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The Super Awesome Pinball Show - Ep 30 Gomez Pt. 1

The Super Awesome Pinball Show·podcast_episode·1h 56m·held·May 16, 2022
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.036

TL;DR

SAPS Ep30 covers personal updates, community highlights, and hints at upcoming Franchi art projects before George Gomez interview.

Summary

Episode 30 of The Super Awesome Pinball Show features hosts Jeff Parsons, Christian Lai, and Christopher Franchi discussing personal updates, industry news, and previewing an interview with George Gomez. Key topics include Parsons' house move and arcade setup, Christian's Delaware Pinball Collective raffle win (Star Wars), Christopher Franchi work on multiple game projects with hints of upcoming releases, Jeff Parsons' role as president of New England Pinball League and their withdrawal from IFPA sanctioning, and visits from Pinball Brothers. The episode showcases community connections and teases future game announcements.

Key Claims

  • Christopher Franchi has been working on franchise art packages that will be released soon

    high confidence · Franchi stated: 'if you're wondering hey what happened to that franchise guy we haven't seen a game in three years well it's about to rain franchise art packages on people pretty soon'

  • Franchi received a book from Joe Camenco with a note requesting a pinball machine be made, representing an IP he's always wanted to work with

    high confidence · Franchi: 'I got a book from Joe Camenco the other day... inside the book was a note that said, I saw this and thought of you. We need to make this pen. And it's something that I've always wanted to do'

  • New England Pinball League withdrew from IFPA sanctioning due to rule changes requiring 50% of games to be played at a single location

    high confidence · Parsons: 'with the new rules, you would have to play at least 50% of your games would have to be in one location. So you don't have the option to bounce around'

  • New England Pinball League has grown from 29 players (2012) to over 300 players across 21 locations

    high confidence · Parsons: 'We started with only 29 players. Now we have over 300 players across New Robert Englunds... we've got 21 locations this season'

  • Mark and Aaron Seiden (now at Jersey Jack) are hosting a New England Pinball League annex in Chicago

    high confidence · Parsons: 'Mark Seiden is working now for Jersey Jack... they were kind of like, man, we're really going to miss this. Can we have like a New England Pinball League (NEPL) League annex?'

  • Pinball Brothers Roger and Kato have multiple games in development with things actively happening beyond Alien

    medium confidence · Lai: 'I spent a weekend with them at TPF, and they don't just have ideas. Things are happening.'

  • Christopher Franchi incorporated Christian Lai's family initials and pets into the CGC Cactus Canyon LE game art

    high confidence · Lai: 'Chris did some additional work on CGC's new Cactus Canyon game... there's a water tower... it says C line... below that it says FLC, which are my wife and daughter's initials... below that are three cats sitting on the tower, which are our pets'

Notable Quotes

  • “I got a book from Joe Camenco the other day... inside the book was a note that said, I saw this and thought of you. We need to make this pen. And it's something that I've always wanted to do that I really think guys and girls would truly love.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~25:30 — Teases an unannounced pinball machine based on an IP Franchi has long desired to work with, adding fuel to speculation about future releases

  • “if you're wondering hey what happened to that franchise guy we haven't seen a game in three years well it's about to rain franchise art packages on people pretty soon”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~22:00 — Franchi confirms imminent release of multiple franchise-themed art packages after a 3-year gap, signaling significant upcoming releases

  • “with the new rules, you would have to play at least 50% of your games would have to be in one location. So you don't have the option to bounce around and see other people that you might not see”

    Jeff Parsons @ ~55:00 — Explains the core conflict that led New England Pinball League to withdraw from IFPA sanctioning, highlighting tension between competitive rankings and community values

  • “I was given one of the most incredible gifts I've ever had from Franchi. And it's art, but it's art on an actual pinball machine.”

    Christian Lai @ ~45:00 — Highlights personal connection and community sentiment around collaborative art integration in modern pinball machines

  • “I spent a weekend with them at TPF, and they don't just have ideas. Things are happening.”

    Christian Lai @ ~38:00 — Confirms Pinball Brothers have active game development underway beyond their Alien release, indicating continued company momentum

  • “We have the same thing. And the top certain number of players in all divisions make it to finals. So even if you're not the best player, you're still competing for a chance to win some prizes.”

    Jeff Parsons @ ~60:00 — Articulates the inclusive competitive philosophy of New England Pinball League that drove the IFPA withdrawal decision

Entities

George GomezpersonChristopher FranchipersonJeff ParsonspersonChristian LaipersonJoe CamencopersonMark SeidenpersonAaron SeidenpersonRogerperson

Signals

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Mark and Aaron Seiden moved to Jersey Jack Pinball, establishing JJP's presence in Chicago and extending New England Pinball League's reach westward

    high · Parsons: 'Mark Seiden is working now for Jersey Jack... they've been a part of New Robert Englunds Pinball League for a long time'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Christopher Franchi received mysterious book from Joe Camenco suggesting an unannounced pinball IP he has long desired to create, fueling community speculation

    medium · Franchi: 'I got a book from Joe Camenco the other day... inside the book was a note that said, I saw this and thought of you. We need to make this pen'

  • ?

    machine_intel: Christopher Franchi confirms imminent release of multiple franchise-themed art packages after 3-year gap, indicating substantial upcoming game projects

    high · Franchi: 'if you're wondering hey what happened to that franchise guy we haven't seen a game in three years well it's about to rain franchise art packages on people pretty soon'

  • ?

    competitive_signal: New England Pinball League withdrew from IFPA sanctioning to preserve regional league identity and community connection principles that conflict with IFPA's direct-play requirements

    high · Parsons: 'with the new rules, you would have to play at least 50% of your games would have to be in one location' which conflicts with NEPL's mission to 'connecting people across New Robert Englunds'

  • ?

    business_signal: New England Pinball League experienced substantial growth from 29 players (2012) to 300+ players across 21 locations, representing significant community expansion over 14 years

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.349

0:00
I did assault a couple of cabinets, but I did not touch Ms. Hurt. And you may have been drunk in that video, correct? There's a possibility of that, yes. You poured yourself a mega pint of red wine, correct? A mega pint?
0:15
Yeah. I poured myself a large glass of wine. Right. I thought it necessary. This program contains dream potty mouth. Because we like to swear. Fuck! Spirit! Holy shit! Ball! Hey!
0:34
Ladies and gentlemen, you wanted the best, and you got the best. The Super Awesome Pinball Show! With Christopher Franci, Christian Lai,
0:56
And Jim Carpenter! Yeah! He's the new ball! He's the old ball! Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 30 of the Super Awesome Pinball Show. And boy have we got a great one for you. A fantastic interview with our pal, Mr. George Gomez, Vice President of Everything Cool at Stern Pinball, and a whole lot more. So stick around for the Super Awesome Pinball Show.
1:47
Welcome to the Super Awesome Pinball Show. I'm Jeff Parsons, and of course with me is Dr. Pin Christian Line, who has the most hair out of everybody else in this entire thing. And then we've also got the wonderful, the very talented, and the very handsome Christopher Franchi. I'm glad you noticed. Thank you. Hey, it's good to be back. We had a lot of messages saying that they're really happy we're making content again, and it's good to be on the horn with these guys. Yeah, definitely. Our last show didn't really count as a full show, but it was something we had to get out, and thanks to everybody for their kind remarks on that. It was a tough show to do, but we're glad we did it and we got it out there. But on to happier notes, George Gomez. We have the incomparable George Gomez. I may be a little fanboying at this moment. I may be pretty excited about this. You and me both, Jeff. You and me both. Yeah, I mean, you know this guy better than anyone on the show, Chris, but every time we talk to him, it's like we're just hanging out, having a few beers, and you realize you're actually talking to George Gomez. If you listen closely to the interview, you will hear Christian's voice crack. Multiple times.

  • Christian Lai won a Star Wars in a Delaware Pinball Collective raffle with two tickets purchased as a Christmas gift

    high confidence · Lai: 'There were 200 tickets, and I bought two for Sarah as one of her Xmas gifts... we actually won a freaking pinball machine. A new in box Star Wars.'

  • Jeff Parsons' son Jake is skilled at pinball despite being only 15 years old

    high confidence · Parsons: 'he's totally kicked my ass on rush... He's like, I'm just hitting the shots'

  • Christopher Franchi is working on multiple projects for different companies simultaneously

    high confidence · Christian Lai: 'you are working for a lot of different companies. And I don't know what you're working on, but I know that you're busy'

    • “My basement looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. I mean, stacked to the ceiling.”

    Jeff Parsons @ ~8:00 — Humorous but revealing insight into the obsessive collecting culture within the pinball community among industry personalities

  • “They're really good guys. They're super passionate about pinball, and I know they have a ton of ideas, you know, for future games that sound really, really exciting.”

    Christian Lai @ ~36:00 — Provides insider perspective on Pinball Brothers' vision and dedication despite their low public profile

  • “It's going to be there forever, dude.”

    Christopher Franchi @ ~48:00 — Emphasizes the permanence and significance of having personal/family elements immortalized in a physical pinball machine

  • “So we decided to withdraw ourselves from the IFPA. And the reasons were because that whole connecting people across New Robert Englunds.”

    Jeff Parsons @ ~53:00 — Announces major competitive league decision with significant industry implications regarding IFPA structure and local league autonomy

    • Kato
    person
    Joe Foxperson
    The Super Awesome Pinball Showorganization
    New England Pinball Leagueorganization
    Delaware Pinball Collectiveorganization
    Pinball Brotherscompany
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Stern Pinballcompany
    CGC (Chicago Gaming Company)company
    Star Warsgame
    Cactus Canyongame
    Aliengame
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Pinball Profileorganization
    IFPAorganization
    Pinsideorganization

    high · Parsons: 'We started with only 29 players. Now we have over 300 players across New Robert Englunds... we've got 21 locations this season'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Christopher Franchi pioneered personalized family integration in Cactus Canyon LE artwork, incorporating customer family names and pet imagery into production game art

    high · Lai: 'Chris did some additional work on CGC's new Cactus Canyon game... there's a water tower... it says C line... below that it says FLC, which are my wife and daughter's initials... below that are three cats sitting on the tower, which are our pets'

  • ?

    content_signal: Super Awesome Pinball Show resumed production after extended hiatus, with episode 30 featuring high-profile George Gomez interview and venue-based coverage (Texas Pinball Festival, Pin Brew Fest)

    high · Parsons: 'We had a lot of messages saying that they're really happy we're making content again' and 'between Texas Pinball Festival and Pin Brew Fest... I got rid of all... Super Awesome stuff'

  • ?

    venue_signal: New England Pinball League expanded competitive infrastructure by establishing Chicago annex through Jersey Jack employees, extending regional reach and partnerships

    high · Parsons: 'Mark and Aaron Seiden... they were kind of like, man, we're really going to miss this. Can we have like a New Robert Englunds Pinball League annex? And we're like, sure, why not'

  • ?

    industry_signal: IFPA's new direct-play requirements conflict with regional league structures, causing major leagues like NEPL to withdraw sanctioning in favor of community values over global rankings

    high · Parsons: 'we decided to withdraw ourselves from the IFPA' because new rules require '50% of your games would have to be in one location' which contradicts league mission

  • ?

    business_signal: Pinball Brothers actively developing multiple games beyond Alien release, with projects in advanced development stages as of TPF 2025

    medium · Lai: 'I spent a weekend with them at TPF, and they don't just have ideas. Things are happening.'

  • ?

    collector_signal: Delaware Pinball Collective raffle winner claimed Star Wars The Pin NIB, demonstrating active secondary-market FOMO within regional communities and promotional engagement

    high · Lai: 'There were 200 tickets, and I bought two for Sarah as one of her Xmas gifts... we actually won a freaking pinball machine. A new in box Star Wars the pin'

  • ?

    community_signal: Pinball Brothers visit to Christian Lai's home demonstrates tight-knit community dynamics and social connections between manufacturers and media personalities despite low public visibility

    high · Lai: 'Roger and Kato from the Pinball Brothers swung by our house for a drink a few weeks ago... They're great guys... They're really good guys. They're super passionate about pinball'

    • 2:52
    It's time to shake. The last episode, we really wanted to focus completely on Lyman, but it's been a minute since we caught up on the news and what we've been up to, and we're going to cover all of that in this episode. So if you hate that kind of thing, just jump ahead about 45 minutes to an hour to the really fun and interesting interview that we did with the one and only George Gomez. But if you want to hear Franchi spill all the secrets to the games he's working on, stick around.
    3:46
    been doing for the past seven months besides, you know, the things I don't want to know about. Parsons, I don't think I've ever heard you swear before. That's not my show anymore. So I can, you know, there's a disclaimer at the beginning, right? Well, I moved. I didn't really get burned out. Right after we recorded that interview with Lyman, I found out that the people that I was renting my condo from, they basically said, look, your dog needs a yard to run around in. You know, you've got a bad knee. You don't need to be going up and down the stairs on the second level condo every day. You need more space. You need to get the hell out of here. And they talked me into moving. But then they were like, but you got to get out now. Because I don't want any lapse of you paying rent and then a month off where I got to pay double rent and then the next, you know, so this is right at the beginning of October. Let's get you packed up. We'll help you out and we'll get you the hell out of here. Start looking for a house. So yeah, I found a new house. It's a ranch. Everything is on the same level. I do have a basement though, which is a bonus because I got so much Shit, guys, my basement looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
    4:51
    I mean, stacked to the ceiling. It's stacked so high with toys and shit. Not even crap like, you know, well, here's an old lawnmower. No, all toys and bullshit stacked to the ceiling so much that it blocks the light fixtures from lighting the basement up. I've told people that your house looks like a TGI Friday's, but it's more like a hoarder's house. But it's not like nasty. Listen, listen, listen. It's not like nasty newspapers or like dead cats. It's awesome shit. Dead cats? Awesome shit and fecal matter.
    5:25
    No, it's just cool shit. You continually collect cool shit, and it's like all over your house. Your house is freaking amazing. But it's all properly displayed. There's no stacks of shit on the floor and stuff, other than the basement. But that's what it's for. That's what the basement's for. Literally in my office, I'm looking at a wall that I bought a bunch of black pegboard and those little hooks that you put into the pegboard. So I have a wall that looks like the action figure aisle at Toys R Us. And it's just all filled with figures that are still in the box. Toys R Us, may you rest in peace. Yes. Oh, God. I wish they would stop teasing this. We're coming back. Because every time they say that, it's like a kiosk in the middle of some mall in New Jersey. It's not coming back. That's putting your brand on some shit little thing that's, like, selling novelties for Christmas or whatever. But anyway, so, yeah, I also have an arcade. I have what I call a pinball lounge. It is an entire room dedicated to all my games. I've got five pins. I've got four video games and a sticker machine. And, yes, the sticker machine, one of the channels that I've been calling, you know, because there's, like, four different things you can put quarters in. One of them is super awesome stickers. Yes. Now, is it the little, like, clear capsules, or is it just the cardboard thing that sticks out? Yeah, it's the cardboard thing. You push the quarters in and pull the handle out, and, like, when you pull it out, the cardboard sheet comes out with the sticker in the middle. That's awesome. You're not spending money on your own stickers, are you? Yeah, I've been sticker-muled. Yeah. If you buy something from Sticker Mule, you get this stuff, like, every week they'll be like, hey, 100 pins for 50 cents. Like, I can't say no, you know. The real reason we came back, actually, is so that we can get rid of all the schwag that we have. Because Chris and I together probably have 10,000 stickers of Super Awesome Pinball Show stuff. Speaking of schwag, between Texas Pinball Festival and Pin Brew Fest, and again, thanks to those guys for having me on, I got rid of all, I don't say got rid of, but I put out a shit ton of Super Awesome stuff, and it was gone. The first day, they just cleaned me out. The second day, I had a couple of crumbs left. I put it out on the table, and that got gobbled up. So, yeah, there's no shortage of swag out there for sure. But I'm going to keep making more. I just got a thing today, $29 for 100 of those little clear.
    7:39
    Why are we talking about pins? This is the wrong kind of thing. We're supposed to talk about pins. Yeah, just the pin balls, not pins. So, anyway, love my new house. By the way, the pinball lounge, you have to step down one step into it. On the edge of that step, I put black lights, and I bought the official carpeting for arcades, which is that planet carpet that's got the planets and the stars and shit all over it. Very cool. And it glows in the black light. So I've been buying black light posters and shit.
    8:07
    It's very cool. And Barlow is extremely happy. He loves his yard. We've been getting it in shape out there. I put a fountain in and a fire pit and stuff. So anyway, very happy to have a new house and have my game room. Like I said, I went out to TPF, which was a blast. Went to Pin Brew in Ohio, which was also a lot of fun. pinball wise just been busy i've been working on a bunch of projects going on so i've been working like a madman trying to like just a little for this a little for that a little for that keep everybody happy keep the progress moving on all that but uh if you're wondering hey what happened to that franchise guy we haven't seen a game in three years well it's about to rain franchise art packages on people pretty soon it is and honestly man you you've been working on some of this stuff for a long time it's my understanding though that you are working for a lot of different companies. And I don't know what you're working on, but I know that you're busy. So that means that hopefully we'll see some franchise stuff in the next few months to years, hopefully. Well, definitely. Yeah. The ball keeps rolling. I've still got more. Oh, another tease. I hate to tease. I'm sorry. But I got a book from Joe Camenco the other day. I can't say what it is because inside the book was a note that said, I saw this and thought of you. We need to make this pen. And it's something that I've always wanted to do that I really think guys and girls would truly love. And everyone's like, oh, wow, what is it? What is it? I'm sorry. And that's no kind of a hint. And I'm not going to give you a hint because I don't want to get in trouble again. I would say until the rumor mill begins. Yeah, I would hope it was Goonies, but I don't think there's any really good Goonies books out there. And Joe, when we interviewed him, he shot me down when I requested Goonies. God damn it. Yeah. Every once in a while, I'll call him up. I'll go, hey, what do you think of this? He'll go, hmm, no. And he'll just throw out some one-liner about why it's not good to do and half the time, I just bust up laughing. I can't say what this stuff is.
    10:02
    By the way, a hot take on me from Goonies? Not that great. The movie? No, you're not a fan. Oh, man. That is a hot take. That's a controversial take. There you go. I've only seen pieces. I mean, is that more controversial than I have even bothered to watch the whole thing? That's pretty bad considering you have
    10:17
    that should be on your to-watch list. I don't have that one. You and Ron from Slamtail. Ron hasn't seen Jurassic Park and Willy Wonka and a bunch of other classic movies. Oh, yeah. Well, no, I'm not that bad. But, yeah, Kamiko did chew me out for, he was like, you have not seen Animal House? I'm like, no. He's like, dude, that's like the best movie ever made. I'm like, well, on that recommendation, I'm going to have to see it. But I've tried to get through it a couple times and fell asleep. I don't know if I was just really tired or it was really boring. It's a funny movie, but all I really remember is Belushi slapping his cheeks and being zit. You guys know what I'm talking about.
    10:52
    I'm a zit, get it? Yeah, the food fight and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. All I remember is Belushi smashing the guy's guitar and just handing it back to him saying, sorry.
    11:00
    That's kind of like you and Twippies, man. I did smash another one this year, but for any of you out there who are like, is this just going to be the two days of the year? I'm done. It was just a callback joke because you want to kind of strike while the iron's hot. You don't want to wait 10 years and stomp a trophy. What's that for? So, yeah. So, anyway, you know, and lots of other crap. That's been my seven months. What about you, Christian? A lot of stuff, right? A lot of stuff has happened in the last seven months, pinball related. My wife and I were asked to host an episode of Pinball Profile with our good friend, Jeff Teolis. I heard that. It was awesome. We interviewed one of the co-founders. Yeah. I didn't say anything. We're with Joe Fox, who's a great friend of ours as well, and he started the Delaware Pinball Collective with a bunch of other guys. So if you ever wanted to know what it's like to start a pinball collective and what you have to do to do that, check out that episode. It was really fun to do. And Jeff and his lovely wife are actually coming to visit us later this year. So we are excited to get totally bombed on fireball and play some pinball. So we're looking forward to Jeff being here. But speaking of the Delaware Pinball Collective, We also were involved in one of their promotions, which was to raffle off a pinball machine. There were 200 tickets, and I bought two for Sarah as one of her Xmas gifts. And the drawing was live a few weeks ago. And believe it or not, we actually won a freaking pinball machine. A new in box Star Wars the pin. Winner, winner, chicken, winner. Yeah, we couldn't believe it, man. We were live streaming the drawing at breakfast, and all four of us jumped up from the table and just started, you know, dancing around celebrating. It was definitely a little awkward, but totally warranted. So thank you to the Pinball Collective, and especially to the amazing kid who drew our name from the raffle basket. We bought that kid. When will those kids ever draw my name? You little prick.
    12:53
    I know, right? I've been in so many Project Pinball raffles and so many random pinball things, and I've never won. So we saved up all of our luck for this. So we were really, really excited. My dad taught me the trick on how to win raffles, by the way, is you crinkle up your ticket. Crinkle up your ticket. And then, like, open it back up and let it be all kind of wobbly and all that. That way, like, because all the other ones are just super flat. They're going to just lay on top of each other. Yours is going to stand out because it's all crinkled. I love it. I have one shit because of that. What have you won? Park Cheesy Game. Things. I won a car once. That's amazing, man. That's way better than a pinball machine. Yeah, it's a Dodge Avenger. I think it was like a $30,000 car or something at the time. So did you keep it or did you sell it? We sold the car. And the guy came over and paid cash, which was really weird. peeling them off, slapping them down, as you two would say. Well, we're talking about surreal pinball experiences. Roger and Kato from the Pinball Brothers swung by our house for a drink a few weeks ago, which was crazy. They were in town with Chris and Melissa from Cointaker, and they were going to Hershey for a hockey game, and they both decided to come here and have a drink. So I had some drinks with the Pinball Brothers, and we talked about Alien, and I showed them around my basement, and we had some beers. It was really, really cool. I mean, it was cool to have them here. They're great guys, if anyone has any doubt, because I know they haven't really been too public. They've been on our show, but they're a little bit of an enigma. You know, not many people know them like they know other pinball companies. They're really good guys. They're super passionate about pinball, and I know they have a ton of ideas, you know, for future games that sound really, really exciting. So I hope they stay in the game. I hope they continue to make games. Oh, yeah, things are in the works. I spent a weekend with them at TPF, and they don't just have ideas. Things are happening. Good, good. I'm glad to hear it. Because Alien is great, you know, but they kind of had to get through Alien after all of the drama that they had, you know, with humans not aliens.
    14:46
    Inheriting all the evil. Yeah. So anyway. If you guys could stick around after this show, I'd like to have a conversation with you about why I'm apparently such an asshole because you're having all kinds of fucking drinking parties at your house. Nobody comes to visit me. What the fuck, man? You're not on the way to Hershey. Oh, Jules has to pass my house to go see you. This is true. I think he's coming through Windsor. So he's going to drive right by my house, probably flip me off, and drive to your house and have a grand old time. Listen, you should come too, man. You guys should carpool. It would be fun to have both of you guys here. And we love everyone in pinball, and we like to have drinks with everybody. So come on over. But anyway, it was great to see them. And I'm going to save the best for last, because this has been probably the coolest thing that's happened to me in all of pinball. I was given one of the most incredible gifts I've ever had from Franchi. And it's art, but it's art on an actual pinball machine. So everyone knows, you know, Chris did some additional work on CGC's new Cactus Canyon game. And he did the art blades on the LE. If you walk up to the LE and you look kind of close to the left flipper, there's a water tower out in the desert. and on the front of that tower it says C line, which is freaking amazing. But the icing on the cake is that below that it says FLC, which are my wife and daughter's initials, and below that are three cats sitting on the tower, which are our pets. So Chris somehow got our entire family into the game, and it's just so epic. I talked to Cointaker very early on and said, I have to own this game because I knew it was coming. So thank you, Chris. This is a game that has always been on Sarah's wish list, So we're psyched to actually be part of Pinball Machine. And we're really stoked that you were the one to make that happen. Well, you know I love you guys. And then the best part is, like I told you, a line is another word for a train line.
    16:37
    So it fit perfect. I didn't have to really explain it to the guys over there. They just thought I was kind of just filling in some random crap. But, yeah, it's actually a word for a train track. Love it. It's perfect. Is that your heritage? You know, your family was way back when we're train track builders. Totally. Let's go with that. That's totally right.
    16:58
    The Lime family goes way back to when we pounded the golden spike connecting the east to the west. I mean, Jeff, you've been the voice in the game. Chris, you've been like an artist on a ton of amazing games. So this is finally me being part of a pinball machine, which is so cool. It's going to be there forever, dude. No, and it's one of the games we love. So it's just icing on the cake. You know I love you, buddy. Love you too, man. So, Parson, hit us up with what you've been up to, Jeff, because I know you haven't been on air for a few months now. I mean, Pintastic was your last show. Yeah. So what's been happening? Personal life, nothing really exciting because most of the time I work all damn day. So that's pretty much what I'm doing. So my free time is very, you know, not a lot much. So when I do have that free time now that we're going out and places are back open, I'm going to play pinball as much as I can. In fact, last night I was at, I sent you that pictures, was at Chuck Webster's. He invited some people over, and my son Jake and I went down, and I texted him when he was on his way. I said, hey, you want to go to Chuck's on Friday night? And he said, if you have to ask that question, there's something wrong with you. You're so lucky to have a son who's into pinball, man. I cannot force my kids to like pinball. But, you know, he's been kind of not only into it, but he's really good. Yeah, he totally kicked my ass on rush, I can tell you that much. You lose! Good day, sir. I'm like, dude, you even know what you're doing? He's like, I'm just hitting the shots. I'm like, yeah, you're nailing them. I'm breaking them everywhere. He's good. But at that age, he's 15. I'm 50. So your reflexes are still there. Your eyesight's good. The lights, when they flash, don't bother you like they do me. So I get that. It's still fun. He's loved it ever since he was a kid. I surprised him. He was like four or five years old. I borrowed a Funhaus and a Terminator 2. from my buddy JR. He needed some space to store them, and I put them in the basement. And at the time, I had built the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet, which was a main cabinet, and he liked playing that. He said, do you want to come down and play Ms. Pac-Man? He's like, oh, yeah, I'd love to. And he turns the corner, and he just shrieks because he sees these two games lit up and ready to play and just runs right over to him, and off he goes. And so he's been playing. It's kind of very similar to me. At his age, when I had to pull up a chair at the restaurant, my mom would take me to it while she talked to the person that owned it. When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better. I go over there and play pinball and standing on a chair and have loved it ever since. So, yeah, so I did that. And we're back, like I said, at the top of the show. We're starting the new season of New England Pinball League in the first week of May, which will be great.
    19:41
    Now it's time for some tournament talk. Yeah, yeah. It's our 26th season, 10th year. We started in, let's see, 2012. We started with only 29 players. Now we have over 300 players across New England. Yeah. I was going to ask you how many people are in it. So it's 300 people, you know, over all that territory. How many locations are actually involved in the league? Okay, so we've got 21 locations this season in New England. And one, this is weird, this season is going to be in Chicago. And you're going like, what? So Mark and Aaron Seiden, Mark Seiden is working now for Jersey Jack. Yep. They've been a part of New England Pinball League for a long time, and when they went on out there, they were kind of like, man, we're really going to miss this. Can we have like a New England Pinball League annex? And we're like, sure, why not? So they're going to be hosting at their place, and their results will count for all of New England Pinball League because they're still kind of New England family, and they're going to be part of it. That's cool. Oh, and you're not IFPA-linked, so there's no state delineation. You guys can do whatever the heck you want. Right. So the IFPA thing is a completely different story. So two things that happened to me when I became president. We had a pandemic, and then we had a very controversial decision to make with New England Pinball League. Yes. Let me tell you a little about the history of it. What makes New England Pinball League different is because we have locations all over New England. And the one thing that does not work for IFPA is not direct play. You're playing in all these different locations, and you're not playing against everybody that will be in New England Pinball League, which is typically how Whopper points work. It's, you know, direct play. But it's kind of happened all these years without a problem until, you know, they made a change to the rules so that you had to have more direct play, which meant that in a nutshell, every location becomes its own league, and then the top players in that location move on to the finals that brings in everybody from all locations. and they're two separate, basically, tournaments, if that makes any sense. Sure. The top thing for us is, you know, our motto, what we were founded on, was connecting people across New England through the great game of pinball. And one of the nice things about what we have is you can play anywhere you want. You want to play at one part because, I mean, people love different games. There's other people that play at certain places you might want to see. New England pinball has always been a social thing and a way to get people into competitive pinball and introduce them to competitive pinball since the whole thing started. And with the changes that have happened now with the IFPA and the way that these new rules would affect us, it just seemed to be more than it was really worth for us to be able to still be a IFPA-sanctioned league. So we decided to withdraw ourselves from the IFPA. And the reasons were because that whole connecting people across New England. We wouldn't be able to do that because with the new rules, you would have to play at least 50% of your, I think, no, 50% of your games would have to be in one location. So you don't have the option to bounce around and see other people that you might not see and play in other places and try out different places that you would if you wanted those points. You guys are so unique because you're so huge. That's what she said. And you have such a different experience, league experience, than I think any other area really. So it's so important that you guys maintain that. I totally understand why you made that call. But not easy because people who are playing competitive pinball also are in it to get ranked and to have some sort of idea of where they are playing against everyone else in the world. So that is a really, really tough call. But I think you guys have maintained what NAPL is all about. And I totally understand why you did it. Yeah. And it wasn't, it was not an easy decision for me. I thought about this for a long time. And what it really came down to is what's more important, that we have these points and conform to the format that will, you know, still be able to keep us the IPA? Or is it more important that we still be able to keep that mantra of connecting people? And to me, it seemed like that was a better way. Plus, there were other things. There's a whole list of other things that would be different. You know, one of the big things that we prided ourselves in is when we started out, Every player got to go to finals, no matter how you finished. You were in finals. Everybody played. As we grew larger, the facilities to be able to hold all those players became less and less. There was one place we had, central place, that could hold everybody, but eventually they closed and our space was limited. So we had to take a percentage of it, which was usually the top third or maybe the top two. I can't remember exactly how much. It was at least half of them. And so that was a big thing of, you know, if you do well, you're more likely going to go to finals. Even if you're in the middle of the pack, you'll probably go to finals. And it's just being inclusive to everybody, giving everybody the chance to experience. Kind of like, a little bit like Pinnberg, because this kind of was based off Pinnberg. I can't remember which game for us, Pinnberg, but I think it was Pinnberg. But it's kind of based off that where, you know, they have divisions and, you know, everybody fits in a division. We have the same thing. And the top certain number of players in all divisions make it to finals. So even if you're not the best player, you're still competing for a chance to win some prizes. And everybody wins the same. no matter what division you're in. So it's equal opportunity for everybody, basically, no matter what your skill level is. Right. And, you know, it was a tough call to make. But as the president, you've got to make the tough calls. And I think you did the right thing. And Franchi, right now, his brain has flatlined because he has no idea what the hell I'm talking about. It's a bed and a pinball. Yeah. You guys keep talking. I'm making a grilled cheese.
    25:14
    Yeah. We have to talk about it, Jeff, because that's something that's really important to you. and I know it's part of what you're all about in pinball. You've always been about playing pinball in the competitive world, so we had to touch on that. Ladies and gentlemen, we have to thank Jeff Parsons for being a part of the Super Awesome Pinball Show for one episode.
    25:37
    So, yeah, that's cool, man. I'm glad that you're through that hump and that hurdle because that wasn't easy, and I'm happy to see how that goes without IFPA points and that sort of stuff and how you incorporate that moving forward if you're going to do some IFPA stuff. For instance, we are going to still give out opportunities. Like at our finals, there will be a separate IFPA tournament at our finals. Nice. So it's the Wobbers. Yeah. So if people still want to compete for that, they still have that option. Cool. You guys want a grilled cheese?
    26:04
    Dude, I would love a grilled cheese. That's amazing, actually. That sounds so good right now. Let me call Michelle and see if she'll make me one by the time this is over. Crispy on the outside, gooey on the inside. How do you guys make your grilled cheese? Do you do shredded cheese in the middle, or do you do... Shredded cheese? What do you do? Crab singles. I do one crab single American, one crab single Swiss. Oh, crab singles. Singles? You mean you've got to unwrap them singles? Yeah. Come on, just get the cheddar. Get the sliced cheddar. Oh, god, cheddar. That's a grilled cheese with cheddar cheese. Hello? That's amazing. What are you talking about, Franchi? No, I love cheddar cheese, but I don't want a fucking grilled cheese made out of it. What do you put in there? What cheese do you use? American cheese and Swiss cheese, but the crap Swiss singles almost taste like American. It's not got that foot taste like regular Swiss does. It kind of tastes like your foot.
    26:58
    That's not even cheese. That's like cheese product. Whatever. It's yummy product, whatever it is. It's delicious, and I'm not changing.
    27:08
    You've diverted way off course. What happened? What happened to the Super House of Pinball show? You left and started to make a grilled cheese, and that's when we're off on grilled cheese.
    27:19
    Just having some damn good. We've updated everybody on what we've been up to. So now we can move forward. By the way, my coffee's empty. I don't know what the hell's going on here. I don't know. I expect I have higher expectations here, Seth. God damn it. Let me just send you a Dunkin' card to be good. I'm making my own grilled cheese. and this just in more crazy pinball bullshit with the wpin action pinball news crew all right who still uses a typewriter all right first thing first thing in the news i gotta say most important out of any any news you guys might have or anybody else has collected There is a Batman SLE for sale on Pinside right now. Whoa. Somebody that goes by the name of LLLVJR from Milton, Massachusetts. Guess how much he's asking for it. It is not in the box. It has had home use.
    28:22
    Because it's Super LE. I'm going to say one of 80 games. What did they resale for initially? I forget. Like 10 or 15, right? 14? Was it like 14? I'm going to say, listen, if pirates are selling for $30,000 plus K, I'm going to say that this is on the market for $30,000. I'm going to bid $30,001. Oh, you son of a bitch. The actual retail price is $60,000. Oh, shit. $60,000. Does that come with, like, Catwoman? What are you getting for that How modded out is this thing It didn look like it was modded out at all I didn see anything Well I mean it is the SLE so it kind of tricked out But the reason why this is great news is because I have a one Oh, yeah. I have an extra super LE, which means mine's got to go worth at least 80, right? Listen, man, if you ever want to buy a house, you just have to sell one or two games. Yeah. And you're in good shape. Yeah. So anyway. This is ridiculous. So we got that. Wow.
    29:28
    What else is in the news? What do you guys got? All right. Well, one of the most prominent things out there in the news is that American Pinball has hired Ryan McQuaid, who is of Sonic Spinball fame. And we also, we've been off the air for so long that we didn't really talk about Steve Bowden getting hired as well. Bow, bow, bow. So they picked up Steve from Deep Root, and they also have Quaid now. What do you guys think about that? I think we're excited. He's going to be on our next show. That's our next interview. Yeah. I'd like to point out, by the way, Ryan McQuaid, who, as you said, did Sonic Spinball, New England player in New England Pinball League, as well as Mark Seiden, who's at Jersey Jack as a designer, and Michael Grant, who's the marketing manager of Stern, all from New England. So those three New England people get jobs in pinball, and we are all so proud of them all. On the other hand, you guys also have clam shatters, so fuck that.
    30:17
    The smell of that makes me rail. Nothing but garbage, Green. No, but I mean, before we really touch on Ryan, let's talk about Steve, because ever since, you know, the writing was on the wall for Deep Root, I've been saying that other pinball companies would be crazy not to pick up Steve. And I'm glad that American picked him up and are putting the work on games that may actually see the light of day. We've got some glimpses of Raza, but we were really cheated out of seeing what Steve was capable of. And, you know, I also want to know if he's designing games as well as doing rules for them, because, you know, he certainly knows what a great game is in pinball, considering he's played almost all of them. Yeah, I was talking to him, and he was really excited about his new invention. He was telling me about the pin bar.
    30:55
    Oh, no, I'm sorry. It was the pin pod he was telling me about. Oh. I'm just glad he landed somewhere after that whole debacle, because he was so excited to go out to work for Deep Root, and then to see it all just kind of crumbling down. I felt, you know, Steve, if you don't know him, is the nicest guy in pinball, hands down. I've known him for a long time, and I felt so bad for him when that happened. I'm glad he's got his feet somewhere where he wants to be. I totally agree. I feel like he was in such a hard spot. People have come down on him a little bit, a lot of it, about not speaking out about what he saw on Deep Root. But, I mean, you know how freaking litigious Robert was. I would be so scared to say anything. I mean, there's two things you've got to look at here, realistically. Yeah, everyone wants to say, like, oh, you could have warned us, or, you know, we could have saved this, we could have saved that, whatever. You're talking about the guy moved to Texas for this job. I'm sure he needed his job. He was in the middle of nowhere. The only people he knew were the people at work. He's getting a paycheck, and then he starts to smell some odd shit going around. What's he going to do, start running around and telling everybody? It's like you sit on your helmet and you pray for the best. That's all you can do. I wouldn't have expected anything different than what he did and how he handled it because it's a career. This isn't a hobby. This isn't everybody else's situation and what money they have invested. It's a man's career, and you've got to do what you've got to do. It was a professional way to handle things, despite how hard it must have been for him. Yep, exactly, exactly. And I don't look down at him at all for any of that stuff. Absolutely not. He's got a fucking layoff. So, Ryan McQuaid, I mean, I don't know this guy at all. I know you do, Jeff. Is this something he's wanted forever, to be actually part of a company? From what I can gather with his excitement about building this game, yeah, absolutely. You know, he's a huge Sonic fan and just didn't build something he loved just as a hobby. and he took it to show his head and pin-tasked a couple times and the lines on this thing where my kid was just like, Dad, have you seen Spinball? I'm like, yeah, I know the guy that did that. He's amazing. This is right up his alley. He's going to do great. That's awesome. I mean, he's very similar to Mark Seiden at JJP in the sense that he's done some really great things in the homebrew world, but we haven't really seen what he can do outside of that one title. So, you know, both guys are incredibly passionate about pinball, so hopefully that will translate to some new ideas and some fun designs in the future for both companies. Yeah, I feel ashamed because I could have been meeting him this coming up week because, obviously, everybody knows I'm working on a project with American Pinball. And Dave Dix asked me to go out there, and you guys, I'm ashamed to admit the reason why I said no. Now, I could have lied. My mom's not feeling well. I have to take care of her. My dog, something's wrong with my dog. Could have lied. Number one, I don't like to lie. Number two, I feel if I lie about something like my dog, I will just jinx him and something will happen. Right. Honesty is always the best policy. David, I cannot come out there next week. Why not? Well, it's like this, David. I sit at my desk and I work about 20 hours a day, which is really not a lie. Probably about 18 hours a day. All I do is work. When I work, I sit here, and for the past three weeks, I have been listening to, while working, the Johnny Depp Amber Heard court case. If you're telling me that you are not going because you want to see the conclusion live on TV, I will be so amazed. I spent all of this week, they were off, no court case, because the judge had some conference to go to. Monday morning, Amber Heard is on the hot seat with Johnny Depp's attorneys, and I will not miss that. What a dick. Oh, my God, dude. I told them I couldn't go. They got a new whitewood of the game we're working on, and it looks fucking amazing. And I could be seeing all this shit, and I said, oh, I got to stay home and watch. That is fucking incredible. Yeah, so now I'm going to be watching Amber Heard's butt fry on the seat instead of going to see this cool-ass game. Who knew you were, like, a TMZ superfan? I'm not. I just got sucked into court cases. Like, all these ones that, like, the cop who put his knee on the dude's neck and killed him. I heard that old court case. So are you, like, salivating for this court case with Deep Root? Are you watching all of these live feeds? As far as I can tell, there are not. And I wanted to. Canon Co. called me, and he's like, you know, are you listening to this? And I'm like, no. And I'm like, where are you listening to it? Something happened in the conversation, and it never came out where it was, but apparently it was a shit show. He was just like, there's this thing in the Constitution called the Fourth Amendment, and I believe that I will be pleading the Fourth Amendment to your question. And he said that just like that every answer. Like a total snotty asshole. What a piece of shit. I hope that guy gets slammed up the ass by the biggest dick in that prison. Filibuster. Oh, my God. Okay. All right. Fuck it. Oh, boy. Sorry, George. I was going to come to hear George's classy interview, and I just junked it all up with dick talk. Sorry, George. I didn't mean to be unclassy, but I'm passionate. Well, the elephant in the room when we talk about Ryan McQuaid is that Ryan's homebrew game, you would think that American Pinball would want to pick up that design and get the license, given that it's one that a lot of pinheads have been asking for. But, Franchi, you've got some insight onto that, don't you?
    36:12
    Another super awesome exclusive. Anyway, American Pinball looked into the license. They worked out a deal. American Pinball then said, okay, we're going to think about this. And I believe like a week later, went back to them and said, okay. And Sega said, oh, we're sorry. Another pinball company already has that title. And they could not get it. They offered more money. So you can't say they didn't try, but they could not get it back because that little pause and not signing on the bottom of the line cost them the license. So unfortunately, Sonic Spinball will not be made as Sonic Spinball. Now, whether that game itself is going to be rebranded or trashed, I do not know. we'll find that out from Ryan on the next episode. That blows. Here's my thought. Stern used to be owned by Sega. Or Sega became, Data East was Stern, Data East went to Sega, then became Stern. So that, there's a connection there. Something I'm thinking. Maybe. Do you think of the return of the old Godzilla scenario? Yes. Yeah. Sorry, I know Ryan is kind of a super fan of Sonic, and that game was a ton of fun. I had a chance to play it. It's fantastic. I can see them pulling a Keith Elwin Archer, and transitioning his layout to another title, though. You know, hopefully they'll still use that with a few tweaks. It was a fun game. That game does really fit that theme very well. I know, it does. So you guys think maybe this was a Stern move, huh? I mean, is this another Godzilla? I have no idea. Just the connection that Stern has a connection to Sega in the past. Hey, Jeff, why don't you bring it up to George when we talk to him later on? No, I don't dare. No, no, no.
    37:49
    Isn't it interesting how the perspective on that move has changed? People were really mad at them for that until Owen knocked it out of the park with his gun. So I think people might forgive if they do justice to the property, but it definitely sucks for AP and McQuaid. Business and pinball can be brutal. It's tough business, and that's the way it goes. I don't think it diminishes from Ryan's skill, though. No, no. So that kind of sucks. I'm sure he would have loved to see his game produced by a company, but he's got to do something else, and I know it's going to be great. Now they have Dennis Nordman, they've got Bowden, they've got McQuaid and the design studio, in addition to the Riot Pinball guys, right? So they certainly have talent. Legends of Ahala was released in October of 2021, and the game before that was Hot Wheels in June of 2020. So averaging around a game a year, we'll have to see if they can shorten that reveal schedule moving forward because they have so many designers now. Yeah, lots of stuff going on. Might be looking for a coder, though. Mr. Josh Coogler is no longer with American Pinball. Yeah. Sad to see him go, man. He was such a great guy. He did so much for that company. I'm curious where he's headed. Like, is he retiring or is he moving on? Because he was a lot of fun to talk to on our show when we interviewed him in Ballsburg. You know, I'll drink a tequila to your honor, sir, if you're listening. I'll reach out to him. I'll see if I can get a hold of him. And if there's something he wants to talk about, we'll get him on the show. Yeah, let's get him on the show, actually. That's a great idea. Well, what else is going on? Jersey Jack's coming out with a game any day now. You know, with our luck, the day that this episode hits, the game will come out. It's supposed to be any time now. Heavily rumored to be Toy Story, and JJP generally goes big on their game. So, you know, it's been a really long time in the making. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it's going to be incredible. You guys excited for the theme? Is this supposed to be Pat Lawler doing this one? Yes. It's his swan song. He's retiring. All right. He's retiring after this game. I'm excited. I'm not a huge Toy Story fan, but I am a fan. I mean, like, I'm a toy geek, so how could I not be excited about it? Whenever any new game's out, I try to curtail my excitement, if you will, because I don't want to want it. Because if I want it, then I'm like, oh, am I going to put it out on space and it's going to cost $10,000? Because I don't do pros, you know, I don't do that. I got to have the goodies. So, yeah, so I try to get too excited about something. But let's say this. I'm looking forward to it. How about that? How about you, Jeff? Theme does zero for me, but that's just me. There are games that I have no interest in the theme, but I actually love. So I always never put theme first at all. It's how does it play, how does it shoot, is it fun, regardless of whatever the theme is. There hasn't been, honestly, there haven't been a lot of J.J.P. And I hate saying J.J.P. because those are my high score initials. And I had it first. Just saying. All right. There's not a lot that they've done that I've really gone, wow, this is great. The only thing I really liked the most was the one that wasn't actually a license was Dialed In. I really like that game. So I'm excited to hopefully see something that I'll like from Jersey Jack. I know a lot of people that do like Jersey Jack. I think there's going to be a really strong market for it. It's a family-friendly property. And men and women in their 40s and 50s with disposable income, they remember Toy Story. I think if my kids were younger, it would be a stronger draw for me. It could be a game in a category of the gateway drug for kids to get into pinball finally.
    41:09
    And I really need that. That's going to be speaking of your kids. My kids hate pinball at this point I can't pay them to play it You showed your daughter You showed us a picture of your daughter wearing a pinball shirt They love franchise It was a franchise Uncle Franchie can do no wrong Alright so let's make a Franchie pinball machine Let's do it I can hear the call outs Damn it how could you miss that shot Phil Fuck So let me throw this out there. What do you guys think about all these companies who don't have nearly the release schedule of Stern, even with only two titles this year from Stern,
    41:50
    bringing on a huge cadre of designers? So JJP revealed GNR in the fall of 2020, haven't had a new game since. Assuming they reveal Toy Story later this month, that's about 18 to 19 months between titles. They have Richie, they have Sidon, they have Meniere, they've got Lawler now. Let's assume, best case, they ramp up production and so they hit two games in 12 months. That's a game every six months or shaving a full year off the current time between reveals. Even in that scenario, there's still two years between any one designer's game. How are they going to make that work? I don't know. I think all these smaller companies are missing out. With Stern back on their heels, trying to get games done and cutting short their new game production this year, these guys should be pouncing all over this stuff. This is the window. This is what you prepare for. You get your stuff ready and you wait for a window and then you just pounce. Yeah. So that's unfortunate. Yeah. I don't know. You know, a lot of people, even American pinball has said like, hey, we're going to make two games a year. You know, there's been nothing. Yeah. So either it's not as easy as it looks or it takes some time to get there. And I'm hoping it's the latter. I'm hoping these guys are just like, you know, well, you know, yeah, we said we're going to do that and that's our goal. But, you know, we don't reach our goals tomorrow to get there. Sure. Because, you know, as George will attest in the interview that happens later, that we already know what was said.
    43:07
    Pinball's not easy. Could supply issues still be a challenge for Shizu Jack? Yeah, sure. For everybody. It's got to be, right? It's got to be. Take a look at how many parts are on a pinball machine, and if you don't have one, you can't make the game. All you need is one piece to be missing, and you're screwed. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. I'm hoping for the best. I know I'm a part of two games that are supposed to come out this year. So I really got my fingers crossed. What do you think, Chris? Do you think they're actually going to make it, the two that you worked on?
    43:42
    One of them I am positive on. Okay. The other one, I'm concerned about that one. Let's put it this way. I know I'll have one game out this year. Oh, sure. All right. Oh, sure. And actually, if you want to be technical about it, you could say two games. So it's just one game. One game, two art packages. Yeah, good stuff. All right, so let's move on. Jeff, this is near and dear to your heart. Pentastic has announced that Roger Sharp is going to be there. And you and I are there almost every year because I know it's close to you and it's freaking amazing in terms of the show. It's up there with CPF for me in terms of how much fun the show is. And it's really grown a lot. That's the other thing is it started out just a little, you know, show in New England, and it has become every year they bring in more people and bigger names and game reveals. I mean, they do the whole staff there at Pentastic just does an amazing job with this thing. And Gabe, I have to say, and this is no insult to anybody else that I know, Gabe is the nicest guy as far as the expo promoter guys go. I love Gabe DePices and his family, and they all work really hard on this. But I'll say this, I think I came up with a new slogan for Pintastic. Oh, no. It's the best pinball expo at the worst hotel.
    45:00
    Yeah, there's a lot of people who might agree with you. That's something, though. People will make the trek and they'll put up with that hotel to go to that show. It's special about how terrible it is.
    45:11
    It's so bad, it's good. Yeah, kind of. I mean, there's a big atrium with a pool there, and they had the Guns N' Roses cover band there last year. I feel like one of my all-time best memories in pinball is watching a Guns N' Roses cover band with Eric Menier after I've had, you know, way too many drinks. Just how surreal that was. The only problem with that show, by the way, was that it was like right out in that atrium. It was late at night. And there were some people in those rooms that have balconies that look right out onto it. Like, I'm just trying to sleep. Throwing pots and pans. Yeah, I knew I was in trouble at that hotel when I walked into my room and there was a tube TV sitting on the dresser.
    45:50
    I haven't seen one of those in 15 years. I couldn't believe it. If you're going to get someone who is going to bring in a crowd to a show, it's the man who saved him, all right? I mean, Roger Sharp. I'm sure they'll be announcing other guests as we get closer to the date, so stay tuned. But, Jeff, I know you'll be there, and we need to get Frenchy to come join us. But you know what we're going to get out of Roger Sharp, though, at this seminar? For sure, there's going to be information on the movie. Yeah, I know. Oh, yeah, coming out this year, right? We've not heard nothing, but there was some kind of teaser poster kind of thing or something that went around, but not a whole lot, but I'll bet he's going to have a lot to talk about. So, I mean, that's worth coming out for. Have you guys ever been to a Roger Sharp seminar before? We've had one. We interviewed him. Yeah, we had a two-episode hour. Personal. So, personal episode. He, at the very first ReplayFX in 2015, he had a seminar that he had planned on the books, and Zach was playing in Tinburg and was about to win the thing. So his time window for his seminar, because he stayed to watch Zach win, elapsed. And so when it was time for the seminar, I was all excited about this. We're all waiting in the seminar room, and then we get kicked out for the Tetris speed run people that had it next. Okay, great. So literally when he was done, Zach came up with his trophy, Josh was there, Roger was there, and we sat down on the floor outside of that lecture room and just sitting there on the floor, and Roger would talk for probably an hour and a half to two hours about the Williams days, about everything. And then he opened up to questions at the end. I was the only one that asked a question because he probably went on for about 45 minutes to answer it.
    47:24
    And then it was all over. We lived that, man. I mean, you should have. How much time did it take you to edit that episode, Franchi? It had to be days. Oh, my God, it was so long. But it was great. Both of us the whole time, we were totally enamored. I could listen to him talk all day. I mean, I literally could. It was just so good. The Concourse Seminar Series is proud to present a conversation with Roger Sharp in the snack shop.
    47:52
    All right, so, yeah, so Pintest, what's the date? Third week of June? That's just too long of a drive. I'd have to fly in. And if I have to fly in, that means I have to go, hey, Gabe, you want to bring me in as a guest? Because I don't want to pay for airfare. Fantastic is the 23rd through the 26th of June. All right. So we'll see. I'll talk to Gabe if he wants to bring me in. Well, you know what? See, that's another thing. I'm fine if he wants to bring me in as a guest if I've got something to talk about. But by June, I won't. Let's do a seminar, man. We could do a live recording. That's what I'm saying, though. He's going to bring me in so that I can do a live recording of the Super Awesome Pinball Show? I don't really think he cares about that. I don't know. We'll figure something out. All right. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's move on to something next. coming up after this. The Super Awesome Pinball Show.
    48:44
    Stillhound number one. Without a Twippy. Mmm, it does go well with a chicken. Brought to you by Coin Taker in lovely Sunbury, Pennsylvania. Also available at Allstate, Warren Cunningham's Drugs. Now that will win you by sponsor! Ha ha!
    49:03
    This show is sponsored by Coin Taker, distributor of brand new full-size authentic Stern pinball, Chicago gaming, raw thrills, arcade games, and much more. Also, a full line of dramatic pinball mods, LED flipper kits, speaker lights, custom laser LED toppers, right field protectors, Valley Williams parts, pinball apparel, and much more. Get the latest releases and glam out your game room with Cointaker. Everything at your fingertips at Cointaker.com. Get your game on.
    49:29
    Hey everybody, it's Mark Rizzi here. You are listening to the super awesome pinball show. Now, back to our program.
    49:49
    And we're back, and everybody, it's that magical time. We are bringing in my favorite person in pinball, Mr. George Gomez. Now, he never ceases to amaze me. Every time I reach out to have him on, he is more than happy to do it. In fact, he is so gracious that this time it actually took two days to record this interview. Two days back to back. That's a lot to give of a man who's as busy as he is. And I really appreciate his generosity. I appreciate his friendship. And I just appreciate the man that he is. So without further ado, here is our interview with Mr. George Gomez of Stern Pinball. I wish my brother George was here. Hey there George, you're on the clock We know that you've been suffering from right of law Give us a fee, oh we want to look We need to see some food that you've been working on the street Hey there George, I know you're just one man But you gotta believe what you began George Gomez is as much a part of pinball's DNA as anyone. He has worked on or inspired many of the hobby's favorite games. If there's something in the works now or in the distant future at Stern Pinball, as the Executive VP of Game Development and Chief Creative Officer, George is directly involved in making it happen. He's a great storyteller, pinball historian, visionary, and all-around great guy, and we are lucky to have him back on the Super Awesome Pinball Show. Wow.
    51:27
    There you go. Sounds like we're bringing out somebody at the Academy Awards. Yeah, we are. Welcome, George.
    51:33
    When we've talked with you in the past, George, we've really delved into your past history in and out of pinball and your role at Stern up through to today. For this show, we really have to focus on the current landscape at Stern and what will be coming in the future. We also reached out to some other pinheads in social media for their questions for you and the man that they deliver. A lot of our questions today came from them, topics like manufacturing, current and future titles, Stern Tech, like Insider Connected, and the current team at Up and Comer's at Stern, and a boatload more. Are you ready to do this? Yeah, wow. I mean, you guys, but absolutely, you know, happy to talk to you guys. Really always enjoy getting together with you guys. We always end up laughing and having a couple of drinks while we do this, and it's always a good time. So yeah, let's get into it. I don't know If I can, man, that intro, I don't know. I thought hard about that one. I wanted to do you justice, George. You've been on a few times, and every episode that we do with you, we just get so much positive feedback for it. I love it. I mean, you guys ask tough questions. I hope I can answer them. You know, and the thing about having George on is that when he's on another podcast, I get all jealous and stuff. I'm like, he's our George. That's right. I don't do that many. You know, I don't do that many. And I certainly don't do the French-hating extravaganza.
    53:00
    The wacky hijinks? The two dance-ons. People really want to listen to me for like six hours. They do. Unfortunately, our audience is all hardcore pinball people. George, we saw that you had the flood of a Mother's Day weekend there in the manufacturing facility. Everything okay? How did that happen? And what did you guys have to do to shift and adapt to that? Yeah, so a water main in Elk Grove Village where we are broke and a city water main, nothing to do with us. And now I'm sure it had something to do with we had a lot of rain and something happened. But anyway, the city lost a water main, flooded a bunch of people in our area. And I think the reason we put those pictures up is honestly, we're like super proud of the response. Like I think the factory lost, you know, six hours of production and then we were up and running. Wow, that's impressive. Yeah, yeah, it was very impressive, and to the point where, you know, Seth Davis, the new president, said, you know, this is impressive stuff, you guys ought to brag about it. And I was like, look, it's just what we got to do, you know. But, yeah, no, so we were down for a few hours, you know, we swept up the water, we tipped it out of product development, you know, we're like, I got a thing from one of the guys, and it was just, I'm at Home Depot getting sandbags.
    54:17
    Product development's going to be underwater. Like, what? What are you talking about? I don't know. So nothing came in from the ceiling. It didn't come down onto stuff. It just came in from the floor. No, it came up from the floor. Oh, that's good. Actually, it came up the drains. It came up the drains. But no damage, basically, from any of that. Then everything is still used up after six hours? We lost some cardboard boxes.
    54:40
    I think it was six hours. I don't know exactly, but around six hours of production. We had to send people home, and we had to clean stuff up. We definitely lost some cardboard boxes. We lost some pallets. And, you know, it didn't get really deep. We lost some carpeting. It's always the first thing. When I walked into the building, there was, like, all kinds of, you know, like a day later, there was, like, fans and antifungal stuff and God knows what, you know, to get everything cleaned up and squared away. No humidity issues or anything? Yeah, it wasn't around long enough to cause too much damage. And the areas where it was around was all factory, mostly factory floor. So we didn't lose any carpet or anything like that. It was just all, I think it was, you know, it's mostly all just concrete. We were actually worried about our new model shop has some really cool, you know, metal bending stuff and great machinery and stuff. And so I was mostly worried about all those machines, you know, but those guys managed to get everything cleaned up and oiled up and dried out. Cool. Awesome. Well, you know, bring us up to date on how things have been going with everybody there since our last interview. You know, at that point, we were in the thick of the pandemic, and you were doing a lot of work remotely. And it's certainly not gone, but how have things changed at Stern as COVID becomes maybe less overwhelming? Yeah, so we just dropped our mask mandate like three weeks ago, something like that. And so their mask, you know, we're mask optional now. But, I mean, we've been up and running. As I said, you know, our production numbers are up higher than they were going into COVID. So, you know, we've gotten pretty efficient. we're still struggling with, you know, like I said, the material shortages. But PD is mostly, I would say that we're, the studio's about 50% there. Most of the guys that are remote are the software team because their development rigs are a bitch to move. And so Mark Guaino, my executive producer, said to me, he goes, if you're bringing these guys back, you're bringing these guys back.
    56:40
    Because he said, you know, I'm not doing musical chairs with all that shit, you know. Yeah, so I said, well, you know, I don't know if we are yet, and they've been pretty efficient. We really kind of, you know, we got the cadence of work, you know, the team meetings and all that stuff. Actually, today, Thursdays, the reason I was late coming on with you guys is Thursdays is the big team meeting day. And so Thursday afternoon, it's like back to back to back to back, you know. So you got, you know, you got Jack and Ellen and, you know, all the way down the line. and everybody's meetings. And so we've got the cadence down, and we know how to do it now. And so, you know, things have been, you know, knock on wood, great. Good. Busy is good. From a hobbyist looking in from the outside, it looks like the two main issues it's facing right now are demand and part shortages. And we talked a little bit about the parts. Let's tackle the demand because it's a fantastic problem to have, But I know that it's a problem for you guys because there's so much demand for your product. Yeah, so there's a lot of stuff to try to deal with that demand because, honestly, we'd love to satisfy it, right? It's a great business problem to have. So it's being attacked in a lot of different ways. Unfortunately, some of it takes a little bit of time, right? So if you want to expand manufacturing beyond the footprint that you have, you need a bigger space. And so we in the midst of finding a bigger space Oh good And then you need to staff that up And staffing manufacturing like staffing anything is you know there all these different layers And so you need at a very minimum you need the leadership layer is really important because that has to be there so that, like, you know, the people that run work cells and deal with all of the different areas, you need to expand that. And so it's a question of, you know, we've studied, we've done a lot of study on, you know, should we go to a couple of shifts? The issue, we don't believe that we would be efficient in multiple shifts at this point. Maybe it's a future date, and so that's one of the things that we could look at. But right now, we wouldn't be efficient. You know, we would be, it might be hurting us. And we have, look, when you ramp up production and you have material shortages and you have to hire a lot of people and bring a lot of new people in and train a lot of people and stuff, I'm very aware of the quality issues, right? So I want to tackle all that stuff too, right? So a lot of it can be done in design, but some of it, you know, it's kind of like we can specify the right screw all day long. We can test the crap out of something, but it doesn't get screwed together right with that screw. You know, and it manages to get out the door. Nobody catches it. Then you have a problem, right? So now the good news is the other thing that we're looking at is there's a lot of conversation out there, and it's wrong that we have fewer people in tech service. We actually have more people in tech service, but we also have tremendous demand for their time. So we're looking at, you know, fixing the call-in line issues and, you know, the people aren't getting a call back or people feel like they're not being updated on parts and stuff like that. So a lot of moving parts. I mean, really, literally and figuratively. You mentioned the staffing, that you're still building more staff. Are you finding it hard to find staff at all, like a lot of businesses are, or has there not been a problem? Yeah, we can get bodies. It's a question of are you getting the right bodies, right? So I think that, and honestly, every time we hire, it doesn't matter what area you hire into, whenever you hire, there's some ramp up for those people to learn, to train. So, I mean, I bristle at the notion that, you know, like when people say that we don't care or that we're being, you know, callous about stuff, that's like the farthest thing from the truth. I can't even begin to tell you because I've said it before, but certainly the guys in my studio are huge drivers of the sort of the performance expectations for the company to some extent. And because we are consumers of the product. So it's kind of like I've paid for my Stern pinball machines with my money. I brought them home. I've opened them up. I literally take notes and I either call over there and congratulate them. Hey, my Deadpool came out of the box and it was perfect. Or I say, hey, my Deadpool came out of the box and I had this issue. Right. So we care a lot and we're trying to fix the problems. We're not going to fix them overnight. And honestly, the demand for the product and the fact that we've had to scale up and that we have these material shortages. You know, when a vendor has a material shortage, sometimes, you know, and it's bit us. It bit us just recently. We don't have adequate time to analyze the substitution, right? That bit us in the ass in a rush, right? So, yeah, you know, on paper it looks like it's the right material. And it's like, oh, man, you know, what do we do now? And so, you know, it's like you're, like, trying to fix a problem on the run, you know, while still trying to satisfy demand and stuff. So, hey, that's the world we live in. We signed up for it. We're in it. We're going to do the best we can. And in this stuff, obviously, people know that this stuff will happen. It's how you respond to it as a company that matters, not so much that it happened. Yeah, where are we with that? I mean, the rush, I think you're referencing the outholes. Yeah, and honestly, you know, Borky, this is no secret. And I told Elliot, I said, you know, let's be truthful. He did a podcast, I think, with the Marco guys. And as I just told the story, I mean, it's like, honestly, we developed most of the game, the entire development cycle of that game, there was no protector on there. And, you know, he's got, I can't tell you how many games, countless games, where he's had a scoop that close to the flippers. I mean, you go back to his old Data East designs, and that existed in those designs. And that was pre-anybody putting a protector on anything, right? So he developed that game, and we don't have a policy that every eject hole, every fuck, there is no policy that mandates that they get a protector, because protectors are a double-edged sword. And protectors are kind of like those dudes that rip their playfields apart and put a piece of plastic on them. It's like, okay, yeah, you're not going to damage the wood. I think your game plays like shit, but okay, you don't have at it. So protectors have been sort of designer's choice, meaning I like the way it feels. I'm getting too many rejections out of the hall. I don't want that, whatever. And so if you notice the promotional photos of the game, the promotional photos that went out, none of them had a protector on them, right? And the community reacted to that. You know, we started getting emails saying, hey, you guys are going to put a protector on this, right? Yeah, yeah. So my fault. I called Borgia and said, hey, make sure you guys put a protector on that game. Okay. 11th hour, it's not any, you know, protector design. So we've done a billion of them. There's nothing exotic about it. In this particular case, the hole for that particular block was smaller than anything he's ever done before. Okay. And when the ball whacks the back of that thing, it comes back and it hits that edge. And it has a lot more energy than when, you know, I mean, I have a very similar design in Deadpool. It's further up play field. The ball has less energy. I never had a lick of a problem on a protector. I don't hear anybody talking about a Deadpool protector problem. You know, very similar design, you know, similar material. That's a situation where the vendor did substitute a material, and we didn't have any test time on it. And honestly, if you look at the specs on the material, I told those guys, I said, I think if we had the right material in there, it wouldn't have survived the fact that the edge is so close to the back of the scoop. I said, I don't buy it for a minute. So here we are, and we've got to fix it on the fly. This isn't the first thing we fixed on the fly. What's interesting is that when we fixed it, then a lot of the guys are going, hey, I can backhand the shot now. And so it actually, as ugly as it is, it actually makes the shot easier. What is the fix, George, just for people who may not know? Yeah, so there's a kit that you bolt on. I believe there's two components to the kit. There's a part, the other problem that they ran into is there's a switch in the trough that sometimes was creating a ball trap, and so the ball would be in there lost. So there's a fix for that, and there's a fix that basically puts a couple of blue rubbers. So that blue rubber material is, it's an energy-absorbing material. It's an elastomer. We'd use it. So it was a standard material at Williams. And I'm the first guy. I did it on Johnny Mnemonic. If I know Johnny Mnemonic, I'm the guy that turned it on edge and put it on a ball guide. And basically, I did that to buy a little bit more space because I had a couple of tight shots on Johnny Mnemonic. And that became a thing, right? Now, the material I used was 316-6 back at Williams. And now it's been adopted by everybody. And everybody uses it in different ways. I myself, I've watched somebody in the building took it all the way down to like an eighth of an inch or something in thickness. And I did that on Deadpool and regretted it. I'll never do that again. But that 316 thickness is fine. The material thing, again, bit us in the ass. The material started coming in really thick. And the people on the line started putting it together just like they always did. So to add insult to injury, if you will, there was some portion of those things with the new design that went out. and the thick material, you know, basically they tightened it as they always do, and the edge of the metal, because the material was thicker than the bracketry was designed for, cut into the material. So now you've got a bunch of guys. I think it was on the Canada podcast. I still have that image, you know. And then, you know, he wrecked me over the coals. He does to everyone. Yeah. What a dick. But the reality was, like, the minute I see this, I'm, like, calling the engineering team going, what the hell is this? And so they would go out to the line and was like, oh, my God, we found a box of these things. So a bunch of people got these. So, you know, so what's the fix? The fix is call Stern, get the free kit, install the kit, and that'll take care of your problem. I'll tell you that I'm looking at some of the aftermarket solutions, if you will. So it's, you know, some of the guys in the business, you know, some of the guys in the aftermarket designed a bunch of stuff. And I was like, okay, I told the guys, I said, buy all that stuff. I want to bring it in and put it in life test. I want to see if it holds up to our life test on things. right? Maybe there's something to be learned there. Maybe not, right? People have been clamoring forever to get Cliffy, the guy who makes those Cliffy protectors, to get hired by one of these companies. Yeah, I'll tell you that in this particular case, what Cliffy does is what, you know, protectors very similar to what we do. In this particular hole, his aren't going to fare any better. But I know there's some interesting elastomer solutions and some 3D printed solutions out there that I've looked at and say, okay, so, you know, we would never do that. We would never a 3D print the thing, but we would mold something if it made sense, and maybe we can optimize that material. I don't know. Yeah. You know, if somebody does something better than we do, we take note and we say, okay, you know, maybe we learned from that. If somebody doesn't, you know, it's like the one thing that we do do is a lot of that stuff, when we have the time to test it, in this particular case, we didn't have a lot of test time on that thing because most of the game was developed without it. When we test it, we test the crap out of it. We'll test it to failure just to see what we learn. Right. Okay, let's shift towards games in general that may be releasing this year and into the future. Normally there are three cornerstone games as well as a few other smaller runs like contract games, vault additions, and things like that that you release every year. So with demand being so high and supply being limited, Stern made a difficult decision to alter the release schedule this year. Can you tell us how that changed your plans for this year and why you made that decision? One of the big drivers was the fact that the number of back orders is so high, right? So there's such demand that you introduce a new title when, in fact, you've got a bunch of people waiting for titles. So, I mean, that was a big driver. There were some other issues. You know, Steve left, and his game was kind of, like, at that point, dead in the water. So you say, okay, you know, what do I do with this? So it's like, okay, so that needs a little bit more time. So it was a combination of things, you know, basically. But I think that the high number of games, high demand for games, the backorders, was a big driving force. Also, the material shortages, we talked about that. So we're really fortunate that the back catalog is so strong and there's such demand for it. And what that does is it allows you to make those kinds of decisions, right? Like you say, okay, I got parts for Deadpools, short parts for Jurassic's. Okay, put off building Jurassic's, build some Deadpools, right? So it's kind of like, you know, it's like you take a look, you know, sometimes there are parts that are common, like Spike 2 stuff, right, that's common. Well, okay, that's in every game. When you're short those, you're making decisions basically across the board. It doesn't matter what title a node board goes into. It's a node board, it's a node board, it's a node board. It's the same thing with a CPU, right? By the end of this year, do you think you guys are going to all be back on track, or do you think there's still potential that this sort of thing could happen? No, I can't speak to, you know, are we going to make a decision to do two games next year as opposed to three. But I think that, I don't know if we'll be caught up, if you will, with the demand. Because the thing about the demand is we've had a string of hits. So it's like I was shocked at the demand for Rush because historically a blockbuster, it almost doesn't matter what you have following a blockbuster. So Godzilla has been a blockbuster. So in my history, like all the way back to Williams, it didn't matter what it was, whether they were video games or pinball machines, if you managed to hit one out of the park, The following game, almost didn't matter that it was a good game or a great game, it went unnoticed because the demand for the previous game basically buried it. And here on Rush, oh my God, the demand has been through the roof. So you say, and I gamble to say that they may be different customers, which is great. You know, we've tapped into two different veins of customers. But, you know, if you've got a bunch of guys clamoring for Godzilla, guess what? You've got a whole bunch of guys clamoring for Rush. So that's an amazing best-case scenario that, honestly, when those sales guys told me, you know, like, as much as I love Rush, I love the band, I love the game, I think those guys did a great job. But I kept referencing, dude, you're on the back end of Godzilla. Are you kidding me? You know, you're not going to sell as many Rushes because there's so much demand for Godzilla. And, wow, was I wrong.
    70:35
    Have you noticed that that's coming from Canada or areas that are super into Rush or is it everywhere? It's just that Rush, you know, Ed Robertson told me, you know, I mean, he said, do you have no idea? And I was like, I guess I didn't. This is a really, really, really popular rock band, right? And I love them, right? I grew up with them. But I just didn't imagine that the demand for it was. So we have a really cool thing about Rush. And it is kind of interesting. I mean, I saw a guy asking, hey, I plugged my game in. What now? Nothing's happening. It was like, honestly, he didn't know to turn it on. So, you know, I'm not making this up. Go to Sir Pinball on Facebook and you'll find that post. You know, there's a bunch of guys telling him, hey, there's a switch underneath the back box. Turn it on, you hoser. Yes. Welcome to Pinball Rush, man. Right, so I think there's a lot of new fans that have been brought in by Rush. Cool. And, you know, we love that. Yeah. How about the new game release schedule impact vault titles, like contract games or new games in the pin line, that sort of thing? Right, so the pin line probably won't get too impacted. You know, I think we're developing something now. Well, we are developing something now.
    71:59
    Here's another super awesome exclusive. because that that's also been a surprising line right jack and wasen did a great job on jurassic park and yeah and so i think that you know you have like what we had always hoped which is a lot of people saying hey you know that's not a bad price point and i want that so i think there's some demand for that private labels that's a different animal i think that private labels you'll see those will most definitely take a back seat too. And it's a hard one because we're being approached all the time. And so it's a question of you got to make a deal that makes sense to make because, A, it's a very expensive proposition. Unless you're picking something, basically Chinese menu, this, this, or this, and you leverage that and it's a little bit of code, a little bit of art, and some support stuff. And that's only one component because when you have an assembly line that's got demand on Godzilla Rush and Bat Catalog, are you really going to interrupt that for private label products? So that you may see less of. That makes sense. You mentioned on a previous show that you have games scheduled out as far as two years or more into the future. Has this delay impacted anything on the licensing side or you had to shuffle around titles in terms of when things are going to get released? So the licensing question, the piece of the licensing question that comes closest to what you just asked is the notion of contracts that need to get extended. So like when we take a contract, you know, we take a license and it may be three years, I don't know, whatever, you know. And in some cases, as frustrating as licensing can be from the standpoint that the demands of each licensor are different, the reality is that it's a business partnership. And so a business partnership is a two-way street. You're going to give me X and I'm going to do X. And at the end, hopefully, we'll both be happy. I'll be happy that your brand helped out our games, made our game popular, made people want the game, relate to the game. And I, in turn, I'm going to make enough product to satisfy the financial component of your brand. And by the way, Stern Pinball plays a bigger role that nobody realizes. Really, we have a blue-chip portfolio of brands. And the reason we have the blue chip portfolio is because our product is so unique and the brands consider that. And so, you know, Marvel basically calls and says, you know, it is cachet. It is brand enhancement. As much as I benefit from Deadpool, they benefit from the fact that Deadpool is represented in a pinball machine. Right. So it's a two way street and you've got to satisfy all the components of that relationship, like any relationship. Right. So I think that the brands, most of them, you know, they live in the world we all live in. So they understand that the pajama guy, the lunchbox guy, the comic book guy, the Zippo lighter guy, they're all struggling to get parts. They're all struggling to get things. So when you call up and you say, listen, I was going to make it now, but I can't make it now. I got to make it then. They understand to some extent. Yeah, we get it. We, you know, yeah, we get it. You know, I'm doing Zoom calls, too. I lived through the pandemic, too. That's good. So, yeah. We've got a bunch of licensing questions, but before we get into that, one quick question. We were talking about the fact that you're only releasing two games this year. Now, I'm curious as far as your coding team goes. Are they enjoying having more time to develop what they have, or are they spending the same amount of time and then going into the back catalog and doing that? Like, how are they dividing their time? Yeah, honestly, if the product we slid, you know, just because you slide it, you know, you don't really take your foot off the gas, you know, because you can't. And so, and not only that, you know, the reality is that you got a, you know, you got a situation where the game is X months in and now it's kind of dead because the designer's gone. So you say, you know, do you really want to like finish that or you want to start over? And so that's a choice where you say, yeah, maybe I don't want to finish somebody else's work. Maybe I'll start over. And so I don't think the coding team is sitting on their hands now. The coding team is, you know, we've grown it a lot. And that's the other thing that people don't realize is that we have grown it a lot. So you have more capacity to, like, usually the extensions to the team's previous product, they usually happen when they finish a game. So you might find, like, you know, Dwight ships Mandalorian, and now he's not peddled to the metal on his next one immediately. And so he may have a little bit of time to go back and say, hey, I'm going to do some monster stuff, or I'm going to do some whatever. And so I think that's how that happens. And I think that the other thing that we do is we take a good hard look at, you know, okay, so now the product's been out there for some amount of time. And this is how people react to it, how they relate to it. And, you know, is there something that we could do to make it better? And what's that going to cost us? And so, and if we can do it, we will do it. You know, sometimes, like, it doesn't make sense, right? A guy's asking for something that, hey, that game's not in demand anymore. It was a long time ago. and it's not even technology we're currently supporting, it's hard to go back and say, I'm going to give this guy art resources, sound resources, and code resources, and I'm going to say put three months into it. That's tough. That's a tough, tough business decision. All right, so we reached out to Facebook. We asked them to ask you some questions, and we got a lot back. And one of them was from a listener named Birdo Moon. He says, will we see a video game theme pin from Stern sometime? I would love a Halo pin. And I think the design George did on Armed and Dangerous could be tweaked into a cool Halo game. And I think Birdo brings up a great point because it seems to me like video game theme pins are one area where Stern could really bridge the gap into a new audience. You're keeping your core demographic happy, but you're also reaching out to new people. Like a game like Call of Duty or Pokemon or Minecraft or Zelda, Tomb Raider. These are licenses that would transition extremely well to pinball. So why haven't we seen exploration by Stern into these titles? Right. First of all, that's a great question because we also get those suggestions all the time. And I bet you that list you just named is like probably some of the most requested. That's your survey monkey. Right. You know, right. That's it right there. So even more interesting is I have lots of friends at Microsoft and they've reached out. You know, they really would love us to do a Halo thing. We've had conversations with the Assassin's Creed guys, and a lot of people have said, man, we would love it if you guys jumped in. And so it's not that it's out of the question at all. I think that one of the things I think we do, and I think we do it pretty well because in spite of whatever opinion people have, I think we're pretty good at saying we're going to make these are the titles because it seems like people want them. So if we had guessed wrong, nobody would want it. Right. Right. So I think we still start with so we, you know, we consider a couple of things. Right. We consider the years mix. So, you know, we probably would not do two music pins back to back. But we consider the years mix. We consider what's the pop culture relevant. Right. And and sometimes it's a real witch's brew of stuff. Right. Because you say, you know, what's sort of in the in the forefront of, you know, what's everybody talking about? And, you know, what are people engaging with? Mandalorian is a classic example. Mandalorian was not planned two years out. Mandalorian was not booked way ahead or anything like that. But all the guys in product development were watching the series, and everybody's talking about it. So everybody's like, dude, we've got to do Mandalorian. We've got to do Mandalorian. And it's like, you know, Dwight was losing his mind. He's like, wait, wait, wait. Best car, best car, best car.
    79:52
    So, you know, we called Jody. We said, Jody, I think you ought to, you know, like, you know, yeah, you know. Because, I mean, Jody comes back and he says, they're doing this, they're doing this, they're doing that. You know, Mandalorian, okay. And it's like, then, like, people start watching the series. And I was like, every day in the studio, okay, I get it, I get it. Mandalorian. Right. Videota, we get it. Videota, yeah. So, there's absolutely no policy or negative perspective about video games. There are questions, like, does the audience cross over? How much of the audience crosses over? Most interesting thing about the audience, and this is something you guys don't know because you guys talk to the same people all the time. The audience is transforming. The audience is changing. The demographic is getting younger, and the demographic is coming from places that don't have the history. They don't have, in some cases, the baggage that comes with the usual suspects. You're talking in terms of pinball fans or in terms of, okay. That would say that the licensing, the nostalgia factor is a lot more shallow than it is with a 50-year-old dude. For sure. And so you have the younger and newer that audience becomes, the more we want to appeal to the things that are relevant in their world. And sometimes cultural relevance is the things that may be culturally relevant to me aren't necessarily culturally relevant to you. and so because our life experience plays a big role in that. And so, you know, my James Bond is perhaps not your James Bond. Right. So it's kind of like, you know, we have to sort of, we have to kind of keep that in mind. So you're saying that we could look forward to marijuana, the pinball game, and our parents, the pinball game coming soon? No, probably not, Chris. Chris, you know what? I think, you remember those, what were those cards called with the gross kids? Garbage Pail Kids. Thank you. Chris, why aren't you doing a line of, you know, like, completely inappropriate?
    82:00
    Christopher Franchi Franchettis. New Age Garbage Pail Kids. Franchettis Pail Kids. You could do Garbage Pail Kids. totally inappropriate. Pinball cards. Look, I just gave you a product idea.
    82:18
    There actually was a Garbage Pail Pinball Pits, Pinball Degenerates beer that just came out. Have you seen this card? I have seen that. I saw it. I love it. Yeah. But I think Chris, that's a product idea for you, buddy. Yeah, I think it was fun with shit trading cards.
    82:35
    Excellent. Totally inappropriate. Just to follow up on that video game question because I am curious about this. Do you think that there is some baggage from the people who are still doing pinball who've been in the industry for so long that they saw the attempt to merge video games with like, for you, you were directly involved in Pinball 2000, Mr. and Mrs. Pac-Man, Street Fighter 2, you know, some titles that might not have been super popular. Is that a hang up for people to say, I don't want to do it? I think, I mean, I don't think so. I think it's just a question of, so when we look at, you know, when we look at what we do, clearly we want to satisfy the audience we have, but we also want to grow beyond the audience we have. We want a new audience. We want a bigger audience. They may become sort of an extension of the audience we have, but we want to grow the business and the audience for pinball. And we want there to be a moment in life where no one ever asks you, do they still make those things, right? So we want pinball to be relevant to the culture and as a piece of entertainment that isn't like a thing from the past. It was like, yeah, you know, it did have a life before the life we know. But so that means growing the audience. That means that if you look at my young guys, like, you know, like the new designers, so to speak, new coders, new designers, nobody's bringing that. I think it's, meaning nobody's like, I think those guys are all about, what's cool? What do I want to make? What, you know, what should we make? And if somebody tomorrow decided that, you know, I'm passionate about making a Halo game and I see it in my head and this is the stuff and they beat down the door, then for sure I'd call the Halo guys and go, hey, I think we want to do this. That's awesome. We don't look at, I don't know what you know about the new guy, but I think Seth Davis, I think he's been a great addition to the company. I think that he brings some fairly fresh perspective. He comes from a really relevant background to sort of the future of our company and how we interact and how we engage and stuff. He's a guy that I talked to him for 20 minutes about Insider Connected, and he was freaking finishing my sentences. He got it. He knew. And so I think that his licensing experience, all of his experiences with Disney and some of the other companies that he worked with make all of these new directions, maybe video game focused or on some products or whatever, they make them very feasible. Cool. George, are there any licenses that CERN really considers just too big to pursue? People talk about Harry Potter a lot, and you mentioned a younger audience, which that would fit. We hear that all the time. But are there times when the licensing costs are too expensive to make it a viable business opportunity? There are licenses that are too expensive to be a viable business opportunity. There's no question. There's also licenses that, for whatever reason, the best way to describe this to you is, I don't know if you remember this, but back in the day, in the height of Michael Jordan's popularity, his agent said, you know, Michael, we're going to work with whatever it was, five brands, eight brands, something like that, right? So, you know, it's Nike, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, you know, et cetera. So it was basically, you know, you're only going to be involved with blue chip brands. The real contrast to this is, I don't know how much you follow basketball, but if you look at all this, all the stuff that like Shaq hawks, you know, it was like Shaq's got everything. Yeah. And Charles Barkley makes fun of him. He says, I'll be checked. He uses half that stuff. He doesn't use that much? Honestly, I don't know. I'm just relaying what I see and hear. But the point is, to your question, there are brands that don't want to be in the space. They don't want to be in the pinball space. Now, that's changing all the time because brands that, you know, 10 years ago maybe wouldn't have talked to us, maybe are knocking on the door now. So it's just a question of we can reach out, you know, to somebody and say, we think it would be amazing to do Harry Potter. But if Harry Potter doesn't think it would be amazing for us to do their pinball machine, then there's not a lot we can do as much as we would love to work on a product like that. Makes sense. So George, you're one of, if not the most important decision maker when it comes to what's coming next for Stern. So licensing and determining what games will get made, it's always fascinated me. How many licenses would you say you guys discuss making over the course of a year when you're brainstorming for the future? And then the ratio of how many you take versus how many you don take Yeah well you be surprised We talk about a lot of stuff There might be 60 things on the list on a given year or something maybe more and stuff happens all the time. The licensing conversation is not a conversation we have once at the beginning of the year and then we don't have it again. First of all, just so you guys know, there's a licensing meeting that happens like once a week. So every Wednesday at 10 o'clock, you're not going to get a hold of me because I'm in that licensing meeting. Interesting. So the conversation has to be, to some extent, a fluid conversation, even though, as you guys mentioned earlier, we make commitments way in advance. But a fluid conversation, meaning that sometimes something can break in. The other thing that's happened, and I've discussed this with Chris, licensors have taken notice of us. So a lot of times it used to be that we would reach out or they would bring their product. But we have a situation now where licensors are literally analyzing the product and saying, I want that team, or I want those guys, or I want, yeah. So we've had, in the past two years, we've had numerous requests from a licensor, specifically for, like, for example, an artist. Because they may not understand pinball, but they see art and they engage with art, and art is familiar to them in their world, right? So they would come back and they would look at a product. They would say, who did that? That looks awesome. You know, and then they'd come back and they'd say, hey, can we have that guy? So we have the same thing with like bands. The bands have, I think I've said this before, and it's not getting any smaller. We've become really derogatory with the bands. So the bands have reached out and said, oh, you know what? I played such and such. And, you know, can I get those guys to make my game? That's cool. Yeah, I imagine that a quick Google search or two from one of these company heads will find, you know, who people like and who they don't. Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of things, right? Sometimes it's just, it's a bizarre feel, right? It's like somebody sees something that resonates with them. Or in some cases, they actually played the game and something clever caught their eye or something made them laugh. And then they basically, they extrapolate their brand into a pinball and they say, wow, you know. So we actually turn down more stuff than you would imagine. I believe it. We look at it and we go, love your stuff, use your stuff, not big enough for us to do something with. Or my filter is, okay, guys, so this is the question I ask everybody is, is this the best? Is this grouping of titles? Is this the best thing that can represent us, that can be us, that we can extend, that we can be amazing with? Is this the best? And sometimes, you know, you don't always get it right. You know, you'd always say, oh, yeah, this, you know, what a lineup. Luckily, we do it right more often than not. You do it right enough that, you know, your games are selling like hockey. So clearly you're hitting the target. A lot of people talk about games and what's in them and what should have been in it. And, you know, we always hear about, you know, how pros are too stripped down and this and that and everything else. Anyway, so you guys have developed a line called the pin, which is like a more affordable stripped down version of a game. Have you ever considered doing sort of an opposite version of that, more of an enhanced collector's line where you expand the bomb out and you give designers like Elwynn the chance to go wild and make it priced accordingly? Now that you see, especially with the way toppers are selling and all that, the money that's out there that people will spend. I'm sure four or five years ago, there was more of a concern. It was like, are people going to pay for this? Is the money out there? I think it's been proven over the past five years that the money is out there. So have you ever considered doing a more glorified line of games? Yeah, so Chris, you played a role in sort of, you know, one of the very first experiments in that area, right? When we asked people to buy a $15,000 Batman, right? And they lined up. They did. So we do talk about it all the time. And the real problem with that question is that the way we currently feed the market with games, games fit different segments of the market. So, you know, while the Pro may not be satisfactory to some people, the Pro is perfectly satisfactory to a larger number of people than you think. And it's very title-dependent. Like, for example, Deadpool Pro, right? I didn't imagine that Deadpool Pro was going to be in greater demand than Deadpool Premium, but it is. And there's people lined up. Even though, like, my personal preference, I'm like, you know, why wouldn't you take the Premium? It's got these other cool features. It's got more flow. It's got a slightly slower bottom. It's like, whatever. It's like, we have talked about exactly what you're talking about. It's a hard thing for us to say. I think the effort would need to focus. So basically, you're taking a team offline from pros and premiums and LEs to work on this Uber pen, right? And that's a tough economic nut to kind of stomach. You know what? The guys down the street, they say that's their stock and trade, right? They say that they don't have those limitations, that they can take forever to make a game, that they put the kitchen sink in. Just standing back, I'm not sure that's a move that works for us. What I'm hearing, George, is the economy of scale is better for you guys than necessarily super limited high cost. Yeah, and you're serving a very small market, you know, as I think, unfortunately, they've found out. You know, you're serving a really small market. So I don't know. We've talked about it. Trust me, you know, it's from a guy that, you know, it's like I believe in you need a limited number of amazing things. You don't need to try to make 25 things amazing because it's a really hard thing to do. And more often than not, you won't do it. So I'm not sure, you know, as we talk about, I think that pin would end up being a lot of gingerbread and less substance. Because I think that I really believe throughout my whole career, it didn't matter what I was designing, the constraints of the sandbox are what make you creative. Right. So when you're forced to work inside parameters, that's when you're creative. You're not creative when you can do whatever you want. You know what? And more often than not, and I've been there, I've seen this so many times in so many different environments where it's kind of like I struggle with the bill of material question all the time, you know, in my own games, right? And so I understand it, and I understand the choices I made. And sometimes I'm not sure the game would have been better, you know, for the choice I could have made. I'm not sure. But I think it ends up being a lot of gingerbread. I wish I could spend more money on gingerbread. I don't know. But usually I'm pretty happy with, like, the play mechanics that generate. What would I change in Deadpool? I don't know. Don't touch it. It's good. Yeah. We love it. Yeah. So it's like, what would I change in Monster Bash? I don't know. Right? I saw what, you know, the guys down the street did, the Chicago Gaming guys, the Monster Bash. I was like, it's okay. It's nice. Is it a better game? I'm not sure. I don't think so. More bells and whistles. I mean, with the little electric thing in the back. Yeah, but is it, you know, it's like the end of the day, are you being drawn to it because of those things again and again, or are you being drawn to it because of the thing I did in 1999? Right. I think all due respect, I love those guys. I wish them the best. I think you're being drawn because of things I did in 1999. Oh, absolutely. So I'm excited in 1999. I shouldn't, you know, not just me and Vince Fonarelli and, you know, Chris Shipman and Kevin O'Connor. I think the things we did in 1999, that's the game.
    94:47
    I think that's why they didn't try to change the code. They didn't try to change anything outside of cosmetic stuff. Right. That's right. The direction of new product and new product initiative is all your responsibility, George. And there's nothing more than Insider Connected that really has just been amazing, I think. Let's jump into that a little bit because I know you had a huge role in getting that into the market. What is your take on how Insider Connected has been going so far for Stern and how it's been received by the community? So it's been going great. I think I've said in interviews before, when I sat down to look at connecting to games, and honestly, you've got to look at this and you've got to say, hey, it's 2022. Isn't everything on the planet already connected, right? because, I mean, it's like there's freaking microwaves that are connected, but yet pinball machines were slow to the party, right? And it's kind of just like when we added the LCD screen. And I say this because I spent some time in the video game business, and it's not about the technology to drive the LCD screen or hanging the LCD screen in the back box. It's about being able to consistently generate the content that goes in the LCD screen. So we were late to the party because we're a self-funded company that basically said, until I have these resources available to me and I can do this, I'm not hanging an LCD screen on the back. So we weren't the first to market, and it didn't bother me. You know, it didn't matter at all, because I soon saw the first to market people struggle to fill that void, right? So I was like, yeah, you know, because I understand that problem. So the connected thing is exactly the same way, right? I said to myself, so what are we going to do that's new and different? I was very influenced by my experience with Xbox and PlayStation. You know, when I was the executive producer of an Xbox and PlayStation team, Xbox was just coming to life, into existence. And so those guys were talking about, you know, we're going to connect these games and you're going to be able to play across the Internet, head to head and all this kind of stuff. Right. So I was building a game in that era. And so I had to connect my game and I saw how transformational that stuff was. So I'd also been exposed to a lot of the coin-operated, operator-focused systems that, you know, like the jukebox guys and the dart guys. And so I said, hey, so if I'm going to connect pinball machines and they exist in all these different environments, basically I need a platform that engages with everybody. And it begins with the very first things, the launch. And by the way, we're about to do another, I'm glad I'm talking to you guys now. Very, very soon you're going to see another big code drop to the insider content that's going to bring a whole new set of features, a whole new level of engagement, both for operators and players.
    97:34
    Another super awesome exclusive. So when we were going to launch Connected, I said, you know what, the very first thing we've got to do is we have to get players to engage with it. And so there's, at the very minimum, you know, it's like just the peace of mind of, you know, download the code, you know, at 2 a.m. and leave the game on, download the code, install the code, and just remove the friction, right? And just the service features are worth it, even if you don't want to participate. And there's also lots of cool new server features coming down the road. So the idea was, when can I get the company to give me the resources to develop this program? And the program is massive. It's like freaking massive because the company went all in and said, hey, we believe in the vision. We're going to let you do it. And we realize it's going to take you a year and a half, two years to roll all this stuff out. I kid with the guys inside. I said, there's a bunch of people that we're just hiring right now. I just hired a technical producer. It's someone from the community, by the way. All she does is focus on Insider Connected. So there's an entire Insider Connected group of people that are coming to be inside the company, both on the marketing and sales side and on the product development side to support, develop, and take the product to the next step, right? Because there's so many cool things that we intend to do with it. We want it to operate in all those different spaces that the machines operate in. So we want people engaging with it at home. I wish I could share with you all the cool stuff that people are sending me about interacting with Connected. There's a group of guys that independently, they didn't know they were sending me this email, but several people sent me emails saying, my kids have never cared about these pinball machines until you showed them achievements. And now they don't even play for score. They're playing for achievements. And honestly, as much as that made me smile, I thought to myself, of course, that's the world they know. They're probably walking around going, wait, you mean pinball machines haven't always had this?
    99:32
    Because they don't know any better. So look, I'm blessed that the company has entrusted me with this without, like, I think had I been anywhere else, I would have had to create this incredible, like, matrix of here's when the money is coming back and all this kind of stuff. And the company did force me into that filter. They said, hey, we got to connect the pinball machines. You're talking about bringing a bunch of service features, not only for customers, but also for operators. You're talking about creating quests that operators can use to drive traffic to their locations. You're talking about creating quests that Stern can use to highlight different games. You're talking about a bunch of player engagement features that will allow players to geek out on the notion of the hobby of pinball beyond actually standing in front of a game. And eventually, you know, where we're going, you're going to scan in any connected pinball machine in the world, and it's going to hit your wallet, and you can pay for that pinball machine directly, just like you pay for your cup of coffee. So it's this entire ecosystem of stuff that addresses everything from Stern wants to highlight a game. There's a really cool feature coming that I'll give you guys an exclusive preview on.
    100:45
    It's another super awesome exclusive. Yeah, so, you know, I came up with this thing, Godzilla Destroys a City. Right, so Godzilla Destroys Chicago. Godzilla Destroys Detroit. And when those quests come out, the only way you're going to be able to get stuff associated with that is to hey, Godzilla's in Chicago this weekend, play in Chicago this weekend, right? And that's the only way you're getting that stuff, right? Achievement. Yeah, and we're going to do it globally. And, of course, there'll be things like, you know, these 12 cities in this period of time, whatever. There's just so much cool stuff coming. You know, Godzilla destroys Milwaukee. Godzilla destroys whatever. Paris, you know. So I think we've just scratched the surface on Insider. I'm blessed that the company has let me run with that ball. and now we're extending the reach. And so, yeah, people are digging it. And I love, I get numbers weekly. Look, just the reach into statistics that is going to allow us to tune games in a way where it's no longer anecdotal, right? I'm using global data. I'm parsing that data so I can look for trends. I can say, you know what? Games in the Pacific Northwest perform differently than games on the East Coast. I can understand trending. I can understand scores. There's a tournament system coming. I mean, I could go on and on and on and bore you for three hours on this. It's not boring for us. No, no, no. There's way cool stuff. There's, like, eventually you're going to see some head-to-head stuff. I mean, it's just, like, really cool stuff coming. That is cool. I think that it's become, you know, I kid that, hey, you know, five years from now, there's going to be a bunch of guys around a building with insider-connected business cards. It's going to be like a thing. like a division of the company Gary it's funny because I was telling you guys I talked to Seth when we were interviewing candidates for Seth's position I talked to Seth for you know 10 minutes and he totally got it he's like oh yeah you can do this I was like I told Gary Gary's phones you can do a thing with phones my kids have phones they like phones are good is Gary willing though to take the leap Totally.
    102:59
    Yeah, because honestly, Gary, you know, I love Gary. And Gary, honest to God, Gary wrote the check. You know, Gary and Dave basically wrote the check. They just said, okay, you think it's cool? All right.
    103:12
    There's not, and I told people, I said, man, there's not too many places where somebody can write me that check. Well, you've also earned that respect, George. I mean, over the years, you've been shown to be someone who can take that and make it happen, you know? I don't know what you're trying to call a pinball machine yet, that's all.
    103:31
    So we've got two questions from listeners about Insider Connected. Casey Wheeler wants to know about deeper functionality. You kind of touched on that, but there's a lot of possible features that haven't been widely seen at this point. And kind of going more into what's next and when we might see it. And then we have a question from Patrick Marino. And he wants to know if there's an update that will allow Insider Connected home buyers to not have to log in every time. To just leave it and log in. Right. So that's coming. It's called Home Team.
    104:03
    And so the Home Team feature, you're going to see it very soon. And it's like the best way to describe it is, you know how when you're watching Netflix, it says who's watching? It's very similar. Cool. So you just go to your profile. Yep. They're going to say, you know, it's me. And it's really cool. the guys came up with we've got some really slick functionality for like when Franchetti shows over your house and he wants to play on your game but you know he's not like part of your home team right so you know it allows you or you can make them part of your home team you can add you can add them to your home team but but you know it's like we we did get the request for we have a lot of families we also have a lot of guys that just hey I don't want to pull my phone out every time I want to play pinball but I don't want to miss out on the achievements. And Robertson calls me and he goes, I don't know if I can ever play pinball another way. He says, I can't believe I just had a game and I forgot to log in. I just had an epic game.
    105:03
    So yeah, so the more functionality, right? Operators are going to have a dashboard that's going to allow them to do a lot of things, but, you know, look into their machines, set up quests, do all this kind of stuff. They're going to be able to see trends and their locations, You know, machines are still on Tuesday afternoon. They're overbooked on Thursday night, whatever. So it's coming, but you have to be patient with me. It's so big. Oh, that's what she said.
    105:31
    There's going to be drops. You know, you're going to see this. You're going to see leaderboards. You're going to see home team. You're going to see, you know, it's sort of a sequence of events, if you will. We're going to try to establish a cadence to do monthly drops. And I don't know if we can ever hit that. You know, it's sort of a back of the envelope goal for us. And the reason is, so when we do a drop, and I've cautioned the team about this. I said, you know, guys, when we do a drop, you know what happens is people start interacting with this and we're flooded with things we did right and things we did wrong. So we're going to have to fix some stuff. And you got to be real about that, right? You can't say, I got four-week sprints on content that, hey, I just dropped a bunch of content. and some of it's buggy or some of it's not working right or some of it could be better or some of it, you know, it's like whatever, or people are inventing new things that are extensions of that, of the thing you just dropped and calling you up and going, hey, it'd be really cool if you guys did that. It's like comment like you just had, right? So we've been taking those comments and I'll give you a perfect example. When we first set out to do this, I said, I don't know what's going to resonate. We just have to be prepared to zig in that direction, right? So it's like when people start coming back to us and going, just as a pure experiment, We knew we were going to be looting leaderboards. We set up leaderboards at a couple of shows. And all of a sudden, oh, my God, leaderboards became a thing. It was like we're like my inbox bombarded. You guys got to do leaderboards, leaderboards, leaderboards. Okay, I guess, I guess. So I told the team, I said, hey, it's what I said, right? It's like we dropped this thing, and all of a sudden we thought they're going to want this. We're like, no, no, they don't want that. They want this. Okay, all right, go in that direction. So a lot of the cadence of development, it's got to kind of take into account, you're going to break shit, you're not going to do things right, so you're going to have to fix it before you drop a new thing. And you're going to have feedback from the community about what works, what doesn't work, and you're going to want to fix it, extend it, whatever. I mean, it's an ambition to say, we're going to do a drop every four weeks. And it's an ambitious and motivated team of people working on this thing, both inside and outside. And they want to do it. They keep telling me, and to their credit, they hit their marks all the way along. Even when COVID happened, we put the entire project on the shelf. And the team said to me, we need to spend another two weeks and button this up so that we can pick it up in some effective way when you say go again. And we did that. And at the time, I remember thinking, ah, the world's going upside down. Do I need to spend this money on another two weeks of development to button this shit up? I am so glad I did because when the business didn't wane and we had the ability to pick it up again, you know, six months into COVID, we said, hey, let's turn the dial. Let's flip the switch on Insider again. And so, you know, I call everybody. All right, we're back on. Let's go. And the reason that they're telling me, oh, we can do this cadence tonight, I'm skeptical, but they were on the money. They hit all their marks. And what they did is, I mean, I'm just the guy who dreams shit up. They made it work, and Guidarelli gets a huge amount of credit for that, Erica Fromm. I mean, those people carried. They did the heavy lifting. Like I said, I had conversations, doodled on the whiteboard, dreamt shit up. Mark did a ton on the spike systems, right? But now he's kind of taking point on Insider Connect. Yeah, Mark's the studio technical director, so he basically runs the software group and does a lot of things. But he loves the system side, And so, you know, he's very focused on the system side. Just so you understand, Insider had three teams working on Insider. And the idea was to not impact the development teams. So, you know, that's how we managed to ship all those games while we did Insider, right? So the guys working on the teams, they were basically getting updates on, this is what we're doing, fellas, but they weren't doing any work on Insider. So there was an internal team doing the game side stuff, an external team doing the server side stuff, and a user interface, user experience team doing all of that stuff. And me running around like a crazy man between all three groups, right, to kind of bring it together. But, yeah, so, I mean, that's how it happened. Cool.
    109:46
    Joe LeMire asked, who I happen to know very well, considering that Gomez himself made one for Pinball 2000, and why have they not implemented a feature where you can lift the play field and the balls don't fall out? Yeah, that's funny. That's great. It's a great question. And my engineers right now, because I've been hounding people for this for some time, one of the biggest challenges with this is that the geometry of the stern trough is challenging relative to doing that. And so we have a way to do it, but it's not clean enough for me. It's just kind of like it's too kludgy for me. And so they've gone around and around on it a couple of times because they've said, if you let us redesign a trough, I'll let you redesign a trough. But, you know, it's like now it becomes a big plan because you have to decide when you're switching over. And honestly, I want it to be I would love it to be backward compatible because people are going to want to add the feature. So I am very aware of it. It is a pain in the ass and it is embarrassing every time somebody forgets to do it and all the balls come crashing out of the game. And so it's like the best way to describe it to you is if I took the Willy system and put it on the games as it is, they wouldn't work. It's not rocket science, but it's one of the things that I have to say, this engineer is going to work on just this. And honestly, let me put this in context for you. While I have 50 people in the studio, I have some extended enterprise of people that support us on the outside, consultants, et cetera. But the reality is that I run that studio with five mechanical engineers. Okay, so, you know, wrap your head around that, right? When you think about the number of games, the complexity of the products in the games, and all of that, right? So, you know, I might have three times, four times, you know, at this point, it's probably five times the number of software engineers, right?
    111:38
    You've got to focus on what's important, the most important. Yeah, you know, you do. And honestly, Tom Copera, my old friend and partner on so many of my games, he was my project engineer on Corvette, my first game. I'm joining him on all my early Willie games, NBA Fast Break. And him and I have worked together since he started. He was a co-op in engineering school when I was running a video game design team at Midway Games. And I was 27 years old or something, and he was 20, whatever, 22. And he's been with me ever since. And we've moved almost job to job. We haven't been at every job together, but he was the project manager on Mandalorian, for example. But I brought him on. He's the director of mechanical engineering. And so he's been a huge instrumental in taking a huge load off of me and extending his group. He's growing his group, you know, so it's, you know, I don't know, he's got six guys now or whatever it is. And so his mission in life is, you know, let's make this stuff more reliable. You know, let's do appropriate testing. Let's grow the group to support all of the company's enterprise. And so, you know, prior to that, it's kind of like we had a lot of focus on the game projects, but we didn't have a big picture view on, like, hey, here's all the moving parts that the mechanical engineering group needs to address. And I think, you know, when we talk about the quality thing, it begins in design, right? It begins in design. And that first check is not with the game designer. It's with that mechanical engineer, the project engineer on the team, whose responsibility it is to bring the game designer back to Earth and say, no, you're not going to do that. Or, yeah, I'm not doing it that way, but here's an option. Here's an option. And the best game designers are game designers that learn from that experience and operate inside those parameters, right? Going back to sandbox, the size of the sandbox. The sandbox makes you creative, right? So the sandbox says, no, you're not going to do that with three coils and a gear train and 25 lights. You get this. Reasonable. And then let's talk about it. So anyway, I think part of our success has allowed me to surround myself with guys I trust that can execute on the vision. And I have my staff meeting every Monday, 3 o'clock. I meet with those guys. We touch base. What's going on with every team? What are the dramas? What are the quality issues? What's everything? And what are we doing this week? What's the sprint look like for every one of those guys? What are you doing this week? And that's my staff, right? It's my management staff. You know, it's Chuck Ernst running the computer graphics group. It's Mark Wehner running the studio. It's Tom on mechanical. It's Chuck Blake on electrical. you know it's Guido running the software team it's Greg Ferreris running the ARC guys and that's the team that runs the studio it runs you know for all intents and purposes product development the games that you guys know and love to be a fly on the wall of that meeting would be really fun yeah I mean it's like you know it's sometimes that meeting's a lot of fun sometimes that meeting's a lot of problems and that's going to do it for the first part of our two part interview with George Gomez of Stern Pinball. Be sure to tune in to episode 31 for the exciting conclusion and the winner of our contest. If you'd like to reach us, you can do so at superawesomepinball at gmail.com and also see our Facebook page, Super Awesome Pinball. The show is produced by Asshat Radio Productions and copyright 2022. See you next time, everybody.
    115:10
    Coming up next, the adventures of Walter Jeffrey, the French Bulldog. I'm not feeling very well. Walter, okay, that's enough. No.
    115:29
    Walter, you're getting me in trouble. Walter, stop embarrassing me. Thank you for watching!