I follow this thread with some sort of morbid curiosity, but this made me think...

Honestly, if John could have had a secondary person whose job it was to run the business side of things and keep his dreaming in line, I wonder how things would have worked out. From my limited interactions with John from the MGC, and as I've stated before, I don't believe that he was trying to be a criminal mastermind or steal everyone's money - he really believed his ideas that he had could be created and would be better than anything that came along before. And perhaps he was right, but we'll never know because his business acumen was so bad (or non-existent) that he was never going to get anywhere.

Walt Disney was a huge dreamer too and went bankrupt multiple times. It wasn't until his brother Roy came in and ran the business side and corralled his brother's ambition into a way facing forward that Walt's dreams started to be a success.

From having seen John's ideas for things, he was a wealth of pinball ideas, but he kept coming up with small ones that ultimately didn't mesh. If he had someone nearby who when he would stop working on Magic Girl to figure out the new lighting system for KISS (which was cool) who could have said, "Knock that off or do it when you're not here, we need to finish this!" and who could have coordinated the building of the machines, I actually do think that it would have worked and could have been great.

But... we'll never know, sadly. Dreamers don't make good businessmen.

That's what the boring business person would have had to have done. The truth of the matter is that he had both of those things locked down at one point before - when he worked for Williams. Someone else could say the design had to be done and moved to manufacturing, and it was. There is some debate that has come out since about if others helped push him along into those things, but no matter what, he did design games in the past. So, while he may not have liked it, a partner with which to build with could have been the thing to take this from a giant disaster to a success.

Having said that, he didn't do that - either because he didn't know himself well enough, ego, or whatever. But, it's clearly a key thing that was needed to get done to make this happen...

Oh, I agree with that. I am just saying that I think that this could have been a success had he actually partnered with someone to do this, and when in the past he worked within that environment he did find success.

If he hadn't had that success initially, he wouldn't have ever gotten people to send him money. Some of the ideas that he had really were cool and innovative, although without someone there to monetize them / force them through to completion, it was not to be.

I've been so busy it's been a long time since I have even been on Pinside, but I've been constantly interested in this thread. To say it took some turns, well... heh - yeah it did.

Anyway, when they announced they were going to be at Expo, I'm surprised so many people were against it. Whether Jpop was going to be there or not, whether this new company was going to be there or not, isn't it better to have them answer these questions out in the open? I totally think everything about this was mishandled, but I was absolutely fascinated by how they had any idea this could work, and that was before the MG reveal. Now that is revealed, I'm twice as interested to hear their ideas.

I can't pretend I trust them, but I'd love to hear them actually reply to things in a setting where they don't know the questions ahead of time.

...having said all that, didn't someone else say they officially owned the MG rights now? If so, how can this "new" company make them? Again, questions I feel like could be answered in person, but won't be with press releases...

Here's the thing...

I've talked to no one, and I have no skin in the game other than being an interested observer... BUT, I don't know what it would accomplish to constantly shout over someone else when they are going to be answering the questions that you want them to ask. As for them not deserving the patience of time for any development, why not? If they are moving the games forward toward actual completion, I don't know why people would take that as a bad thing. Either way, I'd be very interested in hearing how they are planning on doing everything.

For the pre-order money people keep mentioning, I don't think any pinball company is going to be set up that way any time soon. Spooky didn't take pre-order money to avoid exactly what has happened to those who have. Any businessman looking at it I think would come to the same conclusion - pre-order money is not a safe way to start a business.

As for why this is happening, here's my guess - John spent a lot of time creating and prototyping brand new stuff for his games - boardsets, cabinets, and whatnot. If I had a bunch of money and was starting a new company, having those as potential starting assets might be worth considerable money to me as it allows me to better control my own future. It could be completely reasonable for a new company to assume $1M in "debt" to essentially have their identity established for them. Obviously, it comes with baggage, but if you have a plan in place to come through on that baggage, it doesn't seem that completely insane to me.

My guess is they planned to unveil all of this at Expo and were surprised that people connected the dots beforehand. I have a guess about what they would plan to do to make RAZA / AIW orders right in the future. We'll see. Like I said before, I am terribly curious to see what they have to say about their plans, but I would be incredibly disappointed if they couldn't tell people their plans because people keep shouting at them. Let's give them a chance, and then if things aren't answered good enough, then go back and ask more questions. If those still aren't answered, I'll shout with you.

I have no idea the answer to this, but...

The cabinets that he designed, were they awesome? I vaguely remember seeing one at MGC a few years ago and thinking it did look really nice. To a new company, if that design is worth, say, $200 / game and they expect to sell 5000 games a year, that's $1M / year right there of value.

For as nutty as John was with stuff, he loved his patents. I believe he had something like four or five patents for his design work already. If he had designed mechs that worked around the existing rights for other machines, you could pretty easily justify a huge startup cost gone and find the value of your $1M - $2M right there. In that case, the actual design work of John might not even be what you are interested in at all, but instead just the other stuff.

I have little idea of exactly how far John got with most of this stuff, which is why I'm terribly interested to hear more. I would hope whomever will be talking will explain exactly what value they saw there and why. If they are a boutique manufacturer, I don't see how the value can be there. If they are planning on rivaling Stern, I can see it easily... although then I have SO many other questions...

Are you suggesting a threat to this company, because if so that's absolutely insane.

Maybe it's just me, but if I was owed something major from someone, and they were willing to sit down with me and tell me what their plan is to make me whole, I'm going to sit and listen. I'm not going to sit down and start screaming "where's the money!?!" immediately.

If they have a reasonable plan to make me whole, stopping them from presenting it doesn't help make me or anyone else whole. Roasting the new company before hearing their plans, what chances do they have to do anything?

Again, I don't think they were ready to reveal anything when this was figured out. They cannot snap and make pinball machines. If those MGs are legit, they clearly have a plan. I'd like to know what it is, and I would be rather disappointed if they are shouted down - or worse like it was implied - before they could explain their plans.

Didnt think I'd be reading about ball save here, but...

Ball save is actually not great for location play. The people that understand pinball already know about ball save and how to use it. The people that don't are usually quite surprised that it happens.

On your own games, you might notice guests and novices you need to tell about the ball save so they understand it is coming. When this doesn't happen at the location, it is generally confusing to new players.

Novices don't really play multi player games. A booth at a local con is also different.

Ive operated games. The number of games that are left with ball three in the shooter lane thanks to a ball save shows that it is a confusing thing. Game making the last twenty or so years has been a huge clash over trying to attract new players with more simple game play, or getting long time players to come back again and again. Both have strategies to them but ball saver is actually a long time player strategy, not a new guy one.