If he is/was sporadically paying some rent, the landlord might allow him to stay until a new tenant is found.

I was under the impression that part of the Pintasia deal was to get John current on his rent.

The rent was current, I'm out a lot of money, and the game was no where close to 90 or 95% complete as I was told. There is no deal. When you try to help and are lied to, I am gone. As far as doing something in Pinball in the future, sure love this hobby. Right now I am licking my wounds and trying to figure out the best way to proceed from here. I wish everyone luck no matter which way they go on this legal suit because 4 years and what we finally got to see is absolute bull poop

Sorry you got sucked into the black hole JPop created. Sorry you lost more money on top of what you were already out.

Rai its no ones fault but my own, however this was gonna go on and on until we saw the books and what state the machines were really in. Now its fair game and people won't hesitate to do what they have to do because we all know exactly what he was doing for 4 years.........

You should talk to the WOOLY guys about maybe getting that game into production. That one is at least 95% finished for sure.

Yep.

aapunch10.JPG

So what are you willing to share about your investigation... since you seem to be the only ones who may have some true insight into the going forward state of the corp?

Seriously. Go to the twin cities and meet Scott. Play his prototype. You will be conquered.

A huge plus 1 on this!

Bill, if you really think that you want to try your hand at the pinball business, I'd recommend getting in touch with Scott at Riot Pinball to see if something could be worked out to try and get this pin into production.

The pre-order model just wasn't going to work here. But I bet they'd be able to sell a decent number of these (in line with what Spooky did with AMH at least) if they could be built prior to payment.

Just a thought.

I would love to see WOOLY go into production but I really hope they do not come anywhere near getitng into bed with Pintasia. Aweful idea on so many levels.

I've talked to a bunch of people and I've shifted my opinion on Bill. He seems like the real deal. Maybe some good could come from all this if he's willing to front the production run on WOOLY. I bet people would buy it if it was ready and for sale rather than a pre-order.

To me, as an outside observer, this is the most telling post in this entire, crazy, long, impossible to keep up with thread.

Jpop told WC that the game was almost done when, in truth, it was 50% at best. So, even at this very late hour, he continues to lie about where things are. This shows that this isn't just a "bad businessman" situation. It shows the guys true nature. I am also aware of other things that were going on behind the scenes that demonstrated John's questionable ethics. But, this shows, to me at least, that John has no ethics and deserves no respect.

Jaz

I am SURE people would buy WOOLY if it was produced and no pre-pay and wait, but I do not see good things unless Pintasia is willing to just front the cash to get the games made and stay out of the way. I also think that if team Riot gets creative they will find a way to get this game done and not have to get in bed with a money man that is obviously looking for a cut.

If he fronts the money he deserves a cut. Seems fair.

Haven't heard from the Riot crew as to production yet, just offering up an easy scenario for two pinball junkies to help each other.

Today i got my WOZ ECLE #641,amazing,amazing machine,should have bought that right away instead of supporting JPOP,in retrospect i feel so stupid..WOZ is a million times better than what JPOP's AIW could have been.
Just imagine the balls Jersey Jack has and how dedicated this man is/was(woz).
WOZ is a pinball on steroids,it is crazy beautiful...colorchanging leds...fat ruleset...bizar quality all the way...first lcd in pinball...certificates... autographs..amazing..
And people are seriously complaining on the web about WOZ? neh...the lights are too bright..something broke...blah blah..
This guy delivered,tweaks are common,no pin is perfect.
With my $6000 loss on JPOP,i have a new look on pinball and it's community.
Jersey Jack is a superhero,what is the BOM on this machine?it must be $10000???and he is presumably selling them with losses?LOL
And this shines a new light on JPOP for me? he has fucking nothing to show??
Look at Jack you STUPID FUCK! you did nothing! NOTHING!?
ASSHOLE FUCKFACE POPADIUK! (see you in 24 hours bey pinside!)

Ignorant.

Anyone who is going to invest in a company and put up tons of capital to get games actually built are "obviously looking for a cut."

The line from JPOP to any potential "White Knights" about coming to his shop and drinking some tea lol...What the hell's in that tea???

Psilocybin.

I hate to say it, but you're in good company. Sounds like everyone who's ever tried to help John.

Hopefully you're the last to try.

What a sad statement. And even worse when we know that John sees himself as a victim in all this.

And deserves that cut too. Can we please stop looking for people who want to do things "for the love of pinball"?

Sounds great, but it's a ton of f***ing work, and a lot of time and/or money, and frankly I don't trust or have faith in anyone who's not figured out a plan to make it beneficial for them. Because without that you have someone who's probably inexperienced, naiive, and likely to just bail out when it becomes too much of a headache.

That's not some kind of subtle shot at Bill either, he was smart to drop out.

I'd have way more trust in someone who came in like a business man, said here are my terms, this is my %, if you can work with that then let's get this done together.

I would love to see JPop go on Sharktank and have them give him a deal! Then we'd see what suckers really are!!!

well of course I would expect he would be looking for and deserving a cut, but I think he is possibly one of the worst people to get into bed with at this stage.

This Jpop deal was aweful from the start, he has people on the Pintasia team with serious potentially criminal background from their recent past, and I think he is now caustic espesially given all the continueed secrecy when he was trying to get MG proto alive. Best case scenaio is a completely silent investor. If he wants to reach out and try to put together a deal then great for him, but best case is to keep it completed behind the scenes as it wont do any good to have the PIntasia name on any future project IMO.

My point is I think there are likely better deals for Riot than having anything even remotely involving Pintasia or someone looking for a large cut. Granted, maybe they are interested in selling the whole thing off and letting someone like Pintasia give it a crack on moving it to produciton. There is not a much more deserving game to see come to light and I would love to see team Riot bring it all to reality.

You may be the only person who can spell this.

Libel is taken very seriously by the courts.

no joke. a friend of mine had to spend $25k in legal because he was sued for libel for calling someone a "pirate" because that person was bootlegging his material and selling it on ebay. Yes, that makes about as much sense as how it reads. Point is, gotta be careful what one says.

If WOOLY is still $8k in this theoretical scenario, it's going to have the same problem it had during the pre-order attempt: Price. WOOLY sells at $6k...Spooky price. Not $8k.

Yeah, $8k is a hard sell. I do think that WOOLY could reasonably sell for $1k more than AMH though. Better theme.

If he wants to sue me then he is throwing more money away. I clearly said "potentially" as from what I can see nothing is proven yet, but even the accusations against some of the Pintasia team are enough of a red flag to steer clear IMO.

It still amazed me how that was all glossed over in this whoel saga.

I think unfortunately that is where the math breaks down. The BOM is obviously much higher on WOOLY than AMH so the numbers may not ever be able to work out.

Mr Popadiuk's arrogance (by not filing for bankruptcy) could be very helpful. And, to be blunt, let's not forget that he 'married up'. That is, his wife might be rich, and is fully implicated in this case.

Thus, although my base case is to get no money from this pond scum, I might be lucky Also, tomorrow's hearing might (tbc) result in a default judgment against Mr & Mrs Popadiuk and Zidware. Awesome.

I guess I'm just saying that it would be nice if Mr Ploppy's incompetence works in my/our favour for a change. Go Team Zane!

It's my opinion that WOOLY is impossible to make/sell with the current design.

$8k is just really expensive. Spooky is proving that there's a way to build limited and cool pins for $6k (AMH maybe doesn't have the art polish, but Rob Zombie will, and licensed music to boot).

There are some games that are that much, but they have some extra things going on. WOZ and Hobbit have full RGB lighting systems, full color LCD screens with high quality animation, lots of licensed sounds and original music, etc.

TBL has the same kind of stuff, with a cool wide screen full color display. 26 songs, etc.

WOOLY has the old LED DMD. I don't recall the lighting being RGB when I've played it, someone correct me if I'm forgetting. As of last time there was no music yet. It's just not quite there to play with the big boys at that price point. And, to make this vaguely on topic, Riot doesn't have the (now utterly ruined) pedigree and rep that John was able to leverage into his asking prices.

I get that WOOLY has 6 flippers etc. It's a bit of a kitchen sink design, for better or for worse, that stems from it being a real world creation of a virtual table, where BOM isn't a consideration. IMHO the design and BOM need to be adjusted to make it realistic.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not a customer at these price points, and I could be projecting my own biases.

Hilton, this is the way things work. If you want an iPhone, you need money behind it to develop it and put it in production. Things like an iPhone don't just happen spontaneously (nor would a pinball machine like Wooly).

I know you want Wooly, so why should you object to someone getting behind it and putting it in production? Unless you are going to be able to foot the bill yourself (John killed the prepay model for start-ups) so it need backing, either a loan or someone with some money to invest.

This idea (a wealthy spouse) has been proffered many times before, including years ago when people were assuring everyone JPop didn't need the deposit money to live on.

I think it has been fairly well determined that the wealthy wife idea was just a myth supported by no evidence of any kind. Best I can tell from what we've seen she's no better than JPop.

I'd echo your thought's but I don't want to curse, but I agree 100% about John, I told him last year around this time "John, you have nothing to show us so in my mind you have done nothing in all this time"

however, I seriously doubt the BOM of WOZ is all that much, it's wood cabinets and LCD what would that all cost a few hundred for the external wood, legs, back box etc.. toy house pop bumpers, magnets, flipper (etc..) seriously how much do you think these cost in bulk? Maybe $5 per magnet, maybe $6 per pop bumper, $20 per flipper assemble?

Wolly over $7K is a non starter.

I feel it's more complex or feature rich than AMH but not drastically more.

Honestly, Bill doesn't deserve statements like the above directed at him, Pintasia or any of his work.

He did not owe anyone anything. He took a stab at saving the project, he's not going to advertise all the details of what he was doing while he was in the evaluation stage (that continued until he dropped the project).

Bill exposed the 95% lie of JPop and spent a lot of money to get a prototype out to the public for all to see. I think Bill did a great job, I don't know what he spent evaluating the project but what he did was worthwhile. I never felt he was obligated to reveal any private data.

So what if one of his staff members had some sort of legal issue (honestly, none of us are privy to the details of what was going on), I see no reason to drag that lady through the mud on allegations and I don't believe Bill should be found guilty by a combination of association and speculation. I have a staff member who had a DUI years ago working for me: does that mean I have a problem with alcohol?

I for one would have no problem with Bill if he ever is associated with a pinball startup. Heck, that would lend a ton of credibility in my eyes to the project to have him associated.

Getting that crap prototype (or whatever you want to call it) together was a miracle. Good work on that Bill. Thank you.

I want to second that comment. Bill did a great thing trying to help Jpop, and moving things along. Not many people can claim to have produced progress in this debacle, but Bill and the great guys who helped him get MG out there did just this. Huge respect for that. We now know much more about Zidware, MG etc than we did, and in a way it's helped get closure on the issue. At least in terms of getting a machine from Popadiuk. No-one can dispute now that that ain't gonna happen.

you need a better comparison...

If you are in the business of serving alcohol and you hire the alcoholic I would question your judgement and be effect would steer clear of future business dealing with you, that is for sure.

It appears there were all sorts of shady things going on even post pintasia involvement. Let's not forget so quickly that they were trying to get everyone to sign away all legal rights on one of the most lopsided contracts even seen in the pinball world. None of it passed the smell test and that alone is reaosn for any other start up to steer clear even if an angel comes along.

I do not object to whatever that team decides to do, but would tell them they should be more than careful in this situation. IF they were ever approached, I have a feeling it would not work out the best based on this recent past history of Pintasia.

If there were a ton of folks wanting to fund Wooly, it would have funding by now. I'm not saying it does not deserve it, but there are very few investors out there looking to fund a pinball start-up. It seems Bill took a shot at zidware to see where its was, and if he would get his machines, ever. He took an aggressive approach thinking maybe with his business expertise, he could salvage something. I think he was crazy to try, but I admire crazy. He obviously found that was the not case, and walked away -- like a good businessman would after looking under the covers and seeing that there is nothing of substance there.

Others have already commented on your comments about his team, and it would be up to Scott/Riot to decide if they had concerns with that or not. While some may not agree or like the way Bill introduced pintasia and how he handled the zidware thing (and I suspect Bill would do things differently with 20/20 hindsight), I'm not sure I would make a leap that says having pintasia involved in a project is going to be viewed as big negative to most in the community. in the end, he did zidware buyers a favor in getting the truth of the state of the machines out there.

As far as wooly. I agree that RGB LEDS and a color display would make the price point more justifiable, especially given Scott's artistic skills. The reality is while the cost to the BOM of switching over might be minimal (well, depends on if the CPU they are using can handle it), the development of all new animations, in color, and potentially larger screen, is significant. I'm sure Scott has considered it, but may not want to be putting that kind of effort into it if he does think it will make a difference in making the project fly.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. His head of finance is appearing in a video ONE MONTH before Bill's takeover plan, for an obvious investment scam/ponzi. She's billed as the manager of BC for a company that the BC securities and exchange has issued a warning for. That says either a) Bill knows and doesn't care, or b) Bill didn't know, because he didn't do his homework. Either way, you're going to trust your money with her?

For the work he did and money he spent he deserves some appreciation, but if you ignore the red flags his relationship with this person represents it's to your own peril.

Q: What's the quickest way to become a millionaire?

A: Start with an 8-figure net worth, and invest in a pinball company.

I'm not in to JPop for any money, I don't need to "feel better". You do realize down votes means folks don't agree with you. You also should read and follow the many requests to not repeat yourself, again, one more time, repeatedly. Pushing the "ignore" button felt really good.

agree 100% and I am continually amazed that smart people like tigerlaw are willing to ignore or overlook these huge flags.

Q: How do you make a million dollars in pinball?

A: start with two million dollars

rd.

Actually, some of us took the 20 minutes out of our day it took to become privy to all the details of exactly what type of legal issues his staff member was/is involved in. If you choose to remain ignorant of the facts, you can't claim that everybody else is ignorant too simply because you didn't take the time to verify.

In fact, I can't believe some people are so bad they would actually flat out say they would hand thousands of dollars to a known ponzi schemer, and not see anything wrong with that. Mind boggling, but at some point you just have to laugh.

Well they never even got to the point of asking for additional deposit money, so it's kind of a moot point. Bill could have easily removed her and replaced her if they had decided to move forward with the project, and in my opinion most likely would have, but with the game evaluation going as poorly as it did, there was no need to bother with that or even address people's concerns about it.

Can somebody just give me an update on how his dog is doing so I can drain this thread?

About 90-95% done