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Ep 155: Is American Being Sued? with David Fix

LoserKid Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·57m 7s·analyzed·Dec 12, 2024
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

David Fix clarifies American Pinball's structure, addresses lawsuits, and discusses next licensed game in development.

Summary

David Fix, EVP of R&D/Production at American Pinball, addresses lawsuit allegations from co-designer Paul Reno, clarifies the company's ownership structure under parent company Ametron, discusses organizational challenges, recent layoffs, and reveals the next game is licensed and in late development stages with code still being finalized. He attributes poor June-July sales to industry-wide seasonal downturn and vacation patterns, and emphasizes American Pinball's small team size versus competitors like Stern.

Key Claims

  • Paul Reno is suing American Pinball over discrepancies in contracts/payments related to Galactic Tank Force co-design work

    high confidence · David Fix confirmed lawsuit exists but stated they are in communications to resolve; attributed to Ametron handling contracts and accounting issues

  • American Pinball's next game is licensed IP and will be ready for production with code polished before release

    high confidence · Fix stated at Expo, select distributors played the game in back rooms and took orders; code was not finished but they want it ready before launch

  • June-July 2024 saw worst pinball industry sales since 2009

    medium confidence · Fix stated this on record, attributed to summer vacation season; corroborated by distributor vacation anecdotes

  • American Pinball shipped over 1,200 Polycade arcade units in three months (Sept-Dec 2024)

    high confidence · Direct statement by Fix; described as significant revenue stream alongside pinball manufacturing

  • Multiple American Pinball staff layoffs including Dennis Nordman, Jack Guarnieri, and Steve Bowden; some being brought back on contract or freelance basis

    high confidence · Fix confirmed multiple layoffs; stated Jack Guarnieri was laid off but invited to Expo; Steve Bowden laid off a week prior to podcast and already being discussed for rehire

  • American Pinball has only 2 standard Barbecue editions and 3 Limited Editions remaining in inventory as of podcast date

    high confidence · Fix stated inventory numbers during discussion about whether Barbecue sales were blocking next game production

  • The next game designer has provided a schedule to personally test first 100 units before production boxinglike Williams historically did

    high confidence · Fix described this as quality control approach modeled after classic Williams manufacturing practice

  • Ametron (parent company) handles all finance, HR, legal, and contract matters for American Pinball; David Fix oversees only R&D and production

Notable Quotes

  • “There were some discrepancies that need to be cleaned up. And I didn't even know about it until it was on the thing last night.”

    David Fix @ early in interview — Reveals Fix was unaware of Paul Reno lawsuit until public filing; suggests disconnect between his R&D role and Ametron's legal/financial operations

  • “I would love to have five or six games sitting in the lab just waiting to be released whenever I felt like it. I don't have the luxury of that. So I have a very small team.”

    David Fix @ mid-interview — Directly contrasts American Pinball's constraints with large manufacturers like Stern; explains inability to do parallel development

  • “I'm too small of a company to afford a failure, right? Or something that doesn't hit all the screws, right? It has to be perfect on this next shot, for sure.”

    David Fix @ discussing next game — Explains conservative approach to next release; references Galactic Tank Force bending targets issue as cautionary example

  • “We saw just recently, and I'm going to give kudos and good jobs, and I want to say to Jack Danger I love his Uncanny X-Men... within three weeks they brought out Metallica.”

    David Fix @ mid-interview — Acknowledges Spooky's competitive advantage in rapid game releases; demonstrates respect for boutique competitor

  • “They never brought out a new pinball in June, July, and August because the sales were always, you know, right in the bottom because nobody's looking at games at that time of the year.”

    David Fix @ discussing sales slump — Contextualizes seasonal market dynamics using historical precedent from Williams/Bally/Gottlieb era

  • “So if you're the game designer, you gotta go live on the line while your game comes off and make sure every game is 100 percent the way it was and train the line.”

    David Fix @ discussing manufacturing process — Reveals quality control methodology and historical manufacturing practice being implemented for next game

  • “I'm a fan first. I have a ton of games... I don't even have an American game down there yet.”

Entities

David FixpersonAmerican PinballcompanyAmetroncompanyPaul RenopersonDennis NordmanpersonJack GuarnieripersonSteve Bowdenperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball's back catalog (Hot Wheels, Houdini, Barbecue) driving revenue; only 2 standard Barbecue and 3 LE units remaining; production constraints indicate limited manufacturing capacity

    high · Fix stated 'we've been selling a lot of our back catalog' and specific remaining inventory numbers; indicated Barbecue production was completed for 2025

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball pursuing diversification revenue through Polycade arcade cabinet manufacturing partnership (1,200+ units shipped in 3 months) alongside pinball production

    high · Fix disclosed deal signed end of September/October 2024; described as significant business segment to 'keep lights on' and enable strategic flexibility

  • ?

    community_signal: Miscommunication between David Fix and Don (Don's Pinball Podcast) about next game production status; Don misinterpreted 'sample went through production line' as 'game on production line'

    high · Fix clarified distinction; stated Naps Arcade amplified misinformation; both Don and Naps retracted posts; Don subsequently visited factory to clarify and play game

  • ?

    community_signal: Paul Reno lawsuit against American Pinball over contract/payment discrepancies; attributed to Ametron's accounting/legal departments rather than Fix's R&D division

    high · Fix confirmed lawsuit, stated they are in communications to resolve, claimed lack of awareness until public filing, emphasized divisions of responsibility between Ametron and American Pinball operations

  • ?

    product_concern: American Pinball's small team size (1 mechanical engineer with 2 juniors in India, 1 designer, 1 art person, 1.5 software engineers, 1 rules person) limits ability to do parallel development like Stern

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.171

0:00
thanks for tuning into loser pinball podcast i am josh ruf with me my co-captain scott larson and we are on episode 155 we've got an awesome episode today but scott before we get to our guest for the today uh new pinballs coming out where are you going to be buying your machine you know new pinballs are coming out and i i'm looking across my screen at my new metallica and I just ordered some accessories for it. So I'm getting the topper and you know what? People can love it or hate it, but I hear it looks really great in person. So I did get the topper and I have some shaker motors and I have some other stuff on board. So including if you want actual, if you want pinball machines, if you want used pinball machines, if you want the new latest and greatest, or if you just want to bling up your machine, we know that Zach and Nicole and Minnie are always helpful with what you need. And easiest way to get a hold of them is actually to message them. But they do have a phone number.
1:03
I usually get a hold of Zach on Facebook Messenger. But they do have a phone. They have a website. So flipping out pinball, definitely reach out to them, and they will hook you up. Definitely. So our guest that's joining us right now, he reached out to us a couple days ago, said he wanted to come on and talk about some stuff. I know that there's been a lot of rumors floating around about American Pinball itself. We don't know if a new reveal is on the horizon. And there's just so many questions and there's so much information floating around. And David Fix wanted to come on and talk about this stuff. And, I mean, there was even kind of a bomb dropped last night that you were telling us about. I kind of want to – let's just get right into it. Let's go with Paul Reno, who was the co-designer for Galactic Tank Force, I guess is now suing American Pinball. Is that right?
1:49
Well, he – I can't go into much details about the lawsuit or what's going on about it. But I'll just tell you that we are already in communications. We've been with him. It's kind of like just cleaning up some other details that needed to be cleaned up. Let's take a step back here for a second, and I'll explain how this works a little bit, because everybody thinks that American Pinball is Dave Fix, and I'm the chief cook and bottle washer, as it were. As it works here with American Pinball, I am the executive vice president of American Pinball, but I'm over the R&D and the production department. The accounting department, HR, is still being run by Ametron, which is our parent corporate. So they take care of all the deals and contracts, and Ametron has its own in-house lawyer who takes care of all the contracts with all the employees and all external employees. So somebody like Paul Reno and Dennis, who made up Wing Ding to bring the game to American Pinball, they're an outside entity. OK, so they dealt directly with Ametron. All right. So if they're having problems, of course, who's the parent companies? Ametron, American Pinballs, me, you know, and the rest of the guys. But there's there's divisions that are run pretty much by Ametron. So if accounting goofs up or they don't do the paperwork correctly or something is amiss, they're going to come after us. And in this case, there were some discrepancies that need to be cleaned up. And I didn't even know about it until it was on the thing last night. I guess everybody at Amtron got the emails about it the day of the filing. So I reached out to Paul. we've been talking already. I brought the horses back in the corral kind of thing and just like, you know, let's start talking and let's get to an amicable situation and figure this out. Paul and Dennis are old friends. I mean, I know Dennis has had some, you know, times that he's not with us right now. He's been laid off. But, you know, Dennis does have a couple designs with us and not only with us but other companies too so uh that also because it's contract goes through aimtron which is the company that takes care of it so barat uh who is their legal counsel he's the one that would be doing all the contracts with the other employees so it it's kind of you know it's kind of a weird thing because i know dennis was like i want a contract i want this I'm like, okay, deal with Bharat. You guys set it up. Bharat, set this up. You guys have to deal with finance. So it's out of my hands. It's more in their hands to deal with stuff. So that's – go ahead. Well, and it brings up a question too because here's the hard part. There's a lot of people that have discounted what you're saying because they don't – because you say one thing. So like with Pinball News, you did an interview back in May on the Dennis situation. And then he then, before Expo, like you said, says verbatim what the interview said, and then he tells his side of the story, and it's not matching up with what you said. So I guess, what would you tell the people, the listeners, to ensure what you're telling us is facts, essentially? So Pinball News, and I have to go back and listen to it, but I pretty much said that under my impression that he was still supposed to be dealing with Barat on the contract, with that basis. Now, I don't know the standings of that because it's every quarter that I sometimes get to see the man. And he's legal counsel for this entire company. So, you know, it's not like I can just like drop in his office and say, hey, where are we with this? You know, I can send him emails, but he also has tons of emails and he's answering to Amtron and the CEO all the time uh Mukesh on that so there's there's sometimes I get pushed to the side which you know I'm only allowed to do what I can do uh besides that um looking at the um the and I have to listen to the podcast again but at that time we were under the understanding that Dennis would be under contract and would come back at some part later date to finish his game because right now the entire department at American Pinball is focusing on the next game, which was not Dennis's game. I do have the quote. Do you want me to hurry in? Sure, go ahead and read it. Let's hear it. It says verbatim from the May 2024 Pinball News interview, Dennis is not a young guy. He kind of came to us and was like, you know, I could be doing better by, you know, being home a little bit more and being this and the other thing. And we kicked it around a couple of times. And he said, hey, this is what I want to do. You had said, we want to lay you off. We want to put you on contract basis. We want to build your game. It's not the hot priority right now. It's not shelved. It's either other little things that can be done. Let's talk about this and have a contract made up. We'll do this on a contract basis. And if you're open to it, we can come and do what we need to do.

high confidence · Fix repeatedly clarified organizational structure and stated Ametron's in-house lawyer Bharat handles all contracts

David Fix @ personal collection discussion — Demonstrates Fix's broader pinball enthusiasm and willingness to buy competitor games; humanizes his position

  • “If you've got a question about American Pinball, call me. I will set the record straight.”

    David Fix @ discussing communication with media — Offers direct contact approach to media; reflects frustration with misinformation from industry personalities

    • Ryan McQuaid
    person
    Sophia Ryanperson
    Polycadecompany
    Bharatperson
    Mukesh Vasaniperson
    Nirmal Vasaniperson
    Josh Roopperson
    Scott Larsonperson
    Jack Dangerperson
    George Gomezperson
    Christopher Franchiperson
    Donperson
    Naps Arcade / Jasonperson
    Stern Pinballcompany
    Spooky Pinballcompany
    Kerry Hardyperson

    high · Fix explicitly contrasted team size with Stern's capacity to maintain multiple games in lab; emphasized 'I can't do that' regarding parallel production runs

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Hosts challenged Fix's credibility based on discrepancies between his May 2024 Pinball News interview statements and Dennis Nordman's contradictory account of contract termination

    high · Hosts read verbatim quotes from Pinball News interview; noted Fix's statement differed from Dennis's characterization of forced contract acceptance vs voluntary layoff conversation

  • $

    market_signal: Industry-wide pinball sales slump in June-July 2024 described as worst since 2009; attributed to seasonal vacation patterns and post-COVID travel spending

    medium · Fix stated on record; corroborated by anecdotes about distributors on cruises; historical precedent cited that Williams/Bally/Gottlieb never launched games in summer months

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball's corporate structure confusion: Fix oversees only R&D/Production; Ametron (parent company with same owners Mukesh/Nirmal Vasani) handles finance, HR, legal, contracts - leading to accountability issues in lawsuits and employment disputes

    high · Fix repeatedly clarified he 'didn't know about' Paul Reno lawsuit until public filing; emphasized Ametron's Bharat handles all contracts; acknowledged this structure creates disconnect between his claims and actual company decisions

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Multiple American Pinball layoffs (Dennis Nordman, Jack Guarnieri, Steve Bowden) with some being rehired on contract/freelance basis as company stabilizes

    high · Fix confirmed layoffs occurred due to budget constraints; stated plans to rehire once 'we turn the corner'; Jack Guarnieri invited to Expo and being recruited back; Steve Bowden already in office discussing 2025 return

  • ?

    product_strategy: Next American Pinball game in late development with code still being finalized; no production start date announced despite Expo demonstration to select distributors

    high · Fix stated 'Code was not done, though. The code was not ready' at Expo; sample produced but production has not started; game designer has schedule but timeline not disclosed

  • ?

    business_signal: American Pinball planning 'soft reboot' with next game release strategy mirroring Legends of Valhalla model: announcement followed by games already in circulation at locations

    high · Fix described playtest-ready inventory approach with game designer personally testing first 100 units before production boxing; compared to Williams historical manufacturing practice

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Next American Pinball game is confirmed licensed IP but specific theme not disclosed; Fix emphasized licensing importance and preparation for successful launch

    high · Fix stated 'the next game is, of course, licensed'; revealed select distributors already took orders at Expo; emphasized wanting code polished before launch

    • 7:14
    But, you know, I got to kind of lay you off from the day to day. and then and norman had replied saying that essentially you came to him saying hey they offered me a contract but wasn't what we originally agreed upon and i was told if i didn't accept it i'd be terminated so he wasn't terminated in fact i was in the meeting and i told him that we were waiting on the contract and i told him he was being laid off at the time um in fact it was funny because well not funny but it's just you know yeah he came to us and said hey i'm not my Game's not the next game. Can I go on a contract? I'd rather be working at home. I'm not coming in all this time. So that kind of opened the door, which I then threw upstairs. And, of course, they were like, yeah, that's fine. Let's put them on contract. And I'm like, okay, you guys have to deal with this because that's not mine in the sand. You know, it's not like I have enough on my plate. Then sit here and go through all the squabbles of contracts with people. And that's what the in-house legal team handles for Amtron. They do all the contracts. So, you know, he came to us. He said that. Yes, I said, let's make up a contract, deal with them, deal with Nermal, deal with the rest of the team, and get this set up. That's where I left it, okay? If he didn't like the contract, he could continue discussing it with them. But at this time, the project was on hold. It's sitting in the lab. We've gotten some new parts in that were ordered. We've put it up. We've been building it, working on it here and there. But it's not flippable at this moment. So we're really on a holding pattern with where we're going to continue with this game.
    9:03
    So I do have a question with American Pinball. So the lifeblood of a company is manufacturing and shipping product. OK, now, American Pinball is not a young company. They're they're in this this transition zone. I will I will argue, though, I don't see a lot of sales from the last two titles. And eventually, to keep the doors open, to keep the lights on, you have to move product because that's really how you keep a company alive. Now, with other companies, they have parallel development. So you have one machine that's coming out, one machine that's behind, and sometimes they get swapped because we saw another company do just that recently where something wasn't ready.
    9:55
    Now, they still are having all those people on staff and having them parallel development. So why is American Pinball a little different in that, you know, are you not able to generate the same volume? Are you not able to meet the same schedule?
    10:12
    I'm really trying to understand where American Pinball fits into the company perspective of all other companies. So we're a small company. That's the first thing. We have a small budget. Okay. I mean, that's another key word right there. I know you were talking about another company which had to switch games and then brought out another game. I would love to have five or six games sitting in the lab just waiting to be released whenever I felt like it. I don't have the luxury of that. So I have a very small team. I have Sophia Ryan, who's my mechanical engineer. She has a couple juniors sitting over in India. And then I got Ryan McQuaid, who is the designer. And then Dennis was a designer. I have one person in art right now. I had another person in art. And I have one and a half software engineers and one rules guy.
    11:10
    So at the end of the day, it's all hands on deck, right? This is a passion of love for everybody in this company.
    11:18
    So I know what you're talking about. If you're talking about a company that is huge, like the monster that I call it down the street, we saw just recently and I'm going to give kudos and good jobs and I want to say to Jack Danger I love his Uncanny X-Men I played it at Expo I've played it elsewhere it's probably a game I'm going to buy it's a really nice shooting game and we saw at Expo what a big company like that can do sometimes the competition to quote George Gomez is sometimes the competition is not across down the street. It's across the hall. So you saw Uncanny X-Men come out, and it's a big enough company that within three weeks they brought out Metallica.
    12:07
    And, you know, that's kind of crazy, right? Usually there's a couple weeks, quite a few weeks that come out, and the game gets, you know, developed. But I love Uncanny X-Men. It's a great playing game. You know, I'm a pinball fan, right? I'm a fan first. I have a ton of games. You know, I love them. I just kind of made a deal with my wife. I'm buying a James Bond premium. I like it. You know, I'm a big Bond fan. I have Stearns. I have Americans. You know, that kind of thing. So it's not just like I'm like just, you know, I'm live and breathe American. I mean, you go in my basement here in Chicago. I don't even have an American game down there yet. I'm going to put one down there. There's Galactic going in there, but that's down the road.
    12:57
    But big enough companies can make that maneuvering. You've got to remember they also have huge manufacturing lines, and that line has to be fed. So if you are making X amount of games, you've got to feed that monster, which is all the personnel on the line, all the parts coming in. That game has to be made. That has to be get out. And the sales have to be there, right? So if you go from one and the sales are bad, then they're going to scramble because they got to keep that monster fed. They've built so many games. Sales hasn't turned around. They're going to put out another game. I can't do that. Now, what I did do this year is that we've been selling a lot of our back catalog. We've been making a lot of Hot Wheels, a lot of Houdini still. We built and sold. we have three limiteds from the as of today three limiteds of the barbecue left and I only have two of the standard versions of barbecue left in the building so that is already scheduled for 2025 because we went through the whole build up on that and so forth it's funny to me Scott too is that you might look at people in the industry or the collectors and go oh you know I all have you know these Metallicas right But there are other markets in this and I don want to quote somebody but there a three-legged stool, right? There's this one, that one, and this one. Well, the coin-op market, which is like IAPA and whatnot, we sell a lot of games there. So there's locations that have Berrios BBQ in them.
    14:39
    So we have that. We also, earlier this year, right around end of September, October, just before Expo, we signed a deal to help a company called Polycade. And I'm happy to say that we've been working with Polycade for the last three months. We have brought in and shipped over 1,000 Polycade units out of our facility up until just recently. Actually, we're over 1,000 heading to, I want to say 1,200 this coming week. So there's a goal for the company. We've been moving a lot of stuff plus the pinballs. We've been at different shows, so we've been moving. But you've got to be multifaceted, right? So if you're a big company like Stern, you're going to have many other games that you can bring out at a different time frame and bring out these games where they need to be to fit in. I mean, think about it. You saw, what did we see from Stern this year? We saw John Wick. We saw then Godzilla, black and white. Then we saw the home edition of Jurassic Park at all the. Costco. Costco, yeah. And then we saw Uncanny X-Men, Metallica, and now we're going to probably see another game maybe in the next few weeks. So that production line there is massive, and they've got to keep that fed. Meanwhile, at JJP, we saw, of course, Avatar, right? Beautiful game, came out nice. Mark Seiden's very first game, beautiful game, got to play it too. Doing very well. We also see, and I'm going to just be the first time to go on the record here, I want to say that we in the industry saw the worst sales since 2009 in the months of June and July, okay? August started picking up. September came right back. Actually, I usually ship a lot of overseas containers in June and July, and a lot of that got bumped over to September, August. I don't want to get into deep and hard numbers, but it gives you an idea that you've got to kind of be, like, flexible to move with the company and to keep us rolling and keeping the lights on. Okay.
    16:58
    So it seems like, to keep the lights on, And you've been focusing, you've been pivoting. You have an arm of the pinball, but you also have these deals with Polycade, which I did see. Because Don and I stopped by, and we were able to see the Polycade and play it. And that's a good thing. I will argue also, your name is American Pinball. And so what people have been anticipating is your next release. And it's been long rumored. it sounds like from what from what is in the ether it sounds like it's a fun shooter and it sounds like it's something that will so when can we see this game like because that would that would seem to be the natural question is great let's see a game that we can sell and to get American Pinball back into the conversation oh absolutely I have to say that the next game is of course licensed and we also want to make sure that it was done. I want to say the last few games that when we bring them out we were always trying to get code kind of finished and code kind of polished and good. This one we want to make sure it's ready. Now at Expo it was there in the back rooms at American Pinball. select high-profile distributors were in there taking orders for the game, loving the game, giving us their feedback and so forth. The code was not done, though. The code was not ready. So as the game progresses, we want to make sure the code is great. So we really kind of – and this is nothing new in an industry, right? Think about it. Stern does this a lot. There are certain people who know what the next games are, have been there, played it. Same thing with Chicago Gaming. Same thing with, you know, JJP. There are certain ways that they handle it to see how the title does. And, you know, I'm excited about the next game. I really am. But I want to make sure it's ready for you guys. You know, I want to make sure it's ready in the right quantities. I want to make sure everything is there. You know, I don't want to have a kind of a failed launch. I mean, we're getting parts in, we're putting parts on the game, we're testing the parts. Listen, GTF, I thought was going to be a hit, right? And we took it to Texas and we had bending targets, right? And I'm like, how is this possible? You know, U.S. manufacturer of the targets, U.S. manufacturer had worked with us. The prototypes have over 4,000 or 5,000 plays on. They never bent. But when you sat there in the room with them, you could go like this and bend it. And we're like, how is this possible, guys? You know, it took some time to get that right, but we don't want to have, we can't afford, I'm too small of a company to afford a failure, right? Or something that doesn't hit all the screws, right? It has to be perfect on this next shot, for sure.
    20:05
    So I just want to rewind for a couple seconds to some previous stuff that we were talking about. um so you were talking about your role in american pinball is the the chief director over like research and development of american pinball and so so correct me if i'm wrong on this so you're saying like the paul reno lawsuit and and the dennis norman stuff wasn't necessarily up to you because that kind of goes past because aim trials are financial and they're over contracting and stuff like that as well right okay just want to catch all that one name i noticed that you didn't say that it was all hands on deck jack hager was also one of the people we've had on our show art director wise and that's is he still there working for you he got laid off too okay he got laid off too unfortunately then then you know there there's a bunch of people and and i hate to say the word play off you know we don't like that but you know there's budgets there's time frames um i had a conversation with jack i invited him to expo he was there i told him that we were trying to get past one corner. He's actually working some freelance stuff. I told him that certainly as soon as we turn the corner on this, I need to bring him back. He's kind of excited. Another name that you probably haven't heard of recently, and we had a couple more layoffs, because we have to be ready to move, right? So one of the layoffs that we had was Steve Bowden, And that just happened like a week ago. Steve's a great guy.
    21:33
    He went off and, you know, he had the layoff. I've had him back in the office this week. We're already talking about when we're going to bring him back, trying to figure out finances and working with Ametron and the finance department and saying, okay, here's the budget for 2025, right? This is where we're shooting for. And they're trying to get the fiscal year kind of wrapped up. We're also, this year, we're going to do a mandatory shutdown between Christmas and New Year's, right? So the employees are going to take their holiday pay and whatnot and vacation time because Christmas and New Year's is a very, very slow time at the companies, right? So it's very slow. So we're going to do a mandatory shutdown. My old company, ICE, we always did a mandatory shutdown, 4th of July week, Christmas between New Year's. We always did that shutdown just to kind of regroup, you know, have a small hands on deck people that are just doing some inventory count or something along those lines. But the bulk of it is just kind of like, hey, let's take some time off. Everybody just spend time with their families kind of thing. So there was a lot to unpack there. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. You're good. So correct me if I'm wrong then. And so is American Pinball more of like a division of Ametron? And you're essentially just building pinball for Ametron, but it's being tagged as American Pinball? Is American Pinball its own company? American Pinball is its own company. It's owned by Mukesh Vasani and Nirmal Vasani. They're the owners of it. They also own Ametron, which is the parent company, which they've brought under the same thing. For them, the best way they figured this out was, you know, we have Amtron with their finance department, HR department, and legal department. We'll just use them in this realm so you don't have to have all those people sitting there. So American Pinball pretty much makes the games, codes the games. They just don't have to worry about financing legal and stuff like that because Amtron takes care of that. And HR, healthcare plans, and all that other stuff. Gotcha. Okay. The other thing too is you spoke to the worst numbers in June and July. I know that Kerry Harder, you released a video about a month ago stating that you guys didn't sell any games in that time. Can you speak to that truth? Sorry, not that truth. Can you speak to that? Is that how bad it was? Yeah, I guess. We did sell games, but they were the worst amount of games. Yes. We still had games leave in June and July. Were they like 20 a week kind a deal no but there were games leaving it did hit our financing a little hard but then by by the time we had some containers leave in august it kind of rolls back up for them so you know it it's it's a roller coaster guys you know it's like you know you're doing this with sales and so forth and i don't i don't uh uh how do i say this i don't fault anybody that they're not buying games in june and july right uh we go that's vacation time yeah people are spending money on family vacations absolutely and this is we're now past covid right uh for a good period of time and people now are finally getting that vacation that they've been wanting to do with the family for a good period of time and they're going to take it you know and it was a good summer and listen i had distributors right i'm calling up a distributor like hey how's things going that's great i'm on the i'm on the boat in the bahamas right now i'm on a two-week vacation on the on a cruise okay i'll catch you later i talked to another distributor oh i'm on an alaskan cruise oh i'm on this cruise all the distributors were like on vacation either other week you know it's like okay who's who's actually working selling games that kind of thing uh for distributors right so it was just that's the time of the year and there's a reason that williams bally gotley they never brought out a new pinball in june july and august because the sales were always you know right in the in the bottom because nobody's looking at games at that time of the year staring stays away from it i was amazed that they brought godzilla out when they did uh because that was so right on the heels of all this now i'm i'm sharing i'm a little bit more uh open today you know i mean i love godzilla godzilla is a great game too that's another game i like um so you know there's there's companies out there that are going to go through a lot of you know turmoil right i mean stern has got to be going through turmoil just like i'm going through turmoil and i'm sure you know hey the spooky guys uh corin and and luke they did a beautiful job with the evil dead i mean i love that game chris ranchi knocked it out of the park with artwork i mean that game looks great i can't wait to shoot it You know, so I mean, I'm looking at this and like every company has to go through some growing pains, growing stuff, and we're going through some really tough times. So it seems like you are getting primed for, I'll put it this way, a soft reboot of the company where you're trying to make sure that your next rumored game that a lot of people are anticipating, that you're going to say, hey, okay, here it is. We're releasing it. By the way, we have X amount ready to sell today. Is that a fair analysis of what your plans are? Just like what we did with Legends of Valhalla. When we brought Legends of Valhalla out, we said, here's our next game. Here's the locations. Go play it. So we are going to pretty much do the same thing there. We're going to make the announcement. It's going to be, hey, here it is. These distributors have it. These locations have it. go play it and enjoy and the idea on that is is that they're not going to be waiting around they're just going to have games in boxes and they've already been play tested they've been tested they they're running perfectly the next game designer he's already told me he has a schedule he showed me the schedule that once production starts because production hasn't started yet you know we have produced samples but we have not produced production has not started get right so it's a whole different world than what you guys are like envisioning right so i mean i talked to uh don from the down pinball podcast and he's trying to you know get this all under control you know he's like how does that work i'm like listen it's a whole string of manufacturing stuff so but the game designer has already given me his schedule that he is going to be testing the first like 100 games and they have to pass his standard beat while they go in boxes and that was actually a a way that williams used to do it it was like you know if you're the game designer you gotta go live on the line while your game comes off and make sure every game is 100 the way it was and train the line and that's that's a key point right so uh he's already given me his schedule on that he's going to be doing that so it's going to be really cool okay so speaking of don and don's pinball podcast there was a little snafu as it is i guess down at iapa you guys had words about uh the next rumored game uh and supposedly he claimed it was on the line he did a podcast that was on the line saying that you would said that was on there and then he retracted that podcast because he came down to american pinball after some things were said got to play the next rumor game said it plays great and flipping i'm a little jealous myself i haven't got to play it yet and he he said that you're on hold right now because you have to sell three barbecue lees because you have to have them all gone before you can start production on the next rumored game can you speak to that okay so it sounds like a mixture of two conversations but i will i will touch on both of those while we were at iapa there was a rumor going around that I had to sell so many barbecues in order to get the next game on the line. At which point I told Don, I said, the classic version of barbecue, the initial run, was gone. We had like two left, I think. I think that's all that's left. They're show games. And we had the initial run of the limiteds. We only had four left at the time. Now it's three. So people had this thought in mind that we had all these barbecues sitting in the back of the warehouse and it was eating up our whole budget and we couldn't proceed to the next game uh which is not true okay and then you know don was asking me how is the game proceeding you know and did you and i explained to him that a sample had been produced now or went through the production line a sample went through the production line is what i said to him he kind of took it like oh the game's on the production line and then he ran with it on the IEPA uh you know his review which I'm like uh when he so the whole world went nuts over this and I'm like uh okay we didn't say that and Don can we have you come down sure we'll come down And then there was another post, Nap Arcade went crazy, which I find interesting because, like, Nap Arcade, you guys, Pinball News, Don, Kerry Hardy, anybody who's in the industry has my number. They know what number to pick up to call American Pinball. So a lot of them have my cell phone. I think you guys have my cell phone. And I also have an email. So I tell people, I say, if you've got a question about American pinball, call me. I will set the record straight. And it wasn't until I caught NAP Arcade that I found out that Don said something offline or about it being on the line that I said, okay, Don, we've got to get you in here. We've got to get this straightened out and explain to you what we meant and get that corrected, right, so that we don't get people all hot and bothered about this. And meanwhile, I heard today that Nap Arcade took that all down. Is that, I guess? Yes. Did you guys hear anything about that? He took it down and Don took his part down. Yes. So that's all been retracted now. Besides the newest episode where Don came and visited with you at the factory and you guys got to play games and stuff like that. I gotcha. And did either you guys talk to Jason or Don about, you know, like... Okay, I talked to Don. Okay, you talk. I called Don and talked this morning and really it was, he, he was under the impression that was, you know, it seems like your view of the conversation is different than, than what he remembered. And I don't think it was malicious. You know, Don is, Don is Don. He's a showman. Don always talks. Love Don. Yeah. Don's great. And so I called him this morning. He was, so we both actually worked at night. So, you know, last night. So I called him and I'm like, you're not sleeping, are you? And so, no, we just had a pleasant conversation. He did mention that he was, again, I'm jealous, that he was able to play the next game. And he said it shoots really well. He is excited about that. I know Josh did talk to Jason. Right, Josh? Yes. And Jason had just said that, and this is verbatim, he just, with the pending lawsuit stuff coming out, he just didn't want to be involved with any of that. So he just retracted because he didn't want to be involved in any of that. And I hope Jason's not mad for me saying that. And I'll, if so. Okay. I think we all like Jason. Jason's a good friend And Jason His passion is To report news And it goes With the territory that with the news We are all going to speculate about what's Going on and we're going to aggregate things That we hear from our friends And so I would I agree with Jason in the abundance of caution He's just like look I don't know what's going on here So we can just So we'll put a pause on that But I am a big fan of Jason and what he does at Nap Arcade because I do go there regularly. So but I also understand him just saying, look, this is I don't want to go into anything that could possibly be legal territory. And so we'll just take a pause on that. Yeah, no, it makes sense to me. And I didn't I was going to reach out to him and say, hey, listen, you want to set the record straight. Just let me know. I mean, you got my number. I've given it to him numerous times with emails and everything. So, you know, I'm not, I mean, if I'm in the middle of a meeting, leave a message. I'll get back to you. It's not like, oh, you know, the news is calling me. You know, it's not like that.
    34:39
    Oh, loser kids are calling. I better step out of my present me-sing so I can get on this. Mr. Fix, Scott Larson's on the phone for you. Hold my call for the afternoon. Cancel my appointments. Yes, cancel, you know, tell all the licensors, get lost. Yes. I was going to say, Kerry Hardy does not have your number, so I'll text it to him.
    35:00
    You're going to get some interesting pictures. Probably. What's funny is I worked with Kerry down at Texas during the unboxing of GTF. He did a bunch of other things.
    35:12
    Listen, I don't hide. I just did an unboxing for my Metallica, so if you want to ship me a next game, I will give you exclusive unboxing videos to show exactly what we need to do yes i just live close to salt lake city just down the street you can just it's even a loaner it's fine just ship it out i'll give it a shot and we'll ship it back gotcha well we we can talk about that we should have you back into chicago then you get to actually oh yeah no that'd be great i we okay we did like don i did stop by expo i think we we were just there and you took us two weeks before expo it was slightly before We were going around. I think you were there for Avatar, weren't you? Yes. Yeah, I was there. We definitely wanted to focus on Avatar. I paid money to change my time so I could come in early so I could see a few other things. But we tried to keep that. The focus of that trip was on Avatar. So that's why we reported other stuff later. I didn't have anything ready yet. well you didn't that's true yeah yeah but we actually you did take us on a tour of the line so that was kind of fun yep you got to see the lines yeah and right now like i said polykade uh you know over a thousand units been rolling out of there that place has been a madhouse and that's what don's been watching i mean uh think about it that's like a semi every you know every day we have a large semi leaving with just polygates right and then the other semis come in for we've had semis backed up down the street now a couple times uh okay so that gets into exactly what we were talking about before that to keep the lights on you have to have some business revenue so right now you're saying that that is what's keeping lights on american pinball you're you're going uh you're you're utilizing your time right now while you're waiting for the next game to be finished and that's how you're doing that now right and we're also building hot wheels we were at ayapa and we sold a lot of hot wheels and we sold some houdinis you know it's it's kind of a you know it's interesting all those titles um houdini uh hot wheels they're all you know like evergreen people love those titles and they've been especially in the coin app business have been moving quite well. So we've been excited about still doing stuff. Four years out, we had an extension with Mattel because we have a good working relationship with Mattel. And we got the extension and we're still building them. In fact, Mattel and Kroger did a giveaway of a Hot Wheels, which that person won the Hot Wheels. And we shipped out that Hot Wheels just before Thanksgiving so that they had it on Thanksgiving week so that they could have it as their new winning game if they won a brand new Hot Wheels.
    38:14
    So, I mean, yes, Polycade is filling some gaps. Pinballs are still moving, but it's like we still, you know, it's a tough market, man. It's a tough market. So are you sharing also the manufacturer line with Polycade and whatnot, so you're having to kind of balance that? Are you manufacturing Polycade at your locations? Is that your question, Josh? No, we're not manufacturing the Polycade, So the poly canes are made, but there's so many options that sometimes they have to be changed up, right? So we've got to put a different deck in, or we've got to put this in, or they've got to be striped.
    38:53
    We're helping out poly cane an awful lot. Tyler Bushnell is an old friend, and he's a good friend of Ron, who's our sales manager. So he actually worked for poly cane for a long time. And then he said, hey, David, Polycade's in a bind. They need a spot. I said, let's take it to Ametron. We took it over to corporate. I let Ron run with it with the legal. He spent a good part of, I don't know, a couple weeks with them going back and forth on meetings. Meanwhile, I'm just focusing on the pins and the development there and trying to get some sales through. And, again, it's a small company. It's very tight. You know, it's kind of like we know what everybody had for lunch because we all went out to lunch together. You know, it's tough. I want to talk about real quick. Let me run back to. I actually want to circle one thing before you do that. So I know what the polycates are. So why don't you give me like a 60 second summary so people know exactly what these things are. All right. So polycate is a multi video game platform. OK, so you can connect it to your Steam account. You can connect it to your games. You can buy the games from Polycade on their website for like $2.99 and then run Centipede, Pac-Man. Polycade, what he did was, Tyler, he went out because his father is Nolan, went out and talked to all the original manufacturers and got all the licensing, right? So now this is a full licensed multi-cade product that can hang on the wall or has its own stand. It comes in white or black. It has decks that can be interchanged. It can be coin-op. It's an all-steel cabinet. It's a very nice little machine. You can look it up at polycade.com. Awesome. So what were you going to say before Scott? What I was going to say is I know that it's funny because I listen to podcasts. And understand, before I got into the industry, right, before I went to work for American Pinball, I used to listen to everybody's podcasts, okay? I listened to Clay Harold, this old pinball. I used to listen to the Silver Ball podcast from Rob Craig. I listened to – there was a ton of guys that were – I mean, game room junkies, Preston down in Atlanta. I mean, there was a lot of people that do podcasts. You guys too. You've been doing them a long time. One of the things that I was going to say is it drives, it's tough, is there's a lot of speculations on what a license is or we don't have a license or what this is. I'm just going to say that as a manufacturer, I cannot disclose any license that I have. I cannot disclose what licenses I'm working on. I can't do any of that until the manufacturing date of that license comes out. Done. That's what is legally binding to us. So I know you can tell me, hey, Dave, I heard you lost this license. Sorry, can't comment on that because did I lose it? No, but I can't comment on it, right? So that's where I get kind of tripped up. And sometimes it's like I might read somebody's thing trying to bait me into disclosing something that I cannot legally disclose. so that brings up one question in my mind then and now since Barrio's BBQ has released I don't know if you can speak to this or not I was told originally there was licensed aspects to that game that were sponsorships they were brands that were involved in that is that true and then they just were removed because they didn get like the final write off or whatever no there was no licenses for barrios but barrios game and that design was what we call a white label game so that is pending so what that means in a white label is that game was designed so that it could be insert licensor uh game right audio gets changed artwork package has changed brief rule sets but it has all that aspects of that licensor for small runs okay so right now we do have pending i want to say three licenses for burritos so that game will probably come back as somebody else's game down the road but we can't go into that detail because I'm touched I'm bounded by contracts not to go into that but you're good yeah Supreme with Stern was like the Spider-Man home version and it's also been Prime you know oh it was a contract game but yeah they had Absolute Ribbon was a reskin of Woe Nelly. Woe Nelly, that's the game I was looking for. Yeah, and Primus was a reskin I thought of Woe Nelly as well. Yes, it was. So it's similar to that. So you're calling this a white label? Is that what you call it? Yep. Okay. Alrighty. So, okay. That makes sense on that. And for us, that made sense because when you have a manufacturer, right, that's going to buy so many parts, we can buy parts at a much cheaper rate and then I can reskin it because the metal rails are the same, all the mechanisms are the same, the plastics are different, the play fields are different, but those can be made pretty quickly, right? The metal parts, the ramps, all that stuff, that takes a lot of time, a lot of R&D and research, right? So that takes a lot of, you know, so just to give you guys a clue, to make a plastic ramp, okay, can take somewhere up to 10 to 12 weeks. and it'll take many revisions so we'll give them a plastic ramp they do what we call a wood mold they'll send us the ramp off the wood mold which we then have to verify and approved if we need to make any adjustments we make adjustments to the wood mold and then they make an aluminum cast mold now that takes a lot of time before we get the actual plastic ramp made which is vacuum formed over right so that that's a long lead time part um also eight to ten weeks on wire forms so that nice little trail that comes down and looks really cool and it's all stainless steel that takes a long time from the bend all the wires make the guides make them just for us and once they have it exactly what we want then we can tell them to start making them but it still takes there's long lead time parts having a white label cuts down those long lead time parts because it's the same ramp it's the same wire form i already have it in stock i don't have to redo it all i have to do is charge them for doing um artwork on the back glass and uh audio think about it um stern or data east at the time did a game called tommy it was also richie rich it was also uh torres spelling It was also, you know, they did that also. They did, you know, white labels have been around a long time. Wait, they did a Torrey spelling game? Did you mean an Aaron spelling game? Aaron spelling. Okay. Sorry. I knew it was one of the spellings. I couldn't remember who it was. Well, Aaron was the dad. Yeah. But I think Torrey was on the back class. Okay, yeah. I think they made two of them, if I'm correct. They had a half a million dollars for the pair. Well, he had a lot of money. Well, candy spelling. I know the story because Joe Kamikow told me all this time that she caught a news article about pinball machines and having customized pinball machines. And she picked up the phone and talked to Joe Kamikow and said, hey, I want to do a game for my husband. And he was like, well, it's going to be like, you know, two games will be half a million dollars. And she says, OK, I'll write the check. And it was like, OK, well, we got the money. Now let's do it. OK.
    47:19
    you know that kind of thing so you know it's been around before and uh we you know you've seen you know some games that have been white labeled before where they can be changed into other games right something that may be popular but not popular enough to run with it right not like you know like oh we're going to do a small band right uh you know let's say a band that's not very noticeable in the u.s but maybe overseas they are they're like aqua baths right josh There you go.
    47:52
    Okay. Here's a question for your business model. Okay. We know that most businesses are in a startup phase and then they're in like a sustained phase. Okay. And typically the startup phase can last anywhere from like four to 10 years where they're actually spending more money than they're bringing in. And then eventually they flip over. I mean, Amazon lost money for so long because they were in this development phase before they became profitable. OK. Yep. Where is American Pinball on that curve? Yeah. So Amazon was a book thing before. Yeah. Bookstore before became Sears and Roebuck online. Yeah. Sears totally missed the boat on that because they are like, like Sears were idiots. Sears is like completely irrelevant today because like Amazon just looked at the internet and said, we can do that. Sears used to do that mail order. Why don't we do it? So they just did that. But it takes investment. Any, any business takes investment before it gets traction. And then finally you get a return on your investment. So again, you know, you're in a good position and that you do have a parent company that does help you out. where on the curve are you well it ebbs and flows i hate to say that you know like okay let's go back i'll just do this 2021 uh i remember going into the end of 2021 which was my officially first full year at american pinball and i sat down with the finance team at amtron and they gave me the numbers and I was horrified but uh Mukesh was very excited about that because it was half of what they were losing every year before I started it was literally half okay uh the next year 2022 was the first year it was ever in the black okay so that was great we're in the black right There were some changes, you know, some things have ebbed and flowed. At that time in 2023, I was looking to, you know, kind of keep the company. We had we lost some key people. Right. We lost. I want to say my purchasing guy. He went got this, you know, purchasing company gave him a blank check. Let's just say I lost them. Right. So I had a changed purchasing department. and Ametron actually has a purchasing department. So they took it over. So they were kind of running the purchasing. They still are. You know, they run finance. They run legal. They run, you know, HR. And they run actually the purchasing. I forgot. But we do have one of my guys, Mitesh. He sits there and he interfaces with the purchasing department saying, hey, we need these parts. We need that with this. And they make the phone calls, right? They make the phone calls. They order the stuff. And then it goes from purchasing right to the finance, which is in the same wing of Ametron. and it just goes that way so i mean so where i was going with this is in 23 we lost some people we lost some other stuff some some stuff got goofed up we were back in the red not a lot but you know we were still in the red in 2034 we're still in the red you know um i was hoping to get out of it by the end of this year uh we're close but uh you know it's still we gotta work on it You know, there's still numbers that have I haven't sat down with finance and that's their department. Right. They kind of keep me, you know, at arm's length and just say, hey, how are sales coming? Do we have any forecasts and projections and what do you got selling? Oh, we're moving all these polycades. This is coming in. OK, thank you. We'll get back to you. And then I'm waiting to sit down with them, you know, in about two weeks or three weeks after the shutdown to have, you know, What did we do for 2024? Right. So it's a little disjointed in my world, but there is definitely those divisions that I have to play with.
    52:09
    Sorry, I'm going to do one follow up and I'll toss it over to you, Josh. Is it fair to say that you're on that bubble between like like sustained profitability? Because the concern, I would say, from the pinball community is that American pinball may not be around next year or the year after that.
    52:31
    It's a good question, Scott. And I will say that since I've been here every year, the podcasters and all the people have always said, oh, American pinball is dead. They're going to be out of business. um you know the day fixes you've got one foot on the banana peel the other one in the grave kind of thing um i don't know where we at with this uh really i want to say that i think we're okay but that's up to the finance department it's up to mckesh that's up to the the team that owns the company right they're the ones they're going to be sitting there at the end of the year sitting there going hey these are the numbers this is where we're at this is what we're going to do scares the hell out of me because who knows what could happen at any point in time.
    53:19
    It's just like getting hit by a bus. It could happen at any point in time. I hate to say it, but I don't want to get hit by a bus.
    53:26
    I think I put a big dent in it. I put on too much weight with this company. You're optimistic, though. I'm optimistic, keeping my options open, looking at everything and trying.
    53:43
    I haven't checked out. I am here. I'm here every day. I'm with the team every day and fighting like hell to get what we need to get done.
    53:55
    Josh, you wanted to ask a question? Actually, Scott kind of asked the question I was going to ask. I'm sorry, Josh. Didn't mean to steal your thunder. No, you're good. You're good. Honestly, I've run out of time, so I do apologize. So I'm going to have to shut this down. But I really want to thank you, David, for coming on. If someone wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way to get a hold of you? Call American Pinball, 6800. You can also send me an email.
    54:19
    It's there, right? I try to get to a lot of emails. You've got to remember, we're a small company. Get bombarded.
    54:30
    I try to help as much as we can. We try to answer all the questions. I try not to go on pin side. I really think that that's kind of been a little bit more How do I say this? Can be very discouraging And if anybody had depression or problems Could cause some real bad things to happen to people And I try not to stay over there and see that stuff But reach out to me at American Pinball My email's there, you know Or you can call the direct number And I know you're going to give Kerry Hardy my number so he'll probably be calling me tomorrow. So I'll be hearing from him. And Kerry Hardy also, I talked to Paul Reno this morning, and he reached out to Kerry to make sure that there was a correction on Kerry Hardy's post from last night that the design of Galactic Tank Force was Dennis Norman and Paul Reno. It was a co-design thing. It wasn't all Paul. So I know that was probably corrected today too. So, you know, we try to correct the things, but we're a small company. We're trying like hell. We're fighting. I'm not like sitting on a cruise in the Bahamas or sitting somewhere nice. We're always trying to get the next game out.
    55:50
    All right. If you want to get a hold of us, we are Loser Kid Pinball Podcast at gmail.com. We're on Facebook, Instagram, all the socials, even threads. Someone's like, you're on threads? I came here to even see if it's true. It is true. I want to thank those that have been buying products. If you want to see our pretty face, we're on YouTube. Yes. If you go to YouTube, even if you're not on YouTube, just go subscribe. It helps us out. Leave some comments. Leave a like. It actually does help out with the algorithm and finding us as a podcast for pinball machines when people are looking for pinball. I want to thank those that have been buying product, Loser Kid product this past month. It must be Christmas time. Holy crap. We've got stuff going all over the world, down to Australia, into Europe. I was kind of shocked. I was kind of like, what's going on? Oh, it must be Christmas time. The high tops, baby. High tops. Those high tops. Yes. I think that does it for us, Scott. You got the last word for us? No. You know what? Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. And we're looking for a nice recap episode of the year. And it's been a successful year, but challenging. So stay safe, have fun, and play pinball.
    57:04
    you