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My Interview with Haggis Pinball

Cary Hardy·video·1h 23m·analyzed·Jul 11, 2023
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.030

TL;DR

Haggis Pinball CEO defends deposit model, cites COVID/supply chain impacts, targets Fathom completion by year-end.

Summary

Cary Hardy interviews the CEO and Head of Design (Martin Robbins) of Haggis Pinball about their business challenges, COVID-19 impacts, manufacturing scale, and the Centaur remake announcement. The founder explains severe lockdowns in Australia affected supply chains and production timelines, details how their 20-person operation achieves one game per day through high-quality craftsmanship, and defends taking deposits six months in advance for Centaur as necessary cash flow and planning strategy, not survival desperation.

Key Claims

  • Haggis Pinball was locked down in Australia for 263 days total over an 18-month period during COVID-19

    high confidence · CEO stated Australia was 'the most locked down city in the world' with hard lockdown meaning no leaving home except 15 minutes exercise within 5km radius

  • Shipping costs increased 300% after COVID and have never returned to pre-pandemic levels

    high confidence · CEO provided specific example: shoebox-sized shipment from China that cost $80 and took 4-5 days pre-COVID now costs $350 and takes 8 weeks

  • Haggis manufactures at approximately 1 game per day (20-25 games per month) with 20 total employees

    high confidence · CEO stated 'one game a day. So 20 to 25 games a month' and confirmed approximately 12-14 people work on assembly daily

  • Stern manufactures approximately 80 games per day with 350 people on the factory floor

    medium confidence · CEO provided estimate: 'if you take the leading manufacturer in the industry that produces, as I said, about 80 games a day, they have approximately 350 people on the floor'

  • Haggis has tripled its throughput capacity since acquiring the current facility

    high confidence · CEO stated 'we've well three-folded our throughput capacity from when we first took this facility to where we are at now'

  • Haggis is currently significantly over halfway through the Fathom production run and targeting completion before year-end 2023

    high confidence · CEO confirmed 'We're well over halfway through the run, significantly over halfway through the run. We've committed to completing by the end of the year' with tracking at one game per day

  • Haggis manufactures all their own cabinets, playfields, and vinyl printing in-house, unlike other manufacturers

    high confidence · CEO stated 'we make all our own cabinets we make all our own playfields we make all our own mix you know we do all our own vinyl printing'

  • The Centaur remake reveal shows the Haggis design philosophy of extreme attention to detail and high-gloss finishing

Notable Quotes

  • “Australia was the most locked down city in the world...we were locked down for something like 263 days...almost, you know, over two thirds of a year, over a period of 18 months”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 4:26 — Establishes the severity of COVID impact on Australian manufacturing; context for understanding business disruptions

  • “Everything just stopped immediately and we needed to pivot...that was basically where the Class of 81 came from”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 6:20 — Explains how COVID disrupted original product roadmap and led to Class of 81 game development

  • “I'm in this country on the other side of the world that has no pinball industry whatsoever. So, you know, I can't just necessarily reach across...and say, hey, I need these particular pinball components...None of that exists. So I had to try to create and figure out how to do all of that almost every single aspect by myself”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 20:17 — Explains structural disadvantage of manufacturing in Australia vs US-based competitors; justifies longer timelines

  • “We're currently tracking at one game a day. So 20 to 25 games a month. that gets us through the end of the fathom run before the end of the year”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 15:17 — Provides specific production metric and confidence in meeting Fathom delivery deadline

  • “if you take the leading manufacturer in the industry that produces...about 80 games a day, they have approximately 350 people on the floor making those games...if you then extrapolate that to us, who has a grand total of 20 employees...we're actually not that far off that throughput”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 17:50 — Quantifies manufacturing efficiency gap between small and large manufacturers; justifies throughput expectations

Entities

Haggis PinballcompanyCary HardypersonMartin RobbinspersonHaggis Pinball CEOpersonCentaurgameFathomgameClass of 81game

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Community speculating that deposit model for Centaur six months in advance is survival tactic rather than operational necessity; CEO denies this but acknowledges perception exists

    high · Cary asked 'you're taking deposits right now in order to simply stay afloat. I mean, those are theories.' CEO responded 'The short answer is no, as in we're not just trying to take deposits to stay afloat'

  • ?

    business_signal: Haggis Pinball reports tripling throughput capacity since acquiring current facility and achieving one game per day production rate with 20 employees

    high · CEO stated 'we've well three-folded our throughput capacity from when we first took this facility to where we are at now' and confirmed 'one game a day'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Community skepticism regarding Haggis Pinball's timelines and deposit practices; CEO addresses perception of taking deposits for survival rather than operational planning

    medium · Cary stated 'I'm sure you've seen the comments' about deposit theories and CEO acknowledged 'All of that, the deposits...ties into us trying to manage that timeframe'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: Haggis differentiates through high-gloss, automotive-quality cabinetry and in-house manufacturing of all major components, contrasting with Stern's modular, scale-based approach

    high · CEO explained 'we make all our own cabinets we make all our own playfields...two-pack automotive quality cabinetry' versus Stern's approach of taking 'out of a box and put in a game or roll in a cabinet off the floor'

  • $

    market_signal: Geographic supply chain disadvantage: Australia has no domestic pinball component industry, forcing Haggis to source internationally with longer lead times and higher costs than US manufacturers

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.250

0:00
I guess my next question is one that's a very common one that people are asking about and it has to do with why are you promoting and asking for deposits on a game that's still six months out?
0:19
What's up guys and welcome back to my channel where I talk and do everything pinball. Now, I just got off of the conversation with Haggis Pinball, and I'm going to upload it as it is. No editing, because honestly, I feel for a couple of reasons why I should do this. One, if I do edit this, there will be questions of why did I edit? What did he say that I edited out, or what did I say, or anything like that? So no, I'm giving this to you in its entirety with no editing. Secondly, I want to get this video out as soon as possible, so that way those of you out there that are attempting or wanting to purchase this game have all the information that you need. And if I put all the time and effort into trying to edit this down, put a lot of B-roll footage in or whatever like that, that's only going to hinder how fast I can get this information out to you, including the time I'm spending right now. So by all means, guys, grab some popcorn. This is over an hour long. All you're really going to need for this is audio, so let's get right to it. What's going on, everybody? As you're well aware, Haggis Pinball has revealed and shown off their most recent title, their revisited Centaur. And I have the CEO and founder of Haggis Pinball, as well as Martin Robbins. Martin, I forgot to ask, what was your title? Are you like the lead programmer, lead coder? What is the term for you? Head of design. Yeah, Martin's head of design. Head of design? I thought you were just over the codes. I'm okay. Head of code design? Oh, no. No, head of design. Full stop. Oh. Everything. Oh, okay. All right. He's the man. Well, congratulations there, Martin. I didn't know that.
2:07

high confidence · Cary stated 'this game looks very beautiful' and 'I don't know if it's me, but I know pinball people in general like shiny things. And there's no doubt about it that your games are very shiny'

  • “pinball is hard. I know it's turned into a trope, that phrase and that saying, but it is”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 27:12 — Reflects industry-wide sentiment about manufacturing complexity; suggests humility about challenges

  • “the deposits, the launch period, that all ties into us trying to manage that timeframe...to actually make sure we meet the deadlines that we want to meet”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 25:57 — Defends six-month advance deposit model as operational/cash flow necessity, not survival tactic

  • “I didn't necessarily know better...I sort of looked at it on the surface and went, well, I just do the absolute best I can do in everything that I do...that's how we ended up with...two-pack automotive quality cabinetry”

    Haggis Pinball CEO@ 21:16 — Explains the philosophy behind Haggis's premium build quality; traces roots to lack of industry background

    • Stern Pinball
    company
    Gary Sternperson
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Australiaorganization
    Chicagoorganization
    TPFevent
    Chicago Expoevent

    high · CEO explained 'I'm in this country on the other side of the world that has no pinball industry whatsoever...I can't just...say, hey, I need these particular pinball components...None of that exists'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Haggis Pinball operates with small team of 20 employees; 12-14 work on daily assembly; CEO personally involved in design philosophy and quality standards

    high · CEO stated 'we have a grand total of 20 employees' and approximately '12 to 13 people it takes to make a game in a day'

  • $

    market_signal: Shipping costs increased 300% post-COVID and have not returned to pre-pandemic levels; supply chain component costs remain elevated

    high · CEO provided specific example of shoebox shipment cost rising from $80 to $350 and timeline extending from 4-5 days to 8 weeks; stated 'that has not changed shipping is still very very expensive'

  • ?

    announcement: Haggis Pinball officially revealed Centaur remake with deposits taken six months in advance; game positioned as successor to Fathom in production pipeline

    high · Cary stated 'Haggis Pinball has revealed and shown off their most recent title, their revisited Centaur' and CEO confirmed deposits are being taken with six-month lead time

  • ?

    product_strategy: Fathom production still ongoing; company committing to completion before end of 2023; Centaur launch positioned six months after interview

    high · CEO stated 'We're well over halfway through the run, significantly over halfway through the run. We've committed to completing by the end of the year' with one game per day throughput

    • So, anyways, I mean, congratulations on your most recent reveal. I mean, I had my reaction video up on it. It was legitimate, like, you know, this game looks very beautiful. And that's the same thing with Fathom. It's one of those where, I don't know if it's me, but I know pinball people in general like shiny things. And there's no doubt about it that your games are very shiny. I mean, inside and out. To the point to where I'm like, man, are they going into too much detail on how shiny this thing is on the inside? I mean, does it really need to look that good? But it was one of those things where I was like, man, it looks really good. And there's definitely some things that we're going to talk about going through this. I have a list of questions right here for you. And obviously whenever you touch on a game like Centaur and even Fathom Since it's a game that's already been made You already have people that love the original for what it is And so now you're going to start playing with something that people already have an emotional attachment to So you're going to get a lot of people out there that are not going to agree with some of the decisions that you've made And I'm sure you're well aware that you can't make everybody happy So, but before we start going into questions, I want to ask this question first because I know that this is going to be the foundation of a lot of the things that are going to be asked after this. And I don't like bringing it up, but we're going to talk a little bit about COVID-19. And for those that aren't aware, I mean, probably people don't understand how restrictive and how much it affected Australia. you. So I want to know when it comes to pinball, not just your personal life, but you know, the business of creating games for people and running a business, how did COVID-19 really affect you as a pinball manufacturer? Well, I mean, to be completely honest, it probably wasn't that far off actually sinking the entire company. I mean, I suppose without going on, I mean, again, it depends how long you want this video to be, but I could probably go on ad nauseum about how much of an impact and how long it went on for here. I mean, Australia was the most locked down city in the world. So, I mean, we had that great accolade to refer to when it comes to COVID. But over that period of time, I think we were locked down for something like 263 days. So almost, you know, over two thirds of a year, over a period of 18 months, we were in hard lockdown. So that hard lockdown meant, you know, couldn't leave your home. It meant you were allowed to leave your home for 15 minutes for exercise and go no more than, I think it was five kilometres from your home. And the only exception was if you needed to get to a supermarket to get food that happened to be more than five kilometres outside of the radius of your home, then that was permissible. So it was full on. And as I said, that was hard, hard lockdown. not just a case of, oh, you can go out and wear a mask and we're going to shut down the hairdressers. It was everything shut.
    5:13
    So its impact was massive and its timing as well, again, without necessarily going on too much about the history of it, but we were all set. Well, I'll go on very, very briefly. So as most people probably know, this all started, you know, with me as a sort of an idea, not knowing anything really about pinball at all apart from enjoying playing it when I was 15. to somehow deciding that I thought it was potentially a viable business option to make a pinball company and then figuring out how to make a pinball and managing to get a whitewood to TPF and get to TPF and then get to Chicago Expo and then was all set to get back to TPF with the finished production game and get it in front of everybody,
    5:56
    sell out of the 200 games that I was going to make of Celts, that side behind me, come back to Australia, set the factory up, get things going or the day we were set to uh step foot on the plane the world shut down so everything stopped so everything that had been planned for up until that point with respect to couch with respect to what the next game was for haggis um all the work that had been put into it up to that point that everything just stopped immediately and we needed to pivot um and pivot quickly and that was basically where the class of 81 came from it was all off the back of the fact that COVID shut down and completely changed every single plan we had. As I said, we were then locked down for an extensive period of time. Supply has shut down, so you couldn't get things. You couldn't get things as simple as framing timber or cladding timber that you might have needed for fitting out a new factory, for example. But electronics went out of supply overnight. So the small computers that we use in the games all of a sudden went out of supply. Components went out of supply. and it was long-lasting. Prices went up for shipping 300% and they've never come back.
    7:07
    You know, I could go on and on and on, but everything from timber to bolts to electronics to almost anything you can think of, all of a sudden became harder to come by, harder to get and more expensive. So Australia somehow, I think like the UK, I'm not so much sure about America, but went from being a manufacturing country from when I was growing up as a kid, We had car manufacturers and, you know, tractor manufacturers and all sorts of things. It's turned into sort of a professional services country, so a bit like the UK. A lot of what we have to get does get imported, even though I may buy locally. You know, wood is sourced from a supplier overseas. All that just dried up instantly.
    7:49
    300% on the shipping cost for everything. Oh, yeah. It was funny, actually. As I said, prior to us trying to get ready for TPF, I could order a shoebox size of something, say, from China, for example, that's close to us, and that shoebox size of product would cost me $80, and it would turn up in about four or five days from China. After COVID, that same box that used to cost $80 cost $350 and would take eight weeks.
    8:21
    And that happened overnight. Just instantly, I put an order in for something, and the price was just, what do you mean it's $350? like seriously and then you know some some of that's corrected a little bit but for the most part um that has not changed shipping is still very very expensive um and lead times have come in but there's still what would have been five days is more like eight or nine days now um so it's come down from 15 days but it's still stuff still slow yeah i mean like so just the first question and you've already like potentially answered a couple of other questions and everything that we're going to get to eventually and one of those has to do with like you know price. But like you mentioned with a new facility, I mean, and that's one of the things that I think a lot of people were following you on social media and YouTube on is that you were posting quite regularly, you know, Haggis updates and this is what we got going on, showing off your large facility, the new equipment. You're basically proving to us that you have the ability to manufacture a pinball machine. And then was it COVID-19 that basically brought the updates to a complete halt for like, I think it was like nine or ten months.
    9:31
    Yeah, I think, I mean, I'd have to try to check back exactly on the timeline. I mean, I guess the sentiment around what basically happened was, look, I guess the impetus for doing the YouTube updates was in the first place was because my head was in the space of, well, you know, I think this is an opportunity to start a manufacturing company. I'm on the other side of the world. Nobody knows who I am. I really didn't have any background or history in pinball at all so I wasn't even really cognizant of the fact that there had been this litany of failed pinball companies prior to me so it wasn't even a case of me sort of going well no I need to show something it was honestly just a case of me looking at it going well I somehow need to let people know who I am what I'm doing you know that it's an honest endeavour and at the same time you know I really quite enjoy taking the videos and going through that process of editing and doing all the sort of various special effects and things. So to me, it just sort of went hand in hand. You know, I was figuring out how to do things. I was sharing the journey. And yeah, and people really quite enjoyed that. I guess when it then got to the point that I suppose we were at the point, well, okay, hang on, it's now a real thing. Like people, I've got the TTF, you know, people didn't tell me the whitewood sucked. We've got, you know, back to a completed game of kelts. We're at the point now we're actually going to start manufacturing. it started to become this sort of decision point around well you know I need to either allocate effort and time into making games or I need to allocate effort and time or a portion of effort and time into producing videos and I tried to do both for a short period of time um and I and I sort of felt like what happened was again two things people were again because of COVID um mindful of the delays that we were already starting to incur or the time it was taking for us to produce games and what people really wanted to see was us put a box in a game and for somebody to unbox that game in their in their living room or lounge room or games room so it was that sort of decision point where I had well I either need to just focus on concentrating on producing the best games that we can best games in the world and that's what mainly people want or I have to decrease my time doing that and spend it on videos and the decision was just made to focus on games fundamentally first and foremost. As much as I enjoy doing the videos and people may think that it's sort of a bit off the cuff and it's like, yeah, set up a camera and just talk to it, it actually does take a fair bit of work. I mean, it takes a bit of work to edit it and actually make it look like it's something presentable. It also takes a fair amount of mental energy that you've got to think, well, okay, now I need to produce footies that people want to watch. and you'll probably get an inkling into the quality of the games that we produce. I mean, I carry that across everything I do. So when I produced a video or took a video, it was not just set up the camera. It was set the camera up, think about the scene, think about the location of the camera, try to change the camera position four or five or six times in that two-minute video or five-minute video, get all the footage down, spend two hours editing the footage and then doing special effects and color grading and audio matching and, you know, all those sorts of things, and then publish. So, yeah, it was just literally, I think I'm better focused concentrating on putting games in boxes rather than the video updates. I mean, without a doubt, I'm pretty sure everybody who's waiting on the fathom right now would much rather you focus on getting games in boxes and getting them out the door and everything. I mean, I guess this is one of those things where I guess to keep people, their hopes up, like a quick video of like, hey, another one's out the door kind of thing, like a 10, 15-second clip posted on your Facebook page or something like that. I mean, it doesn't have to be production quality every time. I'm well aware because of video editing, there's a lot of time and mental effort in there kind of thing. I'm thinking it's just on a basis of keeping the customers informed about, hey, we're still doing our thing. Here's proof kind of thing. and look and we do and we make an effort to obviously speak to the customers that we have and keep them updated on where we're at i mean the other thing in that regard as well it ended up being the few when i was doing those and i did a couple of here's the factory here's the whatnot i mean again it was just an opportunity i think for the detractors to just try to pick apart what we did and it didn't really matter if i posted a video saying hey this is how we're going and we're still working on fathom and we're getting out the door and this is a look at the factory that just seemed to turn into fodder for personal attacks relating to, oh, look, there's nobody in the factory and is there only one person that works there and, you know, why are they doing it this way and why don't they do it that way? And so it just became, again, that decision point around are we actually getting the response that we think that we want from doing that video or are we better off just continuing to communicate with the customers that we have, get the games in boxes and then get them shipped, and that's what we did. Yeah. I mean, so from what you told us recently, as well as a video that you put up, your latest update was back in post-TPF, you have a goal for getting all your Fathoms in boxes and to the customers before the end of this year.
    14:45
    Yes, that's true. So as of right now, I mean, where are we at with Fathoms? I mean, are you able to divulge any kind of numbers on that, just like how far through the – how many you've done, how many more you have to go? Is that something that you can divulge or not? I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, we won't, not exact numbers. I mean, we don't do that. No manufacturer really does that. But we're well over halfway through the run, significantly over halfway through the run. We've committed to completing by the end of the year. And I know that we're probably going to talk to throughput and whatnot. And look, I've told people this as well. It's no secret, which is we're currently tracking at one game a day. So 20 to 25 games a month. that gets us through the end of the fathom run before the end of the year. I suppose people can extrapolate that a little bit.
    15:31
    And yeah, so that's where we're at. So we're confident about that. We're in the best position we've ever been insofar as our manufacturing capability. I mean, we've improved, I mean,
    15:42
    300% seems to be a number for today for some reason. 300% increase in shipping. I mean, we've well three-folded our throughput capacity from when we first took this facility to where we are at now. So, yeah, feel good about that, and that's definitely where we'll be. I mean, Evan, that was one of the top questions I had from whether it be customers waiting and potential customers for Centaur is that basically can they confirm that they're going to have all their fathoms, including all the different revisions of them, Classic and Mermaid, they're going to be done before the end or at least at the end of 2023. And so now you're confirming that, yes, that is definitely the fill for it. So that's good to hear on that one. Yes.
    16:20
    Yeah. But I mean, like anything, and again, we'll talk to that. Sorry to cut you off there. But yeah, we can talk to that. As a small company, I mean, we probably feel impacts to delays and things of that nature more than the larger companies. So, you know, there's always something that impacts us somewhat. But yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yes, we're confident. We're confident we'll be there by the end of the year. And I think that's definitely, you know, when it comes to people in the hobby is that a lot of them are just so used to the larger manufacturers that are definitely located in the States. that don't have to deal with a lot of the things that you guys are dealing with where you're currently at. So, I mean, like when it comes to like manufacturing speed, for instance, and everything, you know, when you have a large manufacturer like Stern that's able to pump out, I don't know, hundreds of games, you know, within a week, yeah, hundreds of games a week kind of thing. And then, you know, so then people, for whatever reason, want to know why is it that it takes you guys so much longer to do that. So, I mean, if you could enlighten them a little bit, I guess, on the drastic differences between a smaller company like yourself and the larger manufacturers to help them understand why, I mean, the floor is all yours for that.
    17:27
    Look, I mean, that's a complicated and simple question and answer all at the same time. So if I try to boil it down as I understand it, and again, I mean, a lot of this, or a certain degree of this is sort of more reasonably educated assumptions or guesses, I guess, on what the other manufacturers are doing. Because as I said, you know, manufacturers don't generally divulge that bit of information. But if you take the leading manufacturer in the industry that produces, as I said, about 80 games a day, they have approximately 350 people on the floor making those games. So if you extrapolate backwards from that, it works out to be approximately eight people to make a game in a day. That's on the floor doing the assembly with all of the various bits and components that they're able to just take out of a box and put in a game or roll in a cabinet off the floor from somebody else and put a decal on the side of it. So if you then extrapolate that to us, who has a grand total of 20 employees that are working within the company as a small company, we're actually not that far off that throughput. So at 25 games a month or one a day, I think we're around, and I've got to recheck these numbers, I think we're around 12 to 13 people it takes to make a game in a day. Maybe it's 14. I've got to check those numbers. so you then take into consideration that there's a lot of things that we do that I think the other manufacturers don't in so far as that we make all our own cabinets we make all our own playfields we make all our own mix you know we do all our own vinyl printing we do all you know all of these sort of additional things that I don't think are necessarily done by all of the other manufacturers we're round about where I think is fair I sort of think that that number's about right one a day with the number of people we have and the number of things we do, that to me is actually correct.
    19:18
    So I guess in a simple response to people, it's just a matter of scale. And that was what I was going to get to right there. It's just a matter of scale when you have like a – I mean, Stern just bought a whole new freaking multi-million foot, square foot building. Oh, yeah. So it's one of those things where it's all about scale. And like you said, you narrowed it down to like this is how many employees we have. so you said you have about 20 employees and like you have 12 or 13 people assembling these games on a daily basis is that what you're saying yep okay correct yeah so i mean and again it's it's you've got to remember as well that a company a company like stern for example have been making pinball machines for how many decades you know 20 30 40 years gary stern has been in the industry his whole life so you're dealing as well with a company that's got an extremely long history of what it takes to make pinball machines. They have a very obviously well-structured and deep relationship with a number of different vendors and suppliers and all of those aspects. And as you alluded to earlier, we're in this country on the other side of the world that has no pinball industry whatsoever.
    20:25
    So, you know, I can't just necessarily reach across, you know, an hour down the road or even across the other side of the state and say, hey, I need these particular pinball components and I just want to buy 500 legs or 500 lock bars. None of that exists. So I had to try to create and figure out how to do all of that almost every single aspect by myself Plus you know as is counted to us consistently we are building the best quality games and even by you best quality games in the world. They're extremely shiny.
    20:58
    And that, again, that's born a little bit out of the fact that, you know, I didn't necessarily know better. You know, I didn't come into this from a heavy pinball background. I didn't come from a pinball manufacturing company or as an operator or anything like that that said, well, this is how games are made. I sort of looked at it on the surface and went, well, I just do the absolute best I can do in everything that I do. So if I'm going to make a box, you know, that's going to be a cabinet for a pinball machine, what is the absolute best way that I could make that? And that's how we ended up with, you know, all edge scenes, you know, two-pack automotive quality cabinetry, you know, the trim that you see. I mean, I've got a bit of a, you know, passion and love of motorsports and race cars which I spend zero time on anymore since I started doing pinball but again taking some of that those learnings and that sort of attention to detail around the way you run your wiring looms and the way that you package up the things that you do and transferred that into when I was figuring out how to make a game so I'm sure in hindsight there are a lot of things I probably could have done that were somewhat less of a quality that were probably much quicker in the throughput side of things. But I was mindful too that this was a, you know, it's a reflection and a testament to each of us that work here, all the people that are involved in Haggis. I mean, this speaks to our passion and our abilities to do things. And, you know, I wanted to produce the absolute best that I could. So that slows us down a little bit as well, I guess. It makes things take a little bit longer than the other guys. Yeah, I mean, I guess my next question is one that's a very common one that people are asking about. and it has to do with why are you promoting and asking for deposits on a game that's still six months out? I mean, they look at that as being a very great deal amount of time. Typically, I mean, for certain companies, I think Spooky is one of those that also takes deposits on their games, but it's not six months out. So there's obviously that question that's like, why so long, six months before that, if you can inform us a little bit on that.
    23:05
    Well, I suppose there's two parts to that question. One is why are we taking deposits while we're still in manufacturing of an existing game and why deposit six months out? I mean, they both sort of tie into a similar thing. I mean, I would also comment that, I mean, and you sort of alluded to that, to a certain extent with Spooky as well. There's other manufacturers that do that currently. I mean, and again, our experience in Australia is probably quite different to the experience in America because, you know, for you guys, as you said, especially people, for example, that live in Chicago, they could, you know, drive around the corner to another manufacturer and pick up a game.
    23:39
    I've got multiple people that I know of here in this country that have been waiting 18 months plus for a game, whilst that manufacturer has since also released new games. So I don't think by any stretch of the imagination I'm setting a precedent by myself. I think that precedent already actually exists. As far as the time scale, I think, again, that just comes down to, again, scale. It comes down to the size of the company, the fact that we are still a young company, and we are figuring out and learning things as we go. And it helps support and promote the things that we need to do in order to make sure we meet these deadlines that we need to make for delivery of Fathom and to roll straight into Centaur as well. I mean, I think people need to understand they probably already do. It's not like you just finish Fathom one day and then you're like, hey, okay, and now it's on Monday. Finish Fathom on Friday. Now it's Monday. Let's kick in a Centaur. There's obviously a lot of work that goes into the background. We've already spent well over 12 months to get to the point that we are with this game. And now we need to start ramping up on, again, supply line, getting all of our things organised, getting all of our parts and components in. One of the things that I'm probably adapting slightly off what we've learnt through Fathom is maybe trying to get more components and more products up front in advance before we need them. I have run and I still continue to run a lean manufacturing methodology which is, you know, it's the Toyota methodology or this concept of just in time where you basically for the products that you can supply in a certain period of time, you only actually really need to source them in advance relative to the amount you use in a period of times plus the lead time it takes to get the product if that makes sense. So, you know, normally, for example, if I get cabinet wood and I can get it sort of in a three-day turnaround and I produce a game a day, then logically I'd want to make sure I had a week or two weeks' worth of stock on hand at any one point in time because then when I run through that stock halfway through the second week, I order the next fortnight's worth of stock and it comes in.
    25:48
    Carry that forward a little bit to what we're planning to do. Essentially, that's starting to expand out a little bit. So all of that, the deposits, the launch period, that all ties into us trying to manage that timeframe. and that program and that schedule to actually make sure we meet the deadlines that we want to meet, basically. I mean, because you've got the individuals out there that, like I said, I'm sure you've seen the comments and everything, or whether it be people on other content creators that are spouting that you're taking deposits right now in order to simply stay afloat. I mean, those are theories. I'm not saying that's what's going on, but you've seen them. I'm sure you have. I know I've seen them. So it's like, okay, is there any kind of response that you have to those theories? I mean, even though you just explained, do you care to comment anything about that?
    26:35
    I mean, the short answer is no, as in we're not just trying to take deposits to stay afloat. I mean, beyond that, I mean, as I said, I mean, us as like all pinball manufacturers, I mean, we don't talk to numbers and figures. And even when I was trying to extrapolate the throughput of one of the other manufacturers, that's just based on what we see from a distance. We don't get that information up front. And look, and we're the same. It's just, yeah, pinball, I mean, as is obviously evident from the history that I have over the last four years coming into this game, into this manufacturing experience, pinball is hard. I know it's turned into a trope, that phrase and that saying, but it is. And I don't think anybody who sits at a distance from a manufacturing company can truly, truly understand just how intricate and complicated and difficult it is, even with a small company such as ours. And even to some extent, a small company as ours, I would argue probably, well, we definitely feel impacts probably more than some of the bigger companies that have got a bit better experience on how to navigate those things. So, you know, we're just, I guess, working through that process and getting better at what we do. and that includes the timeline. That includes the timelines asking for deposit. That includes the timelines it takes for us to produce games and ship games. And I feel, as I said earlier, I think we're in the best position we have ever been and I feel very confident about how we are now progressing.
    28:10
    But like everything, I guess the proof's in the pudding and we've just got to continue now to meet those expectations we put on ourselves and get to all our targets by the end of the year and get through Centaur and show everybody that we're capable of doing it. My opinion on the whole thing is that, like you said, you're in a better position now because we're getting out of the whole COVID-19 thing. So now you're able to start getting those parts, and now you're able to start pumping machines out. And I think over time, as you prove, especially if you can prove to your word that you're getting all your fathoms out by the end of this year, I think especially if you get that done, then there's going to be a lot more faith in your pocket right there from the public right there. Oh, for sure. I mean, people also need to... Sorry, I just can't... I got you.
    28:57
    I was going to say, what I was going to say, people need to also, I guess, understand as well, we've been manufacturing fathom now for just over 12 months. So I know people like to probably make comment to or maybe, you know, make disparaging remarks about, oh, I've been waiting for two years, three years.
    29:21
    The reality is we've actually been producing it for 12 months. We'll be completed within 18 months. And whilst I acknowledge from just even a personal perspective, that is nowhere near the timeline that I wanted to be able to produce these number of games. But I think in the scheme of what we are doing and in the context of the size of the company and where we are in the world and everything that's gone on preceded COVID and et cetera and everything that's happening now, I actually think that's pretty damn good.
    29:49
    And, you know, again, I think there's been a lot of people and a lot of companies that have attempted to try to do what we've done and a lot of them that have probably come from a lot stronger positions of knowledge than I did and experience and, you know, involvement in the industry that have managed to not succeed. And I think that whilst it's human nature to probably focus on the negative things. I think quite often, I don't know. I don't know that people necessarily take that. And I shouldn't say that. People do. Our supporters and the pinball community as a whole are amazing. And we love every one of them. And they are unbelievably supportive and give us the confidence that we need to continue moving forward. It just seems to be, as always in life and in pinball, it's the vocal minority that seem to want to try to focus on detracting from what we have achieved and just try to focus on anything they think can either generate more clicks for them or, I don't know, more upvotes or whatever it is that helps them feel better. I don't know. I think us armchair quarterbacks like myself and everything know a great deal about everything that's going on over there.
    31:00
    I agree with you when it comes to people definitely remember the negatives and the bad more than they remember the good. Anybody that has a yearly performance review in front of their supervisor or their boss or whatever should know that. You're like, I did great, but this right here is a highly magnified kind of thing. So I completely understand that, and it's the same thing. You know, when people give me grief, even just recently when it comes to your most recent video showing off your game, and how I didn't have any kind of criticism or remarks to say about it, and that's why I reached out. Because I was like, I could do a video, and I could speculate and stuff like that. I could easily do that. I don't want to. I would prefer to be able to speak to you directly and ask these questions that everybody has instead of just being one of the other people that's just like, yeah, they're floating by, buy these deposits or whatever and stuff. I mean... Yeah, we've manufactured seven games so far, apparently. I think I saw the comment the other day. What have they made, seven fatters? I know of only five in the US, so what, they've done two more? That could be all they've done. Yeah. And look, to be fair, and I honestly appreciate you reaching out and asking, for us to come on board. And the reason I said yes and I'm happy to is because, you know, you are, you're fair and you're balanced. And at the end of the day, there are going to be people that are happy with what we do and there are going to be people that aren't happy and I get that. And the simple reality is that if people are able to have a, you know, a balanced, I guess, point of view and a balanced conversation about something and then, you know, hopefully the whole point in my mind about all these sorts of conversations is that, you know, you learn something from it and that both people should be able to take something away from it that's positive that helps them grow to some extent moving forward. And that's obviously why, you know, we said yes to you because there's lots of people that would love us to get on talks that seem to go the other way and they just, all they're really interested in is trying to be as shocking or as controversial as they possibly can be to, you know, generate their clicks, as I said earlier. And for me, I wanted to mainly do this to inform the public, especially since orders are opening up tomorrow, so I'm going to try to do a quick edit on this and get it public and promote it so that way everybody can get all the information they possibly can to help them make a decision on this. And so part of those decisions, I guess one of those decisions is they can order directly through your website or they can go through their distributor. And I say their distributor speaking from my perspective being in the U.S., I could speak to Zach at Flippin' Out Pinball, and he's taking the deposits, but I'm also hearing rumors that they're not non-refundable. So I'm guessing he's taking somewhat of a risk there because normally the deposits would go directly to you guys, correct? Or correct me where I'm wrong here. Educate me. Yeah, look, well, the default is, yeah, correct. The default is that refunds are non-depositable. Deposits are non-refundable. Yeah. The other way.
    33:59
    Which, again, as we know, we're not setting a precedent on that. We're not the only company to do that or the first company to do that. insofar as Zach, I mean, he'll need to speak to that himself. Yeah, I mean, we've consolidated our distributors for this release. So we just have the three distributors worldwide. It's Zach in the US, it's Tommy and Nitro in Canada, and it's Stefan from RS Pinball in Europe.
    34:20
    And yeah, we have the web store opening tomorrow and we have given the distributors that period of time between announcement and the web store opening to be able to move on their allocation of gains before we open the official store. So that's sort of how we've run the launch this time around. Again, something that we're trying to understand and work through off the back of what we did with Fathom and having spoken to our customers and having dealt with our distributors in bits and pieces. And we're continuing to try to learn and evolve as we go through it. So that's the current incarnation. And so the deposits, that's basically the whole of your position, your spot, and the rest isn't due until the game is in a box? Yeah, again, so look, the intent always is when the game is sort of scheduled, basically when it's three weeks, two to three weeks out from being boxed, it's the same sort of scenario. You know, we get the final balance payment, we do the final part of the assembly and final testing, put it in a box and ship it. So that's the intent. Again, that was always the intent with FATM. It's just things happen, I guess, and manufacturing's tough and there's all these things that sort of impact our ability to do what we've needed to have done. And so those timelines started to shift. It was never the plan and it was just the way it went.
    35:38
    And again, as I said, I feel very confident about where we are now and I'm hopeful that that's going to be the case through the rest of Fathom and into Centaur. And again, preaching the pudding. I guess, you know, that's some misconceptions that people have on how the whole money situation works with you. I guess they anticipate that they're paying the full amount of the pinball machine, and they're going to be waiting months and months for their game while they've got all that money, whereas it's just a deposit, and you said two or three weeks out from whenever the game was getting into the final touches, that's whenever the invoice will be sent out kind of thing. Correct, correct. And people also need to remember that Australians have a different currency, US dollars, so the money that we've advertised is obviously in AUD. I think I did a little bit of the math on there I think it's like $1336 for the Beast Edition American Dollars for the deposit it's more like $10k oh sorry for the deposit you're right even I'm doing it the deposit for American Dollars is like $1336 and it's like $2004 for the Orp Lydian Edition for the deposit that's correct let's just jump right into talking about Centaur the new game obviously, but I wanted to get a lot of that information out there so everybody is just well aware of what happened, what's currently going on and what the state is of HACCAS. But let's talk about what you just revealed to the public and that's Centaur. And Martin, I know you're there if you want to chime in every once in a while on this because some of these questions may be directed towards you as well. But why Centaur being the next one? Yes, good question. I mean, and again, this is something that we go back and forth and have gone back and forth a lot on. Look, when we, as I said, when we pivoted from COVID and Celts and the whole lot and we looked at doing these remakes, I guess we identified this period in time, so this class of 81 and this general sort of few years around that space has been a very sought after period and a very well loved period of games, I guess, in our demographic. And we identified probably three, four games, you know, that we thought, even probably five games, to be honest, that we thought were, you know, the cream of the crop, if you like.
    37:59
    And we undernought a lot around how would we do them, in what order, and in the end we landed on Fathom as being the first game. You know, it's arguably touted as being the most beautiful art and most beautiful game in pinball, and we just sort of felt that that was right as the launch game, which is why Fathom got picked first. Centaur was obviously one of those that were in the mix. It could have quite easily been the first one that we launched with. It wasn't. And I guess then it became sort of a bit of an obvious second game. And even then, you know, it was one of those things that we tossed around a bit. Do we do it second? Do we do it, you know, later on in the sort of run? And it's tough, Kerry. It is. Or just end everyone until the very end. Go, it's the last one. Yeah, that's right. I was like, they're going to wait Centaur for last.
    38:52
    Yeah. And we asked people too. I mean, once we launched Fathom and when we got to shows and things, we said, well, what, you know, because a lot of people would go, oh, you must be doing X next, right? You must be doing this game. That must be your next game. And often the response would be, well, what would you want us to do as the next game? And so we did, we took feedback from people as well. And that definitely helped influence the decision of Y Centaur. But, yeah, and also, as Martin will always point out if you ask him, it is his favourite game. I mean, he tells us all the time about it. He remembers playing it when it came out in 1981 and just obsessing over it. So it was obviously going to get in there. And, yeah, we just, I guess it landed second.
    39:37
    So, like, when you made the decision, okay, Centaur is the next one. I mean, what were, like, some of the challenges in comparison to Fathom by doing this game, whether it be mechanical, code? I mean, what were some of the challenges that are just worth highlighting in your opinion?
    39:54
    Well, I guess from a manufacturing perspective, I mean, we learned Fathom was obviously the biggest step. You know, I spent all this time and energy working out how to make, you know, what I thought was a modern pin, you know, which was kelts. It's a modern size style cabinet, modern hinges, modern head box, even though we have a different twist on how we do our trans lights and our back glass and whatnot. But it was all built around modern cabinetry design. When we pivoted and went to class of 81 and all of a sudden I'm in this, well, you know, we've obviously got to, you know, we're remaking, trying to make a faithful, you know, revisited version of the game. Well, clearly one of the key aesthetics is the cabinet. You can't not have this cabinet with its shrouded head box and its lifted neck and with the grill in it and all the things that go with it. I had to go back and start from scratch about how now do I make this cabinet. And I can tell you that there is a reason they don't make cabinets or pinball machines like they did in 1981. There is a big reason. And unfortunately, I had to go through all of it. So Fathom was huge. the time and the effort and the work that went into recreating that cabinet, the back glass, you know, the capability and industry we had to figure out internally in order to do some of these things like a mirrored back glass. Again, you'll have to, you know, call me time on some of these things because I could talk for hours on most of this stuff. But back glass is a whole episode in their own right about how much work and how much effort goes into actually trying to recreate a 1981 back glass with chrome mirrored accents it huge So moving to Centaur you know there was obviously all of that no longer needed to be done which is massive You know I got the cabinet now It's easy now. I just paint it black instead of blue and I move forward. And so that's huge.
    41:51
    Under the playfield and the mechs that go on a playfield, again, huge for Fathom. We, look, I don't know what people think that we get as a starting point even though it's a remake. Our starting point is basically zero.
    42:08
    There was no electronic CAD. There was no CAD design. There's drawings. I didn't get any of the drawings. I didn't see any of the drawings. So I had nothing as a blueprint to say, okay, let's just take this. We can adapt that and move forward. Again, I had to basically go, well, here's a drop target. I have to maintain the aesthetics of the belly drop target. I can't change that because that's, you know, it's quintessential to this era of pinball machines. So how do I now build a drop target assembly around this piece of plastic drop target? And obviously I look at the way that Bally did it and I need to then design that from scratch, adapting to how do I produce that in this factory with the machinery and equipment and the capability that I already have and figure out the way that it works. How do I make sure that I can assemble that onto a hybrid playfield technology that's only got 9mm worth of plywood and not 13.5mm worth of plywood? And what does that look like and what does that mean? All my bolts are majority through-hole, not screwed in with T-nuts and all these sorts of things. So again, Fathom was a massive, massive change to how I did things. Centaur not so much because I can take forward drop target assemblies for the most part we've enhanced things but most of that 1980s manufacturing standard or methodology I can now just carry forward through to Centaur so that was good the one thing I'll talk through to or talk to on Centaur is this damn subway auto launch system I was going to ask about this because I've done a play field swap with Centaur. I've got a whole series on it. And even with all the pictures that we took, getting that thing moved from one play field to the next was a pain in the ass. I was like, this is god-awful. I was like, so that's why I was kind of curious about the differences and some of the challenges. I mean, did you make improvements on any of these mechs? I mean, it's also, I got a question where someone's asking if they wanted to, would the new mechs that you're putting on your game, are they backwards compatible with the old game or vice versa?
    44:25
    So, okay. So this subway, so yeah, like the drop target assemblies, we have to engineer everything from scratch anyway. Everything's done now in Fusion 360. It's all modelled and designed so it can be laser cut out of stainless steel and then bent on our press brake and assembled on the floor. So everything gets designed from scratch. It's all very different assembly process from back in the day.
    44:47
    That damn subway. So the next thing that adds complication to that subway, as you no doubt know, is that Centaur, if you took away, for example, the fact that you need to feed a multi-ball, Centaur fundamentally has a single ball trough, and it's above the play field. The ball drains, it drops into a saucer that's above the play field. When you need to eject a ball into the shooter lane, it kicks it out across the top of the play field and into the shooter lane. and for Centaur, if you don't ever get into a multi-ball, you are always playing the same physical ball. You know, you shoot it with the plunger, it drains, you shoot it with the plunger, it drains and away you go.
    45:26
    What they obviously did, they introduced this underplayfield trough that then fed the subway. Well, now move into a modern system where we are using modern flipper mechs which take up a much larger footprint than the Bally Linear in line flipper assemblies and you take a modern ball trough. So we are now running still as we did on Fathom, as we do on all games. It's a modern ball trough running a modern ball trough opto control board. And it takes up a much bigger physical footprint. So I not only ran into this challenge around, okay, how am I now going to manage feeding this under playfield subway to launch a ball three quarters of the way up through a piece of spring steel? I had how do I physically package it? And that ended up being the hardest thing because there is not a lot of room. And so we've had to extensively redesign and reimagine how it is that we manage a modern ball trough to then be able to feed a subway system that's physically located directly under the plunger in the shooter lane to then obviously feed out through into the upper orbit of the game. So it's been massive. it's fundamentally still ongoing to a certain extent i mean we're always trying to tweak and improve um and this will continue to be tweaked and improved probably right up until the point that i call pvt on the game production verification testing on the actual final produced product um so that's without a doubt been the most complicated and the most difficult challenge in in central full stop we also added a few extra things so i was going to say we've actually added an extra magnet. Oh. There's a second magnet. There's a second magnet in the game which is positioned, well, I say it's positioned, no, I'm looking at header design over here and I'm not going to tell you where it's positioned. Oh, come on. We have an additional magnet. Where in the heck is it?
    47:23
    You can probably imagine where it is but we've added a second magnet. We've actually got an up post in there as well to help facilitate something. I'm looking at Martin how much I can give away. You're like carefully reading him as you're saying he's probably Yeah, correct. Yeah, getting the, oh, oh, no.
    47:42
    And we've got smart drops now as well in the Queen's Chamber. Ah. So the Queen's Chamber. The Queen's Chamber now will carry across the state of that between balls, between players. So we have that.
    47:53
    Oh, another challenge too was the inline smart, oh, sorry, the smart drops for Centaur, which are front on. So Fathom was cool. Two inline drop target mechs. Once I had to figure out and re-engineer how we were going to do the smart drops for that. Obviously, there's two of them, so it's the same thing. Queen's Chamber now makes sort of sense, even though there's four of them, not three. It's still an inline smart drop assembly, so I could reuse that engineering. But the 1, 2, 3, 4 drops on the side of Centaur are front-on smart drops. So that had been a battle as well in order to package that with a new assembly. So, yeah, there's been a couple of things without it as well. It's been a bit complicated for us.
    48:33
    You're like, if making a game is not hard enough, Let's just do it while we're at it. That goes into me asking, like earlier I mentioned that, you know, people have like a very strong emotional bond to a lot of games, and Centaur is definitely one of those games. And it's like how do you, like, you know, when it comes to changing the game, like literally changing it, like adding magnets and stuff like that, it's like how do you go about making these decisions? Because you know that every little decision when changing the game is going to upset somebody. It's like, is it like the good versus, you know, the greater kind of thing? Do we make, you know, three or four people upset whenever we're actually making a lot more people happy? You've got to weigh the pros and cons. I mean, how does a decision like that come into play?
    49:18
    Yeah, so obviously we're mindful of trying to recreate the original experience. I mean, it obviously is a recreation. It's a 2022 and a 2023, you know, engineered game. but we have always made sure that we had that classic version of the game. So we don't change the artwork. We don't obviously change the aesthetics in the cabinet as much as reasonably possible with modern tech. And as I said, classic example, I'm not using linear inline flipper mechs or screenshot assemblies. I'm using modern stuff. So we try to make sure that anybody who walks up to the game or sees the game at a distance and walks up and looks at the playfield it looks like the original game. And we're very mindful of that.
    50:05
    Martin, except for the colour version, we'll get onto that in a minute. But, you know, and Martin, as I said, Martin's unlike myself, who, you know, enjoyed and played pinball as a teenager and then, I guess, sort of moved on in life and then came back to pinball and gaming. You know, Martin's lived and breathed pinball his entire life. So you will not find a better expert or somebody that understands and appreciates and knows these games better than him. And so he's that, divining rod's not the right word, he's that, you know, that centre point that says, well, okay, he knows what we can and we can't reasonably do. And as I said, we've made sure that we've, you know, we don't alter artwork, we make sure we're true to that form and we provide the classic version of the game. But then we provide the 2.0 version of the game and it's gloves off, right? So again, we're working with the same layout, we're working with the same inserts, the same artwork. And so Martin has to be unbelievably creative around how can he adapt that into this modern take of a pinball game, which is the 2.0 code. And I think he did an amazing job on Fathom, unquestionably. And Censor, as self-prescribed, you know, a game that he's in love with from 1981. This is his baby kind of thing. Oh, yeah. And it's two, three, four times as deep probably as what Fathom is. the extent of the rule set that goes into that, utilising the existing mechs and, as I said, layout that's in Centaur to start with is just amazing. But 2.0 gives you that freedom because now, again, something we had to engineer was a way to get screens into an older game that has a solid piece of glass as its back glass. There's nowhere to put a screen in the back glass with a couple of speakers around it. you know, we've got a solid piece of glass. We have to work out how do we present a modern rule set where people need to see what their targets are, what the objectives are of the game and what they're progressing. And that's where the two LCD screens in the apron came from. So he's still got that full freedom of, okay, now we can do all the animations and do all the score, you know, real management and people's progress and what they've got to do to achieve the various things in the game on those screens. so it becomes that we think that really good mix between you can hit the button that says play classic and you get the classic sounds you get the classic light scheme you've stored all the classic artwork and the classic inserts or you hit 2.0 and it's basically a brand new game you know it's effectively two games in one and that's something that's different between the release of Fathom and the release of Centaur is that on Fathom you had your Mermaid Edition which came with the 2.0 code versus, at first, the Classic Edition, I believe, that didn't have the 2.0 code. But this game is launching both editions will have the 2.0 code.
    53:02
    Yeah. So, again, yes, correct, 100% correct, yeah. Again, I mean, as a young company, learning our way through the industry, apart from just learning our way in manufacturing, but learning as well what the appetite is in the hobby for certain things, when we launched Fathom, I guess, we were, you know, we didn't know we didn't know whether people were going to look at that fathom in the 2.0 rule set and think oh that's terrible and you know we don't want that and the only thing we want is somebody to faithfully recreate the original game because i just want the original game and and you know we didn't know it was it was really hard to tell and so we released the classic version under that guise of okay so if we've got people who uh maybe more of a purist or more just want that original experience, maybe that's all they're going to want to buy and we want to make sure that we can cater to them. And then for everybody else who maybe does want the 2.0, because we were fairly young in the whole 2.0. I mean, how many other companies have done a 2.0? I can think of Bride or Pinbot, but was there anybody else that had done a 2.0 prior to that? I hadn't. It's sort of, since then, it's sort of, yeah. Kerry, you probably know better than me. It's starting to grow. I mean, they're starting to see. Yeah, it's starting to grow now. People are doing it. The thing is that you're going to have the people that just say, stop touching the old stuff. But, you know, you've got a lot of them who like the old games, but it wouldn't hurt to go, you know what that game was missing? It was an updated code. I mean, so it's one of those things where it's like, you know, I have to be able to have the same layout, the same kind of gameplay and aesthetics, but more to do, more depth to it. Yeah. So as a consequence, when we did that and we launched the two games, nobody bought a classic. so the short answer is that we sold very very few because people didn't want it they wanted the 2.0 code and that was evident and again talking to people we sort of found that again a bit like the armchair quarterbacks which I love that phrase I swear we have got an Australian version of that I just can't think of it probably involves swearing so I'll stay with armchair quarterbacks you know the armchair quarterbacks that might say, well, you know, what you're doing is terrible. We want the classic. Well, they didn't buy a classic either because if they wanted the original gameplay, they wanted to just find an original game and restore it. So we just found that the appetite in the hobby was not for the classic. And so as a consequence, we shifted, and you're absolutely right. So for Centaur, we said, well, okay, people didn't want the classic. We offered it. It wasn't necessarily gobbled up, so we won't do it now. You can still play the classic version, obviously. but people want the 2.0 and so that's where we settled with the Beast as our base model if you like I mean that's the equivalent of the Mermaid we basically dropped off the base model we had the Beast and then we thought that we will still produce an ultra exclusive higher end version of the game and again we knew that for Centaur there was a lot of commentary and talk around colour play fields and we sort of felt that we didn't necessarily want to dilute the offering, have that available for the beast. And we sort of thought that sort of fitted nicely into this sort of super alley edition of the game, which was the Oblivion edition. We could offer that as an alternate for people that maybe wanted to have the color edition. They could opt to have a color play field on the Oblivion edition. And that's, I guess, how we sort of landed on those two versions of the game this time around. For whatever reason, people, I guess, are not aware that like a colored centaur playfield this isn't the first time it's been done by you guys putting it into a game like cpr they've had it for years i mean so the fact that some of these people have just never seen it before so i've seen it before but i've just never seen it like fully installed and then you know shown on your video what it looks like so when i saw it was color playfield i had to make a comment and hit that spacebar button to pause and go, hold up.
    57:03
    Because I like the color on it. Me, and obviously the camera's never going to do it enough justice as it would be right in front of it. But from what I can tell, I think it actually does the game pretty much well justice. But you have the purists, like you say, out there that definitely want things the way they are and they just want a new version of the old game and stuff. So it's like, for those purists out there, how are you going to be catering to them other than the fact of them still being able to play the 1.0 code or the 2.0 code? I mean, is there going to be other kind of hardware options that they want to buy the Orbalivian Edition, but they want the black and white play field? Is that something that you're going to cater to?
    57:46
    Yeah, correct. So, I mean, I'm pretty sure it is all on the feature matrix you would have produced on that very first post we did. And this is the other thing about some of the commentators online. I mean, they never worry about truth getting in the way of making a statement. But on the matrices that came out when that first post, it does note that the colour playfield and the black and white playfield are available on the Oblivion. It's just that the colour playfield is an option only on the Oblivion. So you can't opt to get the colour playfield on a Beast Edition if you want a colour playfield that's only available on the Oblivion. However, as we've had, I think, a couple of people suggest that for the Oblivion Edition, they're going to want a black and white playfield. So there's definitely people that are opting for that, I guess. And on that colour playfield, by the way, too, so we were talking before about the fact we have to recreate everything from scratch. For Centaur, I was going to say Fathom then, for Centaur, we recoloured that game ourselves.
    58:48
    So internally, we actually recoloured that playfield. So it's different to the one that CPR produced and the colour palette and the colour scheme is completely different. Okay, cool. And I think that the job that we've done fits in really well with obviously that era of game. To me, you know, somebody who didn't know better and put it up against, say, for example, Fathom, as an example of these two games from Valley from 1981, you would look at the colour version of the playfield percentile and it wouldn't look out of place. It would sort of look like, oh, okay, it's the same sort of colour palette, it's the same sort of blending through things and I think it's been done unbelievably well. Centaur obviously is iconic with that black and white placement and it's surprising, I don't know if I've been staring at Fathom too long but that first time when we sort of had a Centaur standing next to a Fathom and you had them both turned on, Centaur to me almost looked like it was more colourful and engaging than Fathom was and it's that contrast obviously between the black and the white with the subtle red and then the coloured inserts, which just make everything sort of really, really accentuated. So, yeah. I mean, I enjoy it. I mean, I looked at it and I was like, that looks really good. I definitely want to see what it looks like, you know, up close and personal. And especially since you said that your colour palette is different than what CPR had, now I would like to be able to compare them side by side just out of curiosity on the colour tones. And if you say it looks better, then hell yeah. Well, we like ours. I mean, I'm not commenting on something else. Okay, you're not going to say which one's better, but you like yours. They've done a great job. You're a little biased on that, though. I mean, just saying. Yeah. No one would believe my opinion on that.
    60:32
    But some people definitely are purists, and they are asking also about the RGB lighting. So is there going to be an option, I guess? Because I was looking at pictures that you posted on your game. I was, and then it just disappeared. but there is an image of the centaur and it looks like all the lamps are like a like the sunlight color the kind of old school retro color so is that the color that the game's going to be when you're playing 1.0 code or is it only so rgb is going to be in the 1.0 so there's no there's definitely so we definitely run um rgb um insert so it's the same it's the same lighting boards that we use across both. I mean, it's the same with Fathom. The difference, obviously, is that for Classic, we have a Classic light show and the Classic colours for the light show.
    61:23
    Again, these are sort of production prototype games, dealer demo style games. So the pictures you will have seen will have been running 2.0 attract mode because 2.0 attract mode has got all the pretty colourful lights, you know, the ones that really stand out. And so that's just what the photos have been based on. But no, like Fathom, the 1.0 version of the code would be as faithful as true to the original as we can make it with obviously the modern mix and the modern tech we use. Okay, yeah, because it's one of those things, I'm like, if you're such a purist, then buy you an old school 1981 Centaur on the secondhand market. I mean, if you want it to be the way it was, then buy one with the way it was. But I feel like the people that are going to be buying the revisited version because they want the extra stuff. Like you said, people bought the Fathom for the Mermaid Edition because they wanted the extra stuff. So it just makes sense. So I'm definitely glad that you're putting the 2.0 code on both models. And a lot of the extra features are aesthetics only when it comes to between the two tier models correct I mean because Black Pinball You using additional modes Yep So there are different modes on the Oblivion. There's an additional mode on Oblivion.
    62:37
    Yeah, additional multi-ball on Oblivion. And then, yeah, the rest is aesthetics, fundamentally. Oh, sorry, I was going to... Martin's helping remind me. Yeah, there are custom call-outs as well. Oh, yeah. That was another question I had also. I guess people were wanting to know, I guess. Can I just state for the record,
    62:57
    because it was a little bit of an in-joke when we were at TPF about how many people would compliment Martin on his call-outs in Fathom. It wasn't Martin. I've also seen recently that apparently it's me that did the call-outs on Fathom. It also wasn't me.
    63:16
    Funnily enough, it was another Australian voice actor that happens to sound Australian. So there you go. It wasn't Martin or I that did the call-outs on Fathom. It is actually a voice actor that did the call-outs for Fathom. And similarly, it's not going to be either of us, I don't think, doing the call-outs for Centaur. Okay, that was one of the questions. Is there going to be kind of like, you know, a voice every once in a while? I didn't know Martin was going to play Centaur himself or whatever. I mean, there will be. Like Fathom, there's a massive list of, you know, we obviously do all the music, all the call-outs, special effects, you know, we do everything in-house.
    63:53
    And so there will be call-outs and there will be a lot of that stuff done. It's not earmarked for me or Martin to do. We'll get another voice actor to do the call-outs again like we did for Fathom. But, yeah, I just found that was funny because somehow it morphed into me doing the call-outs, which is great, but no, thank you.
    64:11
    So what's your reasoning behind why you decided to do the amount of games that you're going to be doing, 250 of this and 50 of those. Like, why not go a little bit more, a little bit less? I mean, was there a particular reason behind it?
    64:24
    Again, it's one of these really difficult things. You know, like I mentioned, you know, you envy Stern, obviously, who's been in the industry for so long that they've obviously got their finger on the pulse for exactly how many of a particular product they know they can sell or think they can sell. We're still trying to navigate and figure out and understand that. So it's born out of us looking at the market, us talking to our existing customers, trying to get a feel for exactly, you know, how many people are going to want to buy this game. Yeah, talking to our distributors as well, getting a feel for what the community actually want to buy. And then that coupled with what our actual manufacturing capabilities are. You know, I'm mindful that we want to keep moving. We want to keep improving. We want to keep growing. I don't want to put ourselves in a position where I'm trying to sell a game that's going to tie me up for two years trying to manufacture based on timeline. So I want to keep moving. We want to keep moving. Pinball is a, I know I've said it's hard. Design is hard. The whole process is hard. You spend a lot of time behind the scenes getting everything ready that you need to do to produce the game. And then obviously once you've got to that point, then you need to be moving on to the next game and progressing that as well. So it's trying to find that balance between manufacturing in a timely fashion. How many people are going to want to buy your game? You always, you know, you want to, I've come from a bit of a showbiz background, you always want to leave people wanting more. You know, you don't want people going, oh, well, I can pick that up. You want people screaming for an encore and giving yourself, obviously, then the time to produce the next game and progress down on that path as well. So it's this sort of balance that we're trying to understand and figure out between all those things, and that's, I guess, where we land on the number that we land on. Okay. I guess that kind of segues into asking, after you finish with the 81 series and years down the road, I'm sure I already know the answer to this question, but if people that didn't get a chance to get one of your 81 series games, whether it be Fathom, Centaur, and your games that come after that, is there a chance that you're going to go, you know what, we're going to do more of them because the demand is high?
    66:30
    Look, it's certainly not on the agenda at all. It's not in our thinking at all. I will never say never generally to anything I mean at the end of the day you know if the demand seemed to be like that and people really wanted us to then you know I would have to evaluate what that looked like but it's certainly not on any road map or any conversation we have right now yeah not now we want to move through the games that we've got to produce get back onto our own games and on beyond that point I mean just my two cents I don't recommend it I mean because then you're basically the reason why people want it now is because it's limited to what you're doing right now. So if you start it back up again, oh man, you're pulling a thread out there. I can already tell.
    67:14
    That's not even on your mind. You're just like, I want to do this and move on to the next one. But that was one of the questions I got. People were asking if they didn't get one now, would it be a chance that they can get one later? And I know a lot of these questions that people are asking, you answered even just recently by posting, I believe, today, the top ask questions and here's the answers for it. Not everybody's on Facebook and stuff like that. So let me go through here just real quick to see if there's anything I might have missed.
    67:43
    Okay, so after you complete the revisited versions of the series of games, are there other series of older games attainable for you? And are there any series of games that interest you?
    67:56
    Oh, wow. Interest, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of games that interest me. Oh, yeah. I mean, I started this whole journey with a pinball. I mean, I love System 11, but, you know, again, it's a question. So to answer the question to start with, sure, maybe, possible. I mean, like I guess the position we're in right now, it all starts with a conversation, right? It's me having a conversation with a licence holder and saying, hey, this is what we want to do, you know, are you interested? So there's always that possibility. And I would suggest that, you know, that they would always be happy to entertain that question if we pose it to them as well. So again, never say never.
    68:32
    Again, though, we would have to weigh that up around, you know, how many do we think we would sell? What is the appetite for, for argument's sake, a pinball? Because obviously that's a game I love. You know, how many do we think we would sell? How many do we think people, you know, would want to buy? How difficult will it be for us to make it? You know, again, I'm trying to think of what a System 11 cabinet looks like, whether that's a modern, that might be a different cabinet again. You know, these are all the things that we would have to weigh up as we went through it. I mean, we often get asked about doing wide-body games. You know, yeah, I mean, again, I'd be happy to do a very short run of, say, three wide-body games from this era as well. So, you know, there's lots of possibilities. It all comes down to, I guess, us continuing to progress down the path that we want to, which is, obviously, get Fathom all produced out the door, get Centaur all produced out the door, continue to hone our processes and our methodologies and just get ourselves set up to do it. We've also got our original games as well. We've got, you've got to remember too, in the lead up to COVID, we were, you know, Martin was a good 18 months minimum into designing our next game that was going to follow on from Celts. I mean, we were well advanced into what that was going to be and what that was going to look like because that was going to obviously need to sort of quickly follow in behind Celts. That's still sitting there in the background as well, that we will get back to in one guise or another. So, yeah, we've got – there's no shortage of things we want to do and we would love to do. It's just trying to fit it all in the box, I guess, and, you know, get it done. Yeah, just take it a step at a time, you know.
    70:16
    Everybody's always wanting to know what people are doing years in the future kind of thing. Like, Stern could release their next five titles and they'd still be like, well, what's after that? I mean, but everybody's always wanting to know what's going to come next kind of thing, you know. So I've only got a couple of questions left, though. Yeah, sorry. I'm just saying, I don't want to keep you too much longer, you know, kind of thing, but I was kind of curious, like, how many audio tracks? You're going to end up with a four-hour video. Exactly. Like, how many audio tracks do we have in the Centaur 2.0? Is that something that Martin's going to divulge?
    70:44
    We're going to divulge. So for the new track, are we up? How many tracks, how many audio tracks do we have in? So songs, we have, there's about 15 songs, so 15 individual songs. that make up Centaur.
    70:57
    I mean, Fathom was how many different sound effects and call-outs did we have? We were hundreds. So Centaur will be the same. I mean, every special effect, every sound effect in Centaur will be new and every call-out will be new. So they're all new. So, yeah. And we are releasing, obviously, a vinyl. We're releasing a digital download album for the soundtrack for Centaur.
    71:21
    When's that going to be released? Do you have a release date for that? January? It'll be with the release of the game. Yeah, it'll be with the release, first shipping of the game. Okay. Well, what about, what are we going to get to see what that motorcycle helmet and jacket looks like? Yeah, that's a good question too, yeah. That'll be when, yeah, when the customers see it. So the customers will get that experience first. It's always that fine line, you know, between, we're trying to obviously create an experience for the customer, and we know everyone wants to see stuff, but that'll more than likely be a customer unboxing experience. I mean, I ride my motorcycle on everything too and people were like oh you would you ride a centaur like hell yeah i'd ride a centaur motorcycle jacket helmet i mean i'm like that just sounds like it'd be pretty awesome no one will know what the hell it means but me but i don't care correct yeah maybe maybe we're going to put on the back of it marty i've just thought it's off the cuff maybe we should have move over human on the back of the jacket what do you reckon anyway so i mean like is there anything that you You know, you feel like, you know, the people out there need to know. I mean, I think I got one question right here. You know, when it goes down to, I think, one of the biggest things that people are talking about right now when it comes to Centaur is the price. I mean, we mentioned this at the very beginning when it came to, like, certain prices have gone up for years, 300%. But it's like, you know, you see Centaur and you can, people do the math and go, well, that's more expensive than a lot of modern games on the market right now kind of thing. So I guess if you could explain, I guess, your reasoning why you have it priced the way you do for people.
    72:56
    So when you looked at the Mermaid Edition for Fathom and obviously the Beast Edition for Centaur, we had both of those games are priced around about the price of a, again, I keep referring to other manufacturers, which I said I wouldn't do, is priced around the price of a Stern Premium. So it's actually more expensive to get a Stern Premium in this country than it is to get a Centaur Beast Edition. So Fathom was the same. So it's basically priced in the same pocket. With Fathom and obviously the delays that we've had and yes, all the impacts of COVID and all of our prices going up ridiculously, we maintained that price. I mean, I guess it was one of the little things that we could have some sort of control over that we felt was the right thing to do because people had been waiting so long and we had had the delays we had. We maintained that price. Logically, we can't maintain that price for a new game. And, as I said, that price point for the Beast is just where it needed to be more than anything. No one's buying Ferraris off the sales of Beasts. And it's, again, in that pocket of about a premium price, which, again, I mean, based on – I know, again, you're going to get people that will talk about, oh, single level, there's not ramps, it's da-da-da-da-da. It is a – I mean, to all intents and purposes, you could refer to it as a coach built, you know, a bespoke – I mean, I don't know what the terminology is more widely understood. It is a very, very, very special custom-built game that is of an unbelievably high quality and standard. It is not produced in the thousands to be put on location necessarily. And people put it on location and it perfectly fine on location, but it's a little bit of a different, I guess, value prop to people than maybe what a modern Stern Pro game is. and with that comes costs and it's sort of where we felt it needed to be. The Oblivion Edition, as I said, we again felt that it was for us, it was sort of like our Super LE edition of our game and we know there's more expensive games out there than are sold than what the Oblivion Edition is. So again, we didn't think it was a new precedent that we were setting. We think we looked at it and we looked at what we felt the market would support. We looked at what our customers said that they would be willing to pay for a game that was exclusive and had those sorts of things. And again, you know, we're learning and we're figuring out and we're trying to understand what the industry and the hobby will support, what the market will support. And again, that's sort of where we make those decisions to get the price points. It's tough. It's, you know, like I say, pinball is hard. This is difficult. It's really difficult. and I guess again that's just where we felt was a reasonable price and what we felt was a fair price for the product that we were producing I think like I stated if you honor your promises and what you said you're going to do and you deliver everybody a centaur that looks as beautiful as Fathom does and it plays great I think that definitely you're going to win everybody over I mean if you keep on producing games and just like that's why I don't want anything else to happen when it comes to getting your production halted up. I would love to see you guys just keep pumping the games out to where people stop complaining about waiting for their games. Like I said, people are still waiting for Godzilla Premiums, but no one wants to talk about that. No, I'm just fine. I am so impatient when it comes to getting games also. I'm one of those. One of the reasons why I got my Foo Fighters, a demo version, is because I wanted it now. Yeah, I feel you. People are still waiting for their Cactus Canyon LEs, and the reason why I got the version I did is because I wanted it now. But even then, I still had to wait six months for the damn thing, and I felt sorry for Zach because he was hearing from me every month. Hey, man, where's my game at? So I can only imagine. I feel for the people that are waiting for their fathoms. And I know that I understand the concerns that people have waiting for their centaur. But if you know that people are getting their games, I mean, and when they're getting them, they're very happy, then especially since you're not throwing out $10,000 plus on the spot. You've just got to deposit in place kind of thing. Yeah. Look, again, it's interesting, and I don't want to revisit it, but again, there's this whole human nature thing and the focusing on the negative. I mean, I have not had – I lose count of the number of people that have received their game that send us an email, and some have put posts online. This is the other thing people have got to understand as well. I mean, there's a very, very large percentage of the people that we sell the games to that aren't in the pinball bubble. They're not on Pinside. They're not on Facebook. They're not in this group. And so there's a lot of people that I get feedback from and we get emails from, and as I said, some post reviews on Facebook that are just astounded at the quality of that game. I mean, I've had so many people that have said, I've been collecting games. I mean, I don't do testimonials. I don't know whether Aussies are a bit understated or not, but, you know, I could have a testimonial run where people, multiple people have sent me messages saying, hey, I've been collecting pinball for 30 years. I have a collection of 60 games, and this is hands down the single best, most beautiful game, well-built game I've ever set eyes on. That's not me saying that. That's multiple people. And the one thing that, interestingly enough, the detractors who want to, you know, path commentary on all of our failings, the one thing I never hear from anybody is about the quality of our build. And I think that clearly states that, you know, we are able to do it. And now once I get the manufacturing throughput into this wheelhouse that I need it to be, that I know it can be in, then I think we're well on the way. I mean, I consider myself pretty detail-oriented. I have to be for my job as well as doing stuff for pinball and everything. And so that was one of the first things I noticed whenever you guys were showing us the fathom underneath the hood and everything was me just going, why? Why so much detail? I didn't know better. They didn't have to do all this fancy stuff and detail and all this other kind of stuff. They don't have to do this. Why are they going through the effort to make it look as pretty as it is? And so that's what my video was about. It was just like, will quality be what saves haggis at the time and everything? It was like, it looks amazing. And so when I first saw it at, I think it was Expo of last year, was when I first saw and played Fathom in person. It was one of those when I walked around it, and I'm used to going to TPF, and I bring my own games restored and everything, and I have to look at my competition. So I'm always looking to see where the defects and flaws are at, just out of curiosity. So I'm walking around Fathom, and I'm just like, this thing is immaculate. Like, this is crazy. It shouldn't look this good. So it was one of those where I was just like, the game looks beautiful. I mean, that's all I can say to you. So, I mean, props to you for doing what you're doing. I want you to continue doing so. I've already taken up a good amount of your time. We're over an hour on this one. I was trying to get it narrowed down to an hour exactly. But if there's anything else out there that you would like for, you know, your potential buyers to know about, then by all means, have at it right now.
    80:11
    Yep. Oh, look, there's nothing I can think of off the top of my head apart from, I mean, you've touched on everything. Look, as I said, we're passionate pinball people. We love pinball. We pour our heart and soul into this in every waking moment, you know, and it's by no means a quick money grab and run type of scenario. It's, you know, we're in for the long haul. It's tough. It's tougher than I think anybody truly, truly understands or appreciates. But we've had great feedback and, you know, we feel confident about where we are. We feel confident about our progress. And now that the world's settling down a little bit with respect to the supply chain, all those sorts of things, I feel really happy. We all feel really good. We think we're in a really good place and now it's just a drive at home. So thanks, everybody, for hanging in there with us is all I can say. Thanks for your patience and support. I think everyone will be well and truly rewarded and happy for the effort. Are you guys potentially going to Expo this year?
    81:08
    Expo might be tough. I mean, I'd love to. I mean, I'd love to get to the point where I can come to every show. I want to go to Pintastic and I want to go to so many, so many shows. So Expo at this stage, I'm not sure. it might be a bit of a tough, tough push. We're definitely, definitely planning on coming back to TPF next year.
    81:26
    And so we'll just see what the, I guess, the next couple of months bring for us. All right. So, I mean, like, when do you think we might get some more sneak peeks at old Centaur right there? Some more, whether it be behind the scenes or, like, looking into or whatever or stuff like that? Yeah, look, I mean, to be honest, we haven't probably thought about that much. At the moment, our head's obviously all in game launch mode. Obviously, the web store opens up tomorrow, and we're just focused on getting past the next sort of week or two. Georgia, I know, is always at me to get more things on socials and get some more videos. So there's obviously – there's appetite for it internally. We don't have a roadmap for it just at the moment, but I'll make an effort that we try to be a little bit more online and engaging with people. Yeah, I was like – You don't know. Off the feedback of this, you might get people want us back for an encore with you. I think it's just some teases every once in a while. Like, hey, here's the close-up. Here's the back glass close-up, whatever. You know, just kind of people going, like, oh, okay, cool. You know, I mean, little stuff like that goes a long way with people. It's crazy on that one. But anyways, Damien, thank you very much for, you know, agreeing to come on here and speak with me. Martin, I know you're off camera and everything. I guess thanks for restricting Damien from speaking about certain things.
    82:42
    Keeping him in line, just threatening to, like, cut you. But I'm definitely curious to see what Marty's done with this game when it comes to the code and the hardware adding to it to see, you know, how much more behind it. I mean, like I said, I know someone who owns a Centaur and everything. He was very impressed with what you guys have done so far with the video and everything. He's like, that game looks badass. I'm like, I know.
    83:06
    All right. Thanks very much, Herr Haggis. Thanks, Mike.