Without going into the unsavoury details of the alleged crime, which others have discussed enough ....

... this again raises the very real problem of a very small pool of aged designers, particularly at the industry leader Stern.

Whether guilty or innocent, this likely eliminates the tenure of one of Stern and the industry's top guys, even if I didn't care for most of his recent games at all.

Their other guys, save for Elwin (who is totally unproven at a commercial project level) are mostly pushing 70 and some of them have fairly poor health.

The 'young bucks' of the industry are in their mid 50s - Balcer, Gomez.

Pinball may be on an upward tangent sales wise, but what happens if 3 or 4 of the 'legends' retire due to ill health, because they've had enough after a long career, or die?

I think our immediate hope should be that JJP's new, young designer knocks it out of the park on his next game. If it's a failure, JJP, Stern and others might 'minimise risk' on new talent, maximising the risk that they have no-one to design new machines in a few years.

That there may be. But a large, big budget company has yet to take the risk on inexperienced or 'unproven' talent.

JJP #4 is the first. Hence why we should hope it's a good one.

Also, organic development of talent is all well and good at the hobby level, but the 'giants' of pinball have a responsibility to both the industry and their shareholders to develop and foster new talent. WMS, Bally & Gottlieb took on young guys to learn the trade, back in the day, and most of today's legends were once those apprentices. Father time cannot be escaped.