So the idea here is to "pay" people for designing mechs and interesting layouts by giving them one free game once they've been developed? Then Heighway takes these and produces re-skinned games in quantities of hundreds or thousands? In the process you're having a team of unpaid QA/QC testers debug your platform and provide additional IP for you to use?

Seems like a raw deal for everyone but Heighway. Advancing the hobby and industry is well and good but relying on volunteers in this fashion smells off to me. Even interns get paid.

I can see where both sides of the fence could benefit from this sort of arrangement. I can also see where Heighway would be putting in minimal effort and getting excellent dividends and the people doing the design work get the short end of the stick.

If this "think tank" has an exclusive agreement with Heighway it seems like a very slippery legal situation as well, in my limited experience. Will these exclusive designers be "employees"? Will their out-of-pocket expenses be tax deductable? Are they going to buy in as part of a "club" to avoid the employee problem? What sort of legal and tax status will this organization have? Would designers have the option to bring designs to other manufacturers, or will they forfeit that when their IP was released for prototyping? Will they forfeit that as soon as a Heighway system is used in the development of their ideas?

Also, as it's relevant- Patents in the US now go to the first to file. It doesn't matter who came up with the idea. Just something to be cognizant of when sharing this kind of thing with a company that is looking to profit from ideas like yours.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing, but I would have to see a lot more than some posts on an internet forum before entering an arrangement like that.

Very much this. It also seems like a bid to get the large(r) pinball crowd in the US to participate in a "North American" project with more accessible manufacturing and shipping. John seems like a good guy, but are these participants they're looking for really going to risk being financially and legally tied to a UK corporation by way of a hobbyist group that's run by a guy in Nova Scotia and may or may not be any sort of legal or corporate entity? Good luck pursuing any kind of international claims or grievances. This group definitely, 100%, no question has a business interest in profiting from your ideas and in fact this is their primary business? This is a group that has previously hired actual pinball industry designers that have since left the company under unclear (to me) circumstances?

I might be off base, but I'm a skeptic by nature. I'm encouraging anyone reading this to do their due diligence as well. Aurich, I get your points as well and I agree 100% that it could be worth it to some people to just get their ideas out there. Pardon if I'm also skeptical of your take on it due to your position as an Heighway contractor with a good shot of profiting personally on future art packages developed for these hobbyist-developed machines.