- Feb 19, 2012
- 8,144
- 2
Bobby King: "I finally got a chance to answer the latest questions. I wish that I had better answers for some of these, but here what I got....I apologize for the delay in answering. I appreciate these questions and all of you guys and wanted to have more substantive answers. But I couldn’t hold off any longer, so here’s what I can say as of today."
1.) Are any physics updates coming soon to make the ball/flipper interaction more realistic?
The flipper physics update will be coming, but not soon. It will probably not start to be phased in until the September update at the earliest. Plus, and I'm just guessing, but we probably won't make new flipper physics active on all tables all at once. Each table will have to be tuned and tested before any physics are overhauled. We worked on this a lot during the end of 2011 and I know what we need to do. I was disappointed that we had to take out some features, but they weren't ready. We'll get them back in and perfected.
2.) How does the 55K for The Twilight Zone compare to newer licenses such as AC/DC, Tron, etc. ?
Rock group themed tables with a bunch of songs are tough to compare to any other licensing effort. Every band we’ve contacted wants 20%+, and that’s just for the group with no music.
Luckily for Stern Pinball, music publishers and the rights holders to the recordings are more reasonable when it comes to real pinball machines. Having a physical pinball machine licensed is considered a “vanity” project. Mobile devices and video games are categorized differently than pinball. The guarantees (money up front) aren't the major problem. It's the royalties on the backend that make it unrealistic financially. That said, we haven't approached AC/DC or Disney (for Tron) because we currently can’t emulate Stern’s latest hardware. We have made some progress in this area though – so there’s hope for getting more recent Stern tables in the future.
3.) Will we see a free roaming camera mode so we can zoom in and better appreciate and study the artwork and table designs? How about a screenshot capability?
Yes, we will put in a free roaming camera at some point that will be accessible from the Table Menu and the Plunger Camera view. We haven’t looked into adding a screenshot feature.
4.) In terms of lighting, are there any plans for adding "day" and "night" modes?
Yes, we are planning to add day and night mode lighting. Currently on mobile, this would require twice the textures for each table and we don’t have the bandwidth in our art staff to do this for every table at the moment. Our goal is to support real-time lighting on all platforms. before we go back and re-visit this. I envision a slider on the Table Menu so you can select where you prefer the lighting between
5.) Are the commercial results of The Pinball Arcade so far on par with your expectations?
Our biggest fear was that we’d get lost in all of the other games and apps that are distributed digitally. Thankfully, we’ve gotten past that with a lot of support from the first parties.
Once we start rolling out more tables on console, I think we’ll be able to better determine just how well we’re going.
I asked Jay Obernolte (the president of FarSight) to weigh in on this question.
From Jay:
“To be honest, we really didn’t know what to expect. We love making pinball games and we hoped the Pinball Arcade would be successful enough to let us go on making several tables every month. Although the game Is not profitable for us yet, it’s doing well enough to pay its own way in terms of ongoing expenses (which is very gratifying). Also we’re very encouraged by the fact that for each of the past few months we’ve sold more tables than the month before, which means we’re reaching more people every month and introducing pinball to a whole new generation of people who might never have become pinball fans except for the Pinball Arcade. That makes us feel really good about what we’re doing.”
1.) Are any physics updates coming soon to make the ball/flipper interaction more realistic?
The flipper physics update will be coming, but not soon. It will probably not start to be phased in until the September update at the earliest. Plus, and I'm just guessing, but we probably won't make new flipper physics active on all tables all at once. Each table will have to be tuned and tested before any physics are overhauled. We worked on this a lot during the end of 2011 and I know what we need to do. I was disappointed that we had to take out some features, but they weren't ready. We'll get them back in and perfected.
2.) How does the 55K for The Twilight Zone compare to newer licenses such as AC/DC, Tron, etc. ?
Rock group themed tables with a bunch of songs are tough to compare to any other licensing effort. Every band we’ve contacted wants 20%+, and that’s just for the group with no music.
Luckily for Stern Pinball, music publishers and the rights holders to the recordings are more reasonable when it comes to real pinball machines. Having a physical pinball machine licensed is considered a “vanity” project. Mobile devices and video games are categorized differently than pinball. The guarantees (money up front) aren't the major problem. It's the royalties on the backend that make it unrealistic financially. That said, we haven't approached AC/DC or Disney (for Tron) because we currently can’t emulate Stern’s latest hardware. We have made some progress in this area though – so there’s hope for getting more recent Stern tables in the future.
3.) Will we see a free roaming camera mode so we can zoom in and better appreciate and study the artwork and table designs? How about a screenshot capability?
Yes, we will put in a free roaming camera at some point that will be accessible from the Table Menu and the Plunger Camera view. We haven’t looked into adding a screenshot feature.
4.) In terms of lighting, are there any plans for adding "day" and "night" modes?
Yes, we are planning to add day and night mode lighting. Currently on mobile, this would require twice the textures for each table and we don’t have the bandwidth in our art staff to do this for every table at the moment. Our goal is to support real-time lighting on all platforms. before we go back and re-visit this. I envision a slider on the Table Menu so you can select where you prefer the lighting between
5.) Are the commercial results of The Pinball Arcade so far on par with your expectations?
Our biggest fear was that we’d get lost in all of the other games and apps that are distributed digitally. Thankfully, we’ve gotten past that with a lot of support from the first parties.
Once we start rolling out more tables on console, I think we’ll be able to better determine just how well we’re going.
I asked Jay Obernolte (the president of FarSight) to weigh in on this question.
From Jay:
“To be honest, we really didn’t know what to expect. We love making pinball games and we hoped the Pinball Arcade would be successful enough to let us go on making several tables every month. Although the game Is not profitable for us yet, it’s doing well enough to pay its own way in terms of ongoing expenses (which is very gratifying). Also we’re very encouraged by the fact that for each of the past few months we’ve sold more tables than the month before, which means we’re reaching more people every month and introducing pinball to a whole new generation of people who might never have become pinball fans except for the Pinball Arcade. That makes us feel really good about what we’re doing.”
