All right, welcome. Yes, this is Flip N Out Pinball With Friends. This is Mr. George Gomez. I think this is the third or fourth time that I've interviewed you. I know originally I interviewed you just all about Deadpool. And then ever since then, I think we just kind of have gotten in this cadence of like a yearly, let's check in, let's have an update what's going on. And yeah, George, I really appreciate you wanting to have another conversation. Yeah, it's a good time to talk because all of the brouhaha that's going on about the guns on NWIC. So I absolutely love an opportunity to clear the air, talk about it, whatever, try to get people answers that satisfy them. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you now, Joel, it's always great to talk to you, but I've told you this before, ask me hard questions. I don't care. I, you know, I will, I'll give you honest answers. If you ask me a question that, that, you know, it's some company secret or something, I'm not going to, you know, I'll tell you, I can't talk to you about that, But, I mean, asking hard questions. You know, I've been pretty forthcoming with the community. I can't – obviously can't – you know, I can't have a full conversation when I'm online, like, answering – you know, like, you know, I make a statement and then, like, there's 50 comments. I know. You know, bunking my statement or whatever. I was like, hey, I want to – you know, I was like, I want to explain it to you, but, you know, this is a tough way to do it. So, you know, this is a good forum to talk. So let's talk. Sure, yeah. No, so I definitely want to get into, well, there's plenty. But let's just start with, I mean, honestly, reveal day. Like reveal day for any pin. And it's odd because the last few pins, I know from the enthusiast standpoint, like new pinball, new pinball machines coming out. You know, we hear rumors about a theme and then you release the teaser trailer. So we all have in our head what this may or may not be like. and then boom, the reveal happens. And unfortunately, I feel like the reveal happens in the pinball community, instead of focusing on 98% of what the game is, they zoom in on 2% and then get super vocal about it. And so my question to you is like, as a designer, as a person that leads the design team, like how do you guys internally handle review days? Because there's gotta be some excitement there. This is a year plus long project, but also like nervousness. I don't, I don't, how do you handle that? I mean, we want the, we want people to like the product clearly. You know, it begins with it. I've said this before and, you know, I don't, I don't, I think people forget, you know, but the reason the games are as good as they are is because we are in essence part of the community. We just happen to have, you know, we just happen to have the skillset to make the games. but and so and we have you know we have a we have a sort of a slightly different perspective because we've been down the path of making games but the reality is that you know i want to play other designers games i want to play games i collect games i buy pinball machines with my own money um you know when when someone that's when when uh someone in the development team at Stern buys an LE, LEs are not discounted even to us. Yeah. So, you know, if I want an LE, I'm paying the same money you're paying, you know, pretty much, you know, without whatever the distributor markup is. Sure. I am, you know, so I think that I tell you this because we collect games, we have games, we play games. You know, a lot of the guys are very active in the community in terms of, you know, tournament play or just social play. So, yeah, we're excited. We've spent, you know, 14 to 16 months or something making these things, and we're excited. We're thrilled. We want, you know, we want the games to be well received. We want, you know, we're excited about what we made. um the other the most frustrating thing to us is that people are judging the game without actually having played it or touched it or seen it in person yeah so that's that's tough to take right because you're you know you haven't felt the things we felt you haven't seen the things we've seen right so and you certainly haven't been down the path of making it right yeah that's a tough, tough road. And I think anybody in any, you know, whether it's a garage shop, those guys suffer the problems in, you know, maybe in a different scale than we do, but they suffer the problems. And so, yeah, I mean, no, it's, reveal days are in some ways nerve-wracking because not only that, the reveal is very linked to the entire release of the game. So we've been jamming, you know, we've been jamming for months to get to the church on time and release the game. The games are on the line. Like right now, I'm in my office here at Stern, and right now, you know, out on the assembly line, they are making John Wick's. So, you know, There's like tons of John Wicks just like boom, boom, boom, running down the line. So there's a tremendous amount of interaction between manufacturing and engineering. Everybody, get them code. Do they have the latest code? Elliot and Rob are out there testing games and making sure that the manufacturing guys are up to speed on how to test the game. What are the particulars of this game that have to be looked at differently than that game? All that kind of stuff. So it's a buzz of excitement and a buzz of activity. And then, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, look, it's a vocal community. This particular gun item or gun issue is one that is, you know, it reflects our society. it reflects and there's a lot of misunderstanding also relative to the role we've played in uh you know in the decisions or etc and you know hopefully we'll get into that i could i can tell you what it's all about but um so yeah i mean that's yeah i i just feel like elliot and i don't know elliot but it's like this is his first game and it's like i can't i can't imagine what you know two nights ago day before reveal you know he's probably super nervous super anxious and then all of a sudden the game comes out and instead of people talking about like check out that mac check out this ramp check out this they're focused in on art or they're focused in on the media or that it's just like i feel for the guy a little bit it's interesting ellie is a fairly quiet guy and and you know he's he's um you know probably not a guy that's like real comfortable you know expressing himself in in you know relative to the game i'm sure you get him one-on-one he'll tell you all about it right okay but um there was no you know the people have sort of uh you know created all these conspiracy theories about you know you didn't tell us elliot was designing the game i was like well if i had said elliot Elliot Eismin is designing the game you wouldn't have known the name yeah right it's his first game we have and by the way we have every attention he's going to be do the interview circuit with you know whoever will talk to us um with tim in conjunction with tim you know the two of them it's their baby um i i you know i helped mentor him and i'm you know i'm i helped him as much as i could possibly help him with all the stuff he was doing and you know he's a really sharp kid he's he you know he's been with us for 10 years. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And he's, you know, he's a, he's real deal mechanical engineer. He knows what he's doing. Uh, he's contributed to so many games that you guys have played and, and, and worked on. Um, and he, you know, he is solid in, in the understandings of, um, you know, his play field shoots great. And when people get their hands on this, I, I I'll tell you that at four o'clock today, we're starting to live stream on the game, right? Yep. At the end of all of this drama and all of this stuff is a really solid, great pinball machine. And unfortunately, people aren't going to know that until they get their hands on it. True. It's kind of like when all this noise quiets down and everybody's, like, you know, gotten past the fact that there isn't gone art on the cabinet, you know, I think you've got to really saw up in motion. Well, yes. And I think, obviously, when Jaws was released, it had so much hype. Jaws is a killer theme. Keith Elwin, just alone, that name carries a lot of weight. And then they show the game, and everybody's up in arms. The shark doesn't eat the ball. Like, I'm out. The shark doesn't eat the ball. And I remember I kind of took a stance or kind of defended it. I'm like, why is everybody – people are already making mods to add a shark. Nobody's touched it. Nobody's touched the game. Like, can we give them the benefit of the doubt and play the game first? That was my view. You know, we're the guys that created an animatronic dinosaur that eats the ball. Yeah. So do you think for two minutes that the thought didn't cross our minds? Do you think for two minutes that we didn't consider it? And, I mean, he made a choice. And it's the choice he wanted to make. And, you know, he's an amazing game designer. Yeah. So, right? I mean, you know, it's like his portfolio at this point is unquestionable. And we talked about it, and it was like, yeah, and it's like it doesn't have to eat the ball. I mean, yeah, we've done that. So it's kind of like – Yeah, and here we are. And he was – honestly, some of the reasons weren't – had nothing to do with how do you make the shark eat the ball. We could have made that shark eat the ball in two seconds. You know what I'm saying? He has a vision in his head about how he wants the game to flow, and by the way, if you put the shark eating thing on your, you know, have a good time at your game, you can do whatever you want with it, but you will ruin his perception of how the game is balanced, right? So it's kind of like, and you can't dismiss that because the design of a pinball machine takes into account so many things. And so, yeah, I mean, to us it was, you know, in some ways we were snickering because we were like, you've got to be kidding me. But whatever, you know, here we are, whatever it's been, three months later, nobody's talking about it. No, yeah, it's kind of proven itself. I mean, now that people have finally had a chance to play the game, they realize the speed, they realize, you know, having that shark pop up, bop it in the face, and it pops down. Like, it's just, I don't know. I get it, and this is what I'm realizing the longer that I've been in this hobby. It is cyclical where it's, you know, the game is released, And typically, Pinside's going to bash it in some way. And then you wait a little while and they play it. And then that quiets down and people actually start to focus on what's in the game. But you've mentioned licensing and the whole gun thing. And first off, you've been responding a lot on Facebook, which is super nice. It's awesome to see somebody active at Stern trying to answer these questions. The only frustration with it is that it spins off into – well, I've seen John Wick toys. Yeah. Let me explain, please. Please, yeah. But there's no – there's like he's lying. He's like, I'm not lying. It's kind of like – look, here's – let's cut to the chase. every toy out there, every John Wick toy with guns has disclaimers on it. It must be 18 or over or whatever. The video games have a rating system, and they are rated, right? Every product, everything, the graphic novels, everything has that. When Lionsgate comes to us and says, you guys have a pinball machine rating, we say, no. yeah okay i guess you guys are classified all ages classified all ages okay what and and with all ages comes all these restrictions and and one of the restrictions is so people say so the you know the next question is well but you got guns in the video yeah we got guns in the video because they consider that once if you're walking past the game and you see the guns that's one thing and it's about the fact that we are in commercial locations if we could guarantee that this thing was going into strictly going to somebody's house it would be a different conversation but because we're in commercial locations and some of the locations are fvc's family entertainment centers or whatever and you got little kids that potentially could go buy it but the licensor is sensitive to this and so they say no you guys are all ages that means that none of the art on the none of the static art can have the, the, those guns. And, and as I would say, well, what about the video was at that point, life changes. You know why? Cause you made a conscious choice to play the pinball machine. Yep. And so, and you say, well, a five-year-old can do that or a 10 year old can do that. Yes. But a 10 year old, it's a responsibility of his guardians to supervise them and say, don't play that pinball machine or, or it's okay to play that pinball machine. So that's a different, and that's a conversation that it's really hard for me to have that oh yeah via facebook yeah to people on a facebook thing you know so um and and what i wanted to say was look this isn't i mean it's really interesting tim and i were laughing about this because we we said this isn't some sort of like uh anti-gone pro-gone thing on behalf of the company it's like tim and I, you know, Tim, Tim and I happened coincidentally, we're Eagle Scouts. And we came up when, when we were in Scouts as little kids, you know, at Scout camp, every Scout camp in America, when I was coming up, when he came up, as a matter of fact, I think he has the, you know, he has the rifle merit badge or whatever. Every Scout camp had a, had a shooting range. I learned how to shoot. I spent a bunch of time with a 30 out six on a shooting range I know my way around weapons I know how to use them I know all that stuff But it like this isn some you know like anti thing I mean it has spilled over into that conversation. People have made it that conversation. But the reality is that from our perspective, we make pinball machines. We deal with licensing issues. And the guns thing, by the way, is not new as a sensitive spot to licensors. So I'll tell you this story. When I did Deadpool, and that was 2017, Marvel said to me, when you are illustrating the guns for Deadpool, all the guns must be considered blasters, as in fantasy blasters. they cannot resemble any real gun and yet if you buy the neck of deadpool he's got real weapons yeah he's got he's got you know he's so so you know again we're in this we're in this thing where i'm just like i'm i'm you know i'm considered it and but all these ratings are different at all the manufacturers at marvel's i forget what we are we fall into like toys and games or something and And, you know, so we're different. We don't. We just did James Bond. And, you know, clearly in Dr. No, he's holding a weapon. There's weapons all over the art on the games. And yet I had a mandate from the licensor that I could not create a Walter PPK physical feature in the game. And I could not draw any guns. And no gun could be pointed or be shown to be firing at another human. And those were restrictions in James Bond. So why do I get away with showing the guns at all in James Bond? Because the other restriction was all art in James Bond must be based on existing archive art from the film posters or anything that's been published by them relative to Bond. So that's what I had to work with. Yeah. And so I, you know, so I said, can I use this poster? Yes, I can. And I've got this opening here in the play field. Can I draw a bond with a gun? No, you cannot. No. And can I have a feature that collects the Walter PPK? No. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. so um you know i mean every licensor is different the sensitivity to the point i'm making is the sensitivity to the guns is not new yeah um you know um and by the way it's gotten in some ways uh there's been more more sensitivity to it because when we did venom there are no, you know, none of the guns that show up in other, in some of those characters have guns in other moments of the, of the fiction. Not with us. Interesting. So I saw, I, you explained everything I was going to ask. Cause I remember you had a Facebook post and you brought up Deadpool and I actually pulled up pictures of Deadpool. Cause I was like, really? And I'm looking, I'm like, you're right. All these blasters are, you know, fantasy. And that explains Star Wars. That explains Mando. That explains some of these other games that you've had. I don't like it when people question my integrity. I think that's not a lot of fun. Those people don't know me. Well, let me ask you this. First off, congrats on Bond hitting 1.0. I remember one of the last times I interviewed you, Bond came out. The code was not too far. Yeah, it was rough. And I remember you were very clear. You're like, please understand, like, I am passionate about this. I will make this. This will be good. I will make this right. Like, just bear with me. It's going to be good. It's a story, you know, I think that it's happened to me a couple of times in the course of my career. It happened to me on Batman. It happened to me on Bond. And I think that, you know, I don't think anyone will tell you that either of those games is unfinished. No. Well, no, no. And Bond, it's awesome to see the way it's kind of turned around and now it's highly sought after. I mean, I know people that bought it, sold it, and then now the code's finished. They bought it back because it's so good. By the way, there's more cool stuff coming. Oh, nice. One of the things, though, I knew was an issue with Bond, and just tell me if I'm right or wrong on this, but I was under the assumption that you couldn't have overlapping video clips of different movies. Was that a licensing? Everybody asked me how come the video doesn't fill the screen. Oh, I thought it was more like mode. You couldn't have certain modes. The reason the video doesn't fill the screen is we could not overlap licensed video, the video from the films, with any text. We could not put anything on top of it. Okay. So we created what we call the no-fly zone. Okay. And, you know, Lonnie and Chuck Ernst and I, we said this is the no-fly zone. In this area right here, only Bond Video plays. And all of the scores and messaging and wipes and all that stuff have to happen, cannot step on Bond Video. Okay. Right? And so a lot of times we do take over the screen. Like, for example, the extra ball effect. And why do we get to do that? Well, we get to do that because that's video we created. Oh, okay. It's not film video from them, right? So the dragon tank coming in, shooting flames, releasing a ball, that was all created by Chuck Ernst's group. That was not, none of that used film footage, right? But if we're showing film footage, we cannot overlay it with anything. So that makes total sense now, especially now, I mean, I've played the game a lot and I realize, you're right, I've never seen that, but I just never put two and two together. but obviously that was a license like restriction or there's been times like this where this is what the licensors asked have you ever been have you ever started down the path of a pinball machine and then realize you know what this license are so restrictive we're not going to be able to make the game we want and you just stop yeah we have and that's that's yeah that's gonna be uh that's going to suck i don't know how else to yeah big time hunger games i'll say wow to you yeah that's interesting okay so yeah that's uh but that's good we we we started down the path and we started making the game and we got to a place where we said i don't think it's you know I don't think it's good for you and I don't think it's good for us. And so it was very painful and we walked away. Oh, wow. How long ago was that? I'm trying to think of like when that was big, big. Whenever that was happening a long, long time ago. That was a while. Okay. That wasn't yours, was it? No, it wasn't mine. Okay. Well, I assume that because that's what, I mean, there's some people, obviously, you know, these keyboard commandos, we know, we're really smart. We're really smart. And so people are like, well, why would they not just stop? Why would they not sell the license or it's no-go? Yeah, so we didn't talk about that. So when we took the license, it had never crossed our minds. It was just sort of like – because it is part of the essence of the brand, right? You're talking about WIC, right? Yeah, WIC. And so it never crossed our minds. You know, we started down the path and actually, you know, at some point, you know, some combination of I think there was a piece of Randy art that had a gun on it. And so in some review, it triggered this conversation. And so now we're hearing the conversation and we're like, well, that's interesting. What do we do now? And so we started thinking about it. And we said, well, so it's okay to have them on the screen, but I can't build, you know, I can't collect, you know, physical weapons on the plate. I can't build something with physical weapons on a play field or something. And they were like, yeah, so, and, you know, you can't put it on any of the art panels. We did take a step back. We did evaluate. And we said, you know, we thought about it. And when you play the game, you're going to find that it's about – I mean there's plenty of gunplay. You'll see it tonight on the stream. But the thing is that it's about putting you and John in his world, right? And there's so much in that world. I mean it's a rich world, right? So you've got the factions. You've got all the stuff. The guy will turn anything into a weapon, right? So you've got, you know, so yes, there are knives and katanas and cars and got everything under the sun and the guns on screen. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, you will be immersed in the game. And when Tim and company sat back and looked at the thing, you know, Ollie and Tim were like, yeah, we can still make the game. Yeah, yeah. You know, and as the game progressed, we, you know, it's like we stopped thinking about it, to tell you the truth. Sure. We completely forgot about it. Yeah. We were like, you know, we're 14 months down the path. We're having a good time flipping this game and, you know, talking about what we think is the real game. You know, like, hey, you know, like, you know, what if we balance this this way? What if you score this that way? What if you do this, you know, what if you introduce that with that? You know, there's some really, he's got some really great stuff, right? Like he's got a new choreography system. You know, when you do something, he whip does something. He shows you guys getting killed, you know. He's got a really interesting, fairly dynamic mode system where the game is – it's almost an AI in the sense that it's like very much like a video game combat AI. where the game is making some decisions based on the things it's seeing you do. Nice. So, you know, it's pretty cool. So I think when people get into all that stuff, man, it's like, it'll stop. Hopefully it will blow over at some point because that's something. By the way, you know, it's like, you know, there's even a decal in the cash box for the – or not a decal, a plastic in the cash box for the weapons crate that does have the guns. Oh, perfect. take four screws out put that one in and you can have the guns it's in the cash box there's a nice yeah that's smart um but um i think yeah i mean it's sort of taken in some ways it took us aback because we've just been so immersed in the game and we you know we love the game we think the game is fun so we're yeah um the game's got you know in a you know i don't know a couple of weeks you'll see the game's got a super cool topper. Oh, cool. It's, you know, and so I think, you know, I think all of this hullabaloo, you know, will... Yeah, hopefully be behind us. Hopefully people will look past it and say, you know, hey, this is a really solid game and, you know, I'm going to have fun playing it. And I hope it comes across in the stream tonight. We love the game. Awesome. Yeah, my, you know, initial impression, first of all, I love the art. I love the art. I love the color scheme. I'm a big fan of purples and neons and greens. So, you know, my first one over was like, this looks incredible. I love what you did with the skyline and having the plastics behind it to carry that up through. We were working hard to try to get that neon noir vibe. Sure. You know, it's really, I shouldn't say it's easy. I'm sure those guys struggle to get the look on camera, right? But it sure seems that it's – that it was easier for them to, you know, create those glows and those tints and that sort of, you know, that noir feeling that is, you know, lots of dark and then there's some highlights of pink light, right? And, you know, I mean I've got a play field exposed, completely exposed to, you know, to the outside. So I – and now how do I do that? well you know we start we play around with the excellent plastics which you know it's nothing new we've done tons of it before the community designed but they're everywhere and and it's kind of cool it looks awesome and and that's to me first i didn't notice the lack of guns didn't notice that at all i was really focused on that but one thing i did notice so expression lights i am a huge fan of expression lights expression lights and all the models and the speaker lights which blew me away in Jaws. Like, I don't have an LE, but I see that. I'm like, the more lighting that you can bring into a game, that's great. And you're now saying that that will be a kit that you'll be able to go backwards compatible. Yeah, you can put it on all the premiums, all the pros. And, yeah, we, so, you know, some of the original, the pioneering work on Expression Lights was Tim Sexton. Okay. Right. So he did, you know, for Zeppelin, he did all of that stuff. A lot of those light control algorithms that tie it into the music and all that stuff, that was all Tim. So, you know, when we were doing Wick, that just seemed like a natural, you know, and it's another way to kind of get that vibe of I'm tinting everything purple, I'm tinting everything green. and so you know you'll see it you'll see some of that tonight it looks they look great so the the speaker lights though I know well first off question would be is there any way that that kit will be available in JAWS like could a premium use it it will be yes there's gonna be there are some complexities with the with the premium and pro there will be speaker light kits at some point. The speaker light, the issue is that, for example, the custom cut plastics with the dogs, those are probably LA unique. So you'll get a more generic light kit for the other games. So that's great for WIC, but do you will that also be possibly available for Jaws? to do on a premium. Nice. Yes. So when we do release that kit, that kit's going to be pretty much, you know, yeah. Universal. Is that something that, you know, this is two games in a row with speaker lights. Is that something you are planning on doing moving forward? Moving forward. You can expect them on all the LEDs. Nice. And that kind of leads into my next question, which is somebody had asked me, you know, 2024, what are you most looking forward to? And my answer was spike three, spike three. And I don know where we at with that I don know what all you want to talk about So it in development It part of a full platform refresh So there other things coming and you see them They won't necessarily land all at once. But I can't go into details because I don't want to steal the thunder of the Spike 3 release when it happens. but I'll tell you that it's what you can expect, meaning that it's more power in the system in every way. Okay. But it will feel very familiar to you. Okay. So NodeBus architecture remains. You know, it's going to be – it's got some really cool stuff in it that, you know, yeah. So, I mean, it's basically, it's, best way to put it is, it's better everything. Does that include a, like a cabinet redesign? Because you had mentioned that last time we talked. Yeah, yeah, it's part of it. It's cabinet redesign is part of the platform refresh. Okay. So, yes, absolutely. Yeah. No, that's it. I don't know. I'm just excited because like expression lights, the moment I saw those, I was like, I hope every Stern game from here on out has expression lights. And I understand there's complexities to that. So it's these things like speaker lights. Yeah. And the new, you know, like a lot of, you know, we talk about when you're doing a platform, one of the opportunities is to make all of the things that are hard in your existing platform easier. Okay. And so easier and better, right? So the other thing that happens with a given platform is the longer you're on it, the more de-evolution happens because what happens is you have some issue and you band-aid it because you don't have an opportunity to fix it from scratch, so to speak. So a new platform is a great opportunity to kind of take a look back and say, here's all the stuff this thing does badly. Let's make it better. Nice. No, that's exciting. And, you know, I've played a lot of games from a lot of different manufacturers. And honestly, the most reliable system I've had ever worked with has always been the Spike 2 system. So if you're iterating that and making that only better, that's awesome. I mean, operators, look, I'm proud of many things that we've done, and one of the things is that if you talk to any operator and they'll tell you that, you know, any operator of modern games and they'll tell you that spikes are reliable. We have the highest earning games and we have the most played games. And not too far in the future, we will have the largest footprint of games. Oh, nice. So, you know, I think that's, you know, I mean, that's stuff that, that's the stuff that built the company, really. You know, it's like we're a lot, we're a lot different company than we were in 2011. I'll tell you that right now. I know some of those numbers that you just said, I'm assuming you, a lot of that data you're now seeing with Insider Connected where it's, you know, So maybe that just puts you on the spot, but it's like, what's a data point that you've learned with Insider Connected that really surprised you? Like something that you didn't see coming, if that makes sense. So the coolest thing about Insider Connected is the amount of data that's coming in to the point where, you know, we're going to have to have a piece of the organization that's dedicated to, you know, parsing that data, interpreting that data, managing that data and feeding out. Because the thing about the data you get is the data touches every element of the business. Okay. So, you know, so you, you end up, you know, there's, there's learnings for sales, there's learnings for engineering, there's learnings for manufacturing, there's learnings for operations, there's learnings for everybody. So, which is great. And honestly, it's, you know, it was a long time coming, right? It's just, you know, but things that surprised me. Well, you know, given all the flack that we've gotten about games like Venom, Venom is one of the highest, if not the highest earning games on the street on any given day. Nice. Oh, because you can see it every day. Yeah, you can see the game earnings. Yeah, and I'll tell you, Brian Eddy, I have a son of somebody, Brian Eddy makes high-earning games. The other, you know, one of the other standout earners on the street is Stranger Things. Yeah. Standout. So, and we were talking about, you know, we were talking about that, you know, the other day, we were saying, look at the way these games earn. And we can also see another interesting thing about the Venoms, that when they're in somebody's house, they're one of the most played games. Yes, 100%. When I borrowed Venom from Zach to stream it, I was playing the heck out of it because of that XP system. I know I'm only going to have this for a month, month and a half before it's got to go, so I am going to grind out. I'm going to beat Noel as many times as I can. I'm going to work my way up and collect my characters. There was so much more incentive daily to come down here and just put in a few games to just work your way up. I've never had that feeling with any other pinball machine. Right. And, you know, we're going to do more of that. But one of the finance guys here, Brian, is he was like glued to a game. He could not, he would not leave this thing alone until he beat it all. And now, you know, it's like somebody said to me, he goes, you know what? He's back on it. He's trying to do it again. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That was definitely interesting for sure. Just, I don't know. I've never had a game like that. But you mentioned Stranger Things, and Stranger Things was retired. You were done. But obviously you dipped back into the well, decided let's go again. And recently you've announced that you're doing that again with Black Knight Sword of Rage. Is this something we should expect more for you to kind of dip back into your older catalog? Or why did you decide to do that again? So the back catalog, first of all, we love the back catalog, right? Because the back catalog is always there. and you know it's like I I'm you know I'm I think it's awesome you know with games we launched and we're still making games we launched in 2017 or 2016 or something you know mm-hmm we do it based on the man you know it's really it's like if if you guys keep saying to us you know I I want a black night I want black man was there all right we'll make some more I mean yes it's really um I I I'll tell you that I'm flabbergasted at the conspiracy theories about the decisions we make. When I read this stuff online, I'm like, wow, what a stretch. But whatever. Yeah, I would say it's really easy now to just blame everything on Seth, right? Seth apparently makes 100% of the decisions at Stern, right? I was kidding with him that I was the most hated guy for a long time. I have no idea why. Look, Seth, he's great. He's got really, really great business sense. He has an understanding of games, and he understands how to manage the organization. all of these things that are being blamed on him have nothing to do with him so it's kind of like you say this entire gun thing you know I explained it we make commercial games and fall into an all ages category and we gotta go with what the licensor says we can do and that's what we did it's got nothing to do with him you know it's like I think he's I think he's great I have no I'll tell you that I didn't know none of us knew how the chips would fall we didn't know, he's a new guy and my biggest fear initially when we hired Seth we interviewed a lot of people the search went on for a while we talked to a lot of different people the executive team Right. So we collectively interviewed all of the candidates and we collectively made this decision. Right. Of course, Gary and Dave had a bigger voice in the decision because they own the company. But Gary was very interested in in the legacy of the company, the legacy of the company he built, the future of the company he built, the fact that it's going to go on for many years. the person in that seat has to be the person that can guide the company to the next stage, the next level of growth, right? And that requires sensibility and experience in a bunch of different things. And, you know, his track record and his CV, you know, is unquestionable. I mean, it's – and so – and I'll tell you that, you know, My anxiety when he came on was that Gary wasn't going to let the reins go. Gary's poured his heart and soul into this company. He's lived it through every high and every low. It's almost killed him, put him out of business, taken everything he has. It's been that cyclical since he founded the company. And I thought – and Gary is a hands-on, every detail, every nut and bolt guy. And so I thought if he doesn't let the reins go, if he doesn't let Seth do his thing, we're going to lose Seth. Right. The the fact that Gary has let go slowly and let you know, and Seth is running the company is because Seth proved that he could do it. And, you know, he's and again, it's, you know, look, we we want to grow the company. Our our, you know, our vision is we don't ever want to hear again. do they still make those things? We want this to fall out of the lexicon of humanity, right? It's like we just don't – we want to be a staple of entertainment, and we're doing what we can. But, yeah, I mean, no, he's a great guy, and you guys should take my word for it. He's got – the stuff you blame him for, I mean, it's like you need a boogeyman. Okay. I don't know. I honestly would have thought that this would have been, you know, like that people would have looked at the licensor as opposed to me and Seth. I'm going to second, but it's okay. I'm going to say, look, I'll take all the arrows. At the end of the day, I, you know, there's a great pinball machine. There's a great John Wick pinball machine. and we're proud of it. I think you'll see it in the stream tonight. That team is solid. I'm excited to see the stream. I'm excited to play it. That's the one thing that I kind of had to check myself over the last few days of just like, man, all this stuff that I'm reading is so focused on everything but the game that it's like, let's just pause for a second and wait to actually see the game. And it's funny because he said to me, he goes, he says, well, at least, you know, he says, that must mean the game's all good. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's a valid point. I did see one of my old friends talking about, you know, the game doesn't have this, the game doesn't have that. I was like, look, take a look at Deadpool, right? It's got nothing. And it's a great game. Yeah. And you guys, and I don't think I have to convince you guys that it's a great game. I think that, like, you know, it's like games are different, and they are built for different people, and they have different feelings, different sensibilities. This game has plenty in it. But I heard some guy, you know, I heard somebody saying, it doesn't have an animatronic dinosaur. It doesn't have a collapsing building. I said, look, it didn't need a collapsing building, and it didn't need a… Yeah, it doesn't have John Wick eating the ball, George, okay? John Wick needed to eat the ball. John Wick's not eating the ball. But I think the point is that, you know, different sensibilities for different people. This game has its very – it's got a very unique feel. It shoots great. And so, you know, the little car? Yeah. I sculpted the car myself. I designed the body of the car. And there was, of course, you know, my friend Jason Ruffer. I was like, it's not a Mustang. I was like, which John Wick car would you have had me pick? If I picked the Mustang, the Barracuda guy was going to say it's not a Barracuda. And not to mention the fact that we would have had to pay for licenses and et cetera. And so it's a generic muscle car, and I'm sorry. But I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun. And I gave the models that I used to create the molded part are the models that went to Chuck Ernst's group and that he used to animate the car. So in that way, they're consistent. Of course, the car in the films are whatever car John had at the time. Sure. So. Yeah, so back to the reveal day. One thing that was kind of a surprise to everyone was there were a lot of media creators that had reveal videos. No offense to them, but I just had never heard of these people. So these are people outside the pinball hobby. Looks to be in a similar hobby, a lot of arcade-related hobbies. So watching their content, it's clear they were excited. They're excited to be there. they're interested in pinball, but they're not, you know, they don't know. They're not a crazy deep pinball enthusiast. No, they don't know. What's the plan with that? Yeah. So I mean you seen us go to CES and you seen us go to Comic And I know you guys all scratch your heads and go why are they at Comic Why are they at CES So that part of the notion of getting the product in front of people outside of the people that currently engage with the product We love you guys. We love the community. But we are about growing. We are growing beyond the existing community, and that means that we have to get eyeballs in places where we don't normally get eyeballs. And so we did press tours, East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, very similar to the way that video game companies do it. And we invited a bunch of people, and the idea was let's get some press. and you know we don't know when when you get invited to one of those things a we don't know if you're coming b we don't control what you write and the only the only control we have is if we invite we invite you it's an embargo meaning that the material can't be released until you get permission from us to release the material if you're going to write something but you can write that you hate the game you know we don't control what you write we don't control when you write it beyond the fact that there's an embargo date and we don't throw up you even show up or even if you choose to write now we we we have every indicate you know we have every plan to get some of you guys in here to come and look at the game and get your hands on it etc and maybe going forward what we can do is if if if you guys are willing you know we can we you guys have to you have to abide by the embargo sure that you know you can't release material until we say, but, um, but beyond that, you know, you could come in and, and review games and, and write that you hate the game and it's, it's, it's, you know, it's your prerogative. I mean, it's like, but I mean, that's all it was is just, and, and, you know, when you, when you go outside of the, the community that's familiar with the product, you really don't know what you're going to get. And so, you know, and that's, that's what, you know, that's what we've seen. That said, that guy's got a set of eyeballs that we don't normally have. Yeah. Yeah. If some number of those people say, Hey, that's cool. I didn't know I could own a John Wick pinball machine. Then that's worth it. Yeah. And, and I, I, I totally see what you're saying. Um, I just know that's something that like the, at least within the pinball, there's always rumors. There's always the pinball community, there's always rumors. There's always where are the leaks? And I understand you guys have had issues with leaks before. And then talking to distributors, distributors are like, I don't have any information. I'm waiting until that 30 minutes before you are. So to me, it's like, I wish some of the, not necessarily me, but it's even the distributors or the people that are going to sell the games. They have an opportunity to make their own scissor reel or their own in-depth stuff to help them sell. Yeah, there's stuff that we could do a lot better in the way that we disseminate that information. You know, we were talking about it today. I don't think it's in our best interest to stream a game five days after we release it. I think we should stream the day of release. Or the day after the announce. But it's like, I think if we had announced it, if we just streamed this game the day we announced it, I don't think this conversation would have happened. I think that the entire thing was like people were like, five minutes past this, you're into what? Look at this cool game and look at all this buzz. And so, I don't know. Maybe it's still going to happen. There's clearly a challenge there. I just know during the Jaws release, it was either same day or the next day, there was a pre-recorded video that Elwin had done where he just showed, I think it was like two balls, maybe it was just one full game of Jaws where he kind of walked through it. It wasn't a live stream. It was a pre-recorded video and I just remember that coming out and I'm like, I'm a fan of this. I'm a fan of this because he was able to show what he wanted to show, gave us a nice bite-sized chunk of what this game is. And it was all, I just, I remember thinking that's, that's a great way to show off the game this early on. And then it got us more excited going into the stream. Cause then we already had that base understanding of the game. So then when he gets to the stream, instead of spending 30 minutes explaining multiball and all that stuff, like we already had it. It's a really good point. It's a really good point. I think that as the release mechanism has grown, it's also gotten way more complex. Yeah. So we have dealers, distributors, press, our own internal needs for games to manufacture and all that kind of stuff. that release universe needs to be cleaned up a little bit. We need to focus a lot on coordination. And I think there's a lot of truth in what you're saying. Sure. Well, just a few more quick questions before we wrap up. So first off, you're in this huge facility. I think when I talked to you last, you were about to move or you were preparing to move, but now you're in it. biggest, like the best part of it. What's the best part of being about being in this big facility now? Oh, it's a beautiful building. And we're going to have, you know, we're in the midst of, we're building out a huge arcade that's going to be open to, you know, people we invite, you know, when people come for tours and stuff. Manufacturing facility is beautiful. We can get, you know, we, it's much easier to build games, much easier to build better games. um my you know the studio's a lot nicer you know you know i have better more tools it's it's great um so yeah there's no no negatives we have a whole building with four giant cnc machines cutting playfields nice um that's separate from us that's going to do all the you know they're going to do um any pretty much playfields uh and finishing operations okay Okay. Accessories. I know you have like an entire accessories line now, but I know like Foo Fighters is awesome. And the Foo Fighters topper is incredible. But obviously it took a while for the Foo Fighters topper to come out. You know, we're waiting on Venom. Yeah, accessories has been, in some ways, it's been a challenge from the standpoint. there's a lot of the same issues that impact the games in terms of approvals, impact accessories, right? It's the reason that the Star Wars topper took a year to get out of the market. I've said that before, you know, and if you have in a situation like Foo Fighters, if you have a band that's on tour or busy recording or doing whatever, it's tough to get eyes on something. In addition to that, there's the challenge of the team is focused on the game and the accessories sort of fall behind to the game because the game is priority one. And so one of my challenges from marketing and from sales this year is to try to get to the point where I produce accessories on cadence with the games. Nice. The day you get the game, you can order the topper and get delivery on the game relatively close to the, which we haven't been great at. And so, and it's a big challenge because it's not only, there's a design effort, a manufacturing effort, and a sales effort, right? And it has to dovetail with the production of the game, you know, with the release of the game. Yeah, and that's something that I know like Expression Light Kits, for whatever reason, seem to be plagued with backlogs. And so to see WIP come out with more. Believe it or not, some of that stuff, like even as recently as JAWS, we had parts shortages inadvertently, unplanned, like, oh, what do you mean the vendor can't deliver? Yeah. So there is some hangover from COVID relative to park shortages from time to time. Expression Light seems to be one of these crazy things where, you know, one of those vendors can't deliver consistently. So we have definitely that's been a challenge, and we've got to fix that. Because, I mean, it's in our best interest to fix it. And, you know, you guys want it. Yeah. you know, we should be able to provide it. So my last two questions, you had said earlier, you know, Stranger Things and now Black Knight Sword of Rage, you know, you're reacting to a demand or an ask, you know, you're hearing from the pinball community. I don't know. Maybe you haven't heard, maybe you haven't heard, but apparently people want Lord of the Rings, Ghostbusters and Tron. Those are, I mean, I don't know if you haven't heard that, but those are, those seem to be on high demand. and as the creator of Lord of the Rings. All of those. So the toughest one is Lord of the Rings because it's two generations of hardware ago. Is it two? It's three generations of hardware ago. It's a White Star System game. Not to say that it's impossible, but there's a licensing issue also, meaning that we have to renegotiate that license completely from scratch. Ghostbusters. maybe doable. I mean, uh, Tron, maybe doable. Um, so. Hypothetically. Well, I know you've like, as soon as you guys went to LCD, it created a lot of licensing problems. So obviously those three are DMD games in a perfect world. You'd go big old DMD color, DMD, kind of like this game behind me. I just love that look. I love the look. Um, but also I'm assuming like, like Lord of the Rings. Those are photographs of all the movie characters. Just theoretically, could you do a whole new art package where it's all hand drawn and avoid that licensing? Or is there still likenesses or how does that how do you have to fight that? There's never you know, you mentioned likenesses. Nobody has touched on this relative to to Wick, but there's so many characters and every one of those characters had to have approvals on their likeness. Oh, wow. And that was a you know, that was a big challenge. and there's also by the way some of those characters do not want to be portrayed outside the films even in the context of the character they played in the film oh okay interesting yeah and I won't get into who but it's not my place but that's a tiny little thing that somehow went unnoticed and so I think that Yeah, I mean, I'm not to say that Tron, we love Tron. And I, you know, I personally, I had, you know, Tron is one of the earliest things I ever worked on in my professional career, the franchise. And so I really want to do, you know, I was, whatever I was, 25 years old or 26 years old when I worked on the Midway video game. So I would love it. I would love, you know, I mean, I've already talked to John. I was like, dude, you got to do an homage to my stuff from 1982. And so we've talked it through, and everybody here wants to do it. It's just we just have to get to a place where Spike 3 might give us some power to make some of that stuff easier. Yeah, that would be really cool. So I know one of the questions I had asked you prior, and we can close with this, was kind of a what are they up to kind of question. And so like Tanya, I know Tanya crushed it with Foo Fighters. Is he on to another game or what is he working on? So he's director of IC Gameside Tech. So what does that mean? It means that there are two teams that work on Insider Connected. there's a server-side team and a game-side team and the game-side team you know those two teams have to do this you know they have to mesh and interact and and so you know he played a big role in the you know the initial insider connected effort we released you know to release when we launched him and I, him and I did a lot of noodling on the achievement system. And so, you know, I thought, you know, we thought it was a good thing for him to, to do. I think, you know, he likes it and not to say he won't ever work on a game again. It's just that that's a, that job's a full-time job too. Yeah. Yeah. I know it's already been said that Dwight and Brian Eddy, they're teaming up again on the next title. Get ready for more XP, baby. Oh, that's perfect. Does that mean Jack Danger and Ray Day, are they going to team up again? Do you have any idea? Jack's in the shoot right now. Okay. Yeah, Jack's in the shoot right now, but he's got a different partner. Okay. And Ray Day is working on something. Nice. Okay. Is he just – is Ray Day still your worst employee? Has that changed? I'm just checking. Is he still your worst employee? Because we all assume Ray Day is like right at the bottom of the list. It's just – no? He's in the studio today. I should drag him in here. Nah, we're good. He's like, oh, yeah, he's going to get a game soon. Awesome, awesome. He's going to get a shot at the big C. Okay, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to it. Well, George, I really appreciate it. I know you're actually about to go record with Loser Kid. So if you're watching this now, go check out Loser Kid. We've done this a bunch of times, but I don't know those guys. So this will be my first go with them. Oh, very nice, guys. So anybody listening to this after the fact, go check out Loser Kid on YouTube or check out their podcast. But yeah, George, I really appreciate you. I really appreciate you being on here, just being candid, open like this. And I look forward to doing it again in a year. Apparently, we're just going to keep this going. It's always fun. And you always ask some combination of tough ones and easy ones. Wonderful. That's always the goal. Hey, everybody tune into the stream, the live stream tonight, you know, so you can get to see the real John Wick. There we go. And that will be on the Stern YouTube channel. Yep. All right. Thanks again, George. All right, guys. Bye. Bye.