Only 7 days to go.

Lots of good stuff from the series:

You're a lawyer you're not supposed to have empathy for people.

AMH was jank as hell but it was real. Took a lot longer than 6 months though. Hell it took like 6 months of coding after it was completed to get the rules in a state where people started buying it.

I didn't make a cent until customers got them in their home. Myself and Charlie risked our OWN money and time. Not some "whale's"

Actually a while back John said in his 100% custom pinball machine, he was gonna reuse ramps from something else. So the ramp situation is taken care, scratch that off the list, there's no worries there. Buy with confidence.

You risked your own on the Bill Paxton pinball machine too and hauled it to several shows.

That was a one off well worth $100K and no whales were harmed in it's construction.

LTG : )

Or not I see people bitching about reusing ramps now. I do have a few custom shops to do metal work so side rails are covered. Same with powder coating. Coding will not be deep.

Lol. Yeah I’m an estate planning lawyer, tax/financial guy.

You guys would be surprised at my daily life and how we go about it. Empathy and caring about people is where it all starts. My whole team of people are that way and it’s why we are so successful. Positive, happy and providing peace of mind.

I’m only a jackass to the people that attack me here and I don’t like. That is the only part of the “lawyer” in me. I like to debate and argue issues.

Much different here versus 5-10 yrs ago

But the way you treat others matters. To some it doesn’t obviously.

John has had a good attitude about all this despite an onslaught of personal attacks.

In what world would $30k be life changing when most if not all goes to building those pins in whatever state they end up in?

It’s not a venture if it happens for John to make $$$

That’s good for YOU. You did it your way. Nobody knew who you were until you partnered up with JPOP early on.

Charlie took the risk and made it happen. A success story. He doesn’t go around with a chip on his shoulder.

Dutch Pinball was left for dead. They came out of litigation, survived it and now they are thriving. One guy revived it because he had to.

PB learned from the Heighway debacle, picked up the pieces and now we have a great Alien pin and Queen on the way, another great theme I’m shilling for.

I’m also gonna “shill” for Bond and Jaws coming up. Shill means I’m going to buy it.

Both JJP and Stern nearly went bankrupt. Needed investors to survive and thrive.

American Pinball survived Jpop and make solid games.

Haggis did it on his own. Impressive.

Done with CGC and maybe JJP for now. No shilling for them from me.

It’s all good, it’s just pinball!

I thought you were reusing ramps, so now you have to pull $$$ from coding? Great!

Going to have to disagree with this. I knew of Ben Heck since he built a portable Atari 2600 system back in the early 2000s. I checked out his site quite regularly back when I was in high school! Ben was pretty well known for his engineering in the nerd community, and he frequently attended Midwest Gaming Classic in Wisconsin. Maybe not known on Pinside, but he had a reputation for building things predating the jpop partnership.

Yeah my knowledge is limited on that stuff. I grew up with the original Intellivision era, had some great times with those early games. Especially MLB

I only found out about him when he popped up on JPOPs Raza as the mad scientist.

There will be coding ! Now I’m really getting excited. By coding will not be deep do you mean to say that some lights will blink some of the time, maybe.

I knew about Bill Paxton pinball before I even knew who Stern/Williams/etc were. Just another one of those crazy Ben Heck projects and it seemed so cool that a single person was able to put a project like that together. That was probably around the time I got into pinball. I'm pretty sure I got to play it at MGC (and of course later at Lloyd's)

PM when you have a plan. I’d probably like a small stake. We can discuss it then.

GWJ needs to develop a breakdown of budget before beginning, to show all assumptions and a detailed plan. Whether you share here, is probably unwise. But do it to have a baseline to compare with. In your case some of the stuff might be getting done for free, some you plan to do and other parts are subcontracted out. So for instance you might have a line item for programming with a budget of $5k??? (or whatever the number). That way you can work backwards and that translates into 100 hours. You ask yourself, can I find someone to program my game, debug it, enhance it and finish with 1.0 code for 100 hours?

You obviously need a budget for licensing too. Maybe you are thinking it will be no cost and you’d list it for $0 with assumption the license will be granted for free. So when the word comes back it will cost $25k, you’ll realize you’ve exceeded the budget by $25k.

There are so many holes, obstacles and delusions to GWJ’s plan, but if you believed programming might actually take 1k hours, then at $50k, the budget is blown by a factor of 9x. Hopefully at that point you’d realize it was time to pull the offer and refund any money.

Guys some things are getting easier to do like the electronics. Like I keep saying this game will not be geared with super deep code. Getting tired of all these games coming out that you need to school up on. My target market is people to get enjoyment out of the game. I will have a budget. Tired of trying to explain everything here to a bunch of guys that want to pick me apart & trash my build. You guys know who you are, & seem to get some form of entertainment out of it. You are not the guys that are interested in seeing this done.

If it moves forward the whales will be getting full updates, & it will be private. I will be here, but my project will go silent here.

Honestly..that's the best idea. I'd close this thread up if i was you. Just feeding the trolls. (Mostly nobody's but surprised at a few of the naysayers) I don't know you at all, but i hate it when people gang up and bully people. Their intentions are NOT to save potential investors any $$.(those people don't need help) I don't have to tell ya that your idea is a longshot to achieve and that you're crazy to even consider attempting the task! You're a great part of the pinball community and i imagine a valuable asset to your community considering where you live! I commend ya and wish you the best of luck. I'd have a beer with you and play some pins anytime! Cheers

Once again we agree ! Shut this thread down. Everyone will be happier for it. Probably even the whales.

Nope. It's time for pinball scams to end. For far too long scams and schemes weren't allowed to be questioned on Pinside, and it lead to millions upon millions lost.

Wanna give John 10k out of charity? Go for it. But his plan is stupid, he needs to be saved from himself.

For those wishing to close the thread, why don’t you simply stop reading and posting here?. No one forcing you to be here. Others, including myself are enjoying this thread.

Everyone, there is no scam here. John is very sincere here on what he wants to accomplish. It's how he is trying to go about it is what is questionable and head scratching.

I believe this is all way over his head. Not the actual pinball machine itself, but the actual execution of getting to a fully working prototype.

I guess anything is possible if pirate boy was able to build a working Predator or two. It just didn't happen in 6 months.

Let me ask you this John, do you have an actual finished, pre production drawing of the playfield yet?

This is an oft-stated and popular fallacy around here.

I honestly believe that Mueller, Jpop, Skit B, and all the other dreamers and con men "sincerely" intended to produce pinball machines and not steal Pinsiders' money. That Pinball Basement guy who is taking money and not sending anybody boards sincerely wants to produce and send thosed boards he owes. Intent is really irrelevant though.

When you take money in advance for something that doesn't exist, and you don't have the skills, intelligence, plan, team in place, infrastructure, or sobriety required to actually produce what you've promised your "investors," it's a scam.

It doesn't really matter what your intent is or your sincerity level is.

There's a whole lot of sincere people in prison. To put it in terms Pinsiders will understand, John DeLorean sincerely wanted to save the company and make all those shiny steel cars.

Jpop and Skit B actually built prototype machines. However, they took huge sums of money vs $30K. I believe I could build a "bally/stern solid state" style pinball machine and want to try it. I am not going to ask anyone for a dime. The problem for me is wanting vs actually doing it.

If John takes $30K and never finishes due to plain ole being over his head. That is not a scam, that is a failure. It's when you already know the project has failed or cannot be completed and you start taking more money for more machines. I don't see John doing that. Now, he could go back to his 3 sponsors and say hey, I need $2K from each of you to complete these 3 machines. Skit B never had a license, JPoop kept taking more money and selling more machines that were all pipe dreams because he knew he couldn't deliver a proper Magic Girl. He spent the money on buildings and his own expenses/payroll and everything else. Deeproot was an investment scam that happened to try and use pinball production as a front for the illegal activities.

Where John is the same as the rest is he is going to require the money up front, before ANY production/building begins.

The point isn’t whether he’s a scammer or not - he’s clearly sincere. The issue is that he is physically incapable of doing what he’s saying. A team of seasoned professionals couldn’t produce a modern game and build three examples in six months, let alone some guy in Halifax with no actual skills or ideas except that he wants to do it.

No amount of wishing or hoping will make it true. I did a retheme so I got to reuse a cabinet and mechs (although I rewired and replaced the guts) and it still took me years. There is no way in hell this will happen, full stop.

You hire a contractor to finish your basement. They give you a quote and take your money. But the electrician they hire hasn’t finished certification. The flooring they are installing they’ve never installed before and do it incorrectly. And they underestimated the budget by 2X since they’ve not done this particular job before, and are bad at estimating. They come to you asking for more money to complete the job which so far they’ve done poorly.

Is that a scam or just a failure ? Should I be mad because they sincerely thought they could do the job well for the quote they provided when hindsight and the second contractor that had to be hired to fix what they did laid it all out. Should I let them just advertise their wares on Craigslist or Angieslist or whatever handyman site you want. I mean buyer beware right ? I have no responsibility to protect the next person who calls them up for an estimate do I ?

True story all that. No different than pinball really when it comes down to it. Presuming the good intentions absolves incompetency to accomplish the task, especially if we were on the receiving end of any of that, is just ludicrous.

John will clearly not be dissuaded by anyone's comments here, so at some point it becomes a question of what's the point in continuing to make them. John is unfailingly positive. I've never seen a person on the internet abused to this degree without responding back in kind. So despite how ridiculous I regard his plan to be, I wish people would stop saying mean spirited things like calling him a moron.

i dont know what you guys do to celebrate every time greatwichjohn makes a post, but i get up and do a little dance to this catchy steely dan tune.

Bravo!!! Well Done
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Seems you did it all wrong, Whale or mini-pod money would have been the safer and better route

100% -
It's easy to be a keyboard warrior (I get sucked into it sometimes also) and we say things we would not say to someone's face

I have just come to the conclusion that John is fucking with us all and having a good time

I would have thought the same thing had I not both spoken with and seen him take the mic in a seminar.

Very passionate but a huge bull in the China shop…

I personally would keep this thread open until it dies or moves forward. Why close it people having fun at my expense is fair game here. You see it all the time. There is no sense me constantly looping the same thing over & over after being prompted by a few here.

The project moves forward & I prove a bunch of experts wrong on the 6 month build. Project comes in budget like I said, & is a fully playing PRO style coin operated pin with a simple set of rules. Project dies from TPB & their licensing company before the build start. Nothing ready to show for SXSW & TPF in March 2023, you guys get the satisfaction of saying what a failure or idiot I am.

Said from the start I am not looking to take peoples money either $100k US Big Whale, or $10k US Mini Whale (pod of 3 ready to go). Money will be administered by a 3rd party, timelines for payments on goal achievements of build. More than enough people have explained the numerous faults I have & do not have. Along with medical & mental health advice (thanks I think I will go with the advice of medical professionals in my city).

Any new people I will gladly answer your questions. As of now the build is still green light, & next milestone is August 1.

Can't wait to see what you come up with!
And, I give you props. With all the crap thrown at you in this thread, you have remained respectful of others.
But ... I still think you are trolling us. Just reading this thread, drinking, and laughing.

Will you be pitching a "Plan B" license if TPB decline?

Here is a update. I have not had a adult beverage since Friday night with other people relaxing & us enjoying playing pinball. Do not suffer from the shakes or have a urge to have a adult beverage. The medical experts here will still chime in I have a serious drinking problem!

I will be pitching both Plan A & Plan B. I know the pod is ready. There is still a chance TPB themselves, or one of their business associations come in as a lone Big Whale in August, That would cancel out the pod. Nothing goes forward until I have the ok or the project dies in August.

Yet here we are!

So just to make sure that we have the order of priority and thrust straight, you are hellbent and determined to make a TPB pin. Your preference is that TPB themselves finance the machine (and they would take priority over everybody else), and then it goes Whale and then mini Whales. Is this correct? I would think mini whales would be a little chuffed if they are kicked out of the pod but it is your show.

I don’t pretend to understand your thought processes or motivations but as others have said, you are tenacious. I don’t know if you have read Don Quixote but your adventure reminds me of it.

Nothings over until the fat lady sings. TPB have the final say on this project moving forward or it dies. Same with if they or someone they knows wants to be a Big Whale. No takers here, & likely not in the last week. Same with the pod could go from 3 to 1 or zero, or it could go 3 to 10. the clock is ticking. No money has been taken, & no deposit asked for.

From the start I stated this prototype build hopefully leads to a licensed production build by a pinball manufacturer, & TPB. I am not looking to become a pinball manufacturer myself.

I remain wholly convinced that for a boutique pinball machine one really just needs a good layout and you can then plaster artwork and integrate a coded theme after. If your hooked on a particular toy or mech that can most certainly be shoe horned in after…

If you build just one you don't need the license, right?

Apparently there is a caveat to this. See the Dragons Lair build for more info…

It is different in that it is going to a buyer(s), & not remain a homebrew. I intend to get the ok or it dies.

Well since your mind is made up, and there is no dissuading you from a bad idea, good luck to you and your buyers. I would recommend you keep the entire development private from this point on, and hope none of them are on pinside. The only people you have to satisfy are the ones who gave you money. I am for sure very worried at the eventual outcome here, but that is neither here nor there. We will wait and see

As a homebrew to be built and held by the same person, no
but to sell it - yes