deeproot Pinball thread

I have remained quiet about this company but I want to now post my thoughts. The Deeproot company was formed by a bunch of talented people that share a common love. ALL of you know that! Who would commit hours and hours and hours of energy and time with zero $$$ gratification except someone who lives moves and breathes Pinball? We all love different aspects of Pinball. I can't play for shit, but my fascination, which continues to grow, is the overall beauty of the layout, design, electronics programming pushed to it's limit at the time of design, innovation (yes, even the awful Bally Motordome had that totally unique, not done before, skill level selection), and artistic beauty of the entire package. For sixty years or more, they were built for ONE purpose--to make MONEY--that's it! No one cares about the game except how much money it made each week in that cashpan! Most of the world had no idea who designed it, or the music, programming art, etc. No one really cared!! This is why neat, fun games like Spirit, Tx Sector, Transporter, Torpedo Alley, Class of 1822, etc etc, disappeared fast because they didn't make money! But now, COLLECTORS and PINBALL ENTHUSIASTS (All of YOU) , see these machines for what they are. A work of art that you can look at, walk around and admire, and actually PLAY! AND, every time you play it, you have a different outcome! An extraordinary experience that you all have seen and felt! This is why we all week out pinball parlours and expos! We need to show support for these new fledgling companies and not ridicule them. Yes, some playful fun is expected, but there are clearly some great new ideas that DR has developed. Let's let them grow, develop and change ! And always remember, the movie A CHRISTMAS STORY was a BOMB at the box office--a disaster! But now, 35 years later......... Anyway, that is my two cents! Todd N. Tuckey

I understand they had an event this past September, did they provide any info on when it will be released? I looked and couldn’t find.

Someone can correct me if I am wrong; I think the take away was more "back to the drawing board" than anything to do with a realistic release date.

I think they are working to adjust the angle of the tag before release.

@ Todd

A great new idea would be for them to actually produce some games. I don't think these folks will make it another 35 years to actually push something out the doors. No Christmas Story here...

Nice post about pinball history though. Liked that part.

Thanks I appreciate it, just after some clarity. I was interested in a RAZA.

Thank you Todd!

Thanks Todd for the comment. It was good to hear from you. A lot of us still hope they will release something and wish them to succeed. They need to work their communication better. DR need to show a working game which will be sure a good thing for them and show their professionalism.
The other games and RAZA could then be a success. Look at GnR sale, there are still a good pinball market!

Objectively:

Somewhere between the very end of this year (the game ist pretty much finished) and never (giving their track record so far).

Non working software glitches can be corrected in little crunch time. The rest would be waiting for parts and hopefully making a new lockdown bar.
The "orange peel" hammercoat clearcoat is no issue at all, that's a natural thing if you don't sand down the coat layers they added; they just have to adjust the application process.

So the main thing they'll have to do is et a line ready and all parts.

Perosnally I really hope the "get this done" within the next 3 months, wich is pretty much possible, but -again- given their track record I don't really believe in it.

For your info:

Don't forget Steve Bowden is still posting RAZA Stuff on his website.
https://funwithbonus.com/raza-quick-shots-ned-and-his-zombie-army/

Everyone has to judge for himself how much sense there is posting/ reading rules about a game that isn't even out yet but I appreciate the effort.

Love ya Todd but I can't help but feel you are underinformed about the entire situation. I'm not going to go further into detail than that.

But I can't help but wonder how your statement compares to Andrew Macbain and his company to produce pinball machines, Punny Factory. Given your personal history with him, I suspect your attitude is much different. Not the same situation of course but there is a lot of difficult history here and for many of us.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/todd-tuckey-s-response-to-pinball-adventures-book-deal-termination-
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OqCbjLvac0AyovWDX8s90GXZzmahi5bty9r5snJkiv8/edit

For the record, I want Deeproot to satisfy Jpop/Zidware debts and manufacture good quality machines.

LMAO!!

Jones never lets us down.

Hi Todd. Good to hear from you. Anyway, if any of us are tearing DR a new one, its mostly because of the arrogance displayed, the trashtalking and bashing of others in the industry and for the spectacularly ridiculous non-releasing releases and marketing dumpsterfires. And perhaps spraying the world with every idea and everything they are working on for the next 10 years is maybe not the best plan.

As far as the product, there are many good ideas on display but many of us are a bit concerned that they are literally changing every damn thing at once instead of going a bit more incrementally. We are worried for their sake that they are biting off more than they can chew.

And not sure if someone told them that then last 20% of finishing something this complex will be 80% of the work! And then there’s the minor thing of manufacturing them.

Anyway, I and many others on here wish them the best and like many ideas they have. Just thought I’d summarize a bit for you in case you havn’t read all the posts. We hope they are successful but a bit worried that perhaps this is not the best way to get there. Cheers

This and this and this. Complete bullseyes. P.S. Heya Todd!

Sure! Ben Heck says it, you all listen.

When I say it I’m not Ben Heck.

Heck, you're not even a Ben!

In case you missed it. Could this be a product of deeproot?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/well-played-arcade-virtual-pinball-machine-499-

pasted_image (resized).png

If this is DR related they would be foolish not to release a full size model as well . This is a good price point to get casuals to buy it , just like a One Up . So if this is an unrelated toy company - Bravo ! If they are related to a parent or sister pin company they need a full size model to usher customers towards their primary and most expensive products - pinball machines .

VP Cab out of deeproot would fit with their vision of not understanding what pinball people actually want.

I doubt they made it though; we would have been hearing the bravado of how amazing it'll be for years at this point.

I am getting a Jpoppy vibe from that cabinet...

Somewhere in those new 52 new messages is release info! ... not.

Heard anything direct from DR?

Just what has been put here.

Well that’s about a rap I am afraid. Next pin startup in 3....2.....1

Not just any! ... the DEEPROOT Countdown pinsider ...

... which must be like groundhog day

The current environment, after recent epic dumsper-fire fail and combined with recent epic JJP and Stern success, makes releasing anything more about DR and RAZA counter-productive.

So, for the sake of the reputation of DR, please for your own company and employees, just lay low now until after Christmas. I’m saying this as someone who cares - it’s just bad timing.

There is risk of greater damage being done if Robert continues on as before or DR cancels last minute again etc. (and a whiff of desperation in the air after epic investor slide deck info dump). There is even a risk of laughing-stock levels of backlash at this point.

So I really hope DR is not considering hosting any talks or releasing more info at Pinball Expo online. I’m sure they’re not at this point but just putting it out there just in case.

Just saying cause ultimately I would like them to succeed.

Time heals and 2021 will be better timing as there is only two months left this year. It takes some time to regroup and heal and then you return to the ring refreshed.

Todd, I respect you and your opinion, but how is their passion relevant to anything? They have constantly spread their feathers and beat their chest about their superiority while disparaging other established players. After years of development they can't produce a game for sale. The aborted launch was an embarrassing disaster. While I am still rooting for them, I think harsh criticism is warranted. The JJP Gnr launch shows that what we are really looking for is that complete pinball experience, not pinbar and new cabinet shapes.

I got mine a while ago.
Sign language says 5 days of f**king I think. Screenshot_20201012-234645_Photos (resized).jpg

LOL, Classic!

I agree the wrap around backbox is awesome. The split portion... Not so much. Front firing crotch speakers is a great idea even if their design and spacing looks bad.

Still think the Pinbar is dumb, even if they'd stamped a proper lockdown bad around it. It's such an "old man idea" of what would attract whipper-snappers to play.

"Oh they like cell phone screens, let's put that on there!"

The young people who goto barcades like pins BECAUSE they are retro. There's a huge millenial/Gen Z fascination with analog tapes, records, anything pre-digital.

The innovations (aka $$$) should have been put into the mechs. You wanna stand out from Stern, and remind us of the 90s, that's how you do it - not a f'ing LCD. (I'm assuming Jpop is still butt hurt that Williams didn't use his Pinball 2000 concept)

Make a mechanical wonderland under glass, again, retro! Instead we get a static sculpt of a stupid alien with the WCS target below it.

Also reading the Bowden stuff and the lame ass, WAY overwritten RAZA back story makes me think this game is gonna come to a dead stop and make you use that PinBar far too often. Goto the shop, choose a path. Since all John really wanted to do was make a carnival themed pin he probably put Alien Whack A Mole on that screen too.

All they seem to have innovated was the cabinet. This does nothing for game play or costs.

Hey now, it really drives up the cost.

All that money spent on making it easy to service a game instead of focusing on making it a reliable game.

And for what it's worth, JPop did have his engineer make the roto-target thing that isn't exactly a roto-target (lower left side). He's about to run out of EM designs to re-invent though. Maybe he'll rip off the rotating pop bumpers from Nags next.

Two!!!

Ah HECK!

Many insightful points here! Thanks Ben!

My first impression of the curved backbox portion was that it was a fresh way of updating the backbox without going overboard. And it looks like it goes well with the Retro and Atomic part of RAZA without going overboard. It also looks to me like something that could go well with other themes so a great standard DR platform look. And feedback seems mostly good too on curved part. Bravo!

But here is an example of what I hope will not ultimately be DR’s downfall...

That they can’t leave great enough alone.

They need to make the greatest, super-duper-est, most fantastically awesome backbox the world has ever laid eyes on!

So JPOP and Robert, both ego driven dreamers who enable each other and seemingly shut down any talk of pragmatism at DR, go even further...

“Let’s add the bottom stacked backbox potion so that people can look through the backbox”

Now don’t get me wrong, I see the appeal for it reinforces the original Retro space theme of RAZA (so +5 points say), but this won’t go as well with the other themes (so -15 points here).

“So let’s go another step further, let’s make it an option”

Did I read this correctly that they want to have different physical versions of backboxes as an option?

If this is true, now DR is messing with what seems like is their other goal... that of creating a new standard platform for DR (-10 points).

And I’m pretty sure that most collectors don’t want a totally new backbox look for each DR release (-5 points). Because pinball is grounded in being a *retro* hobby and to collect something means that the commonality between the items is as important as the differences. Having every release have a different backbox from the same company goes too far. And this non-cohesiveness waters down their brand a bit IMO (-3 points).

And then there is manufacturing. I’ll leave it to you to unravel the manufacturing nightmare of having varieties of backboxes (-25 points). Hopefully Octo will take care of that.

So the backbox is a micro example of the greater theme replaying itself out again and again at DR.

That they just can’t leave great enough alone.

Robert and JPOP are exceptionally smart in their own ways, and have great ideas too, but they both have to be tampered down with pragmatism. But it looks like from the last NDA’d, non-release, 10-yr-vision slide deck dump party that all internal pragmatism talk has been shut down. This is why we see external hobbiest feedback shutting down release celebrations with 5-person pro documentary film crews. A company that is filled with talent and decades of experience.

Now when you apply this unbridled design bravado to literally every aspect of a pinball machine, and consider all the complexities of all their interdependencies, you might just ultimately end up with the company-equivalent of the center mech of JPOP’s original Magic Girl.

You see, Magic Girl could not leave great enough alone.

OK, so harsh criticim but really it’s not coming from a place where I want them to fail. Like I say, a lot of good ideas and smart people, but I think with some blind spots. I want them to succeed and hope some pragmatism can help them refocus toward feasible product.

But it’s my guess at this point that the mobile app they were working on will be incorporated into the pinbar so we’ll be standing at a pinball machine playing a game we could be playing on our couch.

Or it might just end up to be the greatest, super-duper-est, most fantastically awesome, standing, touch screen video game experience the world has ever laid eyes on.

Id hate to be a real engineer at this company scared to say no to all these silly unrealistic ideas in the real production world.

The Ned toy is sitting on a coil, so it moves, as well as having a lightshow animating his guns.

And there are still lots other small moving toys there.

You're allowed to dislike it and more mechs would be cool, but it's still way more then we'd usually get.

Ah, and:

ONE!!!

DSNadine: i like your presence in here. Let’s hope!

That's hella weak for 2 years of a 750k monthly burn.

My guess is John-Robert formed an impenetrable feedback loop of crazy and nobody else was allowed to criticize "the Rembrandt of Pinball"

Thus we get an emperor who doesn't realize he's naked until an outside party (the city/journalists) tell him so.

I wonder how involved Robert is with the day-to-day. He seems super out of touch

Maybe John just regularly texts him pictures of artwork at 3am. Besides finding Zombie Yeti for Stern, John has proven without a doubt that artwork alone gets people to open their wallet.

Just look at how much Robert has invested in art studios. The man loves seeing a purty picture.

I think Yukon Yeti sounds most interesting. Whitewater is one of my favorite pins, so a sequel could be quite good.

I'm guessing your game has been done for about year now, it just hasn't released because you're not in queue yet at CGC? Yet one more example that making one pinball is easy. Manufacturing many is HARD.

I'm liking the potential in Food Truck and its integration with the Pinbar(tm). I'm hoping the Pinbar(tm) will allow me to actually order a burrito from a real life food truck. How sick would that be!

Ben Heck’s game, AMH, was out for a limited run and did get built. All the shots were makeable and for first commercial game it was pretty good. Between AMH and the Bill Paxton pinball, Ben Heck has produced more complete commercial pinball machines than JPOP since the year 2000.

John made the Zizzle games.

No.. his next game

I also worked on Rob Zombie (script, storyboarding, code overhauls) Alice Cooper (core "mansion travel" rule set, some scripting, storyboards) and have been helping a lot with their next game as well (prototyping, mechanical engineering)

Why wouldnt ya be busy!

I actually came back to this thread to throw shade at dr, since the RZ thread is just as active as this perfectly titled, "next misadventure in pinball" Imagine what Ben and co could have done with RZ if they had ten million as a baseline budget.

I've often said the secret behind Spooky's success is the fact we had to make games to make money, instead of getting the money ahead of time.

You don't work very hard when the money's already in the bank, especially if you're a lazy hack has-been who gets all their ideas from EMs.