There's another important difference: 9,000 Paragons versus 100 Mafias.

What Janos and crew are doing - and let's not forget, this is literally a core group of four at this point, including the designer - if learning to walk before they run. Could they make a more complex game at this point? Probably not. Could they realistically make more than 100? Definitely not. For comparison, AMH had a run of no more than 150, and Spooky has been held up as the benchmark for doing the boutique thing 'right'. Hell, there are twice as many Jetsons out in the world. 100 of these, 10 at a time, doesn't sound like a tall order to me.

There's a reason why not.

Now for an encore, get people to stop mixing up 'why' with 'how'.

Well, I got to play it a good bit today and it's a lot of fun. Definitely more sophisticated and stylish than the basic layout appears at first, and the decision to use lightning flippers with a centre post gives it an interesting feel and extra challenge. Overall quite an achievement for a core team of four all working in their spare time.

It should go without saying but I'm going to bloody do it anyway: anyone saying 'I'm out' at this early point was never going to be in regardless.

£4K is only feasible if you're producing in bulk with a large factory floor and are certain to shift enough units. And if the equation was that easy, Stern would be doing it. This is hand-built by three people in the same way JPop was trying to do - it's not *quite* the same as saying, 'well the Mona Lisa can't be worth millions if I can pick up a print of it for a fiver', but you get the idea. It's definitely not aimed at the market that people think it is, and is not intended, nor is it a requirement, for it to sell even triple digit quantities.

The Mafia's lockdown bar isn't plastic.

Also reverse-printed plastic playfields were common on European games going back ages ago.

Is that the vanilla, strawberry, or mint Vendetta?

They didn't 'crash and burn so hard' because they didn't overextend themselves. Mafia was more of a feasibility study with a proof of concept, done on a small enough scale that if they did miscalculate the first time, they have the chance to try and learn from it with another attempt that can get the balance right. Making shitloads of money with Mafia wasn't the primary goal. Making the platform was.