Time to speak to you and everyone else that really cares about
pinball.  I have known you to be a real "Pinball Man", and have told
you so to your face many times.  There are few people that have been
so dedicated to pinball.  I am not going to point to myself, but you
and the folks here know how I feel about pinball, and my dedication to
it.  There is a lot more than you allude to as to what has happened to
pinball at Stern.  We no longer have anything to lose, so why not be
honest about the hell it was working at Stern.  It had its moments of
glory, but the truth is that it was hell to work there if you really
cared about making a quality game that could make customers happy.
See if you don't agree with me when I add the following points.

Point #1 is probably a good idea, except it should have been 2.5
minutes, not 3.

Point #2 is a string of ridiculous limitations enforced by Gary Stern,
except that I agree with the Italian bottom.  It is a familiarity that
has been proven to be a good choice, since it is the only knowledge
that bozo players might be able to rely on to protect themselves from
the harsh physics of the effects of gravity. The inner lanes feed the
flippers, and the outer lanes drain the ball.  To violate those rules
will inevitably alienate players on some level.  I believe it is the
only thing that must remain from game to game, including the permanent
flipper locations and distance between the flippers.  The science of
designing pinball and my own long history tell me that I am not
wrong.  Yes, we joked many times about the usefulness of the WPT
plunger.  We could have saved some money, but Gary wouldn't have it.
There was never a profusion of sanity raining down upon us when it
came to wisdom flowing from the "heavens."  The "heavens" were filled
with a madman and a bladder full of piss, and that's what we had to
wade through every day while working at Stern.  It was always a crazy
obsessed man that we had to deal with; he was making up the stupid
rules that we had to live with, and the end of pinball is what his
madness has wrought...

Point #3 is another ridiculous rule that we all had to follow while at
Stern.  Gary is the one who insisted that every player got to see and
experience "everything" that the pinball machine could do, every
game.  It was Gary's ignorant way of trying to make every player
happy, and he probably believes that he is right in enforcing us to
deliver his philosophy to the public.  He will never realize the
damage he has done.  He will blame everything else for the demise of
pinball.

Point #4 is another correct analysis of the distortion of reality that
was enforced as gospel at Stern .  We could have had test locations in
other parts of Chicagoland, but the locations on the South side was
convenient to a person (who shall remain nameless) that was dedicated,
but did not understand the limitations of testing limited by
convenience, and was controlled by logistics instead of "the quest for
true empirical data."  We had no choice but to live with the
situation.  The truth is that this was the equivalent of no testing at
all.  I guess you could say that we gained some insight as to
mechanical reliability, but that data is always contributed by any
test, anywhere.

Now let me "turn your headlights on" with some other observations that
you know to be true.  Please, correct me if I am wrong or you
disagree:

My guess is that the experience of working at Stern today is much more
terrible than it was when things were going well, and that Gary's
acting worse than he's ever been.  He can make 30 lives miserable
simultaneously in a heartbeat with just one of his "pep-talks", and I
am sure there are many a day.

There are a few of you who have gotten a personal glimpse into the
leader, like Greg Davis (azpinlawyer) and others that actually heard
the ridiculous lecture consisting of "Don't just buy every title we
make, go out on location and play them there, too.", and a lot of
other stupid arguments he makes.  Gary and Stern Pinball would have
been so much better off if he had just kept his mouth shut.

He is totally responsible for what's happened to pinball in nearly
every way, and could have done better, maybe even survived the bad
economy if he:

Hadn't consistently ignored some of his best people's suggestions,
observations, and common sense.

Hadn't listened to cronies and lapdogs that suck up, help choose bad
licenses, and act like he's royalty.

Hadn't been so damned caught up in his own ego, the "need to always be
right", and his bad, really bad, and clueless micro-managing of
pinball design, which I was able to ignore nearly all the time, but at
no small cost.

Hadn't spoken to crowds of the pin-faithful and in so many words said
"We don't need you guys!  We build pins for Operators!"  (How business-
smart is this item?  That is a PROFOUND piece of idiocy to fathom!
Think about that for just a second!  Wouldn't the president of a
pinball company have to be SEVERELY insane to tell the fans of his
product that they don't matter?  It just doesn’t compute with the
greed, either.  Why not be the silver-tongued devil that he could be
at times?)

Hadn't picked and enforced the lamest, stinking licenses ever, and
ignored many great licenses.

Hadn't raised prices 3 times in the past year and in a bad economy.
This is true greed and very, very, stupid in a bad year.

Hadn't overworked everyone in the engineering department by shoving
through 4 pinball designs plus redemption games (well, now you know
the real reason for unfinished code, and "late" games) in a year's
time, through an undermanned infrastructure that could only support
about 2.5 completely finished pinball machines a year.

Hadn't greedily demanded that games get built on the production line
prematurely and knowingly unfinished.

Hadn't prevented the programmers (specifically Lyman and yourself)
from making updates for unfinished software: "That's stupid!  We
aren't going to sell 1 more SM! Forget It!"

Hadn't ignored all information on the Internet, in fact, demanded that
all employees "Stop reading that RGP Sh*t!!!  They're all crazy."
About this one, I had to laugh.  He didn't think it was funny.  He
really thought that he had the right to tell employees not to read bad
press about Stern on the Internet.  He thought that operators and
distributors wouldn't look to rgp for reviews, answers, and problems!
(Here again, PROFOUND, unfathomable ignorance.)

Once, about a year ago, I told Gary in his office that we have a big
PR problem.  I actually took the time to explain that RGP is like a
giant bulletin board.  Anyone can walk along and read anything that is
there.  I explained that right now there were about 3000 negative
posts about SM, and how people were getting VERY upset about the fact
that the code wasn’t finished.  He immediately said, “How do we take
things down from the bulletin board?”, and I said “We don’t.”  The
only thing he cared abouit was the removal of information!  He said,
“Look, it’s not important.  I want you to stop reading that stuff,
OK?” “Just forget about it.”

Hadn't over-released parts at some real critical times.  For instance,
he knew that none of the designers wanted the FG license because it
was a dangerous non-family oriented entity.  It had been sitting
around for years, until he finally made Pat use the license.  Pat and
Lonnie made a good game out of it, don't get me wrong, but : THE
DEMOGRAPHICS WERE BAD AND NOT BROAD-BASED!

Families who didn’t want their kids to be playing games in their
basement with farting and puking spoke out by not buying FG.  We sold
700.  He ordered parts for 1200!!  He listened to his cronies instead
of the knowledgeable people around him.  His solution?  Shrek, which
took forever, stole away resources from the rest of the queue of
games, and didn't break even.

Shrek was a nail in the coffin, maybe not the last one, but certainly
a nail.  Why was it was a bad idea?:  Distributors looked at it and
said, "Hey, what are you guys trying to pull here? This is a repainted
Family Guy!"

He over-bought again with WOF. There are other problems that I won't
go into now.

I am proud to have worked with you, even though we don't agree on
everything.