There is a thread for this. I think o-din started it.

I don't know why. But just thinking about this topic makes me think of Beelzeboob.

It would deserve a thread on its own!
but for the basement, or I will have to moderate it

What happened to him?

You KNOW we're ALL saving this post......

Good thing his balls are safe. It's a safe bet.

I heard it involved a stapler.

Here is the thing about pinball. Anyone involved in the manufacture of anything related to pinball has to love it. This is a truth solid as the ground you walk on. It is a total ball ache to develop and bring to market anything from the smallest mod to the fanciest machines. The market is tiny. Yes, TINY. Not a single person or entity on the planet would, from a pure business perspective EVER get involved if they are fully aware of the lay of the land from the outset. Returns will never flow from any pinball investment in the time frame generally required by capital. NEVER. The capital applied to pinball investment has to be sympathetic to the cause. It has to come from a position of genuine infatuation with the product. If the process itself is not interesting and rewarding then forget it.
I would bet against ANY startup operation that is attempting to get in on the game from a purely financial position. They will get bored very, very quickly if they are looking for returns.

Quoted from guyincognito:
If this game gets released I will staple monkey glands to my own testicles.

ABSOLUTELY...

This is what I've been saying. No love. No passion. Ultimately, no pinball.

This company is doomed to failure and we will all be better off when this curious enterprise is just an odd footnote and fleeting memory.

In like 3 months, probably.

enjoy!

Thanks for posting but just to be clear so everyone hear listening is aware, that's not the full seminar. There seems to be parts/questions missing.

yes just watched it and I think I must have missed the end of it. anyway you get the gist.

No worries. I just didn't want people thinking we were making up some of the stuff we said we heard in the seminar.

Yes, thank you for posting.

Thanks for the post NeilMcRae!

Really? No way to hit that target?

Next time can you turn your phone on the side?

14713533_10210217848113359_4970785105914744881_n (resized).jpg

I think Cointaker (ironic) needs to pay it's employees more or hire people that can not only count but see what their picking. 10 means 10 as in 1,2,3 etc. Those 10 are the same? Maybe, sometimes. But he ordered Magic Girl? X how many? Wow what goes around comes around but obviously I'm paying to much for some leds

Did anyone ask if they have the rights to make Magic Girl? Given the recent issues with Predator licensing, and the common knowledge that Bill Brandes bought the rights to MG (am I right?), it seems like the most important question.

Everybody is saying Pintasia/wcbrandes bought the "rights" to JPOP's designs, but do we know if they are exclusive rights or just a "license" to use the IP? Or does he actually own the copyrights?

lol sorry i started it and didn't want to rotate it midway through

He got stoned and missed it.

It hasn't been disclosed or expressed in detail... but Bill has inferred only he has the rights to make the game. I got the impression it was a transfer of some exclusive rights.. but not ownership. Basically what you would expect if Bill went in with the idea of making the game viable.. he'd want the protection to make sure his effort wasn't then just re-used by another company without any control or compensation. (which.. is kind of what we had here!)

Pinball News has posted the full audio from the AP seminar.

http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/expo2016/index.html

(Search for American Pinball on that page. Direct link to audio: http://www.pinballnews.com/shows/expo2016/american_pinball.mp3)

While that is certainly true and would be fully commercially reasonable to have in any licensing and other type of deal Bill made...I just don't see Bill stopping Magic Girls from being made for those that had been paid in.

If AP was only going to make the 25 of them and no more does anyone really think Bill would say no or demand compensation?

Almost certainly something more than non-exclusive rights, otherwise why would AP lawyers be contacting Brandes.

I don't know, mum's the word from him, so seems like something could be up. It sounds like he threw significant $$$ at the effort and wouldn't surprise me and I wouldn't blame him at all if he wanted some of that back if some of the IP or rights are legally his.

Dunno. But business people don't tend to be rich by letting the opportunities pass... I would expect he would try to be reasonable, but I wouldn't expect him to roll over if someone tried to abuse him or his rights.

His prior effort didn't seem like charity... just willing to pay to play to see if the opportunity was real or not.

He could let them be made then chase up AP/Zidware after they have shipped

I look at it this way.

1. I don't see any copyright to Magic Girl since I don't see any copyrighted official authentic Magic Girl(no TM) pinball machines.

2. I doubt anything is officially copyrighted by Jpop with his pretend company.

3. If he paid $ in to copyright anything, it was paid for with pre-order money. The preorder people own it. Okay, I'm not a lawyer and that won't hold up in court but....

4. If someone was bold enough to make magic girl machines, I doubt JPOP could find a lawyer that would pay him to take that case. No, he's not Fox->Predator here.

Yeah, JPOP getting money to make machines, and then sell the rights for someone else to make it? Wow, I am just amazed.

Basically, this is all wrong. You don't have to pay or do anything to have copyright of material you create. Copyright is automatically granted once you create the work. If you register the copyright, it makes it MUCH easier to enforce infringement, but it isn't required. The artwork for MG and all of John's other projects has copyright protection in one way or another.

All of this talk of who owns what is moot. We're talking about a game that is not done and can't be delivered to anyone, regardless.

There is no working Magic Girl, in any state that can be played. Best I've seen there isn't even a functioning white wood that has all the mechanicals done and plays. Same goes for Houdini. But both have finished art packages and somewhere there are 2 dozen empty Magic Girl cabinets.

We've all been deceived yet again by John, deflecting from the fact that he works backwards and tricks people into thinking the games are more done than they are.

In exchange for Bill (and volunteers) 's hail Mary attempt to get MG working last June I believe John gave up the rights to the IP.

Seems fair. Bill sunk a lot of money into an ultimately unworkable game. And if AP can finish it the work Bill did helped them get to that point.

Ford Motor Co was in trouble before the economic crash and mortgaged its company right down to the name and logo itself. A gamble that paid off and they avoided a government bailout. Just shows that this isn't unprecedented.

Legal IP issues with Bill can be solved by writing a check. That's the least of this project's problems.

I listened between the lines to the seminar audio. It's obvious they got in over their heads and are working to dump John ASAP.

Jpop, the Andy Kaufman of pinball.

Assuming AP could get the MG's done at all - which is in doubt in and of itself obviously - they already aren't being paid to complete the game or to get the games manufactured. I doubt they would write anyone a check for the pleasure of manufacturing the 25 games for free...

I wonder what will be done with the cabinets?

I just wonder what kind of check would be reasonable. I know Bill wanted to see the project done, put putting $100K (that we heard) into 20 to 25 games that the owners consider already paid for was a lopsided investment. That would be $4K to $5K more on each of a $10K game? I'm not sure how that was ever going to work out.

It's simple.

AP will and should forget MG, RAZA and AIW, pins that weren't engineered to work in the first place or ever had a prayer of being delivered.

Focus on Houdini and give previous Jpop victims a rebate of some kind if they want to buy a Houdini.

Onward and upward. Forget the past and let it go.

Houdini is in the same shape as MG, they should just scrap that as well and start from scratch...let someone design a game that know about physics and make something shootable.

It never made sense to attempt MG. Game has to be 100% redesigned to allow things to fit and there is zero code. So why spend all the time and effort to design a game basically from scratch, only to make 25 and abandon? Stupid - just make Houdini and offer one free to MG owner's and discount for RAZA owners. They would only need to develop one really good game and could direct all their software efforts into coding a single game, also. This would likely save AP a half a million dollars in lost time, material and licensing. More importantly it would help AP to focus on one accomplishable task rather than dividing their attention in many directions.

25 games were never financially viable, not in the past, nor in the future. It was to be a labor of love, the output of which would have been granted to a handful of collectors, at a number so small that in worst case scenario JPop could build them himself.

Without engineering rework on MG and a major increase in manufacturing quantities, this is the best recommendation to avoid AP losing a ton of money trying to make things right for only 10% of Zidware's customers. No, it's not ideal for MG owners, but it's better than nothing (having AP get in over its head and failing as well).

But I think the deal was get the Houdini from John (and maybe a few more designs?) in exchange for building out the MG run, and AP gets the remaining $ left on balance of MG. AP may have made a bad deal - none of us know what it was, all are speculating.

It's simple all right.

AP should fold up shop, write off how ever many thousands of dollars they've already thrown in the fireplace, and just like all the "owners" of MG, RAZA, and AIW, and Bill, whomever it was that got screwed behind the scenes at Zizzle, and god knows who else, curse the day they met Jpop and get on with their lives.

That's really the only option that makes any sense.

Also a dead ringer for Yahoo Serious.

For those interested, I've concluded my research project into American Pinball. I've gathered mortgage documents, their articles of incorporation, the license information I previously listed in this thread, and a few other documents. To ensure I comply with Pinside rules, I will just link to the podcast episode we cover it in:
https://eclecticgamerspodcast.wordpress.com/2016/10/23/episode-20-pinball-expo-2016-more/

If you scrolls to the "Links" section, the very first link is to the Google Drive folder with the relevant documents (some of the public documents have contact information, and I did not feel like redacting as aggressively as I would be compelled to do if I directly linked here).

If you want to hear a summary/walkthrough of the information, we put that in the episode (starts at 8:23 and runs a bit over 10 minutes). Hardly needed (though we always love listens!), but if you want some narrative structure it's the only one I've put together.

Let me know if there are any problems accessing the documents (I did a few tests but I don't share a lot through Google Drive, so I may have messed something up).

Which episode was this?

Yea...
no...

Restitution has not yet been paid by Jpop because the fiasco he created. You don't get to say "oops" and "just move on" until you have had some pain for the issues you created. For example, if you screw up and don't pay your mortgage, you lose your house. There is a "time-out" period before a bank is going to lend you money for another one. John has not yet paid for his mistakes so he doesn't get to move on yet.

Houdini has obviously been created by John with Zidware assets. There is absolutely no way that they are going to proceed with this project and title at this point. Through what they have shown publicly (documented publicly through posts here), there is a legal tie to this whole project to John and Zidware assets. So, any of those people with money in Zidware have a legal claim on anything done with this project.

Also remember:
Those that forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

Jaz

Mortgage documents are interesting as you mention. JPop strikes again!

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