I'm hopeful for an LCD screen in GoT, but that ball was just added over top the intro footage in After Effects. They didn't re-render the scenes with a ball in the middle of the assets.

I'm definitely going to need to see some gameplay footage before I'm convinced this is worth the money. Going by art package alone, this thing is terrible. The back glasses on this game are the worst I've seen from Stern since Dale Jr. The cartoony graphics on the playfield look too generically medieval and lazy (check out those fighter silhouettes on the mini playfield). And the map graphic on the playfield background is too similar to me to POTC, which I also thought looked bad. I can't believe HBO approved this, seriously.

I'm sure there will be, but I don't think it's going to look impressive like when Smaug does his fire breath in The Hobbit because there aren't enough LEDs for a good spread.

Made a side-by-side comparison shot of MM, LOTR, TH, and GOT.

oops, double post

It was just a quick job in Photoshop. I think all MM, LOTR, and TH stand way above GoT even without showing them fully populated. There is strong cohesion not just in theme, but of the elements themselves in those three titles that are missing in GoT. Like others have said, GoT looks like it was a generic medieval theme that had some Game of Thrones elements tossed into it.

Before this morning, I wanted to make GoT Premium my first NIB game (still waiting on MMRLE... black trim...). I was pretty bummed on the confirmed rumors that there would be no LCD again, but I was going to try to push through that and just focus on whether it would have some compelling gameplay and toys. I never expected the artwork to be so horrible. I'm a graphic designer; I don't care how fun the game is, I'll never be able to bring myself to buy one that looks this amateurish. I'll play one on location if I ever come across it, but I would feel sick seeing it in my house and thinking about how much I paid for this high school looking effort.

Aside from that, I'm wondering just how well the game is going to tie into the GoT universe. For example, on the mini-playfield it looks like you're fighting the dragon. Why? If you're against the dragon, what happens if you're playing House Targaryen? Why is wildfire such an important tool in this game? From a GoT wiki (http://gameofthrones.wikia.com/wiki/Wildfire) it looks like wildfire is controlled by the alchemists' guild in King's Landing, which means only Lannisters will have access to it. If you're another house are you going to have to defeat the Lannisters at King's Landing before you can use wildfire? The impression that I'm getting so far is that this game's story concept is just MM except you pick the protagonist.

My favorite response was to someone asking if Stern would confirm who is writing the code for the game: "The stern development team is coding the game." What a weasley answer.

Something my friends and I were talking about at work: what's with the castle around the mini playfield? Let's be honest, it looks like it was a homemade mod produced after a trip to a Hobby Lobby for some foam board, X-acto knife, and castle brick stickers. Why wasn't it molded? Other games molded their big playfield structures: IJ has a molded temple, WH2O has molded mountains, MM has a molded CASTLE, etc. This is not the type of thing I'd expect to see in a $9k product.

If Freres is going to take another stab at the playfield art, then I hope he puts away Photoshop and illustrates the whole thing. He's a really talented artist and did a lot of really great playfields, but he needs to put down the mouse and pick up the pen again.

(Edit: I say this under the impression that he was responsible for the current GoT playfield. That's what I've been led to believe so far.)

I agree that you could do anything in software that you could do by hand, and in reality, when I say Freras should illustrate it, I would expect him in this day and age to be using a pen (stylus on tablet) in Illustrator. I think the problem is that the software more easily allows for shortcuts.

When you need a sword on the playfield, you could draw it, but you could also just grab a sword from the Internet and paste it into place. Great time-saver, but you're limited to whatever perspective the sword photo was shot at, which puts limits on your vision and your capability to express it. We see a lot of this kind of copying in this playfield. The swords were from GoT product shots, the archers were slightly altered from MM, a handful of different gears were duplicated all over the place nonsensically, goin coin clipart. Rather than make a nice illustration for the big prominent shield in the center of the playfield, they used an angle gradient. And so on.

Where there were savings in time, there was loss in uniqueness and quality. I think if the artist had to buckle done and work over each detail slowly by hand, it would have resulted in a superior product. Photoshop and Illustrator give a lot of opportunity to rush without considering much for each individual component, and I think without discipline to prevent that, the product will suffer.

Absolutely. I don't think there's inherently anything wrong with using Photoshop for pinball playfield art. I'm in love with The Hobbit's playfield. I'm sure that's almost all Photoshop, and I think the quality of it is mindblowing. I wish I could find a version 2 Hobbit playfield image in high resolution as easily as I can a version 1. But those designers have discipline and obviously a lot of skill with Photoshop. We're not seeing that with GoT, but we can see from Freres' other work that he has an amazing amount of talent and is much better than the effort that is being presented in GoT. So for this particular artist, he should go back to full illustration, whether that's completely analog or Illustrator. Either way, no clipart, no photos or raster imagery in place of illustration, no Layer Styles, no shortcuts. All of these things are sucking the life out of his work because they aren't being used with enough discretion on GoT. In this case, the tool is getting in the way and diminishing the potential of the product. I think he should go back to the tools he uses best.

That's a really cool ball lock, no denying that.

After I got out of work, I took a quick stab at what would have made me excited for the GoT cabinet. Obviously it's not going to appeal to everyone, and I'm sure lots of people are going to prefer Stern's effort compared to mine, but according to Stern's Facebook rep they spent months nailing down their look whereas I gave myself a handful of hours. And everyone's tastes are different of course. Not everyone wants a black cabinet, but I've owned TZ, TAF, HS2, RFM, and SC, and I'm a little fond of them. It won't offend me if you don't like it.

I'm going to try the playfield next, but I can't promise to finish that. Huge project.

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For the translite, I imagine it having a mirrored backing, so where you see the flourishes around the logo, and the logo itself, would be reflective. The character montage is missing some key players, like a Baratheon, a Tyrell, etc. I just took what I could quickly find on Google that fit the brooding look I wanted. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a montage of characters on backglasses as long as they are well composited and interesting looking. Like I said in another post, the way the actual translite is setup reminds me of a medieval group photo shoot at a Sears.

The gold T-molding is replaced with mirrored T-molding. Instead of another character montage on the side of the cabinet, I just went with the house motto and sigil. I imagine the opposite side would be House Lannister since the LE model is Targaryen themed. Kept the front of the cab simple. Instead of two random characters, I just have the logo and some flourishes.

Yup. Comes with being a graphic designer. Have to get used to people shitting on your work. Sometimes you make something that's a hit, and sometimes everyone smashes it, but you learn from it either way and have a better idea what people want for next time. First few times you have to trash your work and start over is pretty disheartening, but it's a process and you grow to accept it.

Yeah, unfortunately the throne graphic didn't span the entire height, and I wanted to finish it tonight, so I decided to just shift the graphic up and fill in the space with a relevant quote. I'd be interested in hearing anyone's ideas for how to better utilize that space. I ran out of ideas.

I think the issue with it is I have it separated kind of in a JJP style where there's a short marquee at the top and a big area for the LCD screen just below that. I was really hoping for an LCD in GoT I think I carried that thought into the translite.

I agree. Also, if the game is to be all about the various Houses fighting with each other, Daenerys is the least relevant to have prominently displayed on the cabinet. Most the other Houses are pretty close to each other, battling one another, and Daenerys is all by herself practically on the other side of the world. As far as I can remember the end of this last season was the first time another main character has interacted with her face-to-face.

It's true that I benefited from a lot of factors: I didn't have to answer to a committee from Stern or HBO to roll forward with my idea, I used elements without concern for their brand marketing guidelines, and so on. This allowed me to take liberties that likely weren't available to Stern. That being said, I doubt HBO commanded them to use a lot of the lazy Photoshop techniques that I and others have been complaining about the past week.

Check out the side art on this cab:

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HBO may have forced Stern to use these characters on this backdrop, sure. But I doubt they told them to apply a shadow to each of the characters against the SKY. I can see why the artist did it; they wanted to better differentiate the characters from the background, but there are other ways this could have been done. It could have even been done still using the shadow. Instead of using a Normal Blend Mode with a black shadow color, they could have changed the color and the Blend Mode to make a warm subtle glow instead. Would have looked slightly better, but black shadows with Normal Blend Modes are the default when you enable a Shadow Layer Style. This is laziness.

And I just noticed that they didn't pay any mind to the way the light is casting off the characters. Check out Jaime Lannister. His face is lit from the back and Tyrion and Cersei are lit from the front. Doesn't make any sense, because they weren't paying attention.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm an ass.

My thoughts on this whole matter are this: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Stern's claim is that this game's artwork is indicative of the quality of an $8000 game; the evidence says otherwise. My claim is that the artwork looks amateurish and/or lazy, but it's not like that's all I do; I back up my claims with evidence of my own. In my last reply to you to I provided a brand-new, never before mentioned complaint about the artwork. This game is just too easy to pick out flaws, it's not like it stops at the silver shield. That's a big problem when Stern is expecting us to fork over tons of cash for these things.

Yup. Thing is, Photoshop is my bread and butter. I have an intimate knowledge of the software, so I am able to evaluate Stern's art on a level that's inaccessible to the average person. I can deconstruct a piece of design when I look at it the same way a composer can on-the-fly boil a song down into its various components of music theory, or tell when the jackass on the keyboard at the music store with the volume turned all the way up is just hitting black keys to a rhythm pretending he knows how to play piano. I'm not saying I'm special or unique; every graphic artist with at least a few years of industry experience is like this. I'm sure whatever your specialty is allows you to do the same kind of thing.

You tried to argue with me that maybe the art's not good because Stern's hand was forced by HBO. I argued that even if Stern was forced to use specific imagery in specific locations, they likely weren't forced to make many of the bad graphic decisions that they did. I provided the shadow against the sky example, and I broke it down into its technical components: Layer Styles, Blend Modes, color. I explained motivation in those choices--yes, I can do that in certain cases. I've worked with myriad graphic designers on countless projects that I can detect some workflow choices with reasonable accuracy. The artist took the easy way out on this one, and I called it out as lazy. Because it was.

No, it doesn't feel good. I'd rather GoT been visually amazing so that instead of complaining about my dream theme being ruined, I could be preparing to place an order for a Premium.

I'm not going to deny that I'm being sharptongued in my criticisms. But it's deserved. Stern is increasing prices and we aren't seeing any increased value to justify it (we've only seen art so far, I'm sure the gameplay will be amazing). You can say JJP games are expensive, but at least they look like they're worth it.

The way I see it, negative feedback is just as important as the positive. It's importanat to know where you're failing just as much as it is to know where you succeed. Stern knows that Steve Ritchie has gameplay on lock, but they apparently don't know that the effort their artists put forward on art for some games is not up to the level that is expected for an $8000 machine. If they know this for their next machine, perhaps they will up their graphics quality to match the expectations. Then everybody wins. Customers are happier with a higher quality product, and Stern doesn't lose out on sales that they weren't aware of from people that weren't making their grievances heard, like me before a week ago.

Thanks. Yeah, I'd like to give it a shot, but it's a pretty monumental task. First of all, since a bare playfield photo hasn't been provided, I'd have to mask out all the pieces on the playfield like the flippers, wireforms, etc. Just that setup alone would take me more time than I spent doing the whole cabinet reskin a few pages back.

Next, I'd have to figure out a plan for the artwork based around the inserts. The inserts are pretty big and don't leave a lot of room to do any nice artwork. It also doesn't help that we don't know the rules yet since that plays into the design choices.

Third, I'd need the help of an illustrator. I know the limitations of my abilities, and I wouldn't be able to properly execute the artwork without assistance. I have a friend that I could tap, but I'd have to work with his schedule and his own enthusiasm for the project. Both he and I would be doing this for free, for a thing that wouldn't go into an actual product, that a lot of people think of as nothing but complaining. Hard to stay motivated for something like that on a project this big.

I haven't really fleshed out any thoughts on what I'd do on the playfield yet either. The cabinet was relatively straightforward. HBO GoT products have a pretty specific look that is easy to replicate with all the high res artwork available on the Internet. The Stern cabs are the most divergent HBO GoT licensed products I've seen.

So far, what I've thought is that the playfield should be like The Hobbit in that it is divided up thematically. Like the gutter area below the flippers/outlanes should be the great mask hall of the Many-Faced God (the "Valar Morghulis" above the gutter is the best part of the Stern playfield), between the slings should definitely be the Iron Throne. I think instead of shields over top it, it might have been more interesting if the inserts were shaped like some of the swords that are part of the throne itself. In any case, the inserts shouldn't be so big or placed in a way that would completely cover the throne graphic. On the slings could be two enemies in battle stances, like the Mountain and Oberyn, or the Hound and Brienne.

That's about all that I've really thought so far. Any other ideas don't seem like they'd make sense with the potential rules. I think it would be logical that the higher up you go on the playfield, the more wintery it gets, with the Wall somewhere, but the right orbit and pop bumper area lead to the sea. The only North representation we see is the middle lane under the castle mini-playfield. I'm not sure what could be done with with the castle. I think it's inexcusable that the sides aren't plastic molded. Aside from that, I don't know how to reskin the castle reasonably because it doesn't make sense to me. I will need to see the rules to understand why you're going to fight the dragon whenever you breach another House's castle. Stuff like this make it hard to reskin. Not enough information yet.

That's the puzzling thing too. These pinball machines look nothing like the rest of the HBO Game of Thrones licensed merchandise. I would expect if the license were so highly restrictive that we would have seen the games fall more in line with all the rest of the products.

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Don't see why not. After Heighway has their first game after Alien out, I'm sure someone will design a snazzy cabinet that you bolt your pinball machine to instead of using full length legs, and then it will have a shelf or two to store two or three playfields below your active game. I'd love to have that saved space.

Perhaps I don't know my pinball history very well. Done when, aside from Pinball 2000? And how was that particular aspect of it a failure? It's not the feature's fault Bally/Williams only made two games for it. It wasn't the feature's fault they closed their pinball division.

If Highway makes more than two games, I don't see why it wouldn't catch on. If P3 has more than two games, I don't see why it wouldn't catch on. If PPS made a modular cabinet with swappable '80s/'90s games, I don't see why it wouldn't catch on.

And like I said before, if there were games available, someone would design the must-have cabinet that goes under the pinball machine to store the extra playfields. It's common sense.

GoT will probably be an amazing player and recognized for it one day, but it will forever look like amazing crap and that won't fly with me. I'll be happy to play it in on route if I ever come across one but I'll never own it.

If you don't remember, Heighway did show off the Alien playfield concept a while back, Aurich provided a lot of comments on it, and then they pulled him in as a creative director. JJP showed us the playfield art for The Hobbit and the community provided lots of feedback. The playfield art went from good to amazing. Stern showed us GoT as a final product. Its looks suck, but that doesn't matter because they are shipping anyway.

Stern's shipping games. Great. But I'd rather have a good game than a mediocre one. I've never bought a NIB Stern. If GoT's art wasn't so bad, that would have changed. But instead, they continue to get zero dollars from me, and I have my eyes turned away from Stern and looking out for TH and Alien updates. I'd rather wait to have it done right. You don't score points with me if your product is weak.

Did you build the car yourself or did you just buy it? Give him some time to actually create.

To me, bad art is a deal breaker for owning, not for playing. I still want to play GoT, I just no longer want to own it after seeing the renders. I'm not spending thousands of dollars on something with highschool quality Photoshop. Not everyone has the same criteria for big purchases that I do of course, I'm pretty biased toward visuals being a graphic designer. Design is what I spend a lot of my time doing so I'm going to focus on it.

People keep bringing up ACDC, LotR, Tron, ST as examples of other Stern games with ugly art, but I don't know what they're talking about.

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with ACDC's playfield art. I actually even like the Angus drawing on the Pro (I might be the only one). I'm not offended by Tron's playfield art either. LotR's only problem to me is the really low quality, low resolution print of it. Those three are at least technically decent and very obviously fit their themes. ST is good technically, but the art isn't quite cohesive to the theme. As I've said before, ST reminds me of Buzz Lightyear. But all four games have much better playfields than I would have been able to make. It's a shame that GoT doesn't.

buzz.jpg

Who blames Steve Ritchie for the art? How would it make sense to blame him for it? My complaint is that a Steve Ritchie game deserves better art. Chances are good that this game is going to rock, gameplay-wise. The art sucks though. Steve Ritchie's not the artist, so why would he be held accountable?

I agree. Stern didn't build this game for free, for the good of the pinball community. They are presenting a product to us and expecting us to buy it for a not-so-insignificant price so that they can make a profit.

Some people have said to me that there is no point in complaining about the product or making my own mockups, that keeping my wallet shut will say more to Stern than any noise I could make. In a way though, that's what I've done as long as I've been in the pinball hobby. I've never bought a NIB Stern, so they've never seen a dime from me. As far as they know, I don't exist. They will never have any idea they missed out on my dollars until I start complaining. This is why people parrot that stupid phrase, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." In terms of impact, that cabinet mockup and the comments I've made will be worth more than my closed wallet would ever be.

That's what I meant.

All the more reason complaining right now is the most effective immediate strategy.

I think some of the high rollers are disappointed because it's going to look too similar to the Hobbit SE that's also going in their collections. Both have a lot of red, a lot of fire, and a dragon. Difference is that the Hobbit does it better.

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Look at Drogon. Just sitting there passively on some mountaintop, breathing fire for whatever reason. I can't tell what he's blowing it at on the front of the cabinet. The Unsullied (but that wouldn't make sense)? I think it's boring.

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Now look at Smaug. He looks menacing, and he's coming for you. His intentions are pretty clear. That's exciting.

I was really happy with the first iteration of Hobbit too. The only thing that I had a problem with was the center of the playfield with a little Smaug flying over the Lonely Mountain. I thought if they just fixed that it would be perfect. Turns out that wasn't true. They fixed that, and then they reworked the entire rest of the playfield and now it's absolutely incredible. I haven't seen another playfield yet come close to that one in amazingness.

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I haven't had a chance yet. I'm in love with the machine, but if I decide to I'm not going to order one until they start rolling down the production line. After seeing the JPop and Predator fiascos, I'm not going to take any chances. I preordered a MMRLE, and paid it in full last year, expecting it to be here quite a long time ago and still have no idea when I'm ever going to get it (black trim).

Yes, clearly a dragon, but what action? He’s just sitting there by himself. And look at all the ineffective negative space around him. The composition’s cropping is more boring than Drogon’s pose.

This shot has been cropped for maximum impact. There’s no wasted space on this sideart. Smaug is *doing* something. There’s action in this shot. And I would think in a scene where there is waste-laying and destruction, you would expect it to be filled with mayhem and hard to identify things that are being obliterated.

I personally don’t like the gold covered Smaug head, but I think the mold is sufficiently close to movie Smaug’s shape. I also think it’s a really cool toy. I love that it talks with lip-synced dialogue. I love that it breathes fire and lights up the inserts in a cone from whichever direction it’s pointed. That stuff’s cool. I’m looking forward to seeing what the GoT dragon will do, but I’m not expecting anything on Smaug’s level of coolness, probably just some flapping wings and strafing left and right.

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It didn’t take JJP years to make the artwork for the Hobbit’s playfield, there’s no reason it’d have to take Stern years either. If GoT’s art was half as good as Hobbit’s original playfield, I probably wouldn’t have complained at all. That would have only taken another couple weeks and hiring a talented Photoshop pixel ranger for the job that was fully committed to making the best product possible.

What is the point of saying this? That JJP has to make a perfect game so they better do it right? I don’t care that Stern will have another game out in a few months. There’s probably not ever going to be another GoT pin.

Being slightly better than Stern’s previous efforts is not good enough when they've raised the prices like they have. Those games you showed are from before the PRE/LE model kicked in. You can’t really compare those games and GoT as similar products since the Pro model as far as we can tell is essentially a nonstarter. And why didn’t you include LotR which is the most analogous? More relevant than digging so far into the past is looking at all the better art on their more recent games: MET, TWD, KISS, even ST, WWE, and Mustang. GoT looks lame in comparison, and a joke next to The Hobbit. Study the highres shots of the TH playfield for a while and then switch back to GoT. It’s pretty jarring.

I applaud Stern for putting the throne back into the Pro. That was a glaring omission.

Everything Aurich said, especially this part:

Someone asked me to redo the playfield after I did the cabinet, and I went into detail about it in this post:

Really though, there's no reason to have to redo GoT's playfield to prove it could have and should have been done better. Just look at the higher quality art on other games' playfields. Look at TH especially. Check out the playfields by http://www.tiltwarning.com Look at LotR, TBL, MET, and so on. Look at B/W and Capcom games from the '90s. There are lots of examples of playfields that shine above GoT's.

Ironically, this might have been Stern listening to fan feedback. I've seen lots of complaining in the past about faces on playfields/translites. I think the real problem has been poor integration/bad Photoshop jobs.

Yeah, the sideart looks a lot better with the terrible shadow-glows around the characters redone. For those that didn't notice the difference, check out Jaime and Tyrion especially.

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I'm glad we all have complained. Stern listened and did something about it. Now people are going to get a better product and it didn't cost them a dime extra. This example and #whereisthethrone both show why even negative feedback is important.

I love video modes and I think GoT's has potential to be kinda fun... but it looks embarrassing in its current state. Check out this comparison shot with IJ, a game that came out over 20 years ago.

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Pretend you know nothing about either game or either franchise. Just based on that shot, which would you assume is the newer game? The IJ shot looks more sophisticated, with bigger sprites and better utilized whitespace.

The comparisons people made of GoT's video mode and Karateka (made in 1984) are pretty apt, except that at least Karateka is in color. I actually took the IJ shot from the ColorDMD promo video, but I turned it monochrome so that the comparison wouldn't be completely unfair, which is ridiculous in my opinion since ColorDMD started coming out 3 years ago.

I specifically chose this shot from IJ because I think it better portrays how Stern should compose GoT's video mode. Make the Arya and opponent sprites much bigger, to fill out the display, and give them some detail so you can recognize who they are. There's no need for them to be so small and able to travel around the display as much as they currently are; 5-8 pixels of horizontal drift should be more than sufficient to give some back and forth movement in battle. The player's not controlling the movement anyway, so what does it matter?

Notice in the IJ shot that the characters are slightly rotated from perpendicular to the camera and you can see the opponent's back? Do that; it helps make the graphics look less flat and boring.

This would improve GoT's video mode 100x.

Definitely. When I play Getaway, my main immediate goal is to play the video mode. Same with Fish Tales. The sword fight doesn't have to be hokey diversion, it could be a meaningful positive addition to the game.

Lots of great ideas.

I think that you play only using the flipper buttons. One flipper controls your parry action, and the other stabs.

Let's hope so, but it's better to speak up now while they're still heavily working on the code rather than keep quiet and risk that they are already satisfied with it. That PotC screenshot gives me some doubt that its end state is going to be much different.

Agreed. Kudos to Stern for doing something rather than just telling us to suck it up. I appreciate the effort, but it's still not enough to sway me back to wanting to buy.

Yeah, the color of the gears and plastics feels off to me. Perhaps they would look better if they were frosted white?

I hated Ygritte, but I think it is a mistake to not include her. This translite is quite a sausage fest. It's not doing the best job being inclusive to female pinball players. In place of just Sam could be him coupled with Gilly. Ygritte should replace Rattleshirt, or even Karsi, the dark haired Wildling woman that was only in one episode. Considering the direction the show is going it'd probably even be okay to throw Melisandre on there.

I'm going to assume that the stark difference (see what I did there?) is a response to the fan reactions to the LE/Pro unveil, and this was not part of the original plan. If they intended from the beginning to have such a different playfield for the Premium model, I would have expected we'd see some Daenerys-specific customizations on the LE playfield, some dragon/Dothraki/Meereen influence. Instead, it's going to be difficult to tell the difference between the Pro and LE woods if you depopulate them without paying attention to which inserts are missing and probably holes and such for the mini-playfield. Instead of the silver shield, the LE could have had a dragon egg, for one small example. There's nothing like that. Stern has the time to make changes with the Premium that they don't with the Pros/LEs, so they did. Perhaps they did always have this in mind, but it seems pretty bizarre to me.

I think they didn't change anything about the cabinet and translite from the original plan. I only think it was the playfield that received extra attention after the LE/Pro response. It seems fishy to me that the Pro and LE playfields have the yellow map playfield and silver shield, and only the Premium has the blue playfield and metal link pattern. Why does the Premium playfield stand out so much from either the Pro or LE when they had to make three designs?

Despite gears having nothing to do with GoT, I realized they weren’t ever going to budge on them after I saw some of the DMD animations. They obviously think the gears are clever since they included them in some of the mode graphics (also with Roman numerals? because GoT is medieval and not a fantasy setting on another world, I guess? and Roman numerals are old-timey?). I have to give them some credit though, they did change the silver shield, which was the biggest blight on the playfield. That’s something.

I agree. Cabinet-wise, I’m not really impressed by either. And neither of them feel like HBO Game of Thrones officially licensed products to me.

Steve Ritchie said the cabinet mockup I made would never fly through approvals, but I think that’s BS. Not because I think there wouldn’t be any issue with my design; I’m sure there are plenty of problems. I’m starting to think the cool metal Stark wolf sigil I used on the cabinet side was just fan art. But I say BS because almost everything I did already had a precedent in some other officially licensed GoT product.

Here’s a quick breakdown:
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I think my design has been a hit with a lot of people not because what I did was good so much as that it connected better with fans' expectations of what a Game of Thrones product would look like.

Steve Ritchie said in the Twitch stream that he’s read all the books and watched all the episodes at least seven times each. I believe it. But I don’t think the artist Stern used is familiar with the series at all. None of the three cabinets or playfields do anything to capture to the mood of the series. They feel to me like the artist was provided the promotional photos and then assembled them together without much understanding of what they represented. Like the orange starburst from the seven-pointed star symbol behind the Iron Throne on the Pro translite. The impression that I’ve been getting from the latest season of the show is that the New Gods don’t actually exist, so showing god rays bursting out of the star on the Pro translite make it especially ridiculous.

And as I keep saying, these pinball machines are the most divergent officially licensed HBO GoT products on the market. The closest products I can find that the pinball machines are like are non-HBO Game of Thrones licensed products:
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[Edit: just found the source for those house sigils. HBO should officially license these because they are awesome: https://www.behance.net/gallery/Game-of-thrones-wallpapers/3985601]

I can tell you that aside from the low resolution printing of it, I never complained about the LOTR art when I owned one.

Appeal to Authority

You and I went over this already:

When someone says something in public, other people have the right to call them out on what they said. That's what I did to Ritchie; that's what you did to me in response to me doing it to Ritchie. It only makes sense that if you're going to argue against someone's claim you provide any evidence if you have it.

Steve Ritchie's claim was that my design wouldn't fly through approvals. I refuted that it wouldn't at least be somewhat in the ballpark by showing some evidence: all the HBO-sanctioned material I used to build up my cabinet.

I'm sure the reality is that Ritchie's statement was just a clever deflection to the person he was responding to that said that they liked my design. It allowed him to avoid saying that he did or didn't like the design and changed the subject to its approval viability. Something of a conversational sleight of hand.

Yes, they could have. Try and find another HBO Game of Thrones product that is of similar or lower quality than the pinball machines. I haven't yet, and believe me that I've been looking. If anyone finds one, please share it.

Why? I may not be buying anymore, but I still want to play it, and when I play it I want it to be the best experience possible. This is why I'm complaining about the video mode. I still intend on playing it one day, even if right now it looks like an Atari 2600 game. The worst thing I can do at the moment is sit idly by and not say something about it looking like a turd. If no one says anything negative about it, it might end up like that in the final product, because Stern doesn't know people aren't happy with it.

And repeating what I said before:

Of course he doesn't have to provide any evidence of his own, nor does he owe it to the Internet to provide it, but that doesn't mean the Internet isn't allowed to dispute his claim. I disputed it; based on his merits, I made an extraordinary claim, so I was compelled to provide evidence to support that claim, which I did. Get it?

I don't "get to decide this reality". I postulated that Ritchie deflected onto a more nebulous topic (approval viability) so that he could avoid saying something negative about the design, which would have come off as unprofessional, or positive about the design, which would have bad implications for Stern and the product he helped produce. So responding positively or negatively would have been bad for him. No Google necessary to figure that out; this is just using my brain.

And what do I find on the Internet? Tons and tons of better designed products that also went through the HBO approval gauntlet and passed. What are you saying? That I can't compare Stern's products with theirs, see a difference in quality, and assume that Stern wasn't allowed to make their games look as nice as the rest of the GoT merchandise? I wasn't involved in the approval process, true, but I think I can safely guess (but I can't know, right?!) that HBO wanted Stern to build the best looking product possible and didn't tell them to crap it up a little because it looked too good.

Indeed, because like or not, I and the rest of us Pinsiders that aren't settlers are the ones that compel Stern into making better products. Remember #wheresthethrone? Don't be surprised if more suggestions, like replacing the silver shield, or putting Ygritte on the translite make it into the Premiums. Or better than Atari 2600 graphics make it into the video mode because of critiques like mine.

Exactly.

This is called tone policing. This is what the Urban Dictionary says about tone police:

Tone police are people who focus on (and critique) how something is said, ignoring whether or not it is true.

They will discard a true statement simply because they don't like how it was presented. This attitude is prevalent among emotional midgets, mental midgets, liberals and wimps.

They tend to be intolerant of any statement that isn't couched with empty platitudes and butt-kissing, while thinking themselves a model of tolerance. They are often also hypocrites.

Tone police: "You might be right, but since I don't like how you said it, I demand you apologize!"

Sounds about right.

Yeah, I agree. I didn't know it was fan art when I made it, but I realized it since then. I even mentioned this in the original post paul complained about:

In any case, this is an easy fix. Instead of the cool 3D sigil, it could have just as well been the flat grey one from the official artwork. That'd still look nice and on theme.

Haha, okay. Now you're reminding me of the "slit your throat neck" fedora wearer:

Reading comprehension fail. Read the very thing you quoted from me. I said that I disputed something Ritchie said. Being an expert in his field, it's an extraordinary claim for me to make, so I needed to back it up with evidence. He's the King of Flow, and I'm nobody, therefore I need evidence. Do YOU get it yet?

Interesting is all it was ever meant to be. I never demanded Stern to stop printing their decals and start using mine. It was to spur discussion. It worked.

I quote myself because there's no point in me saying the same thing a different way. Why are you so offended that I'm posting my opinions? Get over it.

Non-sequitur how? You said:

The same stuff that fedora kid harps on about in that video. It was a relevant comparison.

Haha, you crack me up. This is once again fitting the definition of tone policing. You hypocritically call me names (say I'm asinine, insinuate that I'm a boy and don't have class) while pretending you're above doing that when I dish it back to you. And then you want to censor when the conversation doesn't go the way you want. Go ahead and block me if you can't handle it. I don't intend on blocking you, because I won't get hurt feelings just because you don't say nice things to me. If you want to continue tone policing my posts, let's move it to PMs. If you can try to look past my tone and argue my points, then do so. If you're not mature enough, just block me. And if that's the case: adieu.

I assume you're talking about me, and if not, then I at least fit all the parameters.

There are lots of reasons why I don't own any recent Sterns. I owned both LOTR and TSPP in the past. They are both fun games in their own ways, but I had a hard time looking past the quality of them compared to the Bally/Williams games next to them. The cut-corners were painfully obvious, especially when doing something like lifting the playfield and there's no support hinge. Then the printing on them was low resolution, and they were simply more expensive.

For most of the post-2000 Stern lineup, the themes didn't connect with me or I didn't like the implementation. Of the last ten or so years, the only ones I've been interested in owning aside from LOTR and TSPP are Tron and Iron Man, but I couldn't justify the price for either when I could spend the same on two equally or greater feature-filled fun B/W games that were built to higher standards.

I did plan on buying GoT though. Ever since ACDC, I thought I was seeing a Stern renaissance, they just didn't have the right theme to connect to me. MET especially convinced me. The Dirty Donnie artwork is really fantastic. If I were rich I'd own that game just for the art (not really a Metallica fan).

The pieces were set with GoT to be Stern's crown jewel, that could have for better or worse, annihilated JJP. On the JJP side, The Hobbit movie trilogy hasn't really been very well received, and it doesn't help that the game still didn't have a definitive production start date. On the Stern side, they snatched up the hottest fantasy theme since LOTR, they switched to a new system that can support hi-res video, they gave the world's best pinball designer two years to work on the project, Stern had recent hires of 3D people, and there were no surprises on what to expect from Hobbit, visually/gameplay/etc. because of their public updates. It only seemed obvious to me that GoT was going to be great. It might still be, but they could have sucked all the excitement out of TH with an LCD, comparable artwork, and being available sooner than TH.

I still intend on playing one, I just won't be buying it. I bet it's fun, it's just not a looker so it has no place in my home. As a graphic designer I'm going to privilege the presentation over the gameplay when it comes to putting this huge thing in my house. Otherwise it'd be like me being an out-of-shape fitness trainer or being a barber with a terrible haircut.

That wasn't an unrealistic statement. I could fill a room full of arcade games for $4500.

In my area, many video arcades sell for about $600. Just looking on Craigslist right now, I could turn that money into: G-LOC ($500), Golden Tee ($550), Big Buck Hunter ($550), Area 51/Maximum Force combo unit ($750), Neo Geo with 161 game cart ($450), Hydro Thunder ($650), Ms. Pacman ($850), and a $150 slot machine. That's two sit-down drivers/cockpits, two gun games, one retro game, a golf game, the holy Neo Geo, and a slot machine. You could skip the slot machine and buy a 60-in-one board for more than just Ms. Pacman; there’s also a Battlezone available that could be bought in place of one of the other games.

This is just what's available right now if I wanted to blow that money right away. Like pinball, if I were to wait, I could get better deals or have a better selection of games. Instead of Area 51, there’s sure to be a Point Blank or Time Crisis, instead of G-LOC could be Cruis’n USA, BBH could be replaced by X-Men, Simpsons, whatever.

The video arcade fans have it good these days.