Quoted from Thermionic:I have been pulling as hard as anyone for Spooky, but the time has come for them to "step it up" a notch or two in terms of engineering, coding, designs, and manufacturing.
This company in my opinion is back to being a HOMEBREW company with Halloween. They really started to fall into place with RM, then all those guys left the company, putting them back to square one. At some point an alarm bell should have gone off there after looking at their bank account... hey we can hire someone to improve our games on EVERY level? But no they went a different direction with someone who had never designed anything. One step forward TEN steps back. I honestly think Spooky has severely damaged their company, brand loyalty, and their ability to collect up front deposits on their next game. Even their biggest fans will be like maybe I should play it first. Spooky in the past was smart in only offering 500 games total, which created a quick demand. But now they're offer 1,250 games, this creates the option of maybe I should wait and see. Whatever the next title is from Spooky they probably need to go back to the 500 title, or make a HUGE announcement of hiring KPOP, or some of the top guys from Deep Root, or stealing a designer from another company.
Who is honestly going to buy another game designed by the exact same group who did Halloween? People really need to STOP saying 'CODE' can fix the game... ahhh NO! This group thought to powder coat halloween game GOLD nothing else needs to be said.
I'm going to say something here that a lot of people probably never considered but here it goes... because SPOOKY only makes ONE TITLE a year or every year and some changes the games get drudged thru the mud a lot more than a Stern.
Let me give you an example... LED ZEP is not a great layout, great theme not a great layout. Stern didn't give you long to drag it thru the Mud here comes MANDO! Again Mando honestly isn't that great either, but that's okay because here comes GODZILLA which is awesome. In the span that Spooky released the disaster Halloween, Stern more or less released Led Zep, Mando, Godzilla now Rush. You can't dwell on one thing, because they bring the excitement before a lot of people can figure out Mando just isn't that good. Spooky on the other hand has their conversation focus on the SAME THING for MONTHS AND MONTHS and MONTHS... while they're still trying to make game number 600, Stern has already released another couple new games.
If you're going to take a year to release a new game you need to make sure you did it right because that game is going thru several phases as did Halloween.
PURE EXCITMENT - FOMO STAGE - Can't wait to play it - Played it a couple times it was fun (its always fun to play something new btw) to oh wait I played it again and again, this broke, this flaw, that flaw and it goes on and on for months. Again while everyone is finding every flaw with Halloween, Stern just had 10 more games come out.
This will always be the case which is why I think all the suppliers shouldn't make games until the demand is exhausted. Every flaw of that game is talked about over and over until they finally do something new. In Halloween's case there are so many flaws we've created the buyers remorse club wondering how do I get out of this. Spooky needs to hire experienced talent and make that announcement otherwise I really feel their next game will suffer.
One last thing Spooky games really are the pinside community, the toughest crowd, whereas Stern has buyers thru channels Spooky never has access to. You must design a great game because you'll get this treatment every time.