9 replies to this topic

[Noah Fentz]

https://vpforums.org...er/Aug2010.html

[Sabbat]

woot

[kruge99]

Superb! Thanks for all the hard work fellas!


Best Regards,
Todd.

[Steve Ritchie]

Eala,

I like what you had to say about Stern's choice of titles and the validity of each. I also tend to agree with your opinion. It isn't your fault that you weren't there to see what REALLY came down, but I was.

Gary doesn't know what titles are good or bad. He relies on Roger Sharpe and Joe Kaminkow to decide for him when he bothers to inquire. It took me 6 months of politicking to get him to check out Avatar.

In the end both Roger and Joe approved AVATAR as good potential, but he never paid any attention to me! He is worthless for ignoring the "souls of pinball" through the years.

Talk about arrogance! I had been intensely studying upcoming movies, and AVATAR was of great potential 3.5 years ago. Avatar had a great future, but Gary wouldn't see it until Roger and Joe chimed in.

Gary blew the window of opportunity and will now embark on a pinball journey to make AVATAR a reality, but just a wee bit late!!!

As for WPT, Gary and Mike O'Donnell (the CFO) got me cornered into a tiny room at Stern and started yelling at me to make a WPT game! I knew I was going to be out of work if I didn't agree to it, so I reluctantly agreed after spelling out all the negatives of doing a card game (the last successful one was 30 years ago!) and the difficulty of overlaying card game rules over pinball rules (CLUELESS AND CONFUSING!!).

Gary even called in Larry DeMar to talk about the WPT license and Larry backed up my position of cluelessness from instinct, but Gary didn't listen to him.

As the license unfolded, nearly everything went wrong, but I am not ashamed of the WPT playfield. It had lots going for it, a tight but beautifully-playing upper playfield and some of the longest and most satisfying shots in pinball history. Keith Johnson went geek-o crazy with rules, and I admire his passion, always.

64 left-right ramp shots to complete all the cities was a bit extreme, but I wrote off the feature as great-player-expendable. Besides, Keith worked hard to do the best ruleset he could, and if there were geek fans out there, the rules would satisfy them.

Gary Stern bought the Spider-Man license after 3 steady years of my, and others' begging. WTF? He always stuck to his guns repeating with his gravelly voiced reply, "It's too juvenile!" Yeah, right, Douchebag!!!!!!! Spider-Man is TOO JUVENILE!!!!!!!!!

Spider-Man is so ingrained in the WORLD MIND that it isn't funny. Every person in Fiji, New Zealand, Nicaragua, and everywhere else on our planet knows Spider-Man and the movies that have done spectacularly well.

Gary never watched any of the Spider-Man movies, so he had no idea of the power they had over the world's audiences. He ORDERED me to "take out Doc Ock" as we neared the half-way point in SM's development. I refused, but the war went on for months as he continued to demand DO's removal.

Gary didn't know that there was a WHOLE MOVIE devoted to Doc Ock, and was ignorantly fighting success in a forceful way that has never failed to propell Stern Pinball to it's slow and forthcoming grave.

Please, Gary! Either quit ruining pinball, DIE, or just retire now before pinball has the life squeezed out of it, to the detriment of your legacy!

Pinball has no future until your selfish and ignorant outlook has left the business!

You have been destroying your own livelihood by trying to extract every last penny out of your factory with your ridiculous ignorant meddling cost-saving, pinball-destroying actions that prevent anything good from escaping the loading docks of Stern Pinball!

You have cost-reduced and micromanaged pinball into hell, and the end is nearer than you think. You can't operate as you have because the market is now so small that even one pinball company cannot survive!

Your new $$ partner David Peterson is entirely naive, but will come to the eventual conclusion that he is expensing your ridiculous travel addiction.

Sooner or later David will find out that no one in China or Russia is interested in Pinball because they don't care for it, never did and never will!

I feel sorry for DP and know that he will be conned as you conned Data East and Sega out of a ridiculous amount of money and games. It is a shame.

It's about time that the world knows exactly what Gary Stern is about.

[Sabbat]

thank you for your post Steve Ritchie

[Wizards_Hat]

Hmmm...you know I kind of get an inkling that Steve's not Gary's biggest fan

Seriously though, thanks for the insight Steve, it's not often these days that people are truly honest about how they feel - it's very refreshing, if a little sad, to hear.

Regards,
Dan.

[destruk]

Interesting Steve. But Josh Sharpe posted to RGP that Iron Man and Big Game Hunter are the best selling machines in a long long time for Stern so he believes they are making all the right decisions?

[EalaDubhSidhe]

Well, Big Buck Hunter pretty much speaks for its own earnings potential as a game theme, as I said in the article. It's my guess that Iron Man was bouyed by the upward sales curve generated by BBH - the telling thing is how Avatar will sell as the next product after that one.

[EalaDubhSidhe]

As for WPT, Gary and Mike O'Donnell (the CFO) got me cornered into a tiny room at Stern and started yelling at me to make a WPT game! I knew I was going to be out of work if I didn't agree to it, so I reluctantly agreed after spelling out all the negatives of doing a card game (the last successful one was 30 years ago!) and the difficulty of overlaying card game rules over pinball rules (CLUELESS AND CONFUSING!!).

Gary even called in Larry DeMar to talk about the WPT license and Larry backed up my position of cluelessness from instinct, but Gary didn't listen to him.

As the license unfolded, nearly everything went wrong, but I am not ashamed of the WPT playfield. It had lots going for it, a tight but beautifully-playing upper playfield and some of the longest and most satisfying shots in pinball history. Keith Johnson went geek-o crazy with rules, and I admire his passion, always.

64 left-right ramp shots to complete all the cities was a bit extreme, but I wrote off the feature as great-player-expendable. Besides, Keith worked hard to do the best ruleset he could, and if there were geek fans out there, the rules would satisfy them.

I liked WPT myself for both attempting something different and something traditional at the same time. As a European I liked how the upper playfield reminded me of an 80s Zaccaria, plus you can never go wrong with drop targets, unless they're flimsy ones that keep breaking down...

This is a coincidence with what you're saying, but when I first came up with Card Sharks on VP all those years ago, I based the gameplay around cards, but not card *games*. The starting point was, if 8 Ball Deluxe was a classic for having eight balls in the bonus rack, let's see what happens with over six times as many lights to spot; an entire deck of cards that can be built up in several ways, but in which the player can sit back, play the game as a playfield first and foremost with other easily-understood things to do, and not have to worry about particular shots or spotting strategy until the last few cards are left in the deck. (You can, for example, always spot the last card with a shot to the Wild Card rollover around the top arch.) The game has been a VP fan-favourite ever since.

[destruk]

I think WPT has the weakest wizard mode ever, for a modern game, requiring 3 hours of 'work' to reach. That, and I really dislike how Stern removes all challenge in their games. Oh, the mini dmd in the middle of WPT? Yeah, that serves no purpose at all, because it makes no difference which cards are displayed. Oh, you want to play poker? Get some free cards with every ball, complete the river and whatever, and automatically WIN with no specific shot required. It's like Wheel of Fortune where as long as you keep making any shot at all you always are guaranteed to win the puzzle no matter what it is.
These games give the illusion of difficulty, when really it's just plain work and no fun. Hit the ramp 60 times for Indiana Jones - hit the ramps hundreds of times for world poker tour, etc etc etc. Hit the Buck 60 times in the same ball for Big Buck Hunter. See any recycled bad rules in all these games? And how many people get two extra balls from the ramp in Family Guy during a game after 90 ramp shots or so?

Reduce the 'work' like Iron Man, and you are left with a less than satisfying game experience because you complete all the modes too easily. I don't understand how, people who worked for Williams and designed great, fun games with a decent balance of challenge and interest and fun, could churn out such bad games by comparison. Is it really all coming down to pressure from above, and cost cutting measures? Or is it the license holder's fault, or is the magic and spirit gone for good from making a decent game?