And, at this point, that's all there is to see. The dev site is not live yet.

Please elaborate.

Hold on just a second, John has just as much responsibility to deliver AIW as the other two games at this point. After all, he has pre-order funds from those folks as well. He made a commitment to work on all three games HIMSELF. If he is going to abandon AIW for now then he should be OBLIGATED to give everyone a full refund immediately. By doing it your way, shouldn't he just focus on MG and cut out RAZA too?

I have been in on TBL from day one and I am still down with JPOP, so I guess I am drinking the Kool-Aid and the Caucaisians

What did you expect a week after this all blew up? I believe John has started taking some significant steps toward resolving the issues his customers currently have. He has announced that he is working with outside sound and sw partners and has brought on a project manager. Now there is talk of a partner with significant backing. These last two steps show a willingness to at least have some outside influence on his accountability.

I think 2016 is a reasonable assumption for RAZA at this point. JPOP has said that his plan is to have "Lebowski" type reveal of MG in December 2014. Dutch Pinball revealed TBL 7-9 months ahead their self imposed production start (Q2 2015). Assuming JPOP can stick to the same schedule (highly unlikely given his current organization's size) he will not begin production on MG until Q4 of 2015. During ramp up to and actual production I am guessing that he he will have less than zero time to devote to RAZA and AIW; which will push their schedules even further out.

All of this could change if he is able to secure the hinted partnership with a third party that can provide the muscle to push production forward. Otherwise, I would say that the above schedule may even be a bit optimistic given JPOP's track record for wanting to achieve perfection at every level.

It has been said before (probably somewhere in this very thread) but John really needs an equal collaborator. Someone who is willing to say when something is good enough or that it is time to move on from an idea that is never going to come to fruition. I think having a team of designers and collaborators has helped DP get to where they are with TBL much faster than John has with any of his three projects. They have been willing to give up on certain design elements that they just could not make work and focus on the end goal much more efficiently.

I really hope that John can find a partner to help him become an efficient, productive visionary and not, instead, wind up a genius tinkerer who was never able to see his designs become a reality. He is one of only a handful of people in this business who wants to always look ahead and push the pinball envelope.

Is this for MG? Just out of curiosity, what were the initial milestones and their respective projected completion dates? For AIW, there was no timeline provided to me, at all.

Right on, man!

So true. Increasing the build quantity may be the only play left here for acquiring a partner. And, let's face it, John cannot build the 200+ games he has committed to with his current staff level. I believe it was RD who speculated that he could only build 1 a week tops at current capacity. Hell, that is an entire year just for MG production alone and five more for RAZA and AIW.

They don't! All it has done is push these games farther and farther from their original delivery date. Part of what makes this such a viable hobby is that standard parts for 20+ year old machines are still being produced and are readily available. What will happen 20 years after these machines are produced if the custom flipper assembly breaks. It is very frustrating to try and find the 5 -10 % of custom parts for older games now. I can only imagine what it will be like to have a game with 90+% custom parts. Let's hope the 3D printing revolution saves us by then.

Support worries me too. What will happen if these games have an issue like the light boards in WOZ. We could be waiting ages for that type of fix.

From the courseware section it looks as if participants will be building a whitewood in just 1 week....maybe John should sign up for this himself.

Maybe JPOP is stockpiling Shasta.

I will be completely floored if the MG reveal has anything more than rudimentary code and animation. I would say that will be a lengthy process to get through before production begins. DP's timeline for TBL has allowed for 7-9 months of code/rules/dots development between physical reveal and production start and most of their animation is provided by the IP. I still see a long road ahead before owners have MG in their possession.

I received a letter from John concerning AIW this week. It included an invoice and some verbiage that was as confusing as ever concerning the next payment. I can't tell if he is trying to collect $0, $2000 or the remainder of the balance. For the record, I am interpreting it as $0. The attached letter also gives an address for a "secret" web page that is supposed to contain more info about the game. The website address just leads to a page with a line drawing of Alice and the words "Concept Preview" with nothing more. John updated the AIW dev blog three days ago with a long screed about the backglass design process and said that he would reveal the artwork the next day. Since then, nothing has been posted.

Also, for the record, I have never been asked to sign any kind of NDR for AIW.

It seems to me, more and more, that John is nothing more than an idea guy who just can't see anything through. This pinballtruss domain is a perfect example. John has taken the time to put up a website with a link to his profile on the makerbot thingiverse but, just about like every other website he has, it is just a road to nowhere. I fear that John is traveling down this road and about to hit the dead end.

I think he is a year away from starting to build the games at the very best. Hopefully, with all of the drama we have seen lately, everyone will wise up and withhold any and all additional payments for all three games until delivery. The outcome of that could go a couple of ways; it will either light a fire under JPOP's ass and he will define a timeline and start to build right away or he will be forced to admit the financial shortcoming of the project (if they exist, and I am not saying that they do) and Zidware will be finished. If the second scenario plays out, I don't think not withholding funds would make any difference. I share your fear that he is bargaining for more time here. After the post-expo uproar, he promised a project manager would be brought in and that he was looking for more muscle to help produce the games. Has he followed up on either of those? I think the first priority of a project manager would be to establish a clearly defined timeline. Has anyone seen a recently updated one?

Agreed...And for the record, I think John is a hell of a designer whose heart is in the right place. If there is any lesson to be learned from all of the recent drama with the boutique manufacturers, it is that having a business plan and a solid business-only partner are absolutely essential things to have in place when ANYONE decides to go from conceptually thinking about building a pinball machine to actually stating the intent to do so. This becomes more paramount to anything else when you start taking monetary funds form customers.

Definitely what he was after...I'm just not sure how he expects to get it showing his game to a limited audience. I just don't get his paranoia about showing things in public. What does he plan to do if he ever builds any of these things for the pre-order owners? Will they need to sign another NDR stating that they will not expose the game to any third parties?

I get the feeling from the comments here on Pinside that most people are at the end of the rope as far as sending John any more cash. I would guess that those who are deeply invested would most likely want to see him continue. If he is out of cash and pre-order owners stand firm on not funding him any more then I guess he will have no choice but to throw in the towel. The only interesting thing left to see is what he does if the cash stops coming in and the coffers run dry. Will he then honestly try to answer the questions that many have been asking him and that he has been ignoring up to this point?

That is honestly a very good question and the other side of this whole equation. Manufacturing and code development, presumably, are all still hurdles left to jump. Owners may demand that the games be shipped ASAP and that could force John into a situation where he has to decide to ship without incomplete code. At the rate we have seen JJP and Stern finish code with teams of programmers, I shudder to think what that will mean for someone like John.

You are as clueless as John is.

Where is Cousin Eddie when you need him?

Can you tell us how he responded? Your post does not convey much hope that you think he will address any of the concerns that have been put before him by his customers. At any rate, I would imagine that if he had any intention of correcting this, he would have done so by now.

John is quickly losing what little credibility he has left with the shenanigans he has been playing, as of late. I don't think he is taking any of this as serious as he should.

Exactly! On top of the ridiculous cash outlay, how long would anyone getting in at this point have to wait for games beyond #50. Another unknown is John's production capacity. I'd be willing to bet that if he could start production on MG today customer 51 wouldn't see there game for at least another two years.

Can you please expand on this?

This makes me even more leery of his ability to focus on the task (or three) that he needs to desperately complete.

John could have avoided nearly all of the criticism that he is now facing by simply communicating with his owners.

If his "trouble" is anything akin to what JJP has faced then there is surely more to come. JJP faced most of there challenges and criticism during the production phase, which John seems nowhere near.

Big deal! When are we going to see John face his owners and tell the plain and simple truth about what he has done with their money and when and if we can expect to have the games we have paid for? Because seeing a prototype is near the top of the list of things that need to happen to accomplish shipping a completed game.

Very true! And I don't think anyone here has ever questioned John's passion for pinball. I, for one, still believe that he is pouring his heart and soul into these projects. I have often heard artists, mostly painters, say that if it were not for hard stop deadlines placed on them by gallery showings that they would never complete anything. Just tinker with it forever. I think John is caught up in this predicament to a certain degree. Hopefully he is at the realization point of seeing that he to has a hard stop deadline and that some things are just going to have to be good enough.

While I don't get the impression that you are John's official mouthpiece, you do seem to have some insider knowledge and I wonder if you could expand on the above statement. Most people here seem to believe that we are waiting on a flipping prototype of both MG and RAZA. But your statement seems to suggest that John will reveal games ready for production with completed dots/animation and a full rule set with completed code. In my mind, this is the only way that you can make a statement like the one above. Any additional insight that you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

I am not an expert on UL listing but, from what I understand, it may be difficult for JPOP to carry liability insurance if his product does not have it. Which I would believe he would want just to protect himself from a claim if one of his machines were proven to be the cause of a fire or worse.

http://alicepinball.org/chapter2/pagemenu.html

Not that I would recommend jumping in but Alice has moved at a much faster pace than the other two. The Alice pre-order was started around 9 months ago and we have already seen what has been shown on the public site plus two or three generations of playfield design.

No idea, but it is a great question. I wonder just how much of it is custom. Are there any industry standard mechs in these games? If not, tooling will be a nightmare.

Nope...In fact I would be shocked if they didn't.

Keep the faith man! The 100 year journey is 4% complete.

I guess I am going to take the "wait and see" approach. Not much else to do really. I am curious as to the timeline for opening the blogs up. Should be just a tick of a checkbox to make those wordpress sites public. Seems like he could get that done instantly if he has intentions of doing so.

Maybe..maybe not. The last post on the dev blog was Feb 6th and it was just a re-post of the factory stuff from the other blogs. The last meaningful posts were back in January when he revealed the cabinet and bg artwork with the atrocious looking Alice that reminds me way too much of this:

Probably just me...more so in the bg art that he posted. Something about the face. I like some of the Alice renderings better than others. The one you posted is fine as are some of the earlier ones. The bg Alice has this really stern look which somehow reminds me of Jennifer Coolidge. I am just hoping that JPOP tweaks it a little more. Color will probably help too.

Ice, don't mean to load you down with questions for JPOP, but could you also clarify what John's expectations are for future payments? Does he have the funds to produce any games without further payments? At this point, I am not willing to send him any more cash until he has he has churned out a good number of MG's and not at the point where he is promising to go into production (does that make sense?)

We have all known, for some time, that John needed an external force to get moving on these projects. I just want to say a big thank you to you, Aaron and the Mission guys for stepping up and trying to do that in a positive way.

So true, man! So true!

While I agree that the two situations are not exactly the same I do find some striking similarities. John's lack of communication with his owners is nearly as non-existent as Skit-B's. Just like Kevin, as the situation has become more toxic here on Pinside, he has retreated even further from the scene, leaving communication through third parties as his only conduit for disseminating information regarding his projects. I also believe that JPOP has been deceitful with regards to timelines and the completion status of MG and RAZA. He has falsely stated that he has working agreements with outside vendors/resources.

If there is no "cash crunch", then why is John stiffing parts vendors?

Isn't this their prerogative to do? The toxic environment surrounding these projects has been created by no one except John himself. He has repeatedly misled the people who have propped up his projects financially. What right does he have to hold onto their money if they want it back? After years of missed deadlines and now an outright communication shutdown, John should fully expect a run on the bank. Denying refunds at this juncture because it would surely doom the project is just arrogant and wrong.

John has been pretty hard at work on AIW:

It looks like AIW is the only one he has updated in a while. He made several posts to it yesterday. That is where the picture I posted above originated. There were around a dozen detailed pics posted along with a video and and a list of upper and lower playfield features. From the posts, there is zero doubt where he has been spending his time. As Aurich stated above, these new posts have to represent hours upon hours of work.

For what it is worth, it was not my intention to open up a can of worms by posting the pic. I have not checked the Alice blog in a long while and I was shocked to find the detailed posts which are evidence of a ton of work. All while RAZA and most especially MG seemingly sit idol.

Anyone care to post some high res pics from the blog of RAZA in its latest state? I would like to see where it is at but, oddly, JPOP seems to be in no hurry to open up the RAZA blog.

To hell with waiting on John...let's just post the stuff here...if someone will volunteer to post the RAZA stuff, I will post everything from AIW.

No doubt! This MoFo is really good at foam core modeling (or Carolina board as he refers to it in his videos, which was a new one on me.)

Yep...with a TOM Spirit ring hanging off of it on the right hand side.

So that pretty much puts the hardware platform back at square zero, correct? Who is left that will work on his proprietary platform? My guess is no one and that is why there is no flipping MG or RAZA and hence nothing he can do to move those projects along. So, instead he has thrown himself into AIW completely.

Has everyone given up on John now? It seems that the front line of the last push for positive momentum (Fast, Mission and Ice) have retreated (well maybe not Ice, but the others for sure). I think John is nearing the end of the road. Sadly, I don't think he sees it coming.

Is this the modified p-roc or his own homebrew platform?

Couldn't agree with you more. I want to see these games made as much as anybody. Failure is no good for anyone. I just can't see an endgame that is going to work out. I do not believe that John has a ton of the pre-order cash left and I don't see anyone sending him another dime until he can produce a large batch of completed games. I don't think there is money left in the coffers for that. I think he will continue to operate as he has until he completely runs out of cash and that is where this thing will sit. I don't believe there is any way to get through to him. Even in the end, he will still be as stubborn about it as he is now.

For the record, I would love nothing more than to be proven wrong on all of this!

Agreed.... I feel for all of the vendors and past partners who have been blown off and especially stiffed as much as for the owners. I think CoinTaker is in a particularly precarious position concerning the RAZA special edition. I am not so sure that they could not become a target if John fails to deliver and has no means to refund pre-orders. They are a small business that may not be able to withstand a hit like that. Did they have any sort of agreement in place that will hold them harmless in the event of the worst case scenario? Hopefully it won't come to that.

No idea. Obviously someone he respects, so maybe he has worked with them before. Cameron Silver, maybe?

I guess posting here is one way to get his attention..... from the blog:

"All,

I have had a bunch of folks message me about items from this blog appearing on public forums like “Pinside”. These items are not meant to be distributed but for the owners here only. The items / ideas / designs and illustrations on this blog are protected by United States ©Copyright and need to be kept as “trade secrets” until public viewing is ready.

If you are the person or know the person, please stop immediately as great harm is being done. Jpop"

So much for the "opening of the gates" policy.

Yep...JPOP killed the vids so I removed the dead links from my earlier post. Took down the playfield pic too. The iron curtain on the Sekret Club has been restored (special thanks to Aurich for the vernacular).

Yes....this is exactly my line of thought, too. With MG so close to at least being a code-less prototype that, I guess, everyone hopes flips (would really suck if it turned out to be a brick after all of this, wouldn't it?), what else can we assume here? MG and RAZA owners are fed up and tapped out when it comes to these projects but he might be just crazy enough to think that there are some AIW owners who are still suckers. He sent a second installment for AIW back in December. IIRC, he was very vague on the blogs about whether he was actually expecting anyone to pony up. That payment would have brought the total investment to around 40% of the total cost of AIW. If John thinks that he is 40% complete... well, let's just say we have a difference of opinion on his progress. I am not sure I would put MG and RAZA at the 40% mark.

I hope you will reconsider your position. I, for one, value the opinions and information that you bring to this thread.

There was no NDA for AIW.

Yeah, at this point his only hope is probably someone from Nigeria or the eastern bloc that is advertising on oDesk.com for $7/hour.

Has anyone talked to JPOP in the last week or so? I refuse to join facebook so I am not privy to the info on the private group site. Anything worthwhile going on there?

That was a point I made earlier in the thread and this idea speaks directly to what Aurich is talking about when referencing the Ben Heck quote a few entries up. John seems to think that as long as he uses his trusty yard stick to lay out the shots then everything will work out perfectly. What happens to the timeline when he gets one of these things flipping and the shot geometry is all wrong and the flow he thought he was designing into the playfield just isn't there? At that point, any tweaking that might have been a minor adjustment on a flipping whitewood may well require a major design overhaul that could encompass changes to every single part of the table. There is good reason that nearly every successful table starts out as a whitewood.

John has shown a lot of minutia in his posts on the AIW blog and there was never a whitewood shown. Just artwork and then, BAM...a foam core model. Maybe the whitewood is the thing he keeps to himself or maybe he will do that next. Seems sorta like the foam core would be a useless step at that point. Then again, I think building a whole fucking pinball machine, including the cabinet, out of foam core is kinda weird

I used to find this fact shocking, as well. I think I took it for granted that a well-loved, former W/B designer would be able to build a complete pinball machine. Never stopping to think that not a single one of the former W/B rockstars have ever even attempted to build a production game on their own. Not Eddy, nor Trudeau, not Nordman, not even Lawlor or Steve Ritchie! And why? Probably because they have the wherewithal to know that being a great game designer, maybe even the best game designer ever, does not qualify them to build a game from the ground up. And, looking at this list, I would put nearly every one of them ahead of JPOP with regards to being able to do it (I know, I know, hindsight is always 20/20).

The fact of the matter is that it takes more than one person to build a pinball machine. It seems , at this point, JPOP, with his overbearing need to control everything, is the least likely person to ever bring a pinball machine to production.

Could you elaborate here for the sake of us actual stakeholders who are not subscribed to the FB page?

This is my favorite part of the PR PDF:

"But we’ll never be in one place for very long. Just a
few hours on location (or less if any pesky pinsiders show up and start snapping pics of the game)."

On a side note, I am thinking about reaching out to JPOP through Kaneda and pitching the idea of a "Great Harm" themed pin as the 4th, 5th, or 6th title (not sure where we are at now).

Just remember that the only reason John is even doing this is for the good of the pinball community. When the end comes, I'm sure he will remind us of that too.

That pretty much sums up this whole shitshow. It is only because pinball is such an insular hobby that these guys are able to get away with it.

If this were anything else besides pinball, this shit would be on 60 Minutes next week.

"Capable of inflicting pain" might be more useful in this situation.

"Stopping" would require him to have actually ever started contacting anyone.

Just out of curiosity, what did he say?

Whew! That's good news...I was beginning to think they were dabbling in pacifism.

Yep. We are traveling on the same road as Skit-B. Just haven't made it to self-implosionville yet. People with the same old "blinders-on" mindset. The only difference is that Kevin possibly hadn't spent all of the cash when everything came to a head. JPOP has. So, it makes no difference if people do or do not ask for refunds.

I am loathe to do this but it seems like an appropriate time to quote Steve Jobs:

"Real artists ship."

I, for one, do not believe that John has the funds to refund even a single MG buyer. With the time he has taken and the setup costs he has encountered, I can't see a way that hasn't required him to burn through nearly every penny he has collected. I am with Ice, this is going to come to a head very soon.

Best case scenario would be for the stiffed buyers to make a successful bid for the assets and try to figure out a way to forge ahead with design completion and ultimately production. There would be considerably more infusion of cash needed to make this happen, even from fully paid MG owners.

On a related side note, where would a complete Zidware collapse leave Cointaker with regards to the RAZA special edition that they sold directly? Would they be on the hook to their customers?

Alice was 9865.33 USD

Yep. Just looking for a scapegoat.

When do they plan on announcing the title?

I'm fairly certain they don't do reprints. That is pretty much a guaranteed reputation killer for any art publisher. The recent (like, two days ago recent) Wizard of Oz prints were only $40 each (three variant editions of 175 each) and there was a Back to the Future II print earlier in the month were $50 and $75 for the variant. Most of the artists that Mondo employees do not have the reputation to command $300 per print. Not that they are not a talented lot, its just that Mondo are not commissioning Shag or Mark Ryden for stylized licensed print work.

Exactly! Licensing departments probably deal with so many requests for product producers that just want to put a stock IP photo on there crap that they are pretty much geared only to do just that. Requests that want to deviate from the norm by even stylizing are probably outright rejected, more often than not, simply because there is no way to effectively deal with the approval process. I imagine it boils down to a "more trouble than its worth" situation, in most cases.

Since this topic has sorta gone off the rails (not that the diversion was not welcome), thought it might be a good time to ask if anyone has heard from JPOP (by anyone, I guess I mean StevenP) since he posted his incoherent rant? I fear this is just going to fizzle on forever. I am so looking forward to something real and different...Alien, Spooky's next, TBL production, ZY original theme....so sick of the negative bs and WWE.

Anyone who doesn't is completely delusional.

ebay.com link: Back to the Future Phantom City Creative Mondo Limited Edition

18" x 24" each so 54" x 24" for the set.

Can you enlighten us with a little bit more of the conversation?

Looks like PDX was pretty quick to down vote your post. It would be nice for him to actually post something of substance and not just a quick post to say "I played MG yesterday". He does seem to be very close to JPOP. It would be nice to hear an in depth reason for still believing in these projects and what exactly JPOP plans to do going forward.

Did John respond to Cointaker's post on the blog?

He certainly does (er at least did)...named Pinside.

Me too.

I just don't know. When John started this project the pinball landsacape was so much different. The only alternatives to his $16K game were an even less proven startup (JJP) or a very different Stern than we have today. Anyone with $16K to burn on pinball today or lets assume 6-12 months from now would have so many more choices. Choices that would be at least the same caliber game that Zidware could produce with the added benefit of a better support structure. Also, that $16K would probably buy them 2 NIB pins.

The $16K ship has already sailed and it does not have an MG in the rec room. But who knows, maybe if some of the predictions that are being thrown around on Pinside come to fruition, Stern will be the only game in town in 4 years. So, if John strings it out for that long, he may wind up being the only alternative after all.

I agree that the three unfinished protos are probably it. John might want to be careful with what happens to these machines. It has been suggested that they may go to the one or two buyers who still have faith in him and I could see this happening as a last ditch, passive-aggressive move. I am no legal expert and there are others in the thread who would be much more suited to address this but, it would seem to me, that if he turned over any of the machines then his whole "incompetent" defense would go out the window. In other words, he would not be able to argue a breach of contract if he delivered on any one of the games.

Just remember...if he had not had to waste all of that time and resources battling all of us Pinsiders, these games would have been done eon's ago.

Please don't feed the troll.

Two words: Great Harm

I would like to see it, as well. Any news on the letter/memo that StevenP was editing? It ahs been well over a week since it was reported here. Did I miss it somehow?

Causing great harm?

Can you elaborate on these rumors? No additional offers have been made to me either.