As long as his wife is willing to let him toil away while she covers the nut, then yeah i could see games rolling out years from now. That is likely the only outcome other than complete failure.

I've concluded it is naive of both him and us to think that the day after he has a finished prototype he can start production. There will be a prototype phase, which for games like Full Throttle and Lebowski, and MMR, took close to a year. So we'll have to factor that into things.

But we're not even at the prototype phase yet. So, I think we're back to hoping MG prototypes show up at Expo '15, and maybe final games show up a year later for customers.

The slower pace of posts and decreased vitriol appears to show we have reached the final stage of grief over the loss of our money and faith in Zidware - acceptance.

We seem to cycle through these stages as every once in a while John gets our hopes up that things are different. But then when end up right back to where we started.

I think the difference now, is we've gotten a much better picture in recent weeks/months of where exactly things stand, and why things are sitting unfinished.

No amount of polished artwork can hide the huge glaring things yet to be done with the games, and that they are nowhere close to being delivered to customers despite how finished the artwork is.

for some seeing a Jpop machine, with it's lines and curves and art, is like Homer Simpson seeing a pink frosted Donut, they just can't resist it.

It is pretty hard to resist and I did post on his facebook asking for information just to see what I could get. I am not stupid enough to give this guy money however. I like pinball and I wont sell the ones I have but the idea of giving 8-9-10 grand for a pinball right now is stupid, for me. I could buy a motorcycle for my son to ride so we could ride together or take my family to Hawaii or remodel my bedroom and bathroom or many other things. A pinball machine will most likely sit there. I am the only person who plays pinball in my family and I have no friends who play so they all get boring to me after a while.

It seemed like a good idea at the time

More stupid than putting your son on motorcycle?

Maybe, but there is now a private Facebook page for the owners. They no longer have to publicly communicate their frustrations to each other in front of everybody here. I am actually glad that they have that venue to talk in private without us all pouring fuel on the fire.

Did I miss something juicy?

LOL

Chris

I went back and re-listened to this interview of JPop yesterday (which was posted on Pinside months ago) because I remember him saying some odd things in it. With a little hindsight mixed in, it seems to reveal what happened and why he is stuck 4 years later:

Part 1:

Part 2:

He basically thought the big suppliers (many of them Stern’s) would just make him backglasses, cabinets and playfields in small quantities, which means he never contacted them BEFORE he took people's money. It appears the project went sideways right from the get-go. He should have just given everybody’s money back and re-grouped. Instead he took deposits for other games to try to pull it all off by himself.

He said it took him 8 months to make his first playfield. If it took him 8 months to make the playfield, just imagine how long EACH part will take. How long will it take him to finalize the ramps, for example?

The other big problem is that he sees it a non-profit project rather than a business. (Sound familiar?) That is why John sits there taking forever without a care in the world. He looks at this as a gift to the world of pinball, not a company making products that people paid for. He expects those who come on board to work with him to do the same, yet he keeps billing Zidware as a company.

Here are some quotes if you don't want to listen to the nearly hour long interview:

“When I started (Zidware), I didn’t really give thought to everything that would need to be done, because you’re excited, and we’re going to do a game, and all of a sudden it’s like, Oh, there’s no cabinet! Oh there’s no, you know, power supply! Oh, how’s the playfield? Oh, where are these brackets going to come from? Oh, we can’t buy that part. And now you have to design a game, and then figure out how to get it engineered, build it, the platform, cabinet. How’s the artwork going to be done? How are you going to print it.”

“The pinball playfield for example, took us eight months, from start to finish to get it all engineered where the people that DO make pinballl playfields would have had me one back in two weeks.”

“We’re doing it to make pinball better, the community better, and so, it’s definitely not for personal gain.”

“We’re really trying to keep pinball strong in our little way, and try and have a business model that works.”

He is going to ride one because I have one. If I make him take the class and let him ride only with me that's better than him going off on his own.

Here are some more quotes from the interview that I found to very interesting:

“It takes a long time to draw the games. It takes over a year to draw the games… We have to kind of keep the artist busy and keep him going while you finish up with other stuff.”

“I like to try and find the soul of the game, the Zen of the game early, ‘cause if you can’t find it in the sketches EARLY, you have to drop the theme and move on.”

“Many designers will just put down stuff on the playfield and put some ramps on it and they’re done.”

“It gets very complicated, um, especially if you’re detail oriented because you are going to go back and noodle all this stuff. So in my case it works against me, because things take longer. It’s just not, you know I, I, just can’t throw down two ramps without; Well, what do these ramps do? Where do they go? Are they, is it a metaphor? Is it part of the story? Yeah, so people don’t understand that. They’ll call me and they’ll say ‘Well, you know, this and that.’ and it’s like, well, it’s just, I CAN throw two ramps down, but it’s WRONG. It’s just not, you know, we can do more than that. It may take a little more time and people may not notice, but, you know, I know it’s not what it should be.“

“I think that’s where, um, I have the advantage is that I start, and I always get in arguments with other people in the community, but I start at the, at the concept level ‘up high’ and then I work it down. People really don’t care at the beginning if I have wonderfully designed brackets that are holding the inside of my cabinet together. They might care later when they lift the playfield up for something, but people are going to look at the game. They’re going to look at the backglass and the cabinet, and if there’s a topper or something, and how does this work together as a unit. That’s what people see first, and they make their decision in like ten seconds, you know. It’s cool or it’s not cool. So I can spend all day long underneath and have this beautiful laser cut bracketry and all of this. People don’t really care if that whole higher concept doesn’t kind of jive with them. They don’t see it.”

“So when I started at Bally, we just made whitewoods that shot well, and then they would put a theme on it, and they might say well, you need to move a couple letters, and sometimes they wouldn’t at all. They would um, the artist would come up with a name for the game that fit the number of lights that the designer had put down. Yeah, so, but today we can’t design that way. It, it all has to kind of work together and it’s very complicated, so for whatever reason my brain is able to sort all this out.”

“So on Magic Girl, I saw this game finished in my mind before I started.”

“You can’t afford to have ten people on staff making “Chicago” money. You know, Chicago’s an expensive town. So it’s been good and bad. The bad of it is it takes longer, some things you have to learn. The good thing is that you develop a good set of um, other vendors or partners to work with.”

“If you want to get above just kind of average or mediocre, you know, if you want to rise above, you, you know, you HAVE to redraw artwork. You HAVE to tweak colors. You HAVE to get people looking at stuff. You HAVE to spend time on it, details.”

“It takes longer. In the old days you had a time limit. You had to be in production in this day or you know, it’s like big trouble.”

Holy shit those quotes ...

It's like a window straight into his mind when it comes to this thread.

Yeah. They explain so much. Some of the things he said were so revealing that I had to just get them written down for people to read.

Obligatory Onion article:
"Laid-Off Ford Employee Decides to Star Own Car Company"

http://www.theonion.com/articles/laidoff-ford-employee-decides-to-start-own-car-com,2086/

In other words:

"I can mess around with all kinds of shit for years, and start production when....Aww, to hell with it! Who wants to see some artwork?"

Edit: I remember a long time ago in this thread where Frolic said something along the lines of feeling like "a patron of the arts". I've invested in projects where the person in charge generally considered himself to be, foremost, an artist. And that's the major issue. The artist at some point has to become a producer of goods (or someone else has to step in and force it), or things never get done.

On one of the projects I'm in, I have decided to give up and proudly call myself a "patron of the arts".

image.jpg

That was in 2006, did he make any cars yet? I wonder if he took pre-orders.

Thank you saying that and understanding.

If you're a Jpop customer and interested in joining the owners group please shoot me a private email. I'll need to verify your Zidware participation and then send you an invite. We have over 40 members now but it would seem not everyone is aware of our groups existence.

One person who does know about our group is Jpop and the significance behind it. Rome wasn't build in a day but shit is happening.

I don't have the time an patience to listen to that, so thanks for transcribing, very illuminating!

The crazy thing is, he keeps talking about how his machines are going to be light years better than Stern games, but from what I've seen they might be JJP level at best - hardly worth the 4-5 years development cycle.

But then he's always been good at talking a big game, but is actually outright lying.

Assuming a Magic Girl shows up at expo, it will be there facing off against a bunch of "next generation" titles:

-JJP Lawlor game
-Alien
-Dutch Pinball #2
-Production Lebowskis
-Production Full Throttles
-Production Hobbits
-Production P3

Add in:
-Whatever Stern has planned (possible LCD), Possible Steve Ritchie title.
-Other boutiques

I just don't see it making the big splash it would have made 2 years ago. Jpop sure was envious of Lebowski last year, he wants that kind of attention for himself, but missed the boat.

The pinball hype train in general was going at full steam then too, he would have blown people's minds with a flipping game. That's what a real rockstar would have done.

There's still Duke Nukem Forever…
duke-nukem-forever-king-wallpaper.jpg

I hope it works out - but Jpop has to realize that his reputation amongst the pinball public is DECIMATED. He needs to do more than appease the private buyers at this point if he wants anyone to take him seriously and purchase his "products" in the future. In fact - forget about the future - right now there are owners who want refunds, but can't get them because no one else will buy the spot. He needs to fix his public reputation for the sake of his private buyers who want out!

Yeah, which did eventually come out, and sucked.

Yes it did.

God I was addicted to Duke Nukem'.....

"GET SOME"

Even put it on my SBR.

IMG_0530.JPG

Is that 922r compliant?

uh... no

Can't wait until "production" starts, whether that's 20 magic girls with or without code. Keep in mind Spooky builds roughly 2.5 units per week, and that's with a 3 person crew building sub-assemblies like mechs, cabinets, and wiring harnesses (with months of experience tweaking the build efficiency).

Still good to see John think about things like backbox fixtures. Really hope he can pull this off.

Who's making alien?
What is p3?

WTF would you do with a Magic Girl with no code? Look at it sitting there, turned off, and think about what could have been?

Heighway Pinball.

The Mulimorphic modular game that features a combination of physical and virtual screen playfield ideas.

To say he built them, prove out his "manufacturing", show some faith in his buyers by showing progress, let him focus on RAZA while someone else codes it.

When did the Zombies music samples first go up? I really like most of them. Good stuff.

I'm in on RAZA (fully, unfortunately), but refuse to join Facebook under any circumstance. I appreciate what you guys are doing, but I don't really see any results yet. I fear that our money is lost and have heard nothing lately to encourage me. I fear that we've all been J'Pop'd.

Do what I did and create a Facebook account for only this reason. Use whatever name you want and attach it to an email used for nothing else. I never use Facebook either... other than this group.

I have a fake Facebook account under my alter ego, porno name, Peter Goezenya.
Mike Hunt also seems popular...

I'd sign up as Craven Moorehead.

I'm gonna hate myself for this one but someone should sign up as, Jay Popped.

Day one pinball. From idea to full blown company and 30 finished games in 6 months. Granted there are no flippers, it has professional artwork by John Yousi and 4-channel multiplex sound. Amazing what you can accomplish when you have a "team" that all work together, and you have a "project manager"
200_s[1].gif

http://www.pinballnews.com/news/scoregasmmaster.html
scoregasmmaster11[1].jpg

Yeah, but it has the aesthetic of a washing machine...

I'm pretty sure the day one thing is an April fools prank.

Have you actually looked into it? Just a crappy day to announce it is all:

https://scoregasmmaster.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/scoregasm-master-it-had-to-start-somewhere/

I did look at it. I listened to the announcement on spooky podcast. It sounded very tongue in cheek and like they had to stop and edit when Charlie started laughing too much but who knows?

I assure you, it absolutely is not.

Hilarious tidbit - the whole thing has its genesis in the Contact Master that Yancy bought from ... (wait for it) ... JPOP.

I know 4 people that have helped on this project, and I visit Terry's shop at least once a month so I've seen the progression and the final production cabinet, so I can assure you this is no prank.

Charlie was laughing because he knows how much work goes into any pinball project.

I will add this to the long list of times I've been wrong.

Oh it's real all right!