Rockwall, TX
I live how every time deeproot says something random, it stirs up thousands of posts.
"The Sun is up." - Deeproot
Post, post, post, post....
(Topic ID: 203700)
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Quoted from chiefbrody:making pinball great again. Get the hat.
He'd have to buy it from JJP, though, and the poor quality may keep his hat engineers from engineering on deeproot hats.
JJP MPGA Hat (resized).png
Quoted from Daditude:I live how every time deeproot says something random, it stirs up thousands of posts.
"The Sun is up." - Deeproot
Post, post, post, post....
N....no. It's because he says super weird shit.
The funny thing is, outside of Pinside, you ask a random casual player at an arcade, or off the street, “Hey, you ever heard of Deep Root Pinball, and did you know they are going to revolutionize pinball manufacturing?”
Blank Stare...
Crickets...
Quoted from Bublehead:The funny thing is, outside of Pinside, you ask a random casual player at an arcade, or off the street, “Hey, you ever heard of Deep Root Pinball, and did you know they are going to revolutionize pinball manufacturing?”..
Not sure why that's funny?
Blank stare.
Bermuda Triangle
Just to clarify, I think Mr. Mueller was referencing the current generation of pinball machines with his statement. I also have to agree that what we are getting from Stern and JJP is really not much different from what was available in the 90s and in some ways worse than what was available in the 90s.
People may have an issue with how he said it but I don’t think you can make a convincing argument that Stern is pushing the envelope of pinball with their offerings.
People who become entrepreneurs are often outspoken and sometimes brash. It kinda goes with the territory.
Again, I go back to the fact that the ONLY thing that Deeproot has done so far that has a direct impact on a pinball customer is give them a way to recover some of their cash losses. Despite this they somehow get all this hate just because Mr Mueller made some outlandish claims at the start.
I’m content to wait and see what Deeproot does. If they come out with a new machine that is jaw dropping, great. If they push other manufacturers to improve what they are offering, fantastic. If they fall on their face then all that has happened is some people got some money back which is a good thing!
If this small collectors market isn't with pleasing, why do all other major players work so hard to do so? To me, this attitude will come back to haunt them unless their games are leagues ahead of their competition like they say, which I see as hyperbole. If they are even on par with them and collectors have a close choice, this negative image could seriously affect sales. My simple question is why risk it? It's seriously business 101. Ask any business owner on here.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:Not sure why that's funny?
Because the seriousness people throw around in here is pure bullshit on the planetary scale... because on this planet right now, statistically speaking, nobody gives two Hershey squirts about deep root pinball except Pinside. That makes me laugh, har-de-har-har!
Quoted from Bublehead:Because the seriousness people throw around in here is pure bullshit on the planetary scale... because on this planet right now, statistically speaking, nobody gives two Hershey squirts about deep root pinball except Pinside. That makes me laugh, har-de-har-har!
In that case you should be drawing equal hearty guffaws from the Black Knight Sword of Rage thread, or in fact every word posted here.
Hilarity abounds.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:In that case you should be drawing equal guffaws from the Black Knight Sword of Rage thread, or in fact every word posted here.
Hilarity abounds.
Exactly... why else would we be here?
Quoted from Bublehead:Because the seriousness people throw around in here is pure bullshit on the planetary scale... because on this planet right now, statistically speaking, nobody gives two Hershey squirts about deep root pinball except Pinside. That makes me laugh, har-de-har-har!
Then why bother participating? Pinside is a niche hobby forum not meant to appeal to your aunt Bertha or your uncle Percy. With that context, most of us enjoy taking the hobby seriously, and there is serious cash in this industry. Just ask Gary.
Quoted from PantherCityPins:Just to clarify, I think Mr. Mueller was referencing the current generation of pinball machines with his statement. I also have to agree that what we are getting from Stern and JJP is really not much different from what was available in the 90s and in some ways worse than what was available in the 90s.
If you think what JJP is producing is close to what was available in the '90's you're smoking crack. The complexity, deep ruleset, PC-based and detailed playfield mechs and toys is way past 90's era games and quite a bit past what Stern cranks out. The LCD and movie integration, especially on WOZ, is huge. I'm all for innovation and unique/new concepts in pinball but putting my JJP games next to my top level WPC games is like night and day and I love my WPC games.
Quoted from PantherCityPins:Again, I go back to the fact that the ONLY thing that Deeproot has done so far that has a direct impact on a pinball customer is give them a way to recover some of their cash losses.
And until those customers actually see that cash/machine, one could argue that deeproot has still done nothing.
Quoted from plankalkul:Did anyone else see this in their logo?[quoted image][quoted image]
Wait, is the logo NOT meant to be a weird bird head? I thought it was a bird as soon as I saw it and couldn't figure out why the bird.
Quoted from f3honda4me:Wait, is the logo NOT meant to be a weird bird head? I thought it was a bird as soon as I saw it and couldn't figure out why the bird.
I would have loved to have been in on that "creatives" meeting.
"Ok, we have a terrible logo that reminds people of a butthole, or an avocado slung in a jock strap. Can anybody here make it worse, or at least more exciting?"
London
Quoted from CrazyLevi:What does that actually accomplish?
Last year at NYCPC, we had a drunk crash our event. It generated 5 pages of discussion here on Pinside. Exactly ZERO of that "buzz" helped us grow the event, grow our team, or sell any more tickets this year. It was worthless.
This year, we had no such "drama." We had exactly ZERO discussion about the event here, as nobody on Pinside gives a shit about that stuff.The event itself was a huge success, with twice as many people (and income I may add) than last year. Pinside buzz or lack thereof it here had nothing to do with it - but the growth came from everywhere but Pinside.
So stow the "he's a marketing genius" angle, it's total bullshit. He's doing himself no favors with this amateur hour act. This is not how pros behave. This is not how the CEO of any respectable company in any industry behaves. It's doing absolutely nothing to instill confidence in his fledgling company, and it's alienating potential customers. If the product they eventually put out matches the laughable quality of everything else they've shown us so far - from the top - their games will be garbage.
Any "buzz" he's winning here is absolutely worthless. Pinside buzz is the cheapest buzz in the world to buy, but also wafts away quickly like a fart in the wind as soon as something else comes along, or people just get tired of it by lunch time. There's literally nothing easier on pinside than generating thread views through outlandish or ridiculous behavior, but in the end it gets you nothing.
He can talk all he wants. The natives are getting restless, and this is starting to look like every other shitshow we've seen in pinball. Promise big, delay big, talk shit...we've seen it all before. Great if you have a podcast. Worthless if you are trying to launch a pinball company.
If you think this is "marketing 101" you went to one shitty business school.
Hell yes Levi - couldn't have said it better myself.
Quoted from harryhoudini:If you think what JJP is producing is close to what was available in the '90's you're smoking crack. The complexity, deep ruleset, PC-based and detailed playfield mechs and toys is way past 90's era games and quite a bit past what Stern cranks out. The LCD and movie integration, especially on WOZ, is huge. I'm all for innovation and unique/new concepts in pinball but putting my JJP games next to my top level WPC games is like night and day and I love my WPC games.
I will certainly agree with the game rules being far advanced. Mechs, not really. Just used differently. I appreciate every manufacturers take on pinball and the direction they are taking it.
Quoted from PantherCityPins:Just to clarify, I think Mr. Mueller was referencing the current generation of pinball machines with his statement. I also have to agree that what we are getting from Stern and JJP is really not much different from what was available in the 90s and in some ways worse than what was available in the 90s.
People may have an issue with how he said it but I don’t think you can make a convincing argument that Stern is pushing the envelope of pinball with their offerings.
People who become entrepreneurs are often outspoken and sometimes brash. It kinda goes with the territory.
Again, I go back to the fact that the ONLY thing that Deeproot has done so far that has a direct impact on a pinball customer is give them a way to recover some of their cash losses. Despite this they somehow get all this hate just because Mr Mueller made some outlandish claims at the start.
I’m content to wait and see what Deeproot does. If they come out with a new machine that is jaw dropping, great. If they push other manufacturers to improve what they are offering, fantastic. If they fall on their face then all that has happened is some people got some money back which is a good thing!
Stern has been keeping the industry alive for the last 20 years and managed to stay afloat while every other competitor sunk. They deserve to be praised for that and for still being the only ones able to deliver 3 new games a year.
JJP took it a step further by going back to the cost no object design that rules the industry during the golden age, with a far superior build quality, deeper integration, and toys, toys and more toys.
So seeing someone bragging and spitting on them, who came out of nowhere, with no track record in the industry, who is late of every single promise he made, and entered the business by saying "pinball is easy", is quite irritating to say the least, and clearly not brash but plain stupid.
Quoted from adol75:Stern has been keeping the industry alive for the last 20 years and managed to stay afloat while every other competitor sunk.
Stern sunk. They were bailed out.
JJP were in the process of sinking. They were bailed out.
Quoted from rubberducks:Stern sunk. They were bailed out.
JJP were in the process of sinking. They were bailed out.
All the others sunk and no one bailed them out...
Quoted from adol75:Stern has been keeping the industry alive for the last 20 years and managed to stay afloat while every other competitor sunk. They deserve to be praised for that and for still being the only ones able to deliver 3 new games a year.
JJP took it a step further by going back to the cost no object design that rules the industry during the golden age, with a far superior build quality, deeper integration, and toys, toys and more toys.
So seeing someone bragging and spitting on them, who came out of nowhere, with no track record in the industry, who is late of every single promise he made, and entered the business by saying "pinball is easy", is quite irritating to say the least, and clearly not brash but plain stupid.
This /\
Gary Stern: played with parts in the service cage as a kid, became a salesman for Stern Electronics in the early 80s. He knows a little bit about pinball and what sells.
Jack: Routed pins in the 70s, knows what does good on route, what parts fail (LTG also does their service, who also has a long experience of coin-op)
Robert: Pinball is fun, I'm going to buy a dozen. 6 months later, I have money and a media company, I'm going to start a pinball company and hire whatever designers are left.
No offense Robert, I really hope you figure all this out, but even if you're 6 months away from showing RAZA I just hope you realize the uphill challenges you have ahead of you. You should have swallowed your pride and stopped bragging well over a year ago.
Quoted from rubberducks:Stern sunk. They were bailed out.
That isn't quite accurate.
Gary kept the doors open in the worst decade in coin op ever. Look at the year the investor came in. And the games Stern made leading up to it. They were rolling, the investor made things bigger, better, faster.
LTG : )
Quoted from LTG:That isn't quite accurate.
Gary kept the doors open in the worst decade in coin op ever. Look at the year the investor came in. And the games Stern made leading up to it. They were rolling, the investor made things bigger, better, faster.
LTG : )
Llyod is correct 100% here. Gary is a great business mind. Sometimes we disagree but I know he is a big part of this side of coin op staying alive to grow into what we have today.
Ask Gary what is critical, he’ll tell you Manufacturing. Design is great, but you have to build it at cost, and meet production goals. Deep root has no manufacturing experience or people. We’ll see what they can do.
Hope it goes well.
Quoted from Bublehead:Because the seriousness people throw around in here is pure bullshit on the planetary scale... because on this planet right now, statistically speaking, nobody gives two Hershey squirts about deep root pinball except Pinside. That makes me laugh, har-de-har-har!
Hmmm!
Stern, JJP, Spooky, AP, DR...etc.
They are all here, in the pinball space, to make a PROFIT
That's why JJP has pulled back from WOZ despite Jack saying this will be the "beginning and everything after will be much better"
This is NOT Pinball socialism. They aren't here to do our bidding and kiss our collective asses and hand out FREE SHIT. F ing comical
Gerry and P3, with all the transformational pinball change hasn't made a dime of PROFIT yet. I hope they succeed. But the "paradigm shift" most likely isn't going to happen in time.
The idea that Stern makes games for $3k and is ripping off people is STUPID, and comes from people that don't have a F ing clue about numbers and financials. Stick to marketing because you flunked accounting classes. LOL
Use some COMMON SENSE people, sales have to BLOW UP to have a chance to succeed and make a PROFIT with DR or any other pinball machine manufacturer.
The "FIXED OVERHEAD" keeps clicking and ticking every day, 24/7
It might be "laughable" to some, but the numbers have to add up and accountability can be a bitch when the day of reckoning comes
There is no magic silver bullet to make this shit happen. It's not a "mystery".
Show me some financials as a potential investor today?
RAZA has been promised for 5 yrs now.
Is it really that difficult to get one game out there? Spooky does it.
DR better sell a shitload of every "ten's of pinball games" they make.
How is it that everybody F ing hates Stern, JJP, Spooky etc. and DR is gonna roll in and save the day?
I don't know, show me the results, not the bullshit rhetoric.
"ROI" equals Return on Investment.
Is that "funny"?
Deeproot means nothing to the Pinball manufacturing world as we know it today..
It has NONE!! No pinball machine or Machines contributions to the pinball community as we speak..
Hopefully Deeproot can put it’s money where it’s mouth is.
Show me the pins!!
Quoted from LTG:That isn't quite accurate.
Gary kept the doors open in the worst decade in coin op ever. Look at the year the investor came in. And the games Stern made leading up to it. They were rolling, the investor made things bigger, better, faster.
LTG : )
Gary said they were 2 weeks from shutting the doors. Ex Stern staff (some now employed there again) confirmed that was the case and that the business was being wound up.
They were done.
Quoted from LTG:Darn.
I'm here for the free shit.
LTG : (
I will literally attend any boring promotion or seminar for free shit. I have no shame.
70CC644C-8879-4458-9BA0-0BC0F213F6C2 (resized).jpegQuoted from LTG:Darn.
I'm here for the free shit.
LTG : (
If anybody deserves "free shit" its you Lloyd for all you do to help everybody! 
Quoted from LTG:That isn't quite accurate.
Gary kept the doors open in the worst decade in coin op ever. Look at the year the investor came in. And the games Stern made leading up to it. They were rolling, the investor made things bigger, better, faster.
LTG : )
This is what I don't understand about a lot of people here. They hear the words investor and immediately go to "bail out". Most if not all companies relay on some type of funding to grow bigger faster. Has any one of you guys ever broken out a calculator and just punched in some rough numbers? Their sales are far in the millions. Its not THAT expensive to buy/lease a building, its not THAT expensive for a few hundred feet of gravity conveyor, cheap assembly labor etc....Anyone who thinks JJP or Stern are broke needs to take a really good look at things and start putting some numbers together. These guys are not in business to "Be broke, trying to drag their company across the finish line".
Quoted from pinstyle:start putting some numbers together.
I did this quick calculation for CGC MBrLE: 1250 machines at $8k a piece = (and get this for nice round numbers) $10 million dollars. That was easy math.
Quoted from iceman44:There is no magic silver bullet to make this shit happen. It's not a "mystery".
Show me some financials as a potential investor today?
RAZA has been promised for 5 yrs now.
Is it really that difficult to get one game out there? Spooky does it.
DR better sell a shitload of every "ten's of pinball games" they make.
How is it that everybody F ing hates Stern, JJP, Spooky etc. and DR is gonna roll in and save the day?
I don't know, show me the results, not the bullshit rhetoric.
"ROI" equals Return on Investment.
Is that "funny"?
This brings up a great point. "If RAZA" is some DR revolutionary pin, with only sharing the theme with one of Jpops hobbies, then ok. If RAZA is a standard pin, then they have spent millions to develop and its delayed again. Maybe they realized even regular pinball is hard?
Quoted from pinstyle:This is what I don't understand about a lot of people here. They hear the words investor and immediately go to "bail out". Most if not all companies relay on some type of funding to grow bigger faster. Has any one of you guys ever broken out a calculator and just punched in some rough numbers? Their sales are far in the millions. Its not THAT expensive to buy/lease a building, its not THAT expensive for a few hundred feet of gravity conveyor, cheap assembly labor etc....Anyone who thinks JJP or Stern are broke needs to take a really good look at things and start putting some numbers together. These guys are not in business to "Be broke, trying to drag their company across the finish line".
Sales are in millions but so is cost. There’s not much things that are scalable in this industry and having sold 5000 units of one doesn't mean the next one is gonna sell as well.
Pinball is a very fragile business, it takes passion and knowledge to be successful at it.
Quoted from pinstyle:Has any one of you guys ever broken out a calculator and just punched in some rough numbers? Their sales are far in the millions. Its not THAT expensive to buy/lease a building, its not THAT expensive for a few hundred feet of gravity conveyor, cheap assembly labor etc...
At the time Stern was struggling to get games to sell 500-2k units.. they were only making 3ish titles a year.
Revenue is essential... but your 'rough numbers' probably assume a sellout at high numbers. And doesn't account for titles that couldn't sell. Struggling to sell 500 pieces wasn't paying the bills. Games cost huge amounts of time and money to develop.. and if it didn't sell, that was all red. Stern had a model of needing to sell a # of games to make it all work.. and they weren't doing it. It's a huge capital cost to fund the development, then fund the inventory, and then run the manufacturing. It's all predicated on the idea that you are getting cash flow from current sales to fund the next project. And they weren't.
It's why they went crazy reducing the BOM on games. It's why they laid off all their design staff and went BARE BONES. That wasn't the sign of a company just waiting for an investor to 'take them to the next level'. That was the sign of a company facing the crunch of cash flow and expenses.
Gary is an accountant... and that saavy shows in his efforts in the lean years to try to keep things going.
You think it's a simple calculator exercise? Yet we have a whole list of companies that couldn't do it profitably, and another list of companies that couldn't even get it done before running out of money. Your assumptions forget it takes a staff of several disciplines, MANY months to work on game. Then there is prototyping, molds, contractors, etc. That's all cost that needs to be recovered in that margin of the game you hope is going to sell. Because you ordered parts for 200+ games to get things in the timelines and quantity discounts you needed... and now you hope you can sell all 200 or be forced to sit on that inventory. Even if Stern is at 100% gross margin on their distributor sales.. that's still only on the scale of about 2k per unit in today's dollars. In 2008, that was more like 1500. 1500 x 3k units is only 4.5million. That's not a lot to fund dozens of professional staffers... maintain a full factory... pay contract labor... actually run the business, etc.
Quoted from Bublehead:I did this quick calculation for CGC MBrLE: 1250 machines at $8k a piece = (and get this for nice round numbers) $10 million dollars. That was easy math.
And that's only 1250 machines....
What about 5000 machines at an estimated $4000 profit? 20 million..
Even if it cost 4 million to develop a game (which is an insane number), there is still a shit ton of money on the table.
You guys are nuts if you think these guys aren't making money.
Quoted from pinstyle:You guys are nuts if you think these guys aren't making money.
Or that its NOT the reason we have how many companies building or trying to build machines right now? 8? More? Everyone thinks pinball and coin op amusements are easy until they have actually tried it a couple hundred times. The list of failed and defunct amusement companies is long... like, really fucking long. And growing yearly, it seems.
Yes, you wouldn't have everybody and their brother trying to bring games to market if there wasn't money to be made.
I guess by the thought process of some, Jack is eating cheese and crackers just so he can build these guys a Willy Wonka pinball.
Gary unplugged half his microwaves just so he could build a new Black Knight.
Quoted from pinstyle:Gary unplugged half his microwaves just so he could build a new Black Knight.
This, hands down, was the funniest thing I have ready on pinside in probably years... maybe it’s just the booze talking, but I could not stop laughing for a whole 5 minutes.
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