deeproot Pinball thread

Why would someone like Stern rely on a third party to do something as simple as online scores? I would definitely do this in house. Especially because they are already going to set up infrastructure for update distribution. Score tracker would be a couple azure functions and call it a day.

I think more people than Ben should be sour on JPop. JPop doesn't belong in pinball anymore. The chain of events he caused ruined some big things for people. He is also a terrible worker and designer.

Couple of Azure calls and call it a day? Ha. We will see what Stern cooks up for online features but if that is their approach it will be hot garbage.

The sub service also kinda reminds me of EA Games about ten years ago. They were sick of not getting a taste of used game sales, so in new copies they included a DLC code for the online portion of the game. So you got it with the game new, and if you bought used you had to pony up another $10 to play online.

It could be deeproot trying to figure out a way to make money off used game sales.

Maybe let new buyers get several free months of the sub before having to pay. Especially if unused time on a sub is non transferable. It may also reduce the number of used copies directly competing against new copies the first several months after release

I'm obviously simplifying, but the API that someone mentioned is simply some endpoints. Stern already has a website with auth that they can surface the data in. So yeah, it's not -that- hard.

Azure infrastructure/devops is a large part of my career, and I'm really good at it, so I might know a little about it.

The point of my post was that Stern wouldn't go to a third party for this, they'd just do it in house. Regardless of how hard or easy it is.

Get outa here, the whole thing?

I will never buy any pinball machine that does not have a fixed cost for all features included. A subscription to my own physical property? This is going too far. Never never never in this lifetime.

To ask for $5000 and then an extra $500 per year sub fee is scaring tons of people away. This would not only drain your wallets, but you'd have to be confident enough that the business would still be around, AND that the game would constantly be updated. If the last 7 years are any indication, they didn't build this type of reputation to be able to do something like this.

If base RAZA was sold for $5500 w/ no subscriptions fees, I think deeproot would sell far more units, and they'd make the same amount of money per game anyway.

There's no way I'm buying one with a subscription.
I'd be very interested otherwise.

I agree. No way in hell i would buy a Pinball game with a $50 per month subscription attached to it. I want to pay one price in full and be done.

Plenty said they would never pay more than $5000 or whatever amount for nib. $10k by Christmas is no longer a joke. Toppers went from laughable garbage ripoff to begging Stern to make more. It's coming. Soon all games will be connecting to the internet and the opportunity is there. Everyone is ripping deeproot but I think everyone will be doing this to some degree very soon.

It will spell the end of Pinball. No joke, majority of people purchase these machines to make money. Now with COVID, and people slowly going back to arcades eventually, it's becoming harder to be an operator. You don't make operators suffer even more with $50 subscription, in addition to maintenance costs and the lower popularity of pins in an arcade, there is too much risk to purchase a machine and you start to look elsewhere for income. $50 a month means the first 25-50 people playing that game that month are playing for free, and they are sending that steel ball flying in your playfield, ruining it, breaking things along the way, tilting the machine, while you make NO money. So basically you need 50 extra plays a month to break even to what you were originally making when there wasn't a subscription. Again, factor in barcades, might not be hot spots with people fearing germs post covid and DR is just setting itself up for failure. Not a smart business move. Also home owners are now purchasing $5000 machines, and then basically paying rent on them for $50 a month. Not cool, especially when there are months that go by and maybe you play once or twice. Factor in, the game might suck, you don't want it after 3 months, and you're stuck with a full year subscription on a game you no longer have. Pinball will go extinct if other companies follow suit with this $50/month subscription. I'm all for Deeproot doing it, so they fail hard and other companies can learn from their mistake. I was semi excited about this game, but looks like DR greed runs DEEP!

Maybe you should talk to Stern about some contract work. I don’t think they have the ability to pull off great networking and cloud features in house. They haven’t even updated the menu UI to LCD after all these years.

I'm really liking the standard model, most of it looks like your traditional modern pin.

Hopefully, they can offer them without the annual fee.

These are very valid thoughts. What happens when you sell the pinball, does the content passes along with it, is it attached to the machine or the subscriber, and more than anything does the pinball require an active internet connexion and can the dlc owner remove features remotely.

And what if the staging website was/is simply a way to get feedback without official releasing any details about what they may or may not do... If nothing else it keeps the thread active discussing their business as opposed to the best cars of the 80's and 90's.

That's silly. Just ask a few random people to sign a NDA and do a survey for some swag. That's way easier than some convoluted leak, that may not even be noticed. A leak that makes the company look incompetent at basic website management, right before they ask people to sign up for accounts with credit card information...

I tend to agree with this. There are thousands of games I can buy once and play forever. And I have room for 5 max anyway so plenty to keep me entertained forever. If this is the route they want to go, more power to them, but Ill never be a buyer.

And silly when it comes to this thread is completely reasonable.

I upvated both, for both are at least partially true it seems to me

If it is, they'll appreciate having the content bundled here for easier digging into: https://gofile.io/d/cuMXDX

We all like to be proud of our collections and brag about the great deals we got.

I just imagined myself walking into someone's game room and seeing a Deeproot game knowing they were paying a monthly fee. I would be polite and not laugh in their face but I don't how long I could restrain myself.

But just think at all the new updates and content they could get for a licensed them like Goonies! While it may have been released in 1985, if there was ever a sequel they would be ready to capitalize on it.

I'm honored to call some of them personal friends, and they are capable. Nobody has to take my word for it though, it'll play itself out over the next year or so.

There is a lot to digest in this thread. One thing I would be interested in is, what are the updates like for $50/month. Is this additional code worth it? I'm hoping it's just not big fixes and normal things but features within the logic of the game. I will never say never, like previously stated, we as hobbyists and operators are spending more and more on location pinball. Side note, the cost of a game is still the same per play as it was many years ago. I am not sure how we can cross over to charge the correct amount and stay in business at this juncture.

Final thoughts are, if it's worth it then, I would do it. But there has to be additional value for both myself and our customers. I can't say for sure what it will look like so my thoughts are just speculation, but I hope whatever the end results are, there is value for the player in it.

Plz remember all that membership stuff is optional.

If you buy a product for what it is, not what you want it to be, you‘ll be happy.
This goes for every new game.

So if we see a finished Raza and you like it the way it is, buy it. No need for a subscription.

If it doesn‘t have enough bang for the buck don‘t buy the game as a whole until the value is there.

The only circumstance you‘d do a subscription for is for a game you allready love and want to grow and for tied in services if they add value.

Imagine Stern would get paid money for a game that is out of production and has a saturated market:
Ghostbusters Code update wouldn‘t take multiple years because the development window closed.

And again: Yes that subscription shouldn’t be necessary for the kind of „regular“ updates we know, but thats why you should only buy if you know what you‘ll get and like it.

I also imagine this.. You get your goonies pinball. With your purchase price, you get licensed art on the playfield, you get "the world" of the goonies (sort of like how Stern Jurassic park is the world with the music, Ned.. but no clips, no ford explorer)... no actual goonies call outs or video clips. You figure "well this is all good", then deeproot's next update comes and it includes a bunch of licensed stuff. You try to stick to your guns, I'm not paying $500 to get licensed content, this should have come with the game. Then you start seeing pinball streams, you get jealous, and you cave. DR realize now that they have a revenue stream, they dig deeper. The next licensed game is even more stripped down, and they get 2 years of DLC out of their customer base.

An active internet connection means death to most products. Look at EA's DRM release of SimCity back in 2013/2014 for a perfect example. It was a disaster.

At the price point games are at I would not buy an incomplete game to shell out more money for content that should have been there....no incentive to buy it in the first place. These are not $50 video games you pay another 20-$50 for more content. These machines cost THOUSANDS already.
Not no but HELL NO to this idea/concept. And these upgrades don’t add any physical features....I can’t play the animations. If the existing rules make the game bad then I probably won’t want to own it or play it....games with DLC usually have awesome game play but you more. It works for video games because it’s inexpensive. Bad idea for pinball.

Don't worry...Deeproot won't make it to Goonies, they will fold before Goonies ever sees light.

I still think Bible Adventures would be awesome.

My secular version I mean. DR will blow it.

Wow you are always so on point!

If there’s one thing deep root has proven, it’s that they move quickly and never blow deadlines!

I know a lot of you guys are big ballers, so maybe I'm the weirdo here, but $500 a year is absolutely insane to me! In 2 years that a G I could have used for anything else. Wow...

And to anyone saying its optional- sure its optional, but I think anyone who has ever experienced free to play games or even games heavy on DLC, you know they hide anything good behind the paywall, and I'm not sure what kind of evidence we have to say RM wouldn't be extra grimy about it.

It's $550/year...but they're also proposing a $5,000 base model. So think of it as a Stern Pro with two years of the service (or save the money and go buy a Stern topper)

I'm not buying 2 years of service or a 1k topper from stern either though lol, but at least a 1k topper is a physical item with intrinsic value. lets also not forget, that while outrageously priced, the toppers are a limited edition item. Plus your $5000 machine is now a $6100 machine after 2 years, but I guarantee the resale value hasn't gone up.

Theres no amount of additional pinball content that is worth $500 a year, its just the fact that they know if they leave things out, they can pry that ungodly amount of money away from people. Its sickening to me.

Look I'm not a denier than DLC and subscriptions are a way of life now, and I even partake in those things myself, but mark my words, this will be the beginning of the end for pinballs latest comeback.

I can see it now, buying nails from the pinbar, plus a DLC upgrade for New Testament content.

Ok? No one is really arguing against that this isnt a bad trend that hurts collectors and maybe operators.

Agree. Anyone who thinks the pinball market is the same as the video game market is an idiot.

At issue is that when I buy a large item for thousands of dollars, I feel entitled to owning the entirety of that item and that means the code - all of it. Tiered releases of games is another matter because I am choosing up front and receieve the entirety of what I choose.

The utter arrogance of DR shows its head once again. Not only do they have to innovate every damn thing about the entire pinball machine, they have to innovate now with outlandish subscription models too.

Now post-covid, do they really think that operators are where their buyer base is coming from? Surely they are not that dumb.

So then they must think that this $550/yr subscription model will appeal to hobbyist market? For every home buyer that subscribes, they will lose 10 sales to home buyers.

And the hobbiest market is accusutomed to getting free code updates with new features added for years after release. Good luck!

And they will be the only company with their gigantic balls on display, showing everyone how pinball is easy and how marketing and subscription models are done.

DR are simply out of their minds and their competitors are laughing at them along with the rest of us.

(I like the curved backbox though)

I agree with both points. Online updates and score reports are really a week of coding at worst and far less involved than most of their software efforts.

And you hit the nail on the head. JPOP shouldn’t be out of pinball, BUT the money that has been wasted on his efforts surely could have been put to better use in the industry. Opportunity lost here for sure.

No. Both would suck.

Stigmata slap save!

Looks like Pinball News is the first outlet to cover the bonus deeproot reveal https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2020/11/23/latest-retro-atomic-zombie-adventureland-shown/

"Perhaps one unintended reveal was shown on the main display. This was a URL to a website to find out more about the game: pinapi.turnerlogic.com. This appears to have been a testing website used by Deeproot Pinball to access their API for in-game internet connectivity, along with drpb.turnerlogic.com which was a full website for the company. Although the content on this latter website no longer exists at that URL, Google did manage to archive it.

The website was last modified towards the end of September and so it may well be outdated by now due to design and manufacturing delays together with increased costs, but the archived site describes a price of $4,999 for the Arcade model, together with a list of upgrade options including a $50-a-month (one year minimum term) ‘rootAccess‘ subscription plan to buy insider access, branded merchandise, preferential shipping rates and additional downloadable digital content such as software upgrades, exclusive modes and assorted power-ups.

A lower entry price – which would heavily undercut Stern Pinball’s Pro model price point – together with upgrade options for additional in-game content would be a new pricing model in the pinball industry, even though it is the norm in computer, mobile and console gaming. Even there though, bug fixes and updates to the core game code are generally published free-of-charge in order to make sure everyone is running the latest version, which makes support easier for everyone.

The pricing and any subscription models remain speculation until Deeproot Pinball published confirmed details and pricing, but it’s clear the company has addressed several of the concerns raised about RAZA just before their aborted launch and have many more ideas planned for this game and their new platform."

I'll note that the drpub url was actually also on the screen
qr (resized).png

deeproot, may you continue to fail until the doors hit your ass on the way out...

Deeproot needs some of the Pinside base to survive. They need good PR / Marketing to sell us on the benefits of their product. Not looking good so far.

They are haphazard at best and a total shitshow at worst.

Holy Roller Mode, with Ministry's "Jesus built my HotRod" playing in the background!

How do you like that Elvira topper? Lol

I don’t really care what Deeproot does or doesn’t do

I’d pay for one time substantial updates on my older games from Stern or JJP

So would everybody else

In fact, I already do it with Timlah’s awesome effort on JP

I'd agree a one time code update (perhaps tied with a small toy that plugs into PF like a software dongle key) is the best bet for acceptance.

But what's the return? Attach rates are fairly low in general, even if you double them because pinball is nuts you might get 20%.

So take your average hit Stern of 5k units 20% attachment that's 1000 DLC sold at say $500 gives you 500k. Divide by 3 because profit leaves a 166k budget.

Say 66k for licensing leaves 100k, let's say that's your average salary so you have a team of 3 spend 4 months on it.

Seems doable but no DR game is gonna sell anywhere near your average hit Stern. So..... We get the subscription model.

Also the dirty little secret since the dawn of time is you NEVER own software you are merely granted the license to use it. So yes, if you sold a DR machine secondhand the content would be locked to new user unless they subscribed.

Pinside is not the entire pinball world. DR doesn't have to bow down before people here and answer every hyperventilating pinhead. Why not just let them announce their product and services when they are ready? No one seems to know much about the game or this paid service. Maybe the game is fun and the subscription does add some value. Maybe the whole thing sucks. Wonderful thing is we get to decide what we buy.

DEEPROOT LIVES!!!!!!

You seem to be missing the point though. No doubt many would consider a one time payment for DLC. However, Deeproot (if true) are considering a SUBSCRIPTION model. (Not a one time payment) There is a difference.

Once the pinball community agrees to a subscription model, then the floodgates will open for us all to be taken advantage of.

Pinside isn’t the entire pinball world, but it is a rather larger chunk of the collector market. Probably well north of 30%. They have been trying to announce their product for the last two years and have been falling on their face almost every time.