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LoserKid Pinball Podcast
LoserKid Pinball Podcast
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Ep 138: Behind Stern's Doors

PodcastAnalysis updated yesterday47 min listen
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Highlights

  • Stern's timeline from acquiring license to final product is roughly two years with 111 checkpoints
  • Licensing is a major constraint in game design, with multiple approval layers and different requirements per licensor
  • Stern recorded approximately 50 million plays through Insider Connected and is aiming for over 100 million
  • John Wick sales have not been 'as robust as other releases'
  • Stern performed 93 code updates in the previous year
  • Tooling costs are game-specific and cannot be amortized across multiple games for licensed properties
  • Stern uses two separate manufacturing companies for parts to create redundancy in case of catastrophic failure
  • Home leaderboards for Insider Connected are under development but may require additional cost due to AWS infrastructure and privacy/licensing complexity

Notable quotes

“Licensing gets final approval on everything and so and each license is different and there's license upon license.”
Josh Roop (summarizing George Gomez)
“It's on the poster... the people who made the movie, they're no longer around.”
Scott Larson (on James Bond ninja booties approval)
“Every game finds its home.”
Gary Stern (Papa Stern's philosophy)
“It's not like starting Facebook 15 years ago where you invest all your personal information into some random algorithm.”
Gary Stern (on Insider Connected privacy/licensing complexity)
“Sam Stern, they're building a team. It's like literally like a baseball team, right?”
Josh Roop (on team building philosophy)
“There's a lot of fingers in the pie... it's kind of like building a house where you have all these sub-assembly lines that are going to be involved.”
Josh Roop (on licensing approval complexity)
“They're dealing with people that might not necessarily understand what your product is, even though they're trying to give you a license to make the product.”
Scott Larson (citing Gary Stern's New York story)
“He just got hired four days ago... he shot his shot back at Expo... he brought in his resume and gave it to the team there.”
Josh Roop (on hiring new designer)

Entities

  • Aston Martin· company
  • Flip N Out Pinball· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • Williams· company
  • Beatles Pinball· game
  • James Bond: You Only Live Twice Pinball· game
  • John Wick (Pro)· game
  • Nudge Magazine· organization
  • Arcade Matt· person
  • Derek· person
  • Dwight Sullivan· person
  • Elliot Eismin· person
  • Gary Stern· person
  • George Gomez· person
  • Jack Danger· person
  • Josh Roop· person
  • Sam Stern· person
  • Scott Larson· person
  • Tim Sexton· person
  • Zach Sharpe· person
  • Insider Connected· product

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