Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Ep 71 - Nuggets with George Gomez

Special When Lit·podcast_episode·1h 0m·analyzed·Sep 26, 2019
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.032

TL;DR

Stern's George Gomez discusses design philosophy, code quality, and upcoming releases; Deep Root updates on prototype testing and animation.

Summary

Ken Cromwell and Bill Webb discuss George Gomez's appearance on the Flippin' Out Pinball Twitch stream, covering Stern Pinball's design philosophy on classic remakes (Beatles, Sea Witch), upcoming home versions, incomplete code issues, and new artist signings. They also cover Deep Root Pinball's statement about prototypes at Houston Arcade Expo and planned cinematic animation reveals, alongside Robert Mueller's interview with Jeff Patterson about revised launch timelines.

Key Claims

  • Another home version pinball game will be released next year

    high confidence · George Gomez stated directly: 'You know, probably next year you'll see something' in response to question about next home pin

  • Stern's classic game remakes cost more to manufacture than fresh modern designs due to drop target assemblies and licensing

    high confidence · George Gomez explained the cost challenges with classics, noting drop targets are expensive and Beatles licensing was substantial

  • Stern shipped incomplete code on past releases due to licensing delays, product issues, and understaffing

    high confidence · George Gomez addressed Dr. John's call-in question, apologizing for past incomplete code releases and citing environmental challenges

  • Stern has increased coding staff but remains a relatively small operation

    high confidence · George Gomez clarified: 'I haven't added like 30 coders' but acknowledged staff increases since taking over product development in 2011 with nine employees

  • Stern will announce a new artist joining in 2020

    high confidence · George Gomez directly confirmed: 'Yes, absolutely' to question about introducing new artists at Stern in 2020

  • Deep Root Pinball plans to release cinematic animation quality never before seen in pinball

    medium confidence · Robert Mueller's statement via This Week in Pinball: animation package will showcase 'a level of cinematic animation never before seen with pinball, courtesy of Deep Root Studios'

  • Deep Root's initial three games will be unlicensed themes

    high confidence · Robert Mueller stated in interview that first three games will be 'unlicensed, at least as to the theme, art and animation'

  • The Johnny Mnemonic pinball license was nearly abandoned after the film's poor reception

    high confidence · George Gomez recounted calling the factory after seeing the movie premiere: 'Can we get out of this? That's horrible. Let's name it something else.'

Notable Quotes

  • “I never imagined that we were ever going to see him again... Gives another generation a chance to enjoy something.”

    George Gomez @ ~12:30 mark (early stream segment) — Expresses his genuine surprise and approval that Monster Bash was remade by another manufacturer, showing designer satisfaction with legacy game revivals

  • “I called the factory and said, we've got to get out of this. We've got to get out now. What do we do?”

    George Gomez @ ~35:00 mark (Johnny Mnemonic story) — Dramatic anecdote about nearly abandoning Johnny Mnemonic license after seeing the film; illustrates licensing risk in pinball

  • “We don't want to ship incomplete code any more than you want to get incomplete code. Our environment is not as nice, neat, and predictable as you imagine it is.”

    George Gomez @ ~52:00 mark (Dr. John call-in response) — Direct address of community frustration about unfinished code; humanizes manufacturing constraints and licensing complications

  • “We pay for the games with our own money, the guys in product development, and we all own games. We all buy them, and we don't want unfinished games anymore.”

    George Gomez @ ~54:00 mark — Emphasizes designer/developer investment stake in game quality; establishes shared interest with customers

  • “When you have a game with a bunch of drop targets and a motor and a spinner and this and that and the other thing, and it adds up quick... Everybody tells us they don't want to pay that kind of money.”

    George Gomez @ ~25:00 mark — Explains the cost paradox of classic remakes: expensive components conflict with customer price expectations

  • “We've got to get games on the water... December intros are more intended to go overseas. You see them usually in January of the following year.”

    George Gomez @ ~76:00 mark — Reveals Stern's strategy for December releases targeting European market shipping logistics

  • “When I took over product development in 2011, there were nine guys in the company. We went into the business of making cornerstones, three distinct models, price points, and three a year with a very, very reduced staff.”

Entities

George GomezpersonKen CromwellpersonBill WebbpersonRobert MuellerpersonJeff PattersonpersonSteve RitchiepersonZach Sharpeperson

Signals

  • ?

    product_strategy: Stern Pinball confirming additional home version releases beyond Star Wars The Pin; next title planned for 2020 release with teaser strategy

    high · George Gomez: 'You know, probably next year you'll see something' and 'you'd have to guess as to what the theme is going to be'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Stern discovering that classic game remakes cost more to manufacture than modern designs due to expensive component compatibility and design changes

    high · George Gomez detailed drop target costs, part compatibility issues, and explained why Beatles priced above Pro tier despite being a remake

  • ?

    code_update: Stern Pinball significantly reducing incomplete code releases through staff expansion and organizational improvements since 2011

    high · George Gomez acknowledged past incomplete releases, apologized, and attributed improvements to increased staff and company culture shift

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Stern Pinball confirming addition of new artist(s) to roster in 2020

    high · George Gomez confirmed: 'Yes, absolutely' when asked about new artists in 2020

  • ?

    product_launch: Deep Root Pinball bringing Raza and Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland prototypes to Houston Arcade Expo for durability and real-world testing

    high · Robert Mueller statement: 'several Raza prototypes will be available to play at the Houston Arcade Expo... Two early prototypes of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.180

0:00
coming at you out of st charles illinois the special when lit pinball podcast starts now hey what's going on pinball land episode 71 of the special when lit pinball podcast is coming at you recorded out of st charles illinois i'm ken cromwell i am bill webb bill Bill is remote today because scheduling has thrown us off a little bit. So it's one of the few times Bill's not in front of me in the studio. And, Bill, I miss you already, buddy. Believe me, I miss being there too, man. I'm at home. The wife's upstairs. The daughter's running around, you know. So if anyone here is in the background, my apologies. And, no, we're not having our child this week. But we are due in two weeks from today. So any given day. But, you know, that's about all that's going on with me. What's going on with Mr. Ken? Nothing, man. We've got a lot to talk about in this episode. We've got some Stern Pinball update information. We've got some Deep Root information. So without further ado, let's get going. So we all know it's Stern Pinball. They revealed Elvira, House of Horrors. And you can catch the live stream on the Dead Flip streaming channel on Twitch. George Gomez of Stern Pinball came in and visited us on the Flippin' Out Pinball channel, Twitch channel, as he kind of walked us through Star Wars and offered some interesting nuggets that we're going to talk about here in a second. And then as we look at Deep Root Pinball, Robert Mueller made an official statement, update from Deep Root, and was interviewed by Jeff Patterson of This Week in Pinball. We're going to talk about that a little bit later as well. But first, why don't we go into George Gomez? Now, George Gomez had come in, Bill, and sat down with myself, yourself, and Steve Beattie, right? So we stream for Flippin' Out Pinball, Zach Menne's streaming channel. George came in because we had Star Wars The Pin, which is the home version of Star Wars. Now, when George showed up, it was nice because if you remember the week prior, We were expecting Steve Ritchie. Those of you who have reached out asking about what happened with Steve because he never made it in, and it turns out, I guess, that he was sick. I haven't heard from Steve. As far as I know, he's doing better, but he was ill and wasn't able to make it that night, so he was, I guess, didn't want us to get sick. Well, he was out of work for a week, too. So, I mean, dude, you know, I'm glad that he didn't show up if he's been out of work for a week. I can't afford that right now, and I'm sure you can't either. No, I know. But you know what would have been nice? A little bit of a phone call saying, hey, I'm not going to make it because I'm a little bit sick. But Steve's got his priorities, and I can only imagine he was feeling ill.

George Gomez @ ~53:00 mark — Provides context on Stern's scaling challenges and resource constraints that contributed to code quality issues

  • “You would have to imagine what title it could be... You'll have to guess as to what the theme is going to be.”

    George Gomez @ ~20:00 mark — Deliberately vague tease of next home version's IP, maintaining mystery while confirming its existence

    • Dr. Johnperson
    Steve Beattieperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Deep Root Pinballcompany
    Flippin' Out Pinballorganization
    Special When Lit Pinball Podcastorganization
    This Week in Pinballorganization
    Monster Bashgame
    Star Wars The Pingame
    Beatlesgame
    Sea Witchgame
    Johnny Mnemonicgame
    Elvira, House of Horrorsgame
    Razagame
    Retro Atomic Zombie Adventurelandgame
    Houston Arcade Expoevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    ?

    design_innovation: Deep Root Pinball planning to unveil animation techniques claimed to exceed current pinball industry standards

    medium · Mueller statement: 'a level of cinematic animation never before seen with pinball, courtesy of Deep Root Studios'

  • $

    market_signal: Community speculation that unlicensed themes may struggle competitively against licensed IP in market appeal, despite Deep Root's commitment to unlicensed first three titles

    medium · Ken notes: 'licensed themes seem to overwhelmingly outsell or at least seem to have a lot more attraction and popularity than the unlicensed themes do'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Stern Pinball strategically times December releases to reach European market via ocean shipping, with games appearing in NA markets in January

    high · George Gomez: 'We've got to get games on the water... December intros are more intended to go overseas... You see them usually in January of the following year'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Positive community reception to George Gomez's candid discussion of Stern's past shortcomings and humanizing explanation of manufacturing realities

    medium · Ken notes George's apology was 'refreshing' and 'humanizing'; hosts appreciate transparency about staff constraints and licensing challenges

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Hosts speculate Stern may announce one or two additional game releases before year-end 2019 based on George's hints about Christmas and previous year pattern

    medium · Ken: 'sounds like Christmas might be pleasant with another release' and 'I wouldn't even put past two'; George hinted 'We've got Christmas coming'

  • ?

    community_signal: Deep Root Pinball attempting to rebuild trust after delayed announcements and missed timelines, using third-party interview (Jeff Patterson) rather than direct community engagement

    medium · Hosts note Robert Mueller closed Pinside account and now only communicates via media interviews; Ken acknowledges 'one year at Expo last year... bold statements that ultimately haven't been fulfilled'

    • 2:31
    But there was some general talk of the evening. And what I wanted to do here, for those of you that missed that stream, I highly recommend going back and watching it. And you can catch it at twitch.tv slash flip the letter N out pinball.com. It's about an hour and 45 minutes. We do play Star Wars the pin. George talks about Star Wars The Pin, but he offers some interesting nuggets. And what I thought would be fun, Bill, is if we kind of went through some of those nuggets to kind of give everybody an idea of what the discussion was that night. Definitely. All right, so let's do this. At one point, we talked about the thoughts of Monster Bash, which was a game that he originally designed being remade by another manufacturer. What are your thoughts on a game that you designed being redone by another manufacturer? Does that blow your mind a little bit? It does. You know, I never imagined, right, when we did that game, I never imagined that we were ever going to see him, you know, again. Yeah. That's all very cool.
    3:29
    Gives another generation a chance to enjoy something, right? Exactly. Okay, so that was kind of fun hearing from George. I mean, he didn't expect a game to ever be remade, and he's excited that it was. And he's talking about how he's happy to have another generation be able to not only enjoy the game, but enjoy it like as if it was brand new, Like, we enjoyed the game when it first had come out. Well, and honestly, for me, it was kind of like a brand-new game because I never got to play a clean example of it.
    3:56
    Touché, me too. Yeah, no, that was definitely, you know, think about it from his perspective. You know, you go into a pinball show and you see a row of brand-new games that you designed 20 years ago. That has to be a little interesting. It's got to be an honor, right? I mean, to have all the games that have been reproduced, there haven't been many, and for his game to be selected as one of the few, it's got to be a pretty good feeling, I would think. Oh, absolutely. Now, we also had Star Wars The Pin here, which is the home version of their Star Wars, and then it was asked if we would see another home pin in the future. When is the next home pin, someone's asking. You know, probably next year you'll see something. Yeah, you'll see, I don't know, you'll have to imagine what title it could be. Hey, whatever works.
    4:44
    You think we'll see, and not to get off topic, but I mean, so we'll see which was kind of transformed into a new Beatles. You think we'll see another older pin that gets a new facelift, so to speak? The biggest issue with those old games is the cost of some of those parts, like drop targets. Drop target assemblies are some of the most expensive things we put on a game, right? So when you have a game with a bunch of drop targets and a motor and a spinner and this and that and the other thing, and it adds up quick. Sure. And the problem is that everybody tells us that they don't want to pay that kind of money for something like that. So that's where we run into that problem, right? In the case of the Beatles, we also had that license wasn't cheap. Yeah. Right? I mean, putting eight Beatles songs, nine Beatles songs in a game. It's just Beatles. It's not like they're anything big. I mean, it's expensive, right? So that's the challenge. But, I mean, we would love, you know, we've talked a lot about a certain classics line. The biggest issue is that I don't think people want to pay. You know, I mean, they say, well, it's got to cost less than a pro. Well, it's got to cost less than a pro. We're challenged because all those games have to be targeted. It's not going to cost you less than a pro to build. I think a lot of people would try to think, well, I mean, okay, so the design's already there. You don't need the R&D anymore. But, I mean, it's not because you're making physical changes to the playing field, right? Yeah, and the devices we have today are different than the devices that we have then. And honestly, I mean, if you've played a Beatles, I don't know if any of you has played a Beatles. We love a Beatles. And I'm not blowing my own horn here, but I improved on what he did in that game, right? I mean, you can make some of those shots from the bottom that you couldn't in his original game, right? And so I basically did the same thing anybody would do, right? I was like, here's another bite at the apple. Let's fix the stuff we don't like. Yeah, it makes sense. So I had a bunch of guys. I had Zach and I had Keith and a bunch of serious shooters come in. And I said, okay, guys, you guys are intimately familiar with Sea Witch. What should I fix? And they just gave me a line. I didn't get a call on that, Jordan. I don't know. What happened? They gave me a laundry list. Yeah, right, right. So I was like, all right, I think I can do that. And then all the way along, they came in and shot Whitewoods, right? Yeah. So it's like they, what do you think about this? Yeah, no, not easy. You know, it's still too hard. Okay, all right. So if you look at that game, it's the same thing. If I gave you the CAD for that game and I gave you the CAD for Seawoods, you'd find that I moved everything. Yeah, right, right, right. Well, because you move one thing and then geometrically everything else is shifted. And parts are different, right? I mean, the stuff we use today is different than... It's like moving the flippers on Ghostbusters in Eighth of the Men's, right? It's no problem. Yeah, I wish we could. I might actually be able to play that game. Yeah, oh, too early.
    7:43
    So maybe I should have done a better job in setting the tone here. You're hearing flippers and balls and interaction with a pinball machine because this is a live pinball stream, and we have George Gomez in studio with us at our table with live mics, so you're hearing a lot of background noise. You'll notice George seems to be having a good time. He was very easy to talk to, and he was great to hang out with. But a couple interesting thoughts and topics here. One, he did say we would probably see another home version of a game next year. Right, Bill? Oh, yeah, which is awesome. It really makes you wonder what we'd see next, but we didn't get that answer out of him. Well, and that's what he teased, too. He said you'd have to guess as to what the theme is going to be. Now, if this year's release of Star Wars Pin was any indicator of what we'll see next year, it's going to be a game that's in existence. It's not going to be a fresh theme or a fresh license, most likely, on a home edition game. At least that's the way that I kind of took that. Maybe I looked a little bit further into that. But do we see a game like a Jurassic Park, or do we see a Deadpool potentially get a home version treatment of a game just to kind of expand on that license? See, I could see the Jurassic Park theme being a great home pin. And, you know, family friendly, a little cheaper all around, probably the greatest choice out of a lot of them, I would think. Huge license, just like Star Wars. So it absolutely would make sense if we saw something like a Jurassic Park. Now, he also talks about the potential of seeing other Stern classic games because we just had that retheme of Sea Witch and to Beatles. and he talked about thoughts and consideration going into a Stern Classics line where we would see some of these old designs get modern-day feel with some tweaks to increase the playability or enjoyability or flow of the play field. Now, I think the common misconception is because these are older games that look like they're just getting re-skinned that it should be more affordable. These should be priced lower than a pro-level machine. But what he's saying, what George is saying is that, listen, it's actually the opposite. that these games cost us more to manufacture than if we come up with a fresh design using all modern-day tech on its own. I found that to be very interesting because I was also in the camp of thinking that, you know, Beatles, not that it was a price gouge, but I thought that it was priced outside of a pro thing just because they were trying to capitalize on the license and on, you know, making good on what they had to invest to get the Beatles license because it wasn't cheap. But as it turns out, the actual design process costs more when you're considering the parts that were used those days versus parts that were able to use these days. I found that fascinating. Oh, yeah, and those drop targets, man, those aren't cheap to put those assemblies in. And then you think about the song licensing for eight or nine songs, dude, that's not cheap either. So it makes complete sense why that game is what it is price-wise. And I was thinking, wouldn't it not be incredible if we were able to see like a Meteor re-released with a fresh new theme? Now, I'm re-theming a meteor, but I'm not going to be physically moving things around on the play field to increase shot fluidity. Could you imagine like a Stern Stars or something like that being remade with a fresh theme? I think it would be exciting. I would be shocked if we didn't see something like that, and I hope that we see something like that next year. I think those are great games, dude, for the audience that they're trying to capture and the environment that they're trying to put them in. You asked George to share a story that night, and it was based around Johnny Mnemonic, which was a pinball machine. And instead of me recapping it, let's just play what he had to say. Johnny Mnemonic, I had so much fun with that. Good game. That was one of the funniest stories I think I've ever heard. You told, once again, I don't know where it was from, but you went to go see the premiere of Johnny Mnemonic, and you were like, Yeah, I called the factory and said, we've got to get out of this.
    11:36
    We've got to get out. We've got to get out now. What do we do? And now that's like a cult game. Yeah. You know, everyone wants that game. What game is that? Johnny Mnemonic. Oh, Johnny Mnemonic. The movie studio. We were hassling them, you know, come on, you guys got to show us the movie. Yeah. And I knew, you know, I was a fan of William Gibson. I'd read the short story, and the short story was cool. Yeah. And so I thought, you know, and Neil Macastro was running Williams at the time, and he said, And he said, you've got to do this. Sony's going to put $100 million into this. And I was like, okay. Which makes complete sense, though. Yeah, it makes complete sense. And then we kept saying, show us something. Show us something. It was like we're at the end of the development cycle. I mean, we've got our pinball machine basically built. And they said, okay, come fly to Hollywood. So I flew to Hollywood, and they screened the movie for me. And I ran out of the movie theater, called Chicago. Can we get out of this?
    12:38
    That's horrible. Oh, man. Well, that's the risky one, right? Absolutely. Let's name it something else.
    12:50
    Such a funny story to hear George tell it. It's classic because if you can see his facial expression, actually you can see his facial expression if you go on the Twitch stream.
    13:00
    Funny story, and I can only imagine. I mean, that was probably a lesson learned, right? I mean, don't commit to a license to a movie that hasn't been seen. You don't know how that movie is going to be received. And Johnny Mnemonic was not their ideal choice after they were given the prescreening, which I thought was funny. Oh, dude, that was one of the funniest stories that I think I've heard in a long time, especially when I heard it. And I don't remember the podcast that I heard it on, so I'm not trying to not give someone credit. I didn't really have to dig, though, to figure that out where he told that. But just one of the funniest stories, man. I could just imagine him walking out, grabbing his phone and being like, dude, we are in trouble with this license. But, you know, it also brings up an interesting point. You know, how many of those, you know, like Judge Dredd wasn't a strong theme. You know, I think there were a few of those that weren't, you know, they banked on like the success of like Terminator 2 or Adam's Family and was trying to still capitalize on that. And it didn't come to fruition on a few of them. Well, lesson learned, lesson learned. And the gist that I got out of that is that they would not put themselves in a situation like that moving forward. and we you know and then we were asking because if you remember last year around this time stern banged out like two or three titles in like two and a half months just to close out the year and it was kind of shocking because just when he thought they wrapped something up something else had come out like you know primus was thrown at us so as we are kind of in a similar situation we're coming we're creeping up on expo we know that elvira and house of horrors has been revealed and it's going to be shown at expo but then you've got that period between the middle of october going into the end of December. So we asked George about releasing titles at the end of the year. Well, see, that's it. Now, last year you guys snuck a couple titles in at the end of the year where I was like, whoa, I didn't see that coming. So a lot of that is about the European market because we've got to get games on the water. So, yeah, so December, a lot of the December intros are more intended to go overseas Yep Yep Yeah And then you guys see see them usually in January of the following year So we in September We've got October, November, December. So potentially four or five more releases from Star Wars.
    15:11
    Still ready to go. Well, you know, there's Christmas coming. I know, I know. A little holiday cheer. Got to have some fun stuff. I couldn't agree any more. So you heard him say there's Christmas coming.
    15:23
    And that leads me to believe that Stern obviously is not done, right? So we're going to see at least another release between now and December. And one of the coolest expressions that, for whatever reason, I took a lot out of it, is like, you know, we've got to get games on the water. And that's just knowing that those things are on ships. They're going overseas. They're going to Europe. Those are shipping in December, and we see them here in January. But, Bill, we've got more pinball coming from Stern Pinball before the end of the year. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's what it sounded like. I mean, we're not going to put words in his mouth, but yeah, dude, it sounds exciting. It sounds like Christmas might be pleasant with another release. I would love to see it won. I wouldn't even put past two. They did it last year, and George kind of hinted that it might be a happy Christmas for pinballers. You know what? It just makes you wonder what game it might be next. Okay, then our correspondent, Dr. John from Australia, had actually called in, because on our streaming network, our streaming channel, we have a call-in line, so you can interact and chat, right? So you could have asked George questions in chat, and he was addressing questions in chat all night. But then we stopped playing pinball, and we went to the call-in line, and people were calling in, and George is answering questions now. And as I was saying, Dr. John, our correspondent for Spooky Pinball, calls in, and he asks about incomplete code on new releases. And I found this to be interesting too. George, mainly congratulations to Stern on coming out of the dark ages with coding. the feeling I've got is two years ago so many games came out with such early code that they weren't appreciated, they were getting bad reviews Batman 66 got a hell of a hard time when it first came out but with all the new stuff that you're employing now do you ever and Dwight doing his updates with Game of Thrones and Ghostbusters do you think we've seen the end of days with games coming out with incomplete code? Well I'll tell you that Thanks for the call, Dr. Jeff. I'll tell you that we don't want to ship incomplete code any more than you want to get incomplete code.
    17:23
    Our environment is not as nice, neat, and predictable as you imagine it is, meaning that things happen. You know, like licensing things happen, issues happen with the product itself, meaning that, you know, maybe a device required a lot more driver design than it would have normally, you know, than you anticipated, et cetera. Sure. Yep. Makes sense. And even with all that being said, we're still a very small shop. Yeah. I mean, you know, you guys think I've added like 30 coders. I haven't. You know, I mean, it's like… But you have increased staff there, though. I mean, we have. Yeah, we have. We have increased staff and it's we've always been a self-funded business, meaning that the business of the company is what funds R&D. It's what funds growth. It's what funds survival. And, you know, we we guys, we have to do what we have to do to survive. And so it's it it is the success, you know, that we you know, we've had. And I mean when I started – when I took over product development in 2011, there were nine guys in the company, right? And we went into the business of making cornerstones, three distinct models, price points, and three a year with a very, very reduced staff, right? So you can imagine the challenges. Stresses, yeah. And so it's kind of like it's that growth out that has allowed us to ship the games in a more finished fashion. We don't – hey, we pay for the games with our own money, the guys in product development, and we all own games. We all buy them, and we don't want unfinished games anymore, and you want them. So we get it, and I feel your pain, and I'm sorry that we had to ship some of the games we did the way they were. I can tell you that there's lots of stuff behind the scenes that you don't see, challenges that when we do something and it's maybe not real clear to you why. And as a company, we're not in the business of – we're very passionate about the games we make. And we want them to be great. Huge sentence there. I'm sorry that we had shipped games the way that they were in the past. And they went ahead and they rectified the situation with the acquisition of additional staff to make sure that games are shipping with more complete code. It was nice to hear George, in my opinion, it was refreshing for him to realize that it wasn't an ideal situation. And it was just because of the schedule that everybody was on and lack of staff to get that done. And for him to issue an apology, but also to let people realize, hey, we buy and play these games too. And there's nothing that would kill us more than having incomplete games that we would own. So no, there was definitely a very humanizing kind of statement there. You know, I mean, they're doing the best that they can. And, you know, there's things that we don't probably want to see that they get situations that they get thrown in. You know, we get to just play Monday morning quarterback. Well, this would have been great if you did this or, you know, why don't you add this mode or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But behind the scenes, yeah, I'm sure it's pretty tense in that. Well, I think the point is, though, when you get a game and you open it up, it's out of the box. You want to be able to play it. You want to be able to get through modes. You want it to feel like it's just about there. you don't want to feel like you're beta testing or you're like a prototype uh code tester either so and and we haven't really seen anything like that recently i think batman 66 was probably one of the most extreme examples of that a couple years later uh three years later now you're looking at this game being one of the most uh highly celebrated games from from a code and a gameplay standpoint uh it's become a favorite for a lot of people but in the beginning it was very disappointing you see the walking dead was another one of those games that was kind of brutal and and it was frustrating with the code and and that code has evolved uh game of thrones and ghostbusters recently both solid games but people wanted more and we have big code updates so the code updates i think are fun if you stay in on a pin because you're able to see the evolution from start to finish and it's kind of like you're getting bonus or extended add-on content to your pin for free whereas on the flip side i suppose just getting a game that's that's at 100 complete out of the box is nice too because you're not having to wait for the evolution of the game or the code so i can see both sides oh yeah yeah yeah i mean they're if anyone's walked through their factory i mean you can see i mean they've moved in been there what five years now four years dude they've definitely outgrown it i mean they're rocking and rolling and loading with staff and you know that's that's amazing they've outgrown their village facility they just moved out of melrose park so um for them to have outgrown this place already speaks volumes about what's happening with pinball over there at Stern. Now, one more interesting little tidbit, and there is more out there, so watch the stream if you can. I highly recommend that you do so. But there was a question somebody had asked. It might have been Zach. He asked, are we going to see a new artist at Stern Pinball in 2020? Quick questions in chat. Will Stern introduce any new artists in 2020?
    22:53
    Yes, absolutely. Okay. Well, that's perfect. Yeah. so as art has been such a huge topic in pinball and we've got these heavy hitters right we we know about the zombie yetis uh the christopher franchise i mean the two of them in tandem over the past year and a half or so i mean i've just come out with some blockbuster titles recently we had a johnny crap that that had done the jurassic park and then black knight sword of rage we saw kevin o'connor come back in art's huge now they're saying that hey we've got another artist, or at least George's name, we've got another artist and you're going to see him or him or her, right, in 2020. I find that to be extremely exciting, you know, and it's the feedback that they're getting based on these art packages, I would imagine, is making them strive for just top-notch artwork. So I'm curious to see. Absolutely, man, and the titles that are coming next. Yeah, so lots of nuggets. Again, if you want to watch, everything is about an hour and 45 minutes. It's GeorgeAnswersALotOfQuestions, twitch.tv slash flip the letter N out to pinball, all one word. And, you know, click the follow button because we stream every week and we have a lot of in-studio guests. And it's just a fun time. It doesn't cost you anything to follow. So come on in. I also wanted to touch base. Jeff Patterson at This Week in Pinball, right? I mean, we've got a lot of respect for Jeff. We really like This Week in Pinball. He's got some interesting access to Deep Root and especially Robert Mueller. And Robert has been one that, like, if you notice, like, he's, Robert has closed the Deep Root account on Pinside. He's no longer there interacting within the forums. Some may say that they might be better off that they're not. But I think that that gap now is there where you don't have communication with the manufacturer, which, you know, is good or bad. I don't know. Jeff, on the other hand, he's able to get some interviews with Robert Mueller. He talks to Robert, I guess, on a semi-regular basis. and recently Deep Root made a statement and it was a general statement and I'm just going to touch base on some of this. I'm not going to read the whole statement and it reads, at a minimum, this is what Robert's saying, several Raza prototypes will be available to play at the Houston Arcade Expo. Two early prototypes of Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland will be at the Houston Arcade Expo on November 15th and 16th of 2019. The prototypes, they will not have final art, design or code and the primary goal, I guess, to bring those there is to collect real-world data. And what he means by that is they're doing cycle testing, but they haven't really had a plate on location. They haven't moved these pinball machines around. They don't know how they're going to react to just taking the normal abuse that you would see from a pin that's traveling. So that was kind of the first statement or the first part of the statement. He goes on to say, and again, I'm just kind of paraphrasing. I'm not going through everything. He says, hey, we expect a complete engineering and launch early next year. We also plan to release a teaser for our second title prior to the Houston Arcade Expo show. This teaser will showcase a level of cinematic animation never before seen with pinball, courtesy of Deep Root Studios. So now he's discussing the animation process, and it sounds like they believe they've gone above and beyond. And what we're going to see from a display standpoint is going to be shock and awe. Okay? Yep. He also goes on to say that other pinball manufacturers that are interested in licensing the Deep Root package of innovations or intending on attending the launch should email us for more information or complimentary invitations. So that's a bold statement. That's pretty interesting. So let's go ahead and let's dissect some of this. Right. Right, but let's dissect this with taking some of the quips from This Week in Pinball's interview with Jeff Patterson and Robert Mueller. And if you want to read the whole interview, please go to thisweekinpinball.com, support Jeff Patterson, support the site, and read this. But I find a lot of this to be a very interesting conversation. We've not shied away from discussing Deep Root. It's something that I've been anticipating for over a year now. If you think about it, like what was it, Expo last year is when they kind of came out with their panel discussion there and having some bold statements that ultimately haven't been fulfilled. But things happen, right? But regarding the initial launch plans, in the interview, he says the five days of Deep Root will still happen, but maybe not the way I first imagined them to be. and I think what he imagined them to be last year was going to be TPF, Texas Pinball Festival, having five days leading up to TPF where they would probably have revealed or just kind of officially launched the company, and that didn't happen, Bill.
    27:29
    No, it did not, man. They made a few claims last year. Right, right. But regarding the initial launch titles, he says that the first three games, they're going to be unlicensed, at least as to the theme, art and animation. So the first three games that they're going to release are going to be do-it-yourselfers, right? They're going to be independent themes. Now, that's an interesting topic right now, too, because a lot of people have asked to have non-licensed themes. But we're kind of noticing now that maybe you be careful for what you wish for because you might get it. And the licensed themes seem to overwhelmingly outsell or at least seem to have a lot more attraction and popularity than the unlicensed themes do. So you've got a company that's going to be launching with three unlicensed themes. I personally, I don't mind an unlicensed theme. If the game is fun and it shoots great and you get an overall good pinball experience, it's great. License recognition is always nice. But, you know, to start off with three unlicensed pins, you know, are you putting yourself in a situation where you're kind of immediately battling uphill? But regarding Deep Root as a licensor, this I found interesting. Robert says, all other pinball manufacturers interested in licensing the Deep Root package of innovations, right? He said it would take at least five years and tens of millions in capital for other manufacturers to catch up with nearly 200 innovations that we're planning at launch. That is, unless they choose to flat out copy what we're doing. We're more than happy to share the license or some of all the deeper package we will show off at launch. We also want to support smaller boutique manufacturers in being able to get access to economies of scale to increase the quality of their games while lowering the price. So I want to take a time out and kind of discuss this. So now they have their own licensed packages that they become the licensor, right? Yes. And they are offering other people to become a licensee based on their technology. Now, again, we haven't seen a pinball released by Deep Root. We have not seen a prototype. We're going to see one in November. But it sounds to me like there's been a lot of things going on behind the scenes at Deep Root, and it hasn't just been pinball machines, right? So, and Robert kind of discussed all the different avenues that the company was taking. And I started to wonder then, and I'm wondering now, it's like, and this is absolutely no disrespect intended towards Robert or Deep Root or any of the employees there because I can appreciate the innovation that going in and I can appreciate them wanting to bring something to market again I show me something I want to see it But it does interest me in what being discussed Is it possible that and I'm guilty of this. OK. When I start a project, I go full bore. And then when I'm 50 percent or 60 percent into that project, sometimes I have a tendency to get another idea. And then I start working on a fresh idea because I've been working on the original idea for a long time. And something else kind of appeals to me. And at that point, I don't mind switching off a little bit because I don't want to get burnt out on my initial task. But then when I'm in task number two, something else like becomes new and shiny to me. And I start task number three. And what sometimes I'll get into the habit of doing is having five or six projects running simultaneously. But I'm not completing any of those projects. and I'm just wondering, is it possible that because of the innovation that may be going on here and because of the thought process, do you then start spreading yourself thin where you've got your hands in so many different projects or cookie jars, so to speak, that it becomes difficult then to focus on finishing the initial task or even finishing one project? I'd be curious to get your thoughts on that, Bill. It seems like they're jumping into all different avenues with the pinball, the video studio, plus these new mechs.
    31:24
    I'm curious to see it. I think we're all curious to see it. The only thing that I – I mean, there's a few things that were said in there that might have been a little tough to swallow. Like what, for instance? What are you talking about? We'll be showing you a second video of the next game before the first one comes out. Okay. I wouldn't do that. But that's not – I don't know. It's just my personal opinion. Okay.
    31:50
    It's a tough spot to be in, right? Because everyone's asking, well, show us something. Show us something. But then there are those that are like, well, don't show us this because it's just not enough. Show us something when you're done. So it's kind of a – it's a tough situation to be in. It's a double-edged sword for them, yeah. It is. It is right now. Until they start showing us a completed game with artwork and stuff like that. I mean even the – seeing the prototypes, unless it's got a hovering ball or something crazy, It's not going to – I don't think people are going to be as enthralled. And honestly, guess what? It could have some crazy nonsense in it and everyone could be blown away. Well, let's discuss the prototypes, right? I mean, so I guess prior I was kind of under the assumption because it was never, I think, really said specifically that we were going to see production machines. But when I thought about seeing prototype machines, I guess I thought of something that might have been a little bit further along with some artwork and things like that. so and even some generic code you know but but by showing something that maybe is a whitewood in an undecaled cabinet in that state of incompletion is that to their benefit to even bring that in november because i mean does that assure the public that that they are on any type of uh second timeline that they can hit i know robert kind of said that it would kill them to miss a second tpf so i would assume the goal here and the clock that's in the break room there is let's make sure that we get something that's complete by TPF. Again, I'm assuming. I don't know this for certain. Robert hasn't shared any information with me, which is fine. I just – now I'm going to speculate, right? Well, yeah. Let me bring this argument to you. Cosmic Carnival, we saw it at TPF. It had artwork on it, but it was just not even beta code. It was just hit the start button for how many balls you want to launch. Right, exactly. I don't think that did good for them. I don't think that was a great move on their part. seeing the game before it had artwork. I don't know if that was a great thing. And that's one thing that J.J.P. and Stern,
    33:46
    you really don't see a whole lot of it until the game is done, especially after Pirates. Right. I think what Cosmic Carnival, that release, had to rely pretty heavily on the artwork. So I think by showing that art package at TPF was what they were banking on drawing the interest. And I think that they were, I can only imagine, they thought that the code and everything else would then get caught up. So I can kind of see where they dangled. What they thought was their best asset at the time was that art package. It's what they invested in, and it was Dirty Donnie. But now what is Deep Root going to be displaying?
    34:19
    Do they have something that they think is a tremendous asset that they find necessary to share at this Houston show in November? I don't know. I guess, like, if you flew out to Houston, right, and you wanted to see this pin for the first time, I think you would want to kind of walk away with thinking that the trip to see this was worth it and i just i don't know i mean obviously we have to wait and see but it's just like again i am really curious as to what they're going to ultimately bring they're going to bring a game out i mean there's no way that all of this took place and we don't see something launched but now we're seeing they're gonna have a good whitewood laying around now i mean they've been working on stuff for so long i don't want to see a whitewood i don't want to see a whitewood If I want to see a Whitewood, I'll go to the homebrew section at Arcade Expo in Chicago, and I'll flip somebody's Whitewood.
    35:11
    I don't want to see a Whitewood as a first impression of what we've led all of our anticipation up to. And again, I'm the first one to be like, well, show me something, show me something, show me something. And then, okay, well, we're going to show you something. Oh, that's not good enough. So now I'm being hypocritical right off the bat. It's like you can't make people happy, I think, unless they fully launch. And now they're selling license packages to boutique pinball companies because they've put in the effort. They've put in the financial investment to be innovative so that other companies don't have to. So now they've got these packages that they can sell. They can get residual off of their innovation and at the same time help other pinball companies. I do find that to be very interesting. But let me ask you this. I mean, I guess they haven't really come out being buddy-buddy with a lot of the pinball manufacturers with a lot of the claims and a lot of things that they've said about other manufacturers. So is there like that business bond where other manufacturers would feel as if I am going to be interested in this license package? I think there's got to have to be a gap that has to be bridged there. And I think assuming these guys all want to work together and be friends, which I don't know to be the case. I mean, there's going to have to be some repair in the relationship for that to even take place. Again, I don't run a pinball company, and I don't know. I'm out of my element. I'm only looking at it from the outside. All right, but let me throw you this one. Okay, so at Arcade Expo down in Houston, they bring out a Whitewood, no code, right? It's got a floating ball mech. It's got fire in it. It's got smoke in it.
    36:50
    Some of the craziest crap you've ever seen. Would you change your mind then? Or would you rather see all of it complete still?
    36:57
    Yeah, I mean, if I saw something that was that unbelievable, then I'd be like, yeah, I can't wait to see what that's going to look like in the game. But then it's almost like you're spoiling the surprise on your completed art package. It would be like having a movie, and then you fast-forward it to the second best part, and you just watch that whole part. It's like, okay, that's unbelievable. Now I'm going to get the rest of the movie, but I kind of already saw the best part of the movie. So, again, you're going to see that scene implemented within the movie, But if you saw the best action scene or the best CGI scene in the movie, it's just kind of like, I don't know. Yeah, but are they bringing a Whitewood with some of these features? And we're just totally speculating and coming up with crap. But it says the prototypes they're bringing will not have final art design or code. So there might be an art package on here. It just might not be the final art package. So as I'm kind of reading that, it might not be the final design and it might not be the final code. So maybe we do see something that's more complete than I'm even taking out of the initial statement. Because if again, if I'm looking at it, quote unquote, these prototypes will not have final art, design or code. It does not mean that they're not going to have art, design or code. It's just not final. And I guess that's the very definition of a prototype. It's not it's not final. So I think it was important to cover, though, with everything that we've heard from them and how they've kind of disappeared. And now that we're like two months away from seeing something, now it's becoming kind of real. And if we don't see anything, then we're really going to – I think the pinball community itself would have a problem.
    38:29
    The other statement, we also want – and he says, we also want to support smaller or boutique pinball manufacturers in being able to get access to economies of scale to increase the quality of their games while lowering the price. So Robert does not consider himself a boutique pinball company if he's looking to help other companies that are what he feels will be lesser in sales volume than he is. So I don't know. Again, a lot of speculation. We've got a lot of staff over there that people have confidence in. So we'll see what happens. Again, November will be a pretty big time. and I hope that it's not a situation where it's a letdown because I want to see something new and fresh. I want to see innovation. Finally, he goes on to say, when Jeff was talking about play field issues with Robert, Robert says, pinball purchasers deserve better and they will finally have Deep Root on their side when we launch with an unprecedented 10-year warranty on play field wear and tear, which includes dimples. And yes, I'll be using a hammer live at launch. So when we look at playfields right now, clear coat and dimpling is something that we've all been talking about for the past several weeks. It sounds to me like he's saying none of that will ever be an issue with the way that they approach playfield manufacturing. So, again, playing speculation. Are we looking at something? We heard a few episodes on that a few episodes ago when Python Angelo was talking in his TopCast interview using polycarbonate as a protector that would make a playfield indestructible. Now, polycarbonate, Lexan, I think, is used in things like bulletproof glass. So do we see a hardtop on a playfield? Do we see like a thin sheet of metal that is then screened and then covered with the polycarbonate? I mean, I don't know, but he's all in on this playfield. When I say he, I say Robert Mueller on these what seems to be indestructible playfields. And to be able to even hint at a warranty of 10 years is incredible. It's incredible, but it's like it's almost like too good to be true. I mean, how do you warranty a play field for 10 years without knowing for damn certain that there's nothing that's going to question the integrity of that play field? Do you have any thoughts? You don't believe in magic beanstalks? I don't know if it's a magic beanstalk. If there's a magic beanstalk.
    40:47
    I'm curious to see a hammer getting taken. You never know, man. Listen, a 10-year warranty on a play field, that's interesting. I'd like to read the fine print on that deal. um him the guy's bringing a hammer to the playfield at lunch it's like all right i'm curious to see it you know i know you're curious to see it and the cost comes into that how can you put that kind of sheet of something on a playfield and still sell it for five grand well i don't know that like a polycarbonate protector would add more than you know maybe 30 40 bucks to a playfield to protect it i mean it's not like you're adding something that's going to be uh you know 500 600 bucks but I don't know how they're going to implement it. So, and I don't know if they're using polycarbonate, who knows what's going on. The whole thing has me, you know, wondering, and I just, I can only say this. So, so expose middle of October and then by the middle of November, uh, we'll see these things. And, I wish that I could be there because it's been killing me to see it. Right.
    41:47
    We'll wait to see what happens. We'll wait to see who's covering it. We'll wait to see what media he allows into, uh, to look at these things and we'll wait and see. So it's a wait and see approach. I eagerly anticipate it. But I've kind of hedged my enthusiasm or my expectations at this point because we shall see. Yeah, well, we shall see. But I'm going to just kind of be a little bit more realistic on what I am going to expect. And if it's if it's fun and it's serviceable and it's quality control is there, I have no problem jumping on a little bit of a deep root bandwagon and playing some games. Bill, are you ready to play a little drain it or save it? I am definitely ready.
    42:28
    It's time for this week's edition of Drain It or Save It. Thank you. Drain It or Save It is brought to you by Lermods.com, offering you custom quality playfield mods and lighting for your pinball machine. L-E-R-M-O-D-S. Visit Lermods.com today. Bill, first item up for Drain It or Save It. For those of you new to the segment, we bring up a topic, phrase, or situation. If we like it or agree, we save it. but if we don't like it or disagree on the subject matter, we drain it. And the first item is this phrase, Bill. Are you ready? I'm listening. What's the lowest you'll go when you're selling a pinball machine? Do you like to hear people ask what's the lowest that you will go when you're selling a pinball machine, Bill? Drain it or save it? I'm going to drain that specific statement. Why is that? If someone says, hey, what's the best you can do? Hey, you know, cool. the lowest you'll go just sounds cheap pawn shop nonsense but that's just my opinion yeah i i don't like the statement because it kind of breaks down the art of the negotiation which some people seem to live by the only reason i'm going to save the statement bill is because when somebody says what's the lowest you'll go my immediate reply is what's the most that you'll pay and that usually ends that conversation right there so just for my enjoyment i'm going to save what's the lowest you'll go when I'm selling a pinball machine. The second item up, timed games for competitive pinball or party play. And what I mean by that, does it make sense to have a mode or a setting in a pinball machine where you can set the game for 60 seconds or for two minutes per se, and you just start a little tournament and the most amount of points that are accumulated or if the ball drains, whichever comes first, that kind of dictates your standings. So timed pinball play for competitive play? Drain it or save it, Bill? I'm going to drain it.
    44:19
    Not necessarily a fan. Why is that? Just the whole time play thing. It's not that it doesn't sit well. It's just not my idea of a good time. Okay, so you're going to drain it. Well, we're going to be disagreeing a lot today. I'm going to save this. I think this is such a genius way to move a tournament along. These guys go to these tournaments, right? and they play and they're there all day. They get there at like 7, 8 in the morning and they're there until 11, 12 at night. Because somebody can jump on a game like Jurassic Park and maybe have a 45-minute game. And then somebody else who player two might have only put like three and a half or four minutes into that game Maybe somebody else had a couple of house balls and they played for 90 seconds But to just drag it all on I think the way that would make everything so much more interesting in certain tournament formats, and I'm not a tournament player, but even in a house setting, if you had all your pins set to two minutes and everybody had one ball or two minutes, it'd be a quick way for people to get on and off games. You could play several rounds of best of seven on a game. And it just seems like it would be, in my opinion, fun. Now, playing by myself on a pinball machine, I would certainly not want to have a time game, because that doesn't make any sense to me. I want to go through the modes. I want to experience everything. But, you know, if I've got eight, nine buddies over at the house, and I want to rip through six or seven pins, hey, you guys want to do a quick two-minute ball tournament on these pins? Everybody put a buck on the glass on each one of these pins, and then whoever has the highest score takes the dollars off the glass. I think it would be a fun and easily implemented setting for a pinball machine. So that was a long-winded reply, buddy, but I'm going to save that, and I hope that we see something like that come up on a machine soon.
    45:55
    I think it's fascinating, but you know what, dude? We've had nine people at my house, you included, and we've done that one-game tournament, and, dude, it took us like an hour and 15, 20 minutes. So our situation might be different because we're not that good. You know how you alleviate that, though? You know how you make that nine guys go for like 20 minutes? It's like, hey, have a two-minute game, one ball. I don't know, I'm just saying. You can crank through pretty fast.
    46:23
    I think it would be great for another mode. I don't know. Well, modes are timed. A lot of modes are timed. I'm just talking about, hey, two-minute game. You get one ball or two minutes, whichever you can do. You know what? There was an interesting post on Facebook, Scott Drager, a local guy, right? He's like, hey, there'll be a fun mode. Let's code something into a pinball machine that just gives you like 100 flips. You can use the flipper buttons 100 total times, and that's your total score. And I thought, now that's kind of cool, too, because at that point, If you had like a countdown on your LCD or DMD and every time you flipped, it went from 99, 98, 97. And you had one ball or 99 flips, you'd have to really think about cradling. You'd have to really think about, you know, maybe not. Well, you typically don't want to double flip. But sometimes for certain saves, call for a situation where you're flipping back and forth. When the ball's going back and forth between the slings, you'd want to cut down on that. I thought that was also kind of a cool, fun thing that he brought up. But I digress. That one I like a lot more, in all honesty. Okay, okay. Again, little tiny mini-games within pinball for tournament or for just fun party play appeals to me. Finally, let's wrap this up on Drain It or Save It, brought to you by LearnMods.com. This is it, Bill. What do you think? A 24-hour pinball Twitch stream with all the proceeds going to charity. Drain it or save it? I will save it. I'm going to save it, too, because I think we're going to do that. I think we're going to do that on our special WinLit channel, and we'll get more information about that after Expo. We've got some buddies of ours that are going to want to come in, and we're going to stream for 24 hours. We're going to take all of the proceeds, and we're going to give it to a charity. So more information to come about that, but that's going to be fun. So to sum it up on Drain It or Save It, the phrase, what's the lowest you'll go when you're selling a pinball machine? Bill drains it. I save it just out of pure entertainment. Secondly, timed games for competitive party pinball play. Bill drains it. I save that. And we both save the 24-hour pinball stream with all proceeds going to charity. On Drain It or Save It, brought to you by LearnMods.com.
    48:17
    All right, Bill. So moving right along here as this episode is, it's great. I got some energy tonight, man. Like, I'm really feeling the pinball podcasting. Dude, you had like some caffeine today or something, man. You were just like. I don't know what it is. Kathy, dude, just going, going, going. I'm not, it's a bad thing. You know, good thing. Trying to make sure that people don't have to listen to me at 1.5 on their favorite podcast app. So I'm trying to get as much in as I can here today. But I wanted to let everybody know that we had some listeners that had contacted us over the past few months asking if there was a way that they could make a donation or something to the Pinball Podcast. And it was always very humbling, and I always appreciate it. And I said, you know, I appreciate it. We don't really have anything set up like that. But if we do, I'll certainly let you know. But, you know, thanks so much for reaching out. So we went ahead. We set up a Patreon account. If anybody is interested, if you go to Patreon.com and you type in Special Win Lit Pinball Podcast, you can find us there. We have different tiers set up. So if you want to contribute to the show and in the tournament, it's financially contribute. There's tiers that start at five bucks per month. And so what we're going to do is I want to make it clear we're not ever going to lessen the content that we offer here on the show. We're going to come at you every single week with everything that we can. But we will have some additional things that the patrons will be able to have access to.
    49:41
    We've got a Discord channel set up for patrons to interact. We still have our Facebook page, which is a public page that's always going to be up.
    49:48
    And I think this is kind of fun. We're going to release our podcast here on a weekly basis like we always do. And 71 episodes, Bill. We have not missed a week yet. So we have the Cal Ripken streak going so far, Pinball Podcasting. We're getting there. But we're going to do a little bonus content episode that we're going to be offering patrons at a certain tier. So, I don't know. Check it out. It allows some people that would like to help support the show an opportunity to do so. But, again, your listenership and knowing that you guys are here listening is a huge amount of support. And we thank everybody for doing that. And I wanted to really quickly, if you don't mind, because we launched the Patreon account today. and as promised I wanted to just recognize we had two patrons that enrolled today to be a special only patron and that's Tommy McNicholas thank you very very very much for coming to our patron and Joseph Fox man our buddy Joseph Fox comes in with some big support and a little clapping thank you guys that's awesome Joe you're the man and Tommy you guys are both the gentlemen and we appreciate it very very much now and real quick i'm gonna cut you off here yeah i don't know how for once i ever knew how that felt before but here it is um and you and i really kind of struggled whether or not for a long time whether or not to set one of these up because we we kind of like not having one and well yeah i mean the other thing was this like i didn't want to necessarily feel pressured to be able to be consistent with releasing content like six, seven months ago when actually people had asked if there was a way to contribute. So we were just kind of doing it. We weren't sure where the show was going to go. I mean, we're so far into this show at this point. It's not going anywhere. So it's like, absolutely, I'm not too proud to accept anybody that wants to help out the show, whether it be buying a T-shirt or signing up on Patreon and helping us out. The money that we're getting from that, I mean, it's going to help us do things like, it would be nice to maybe go to another show this year and be able to fly out, maybe to Pentastic New England. We've got some extra money to do that. We put a lot of time into our full-time jobs. And I have no problem taking a little bit of time away from full-time work and putting it into, like, the pinball content that we're offering, whether it be the podcast or whatnot. And, you know, if there's a little extra help financially for us to kind of, you know, justify putting even more time into it, absolutely. It's great. And honestly, I'm at the point now where I'm starting to try to upgrade and do things so we can provide even better content. That's what's exciting, right? We're always trying to upgrade and we're always trying to do those things. And, again, I have no problem doing that on my own dime. But it is absolutely helpful.
    52:32
    It helps everybody involved. So, again, thank you. Absolutely no pressure and it's not expected. Anybody that's listening to the show, that's the support that we need, just knowing that people are downloading these episodes. Again, we talk about this frequently. We didn't expect the show to attract the listenership that it did initially. And now that we're here, it's we want to make sure that we're coming through every single week as best that we can. And we never want to slack off. So, again, thanks for listenership. Thanks for the support. Thanks for the financial support. Thanks for the patrons that have come aboard. Thank you, everyone. Patreon.com. And you can check our Facebook page, too, if you want to link to that. So I wanted to bring it up because, again, it's out there. I wanted to address it. And we wanted to talk about why we decided to do it. And we wanted to thank those that are considering participating. So thank you guys. Finally, Pinball Expo. It's coming up, buddy, right? So the 16th through the 20th. Yep. We've got Pinball Expo coming up. Speaking of content, so we have the Epic Tailgate stream, which is set up on October 16th. It's going to be that Wednesday of Expo, and it's going to start at six o'clock in the evening. It's going to go to 11 o'clock. It's going to be at Studio B at Steve Beattie's, and we're going to be streaming that on the Flippin' Out channel. And we've got a lot of VIP industry guests that will be coming in and jumping on and off the mics really for five hours. I'm even wondering if there will be any pinball playing that will be on Twitch. I might try to experiment with, I mean, obviously there's going to be pinball there in the background where people can play. If you've seen Steve's house, he's got like 17, 20 pins. It's set up unbelievably. So all the guests can come in and they can eat and drink and play pinball. All that I ask each one of these guys and ladies that come in is, hey, just jump on the mics with us for 15 minutes. talk about what you're working on. Let's talk about what we can expect from you at Pinball Expo or what we can expect from you at Pinball for the rest of the year. So I think people will find it very, very interesting. I'm looking forward to it, and I know you're looking forward to it, and it's going to be fun to host something that's substantial. And again, you can see that on Flippin' Out Pinball's Twitch stream. We'll advertise that more and more as it comes out. And that's three weeks from today. Yeah, it's three weeks. meet the media is the event that uh that i've been given the responsibility to run and that's going to be at expo so if you want to meet pinball content providers and those will be uh pinball youtubers streamers um homebrewers and we also have podcasters right uh there will be designated times where you know that you can come up and just kind of talk some pinball with those guys and and girls at these tables uh where we can just kind of banter back and forth and uh maybe share a beverage and share a story too. So I can't wait to meet a lot of people in an environment where it's like our natural habitat. Oh, yeah. Great time. Right, right. And at Expo this year, you've got the Elvira House of Horrors, kind of, I think, which will be the first public appearance where everybody can jump on these games. So don't miss. There's going to be a design panel discussion, and that's going to be with Greg Ferrez. That's going to be with Dennis Nordman. I imagine you're going to have like Jerry Thompson up there. You're going to have Lyman Sheets. I hope to see Chuck Ernst up there with animations. That'll be the first time that the team gets together collectively and discusses the trials and tribulations and the enjoyment of coming up with Elvira's House of Horrors. That's going to be fun. And then George Gomez also said of all the pinball machines that they're going to be bringing heavy to Expo, that they might be bringing some Ghostbusters up there because with that new code, he wants everybody to experience that. He was not able to say that there would be a vault edition of Ghostbusters in the works. But I wouldn't be surprised if we see one down the road because the code is that awesome. Dwight and team did a great job. So if you're at Expo, jump on a Ghostbusters. Definitely a great game. Absolutely. Now, finally, the Pinball Life charity open house is going to be taking place. And that's going to be Friday of Expo. And this is real fun every year. Now, they have their open house where you can go like Thursday. You can show up there, and it's free to get in, and it's casual, and go in and play some games, buy some parts. Now, Friday night, is it Friday night or is it Thursday night?
    56:37
    Friday. So Friday night is where it gets kind of crazy because that's where you need to get a ticket to get into this thing. And a couple of cool things that are going on and what I really, really enjoy is so Chuck Emery, Chuck and team over at Spooky Pinball, the last TNA off the line is TNA 550, right? And that's going to be raffled off at JDRF over at Pinball Life that night. And that's going to benefit JDRF. Brian and Deb Kelly, they're involved in this with their grandson who's got juvenile diabetes. And I know that they've all been big supporters over there at Pinball Life, not just of Spooky, but of supporting the cause. And that's going to be crazy. Now, the thing is, like, the tickets have sold out, right? So if you miss the boat on the Pinball Life party, and this happens every year, the tickets go up for sale. and people miss out because they're like, I didn't know they were for sale or I acted too late. They go fast. I think there was literally some on StubHub like at one point a year or two ago, like you had to buy them in the aftermarket. I remember that. So anyways, I bought some tickets and we're going to be giving away a pair of those tickets. So if you missed the Pinball Life Open House ticket purchase, just keep listening to the show. We'll tell you how you can win one of two of these tickets that we're going to be giving away up here as we lead into Expo. So that'll be funny. Again, you can tell we're excited about Pinball Expo. It's our hometown expo, and we feel like we're hosts and ambassadors for the expo. We want everybody to come have a good time. If there's anything that we can do personally to make your Pinball Expo experience any better, please reach out to us. You can reach us at SpecialWinLitPinballPodcast at gmail.com or hit us up on Facebook at SpecialWinLitPinballPodcast. Use that little message button and let us know if you're going to be there and what we can do to make your trip a little bit happier. Sound good, Bill? Absolutely, man. Special shout out to our buddy, Roden. I was talking with him earlier. His youngest is actually graduating high school today. So for our buddy, Roden, he had to throw that out there, man. Congratulations. We're getting old. Yeah, getting old and look forward to those student loans or college tuition. Absolutely, man. Start saving now. Roden will be selling some pins. I wanted to say thank you to the cool tear that he could pony up to. Really? Oh, yeah. Just, you know, shipping might suck from Australia, but that's okay. If he's coming to Expo, just bring it on the plane and drop it off. No problem. It's a carry-on. It is a carry-on. A big carry-on, but it is what it is. I want to say thanks to the Special Inlet Correspondents for all their efforts and all their content that they're offering. I want to thank our sponsor, LearnMods.com. Most of all, we want to thank the listeners. Guys, thank you so much in any way that you're here to support the show, whether it's your listenership or patron. It's awesome. We really, really appreciate it. Could there be a Twippy in store for Special Inlet Pinball Podcast? I'm hearing other podcasts talk about Twippies already. We've not really got into the Twippy vote, but I'll tell you what, Bill. I'll go on record as saying I think we've worked our tails off over the past year, over a year, and I think that we're in a position where we can maybe play a little contention, be in contention for a possible top nomination for the Twippies. What do you think? Even being nominated would be an honor, so, you know. Being nominated is half the battle for me. So if we can get in that top three spot and we can do it with your help, we appreciate it. We'll talk more about Twippies as they come up later. in the year, because that's when voting opens up. But for Bill Webb, I'm Ken Cromwell. Everybody have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening. And don't forget to take some time out of your day and play some pinball. So long, everybody.