is turning out to be a bigger part of my job than i thought dealing with steve richie oh yeah yeah that itself no it's like sign up for this like it's like uh training training people um designers and people that think like a graphics professional right like Like, so I always use the example, like, when Steve was describing things for Black Knight, he's just like, all right, and then you beat these skeletons up and you beat these skeletons up. And I'm like, coming from a guy that's destroyed skeletons for 20 years for Mortal Kombat. You need some intestines or something. Right. I'm like, you can't. It's going to get repetitive. Like, there's only so many ways. Like, and Mortal Kombat even has that problem today. It's like, I cut the guy diagonally. I cut him in half and I cut him in half the other way. And I cut them. There's only so many ways to dice up a human being before you have to like get repeat. Yeah. So I'm like skeletons aren't going to you can't just skeletons. Everybody's like after 50 skeletons, there's nothing. There's no. Wow. Right. You need it. You need other creatures. You need other bad guys. And so sandworms and hell hands. Right. And all those good things. So so I said, you know, I have ideas for this, but I'm I'm just going to tell you right now, if you have any if you have any ideas of things. But here are the rules. No feathers, no hair, no quadrupeds, because these are very expensive things. Okay. So Steve's like, all right. Comes back, a griffin. He's got feathers, wings, and hair, and four legs. And then he's like, and then another one is, you know, whatever. And everything he came up with, like he came up with three creatures, and all of them had hair, feathers. And he's like, this is what I want. I'm like, okay, now I'm going way back to my Dungeons and Dragons roots. Two of those creatures are good creatures. You can't go cutting heads off of griffins.
    54:49
    He's like, no, they're bad. I'm like, oh, God. So then we're going to catch endless crap from everybody about why you can't go killing griffins. I'm like, did you watch Harry Potter at least? He said it was a more recent thing.
    55:01
    I wonder if he ever did watch Harry Potter. Yeah, so luckily we had Josh Clay and Danai and, you know, a lot of those are the main guys that came up with the character designs and stuff. And so I would work with them on like, okay, you go tell Steve.
    55:21
    You go in there. You're the messenger. You guys were all plotting against how to get his vision to change on that. Well, the thing is, at some point, you know, he wanted something that was in his head. and Steve has a lot of respect for people that can actually generate works of art. I'm more of a techno weenie. I had better art skills back in the day, but mowing lawns and stuff, it took it out of me.
    55:48
    Is that what it was? Yeah, it's the mowing lawns. That's why Bill's no longer an artist. Hey, plenty of lawns mode. Absolutely.
    55:55
    But those two guys are really incredible artists, so I'm like, you know what? you could go in there and say like listen you know i make artwork i'm telling you right now this is the way to go and then steve's like okay i trust those guys you know so thank god so he talked him into like worms which don't have four legs don't have hair you know no feathers good lizard things hydra lizard thing great i love the hell hand man yeah the hell it was good that's awesome yeah no that was uh that was interesting in that it and the hell hand for people that haven't played the game is is like this creepy hand that has a face on the inside of the palm that's also creepy right so yeah and then there's some nice comedic relief with backhanded jokes and whatnot oh yeah well originally there wasn't supposed to be joking this was supposed to be a very serious game sure and then and then just slowly tim tim sexton's influence into the game turned into it like there's a lot of like there's a lot of opportunity I mean, it's comical. The character's comical in that he's, like, the Black Knight's keenly self, unaware of, you know, how too macho, you know. Yeah. He is. So you have to have that balance of, like, people kind of making fun of him or he says something stupid but doesn't. Right, but he's always making fun of you. And then the pinball machine, he's taunting you. And it's funny because at one point, like, you feel like you heard him a little bit Where he's like, you struck me. It's like you almost kind of feel bad that you hurt the back night.
    57:27
    So it's dry. Right. You're like, what? Right. Let me know when the fighting will begin Yeah And then I then that usually when I yell at Steve richie i like i trying god you know so chuck what are what are some of your more uh what your favorite game that you worked on and what game are you most proud of in regards to the results oh geez you know the actually the game i'm most proud of i didn't even really do that much work um is the game i'm most proud of i had nothing to do with from from a graphics um a graphics milestone for the amount of animation for the amount of money it costs there's no buddy in the planet that could touch black knight for the the you know it just it's it's it goes back to the old days where like we used we would we i used to make the the the cinema intros and stuff for mortal combat like i was working in the cinematics department and that kind of thing and they would and then they go like this is going to cost seven hundred thousand dollars we're going to send it out they're like okay and then they their first bid they get in was three and a half million and they go all right you guys could do it you know like it's that it's that kind of thing where we're like you know these guys put a ton of work and i didn't have a lot of day-to-day involvement with it my my thing was more of logistics uh kind of thing but the guys the guys really did think outside of the box they used a lot of 2d effects and where they were needed They cut corners, but nobody noticed. Did you want to give a shout-out or some kudos to the side of your team there? Josh, Danai, Zach, Mark Galvez. Okay. You know, those guys all just really, you know. Nice work, guys. Yeah, beautiful. Because it is an impressive improvement as far as, like, just detail and animation in general from when we think about, like, when you started off. The first LCD was, what, Batman 66? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And there was a lot of movie clips. So this is all original animation, so there's a difference in regards to what you're looking at graphically. So that's kind of the funny thing is when you get somebody going like – because they consider this not a license, even though it is a license. Right. They consider it not a license. They're like, the big benefit of this is – I'm doing my Steve voice. We don't have to deal with the license. I'm like, yeah, but then we have to generate everything. Everything. And there's no concept art. There's nothing. There's nobody that's other than the backlash from Pinball 2000 or whatever. So it's funny in that it's like, no, now it's 10 times harder. You know, like Batman was great because there was restraints from the licensor. Okay. And they go, obviously, you know, you just can't do whatever you want. You can't wreck the license, right? And Guardians. You're working within your assets. Right. Sure. And a lot of times those restrictions are a blessing because if you could just run amok, then all your costs go through the roof and nothing gets done because nothing's done because nothing's – who's to say what's done? And if it sucks, you have nobody to blame on it except yourselves, not the licensor. Right, right. Exactly. Right. So there was a lot of that. So it was – we had the most freedom, but it was also like a crazy amount of work and there was no story. Yeah. I go like, what story are we telling? The Black Knight, he bashes people with his mace. Is that Steve Ritchie again? Yeah, yeah, that's my Steve Ritchie. All right. But I'm like, but why is he bashing people with his mace? What is he trying to do? He's like, he wants money. I'm like, okay, this is really shallow. What are we doing here? He's nothing more than a two-bit gangster just shaking people down. For their quarters. Right. Medieval Al Capone. And then what's he going to do with the money? He's going to buy a nice CD rack. yeah right exactly and do something exactly this base of rage you can't get another weapon so then and then it was just so many like uh so many things at that so we were dealing with so much on that and the guys kind of held it together i mean even the name was just relentless sort of rage sort of rage sort of rage a little bit ragey a little bit sorry sort of ragey and i'm like no don't do this and coming from video game background then why not why not do sort of rage well because it's sort of rage not mace of rage no no but it's sort of ragey it sounds like oh sort of it's sort of rage like sort of ragey you know that i got sort of rage so sort of cool sort of like he's kind he's kind of a little bit pissed off a little bit so but he's had worse days and i'm like you can't you you know coming from the video game world the marketing guys used to go make sure the game doesn't rhyme with something horrible yeah because it because It just sticks. So these guys will be like, you know, God of War. God of War, you mean? Yeah. Oh, God. I played God of War this weekend. You're like, dang it. You know what? When we started our pinball podcast, an original idea that I think Bill had, because we're St. Charles. So he's like, well, how about STC Pinball Podcast? And then one of our voiceover, Rachel West, she's like, sounds like Ecstasy Pinball Podcast. I'm like, oh, that's kind of weird. STC, Ecstasy. STD. Oh, gosh, the STD Pinball Podcast. That's a completely different podcast. Three shots on Tuesday. Oh, jeez. Hey, thanks for coming in, Chaka. The problem is we don't – it's very much like – Stern is very much – and I always describe this to other people. The STD Pinball Podcast. It's like a startup, which there's nothing more cooler than working in a startup as long as it's not your money. Yeah. But it's very much like a startup. We keep it lean. We're not trying to go crazy. We're not trying to invent some holodeck pinball.
    63:13
    Let somebody else do that. We make pinball, and we try to keep it there. We try to keep it in the pinball realm.
    63:19
    So there's that. But we also don't have that huge marketing or focus group people. So really it's up to the designer to make the call on something, and you're really relying on them to not do something insane. Are there people at Stern, and not that you prefer to work with or not prefer to work with, but as far as your colleagues, whether it be a designer or somebody that's programming or even an artist, are there those that are easier to work with than others? Yeah, Keith Allen instantly comes to mind, Keith and Tim Saxton, and mainly because they're pinball nuts. As people that are easy to work with? Oh, as easy to work with. Okay. Right. They're they're they both play the hell out of pinball. They play tournaments and that makes a big, big difference. It's and I don't think it might be the lawnmower thing. Right. So you start mowing lawns, you stop doing the tournaments. Absolutely. Yeah. It's all downhill from there. But but but yeah, no, they they they they they have this encyclopedic knowledge of like, OK, back in 1973 when they had this and there was this one shot and there was they called it the whatever shot. and then I'm like, I'm just writing this stuff down. And so they come to the table from a pinball side of things, where a lot of what Stern's past is, is like designer slash programmer side of, you know, like a lot of the programmers came from video games or, you know, something along those lines. And I think like, you know, Lonnie and Dwight and everybody else, they're good programmers. Yeah. But there's some chemistry there when you're like Tim Sexton, where you're a good programmer, and just insanely obsessed with pinball. That makes it – Well, and these are newer guys to the business side of things. And so I imagine there's some tenacity and hunger that – not that the other guys are not having within themselves, but I mean they're fresh right now. So I mean they're on fire, so to speak. Right. And they also – the blood, the fresh blood comes in. They come in and they'll look at, like, you know, Keith will look at a Steve design or a John's design or something. And those guys will come over and go, hey, can I get your opinion? You know, he'll flip the thing and, you know, Keith will go like, man, I moved that post. Man, you just got to move that post a quarter inch and you're dialed in. You know, like that kind of stuff. Right. I would just go like, sucks. And then I would just bail. Right. Like, I can't play this game. I hate it. Oh, it's great. Yeah. Oh, no. Those are the worst. he's just like oh yeah sounds great yeah awesome great yes man you think i hate it but uh but no it's it's the because they're new they're really open to any kind of ideas and yeah and that's also too it's like um they don't necessarily come to the table with something baked into their head you know i always make the jokes it's like a fresh take they're looking at everything right yeah and and so keith is pretty much like hey i've got this idea for a rule ideas.
    66:22
    Because back in the day, the designer and the programmer came up with all the ideas. So a lot of times those guys are still rooted in those, like, I've got to come up with everything for this thing because I'm the idea guy or whatever. And now they kind of come to it like, hey man, you guys are the artists, what do you think? I need something that kind of idles in the background while they could be in a swamp. Oh yeah, that works. It's nice that everybody collaborates and brings something to the table. Yeah, I was like – Dwight will listen to this, though, and I've already said this to him, and he'll even admit to it. He has Dwight speak, right? Like Dwight knows exactly what he wants in his head. He just can't get it out of the head. Like he'll be like, okay, no, it's got to be like this, but I don't know. You guys are the artists.
    67:09
    So we'd have to like show him like five things and go like this is closer to what's in my head, that kind of thing. Creative direction. It's not like he's saying I'm looking for a thrum. Give me a thrum. That was a story I was thinking about. Literally, that was a 10-minute story. Him and Jerry were, I need a thrum. It took Jerry 10 times or something to get that. What's a thrum? He's like, that's not a thrum. I need a thrum. Give me a thrum. So yeah, I can absolutely see that conversation going down with yourself and Dwight. So Keith is good. Keith is like, hey, you guys are the creative guys. I just need a thing that satisfies these rules. And then he has all the rules in his head, which is great. and so like kim and tim will come like how about everybody else spitball stuff and come up with ideas uh dwight will have a very concrete idea in his head what he wants he just doesn't know how to convey to you because he because he can't draw it like you can't sketch it out um in the case of like lyman lyman has an idea of why something needs to happen um he doesn't he doesn't know from an art standpoint but he knows exactly what elements need to be involved in that Like I need a timer and I need something that indicates that you need to make the left shot. Go. You know, like, oh, okay.
    68:19
    And so – which is great with Lyman, you know, a little more creative license. So that's where you get – you know, they're used to working with Greg and Greg will pitch things and go like, okay, we can do this. We did this before and that kind of stuff.
    68:33
    Like Borg definitely – he's definitely got like – Borg seems like a nice – I don't want to say easygoing. but it seems like somebody that's open to some uh not influence but maybe some ideas yeah he'll come to the table with three concrete things that he definitely wants to see in there and then he'll leave the programmer alone like right be like i just want to see these three things in here and then i'm not gonna you know go nuts you know which is great because he he definitely has like he when he designed the shot there was a thing in his head that he he when he designed it you know and then he will express that and then he'll work with the programmer to figure it out and that kind stuff but but uh yeah so everybody's got their own little way of working and and that's probably the hardest part is like every time you start a new project you have to kind of feel out that person and they also have to trust you that you're not there to just you know poo whatever their ideas right you're like okay i know what you're thinking but i'm like here's an idea that doesn't suck you know okay we've all listened to your ideas and now we're gonna see an idea that doesn't suck okay everybody that's awesome so yeah i'm sure you're the voice of reason in many meetings well it was like you know it's just yeah just recently i'm like okay my job here is to talk you out of everything you have in your head yeah and then they're like no all right that's where we start every game all right you know then we meet in the middle that's how it goes i'm like i'm telling you all of it's crazy and it's not going to happen and then you go you want the world and then we meet somewhere in the middle but um so what what game are you most and we have to wrap up because the time is flying by and you're actually going to stick around and you're going to stream Rage LE with us. I'll show everybody how that game is not played. You and I will compete then. I like it. It's a little bit of a kicker. Something that you feel like you really had your hands on. What are you most proud about at Stern Pinball for yourself?
    70:22
    Not so much the products, but I'm really proud of the people. I'm sure at times they were frustrated with me because I have to balance that I have to balance the, you know, the company needs to stay open. And I've worked at plenty of companies that, that were mismanaged and, and just spent money for the sake of spending money and, and went belly up and then balance that with like people feeling like their, their ideas are heard and they're creative and, and also getting good people in, you know, is, is the hardest thing. And, and, um, and I think I've, I've, I've, if the one thing I could say I'm most proud of is, is the, is the team more than any product, you know, they, they've all, that's outstanding that you said that. They've all put it together. And they all just have it invested. They all hang out together. They've all become tight friends, except for the lawnmower guys. But other than that, those guys. Right.
    71:16
    It's an amazing team, and they're all very encouraging, and they share data, share information, and they're all training each other.
    71:26
    We've got some interns, which my daughter is one of them, and Olivia Jensen was another one. And so they are just getting schooled like they could never have gotten schooled in any kind of classes.
    71:44
    Hands-on experience. Oh, yeah, yeah. Real-world situations. Do you see, I mean, without sharing any company secrets, I mean, do we see some different evolution coming out of the LCD in the next couple years, at implementing anything that you find that might be a little bit surprising or ground-shaking? I don't think ground-shaking. I think what we're doing right now is we're kind of... I mean, you work within the limitations of the LCD at this point. Right, we work within the limitations, but really the design or the vocabulary of the LCD is kind of solidifying. You'll notice that a lot of the elements are kind of settling in, like scores are at the bottom because people don't want you know we're learning that people don't want to have to look for their score um you know so you'll see a lot of stuff's on the bottom and whatever current player's biggest score so a lot of it is like interface is kind of um becoming more uniform yeah we're not trying to blaze new ground originally we're like hey we have stuff sliding out and things are happening and then people are you know giving us blowback going like i'd like to see my score more often than it's happening right now so would you say like the approach for yourself and stern is the lcd for the player or is it for the casual spectator that's watching the player so um there's a couple of debates on what's happening with the with that so i'm going right to the source there chad right uh no there's so here's the interesting thing there's there's this idea that the the lcd is going to augment what's happening on the playfield yeah my point is the oh what what did we do i don't know what was that that was somebody oh i'm I'm being played off the stage. That's the end of this one. All right, go ahead. So start that one over. So anyways, they – That's your cue to wrap it up. Right. No kidding. No, I'm kidding.
    73:33
    So in the Dots days, the Dots were pretty much there just for, like, score. I just want to know where I'm at in the game. And then occasionally some big wow moment happens, and then that's about it. Because that's all you could fit on the screen. And then there was this idea that, like, oh, no, we could display all kinds of crazy stuff on the screen. all your data's up there and and you know it's like and i and i was like i was joking around i'm like yeah because kids love reading like when they're playing yeah right kids love the whole reading so you so you had some kind of like star wars was very verbose like it had all kinds of text on there and and in the end it was like nobody read it and and you know so so we're trying to get back to kind of what the essence of the dots were but just cooler and um and and Some of the guys, I'm still arguing with them about it.
    74:23
    I want something on the play field to also tie up to exactly what's on the screen. And I'm like, so when you're looking at the play field, you're not looking at the screen. And they're like, well, but for the spectators, they're looking at the screen. I go, but they're not looking at the play field. So why are we trying so hard to have exactly what's happening here happen there in some way? You have lights. You shoot them. Everybody knows that language of pinball. and then the screen should be just like big wow moments so it catches your eye like you know something happened up there while you're playing sure something that's like transitional versus yeah yeah something like bam thing happened and you're back to scores bam thing happened cool so that that's kind of my goal is to get more and more of that kind of stuff coming because it's a ton of work to try to sync stuff with the play field with the screen outside of like spinners and things that are kind of inherently you know they're you kind of want to know those things happened or how long it's spun for or whatever right um there's there's generally you don't want to take your eyes off the play field so some people think it's it's an advertising thing for people walking by you know like the screen is a big you know that's what the track mode is for though right when somebody's not playing right exactly so we're still learning a little bit about what the purpose of the screen is right and i'm more of a purist that like give me scores give any wow moments, value added. Don't try to replace gameplay.
    75:46
    If there's instructions on the screen on how to play, you've lost them already. You need to do it with the lights, the dots and the lights and the things on the play field need to be able to convey that. That's not my job. It's exciting times. Chuck, I've got to tell you, it's been a pleasure sitting down talking with you, and I can't wait to spend the next hour or two with you streaming this game and answering more questions on Twitch. but ladies and gentlemen Chuck Ernst from Stern Pinball thank you so much for joining the show would you come back in? oh sure because I think there's a ton that we didn't have time to cover I'm looking at the time that went by really really fast we'd love to have you back on if you're up for it yeah sure absolutely so tomorrow will be part two of our three hour two hours in my car of our three hour episode with Chuck Ernst of Stern Pinball But, yeah, so we'll wrap it up here. Bill, did you have a good time? Oh, absolutely. I did, too. For Bill Webb and Chuck Ernst, I'm Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.