Gary Stern spoke about the difficulties facing an American manufacturer striving to use US-produced parts as much as possible. He re-iterated his intention to continue manufacturing pinball machines and explained the changes Stern Pinball has made to keep doing that. These included a change in the way the factory is laid out to concentrate on pinball and not include unused capacity for video and redemption manufacturing.

He also spoke about the different models in production in the factory and told the audience how the licence for Spider-Man had been extended but the Batman and Shrek licences were running out shortly and would probably not be renewed. Gary then spoke about his new partner in the business and what he and his company brought to Stern Pinball such as re-organising and restructuring how Stern Pinball operates in such a difficult market.

He revealed that Stern Pinball is currently making a small profit after a period of losses. Gary said he appreciated the enthusiast/collector market represented by the Expo audience, although it was still a small part of Stern Pinball's overall market and talked about the increased social networking efforts by the company to reach more people in that sector. Operators are the backbone to his market, he said, and many games are also going direct to home buyers, some of which are enthusiasts but some who just want a pinball for their game room.

Returning to the type of games the company is making, Gary said the deliberate attempt to introduce more randomness and make them less skill-based is to try and change the nature of the game and keep maximum game times for a skilled player to around 10 minutes. His attempts to reach more buyers has led to the company making different version of their games for different segments, in particular what he called the 'Classic' version for the home market with regular games given the 'Pro' moniker.

He also spoke about the different ways to sell pinball machines, through different types of retail outlets rather than just through the traditional dealer network. But he also repeated his request for enthusiasts to play more on location to help support operators. Gary then answered a number of questions from the audience about the use of note acceptors, licensing difficulties and costs, and the re-use of certain playfield parts in several games.

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Jim's video presentation showed a number of clips all of which feature pinball on one way or another. From news reports about the Stern factory to the slightest glimpse of a pinball reference in a comedy show, Jim collects them all and presented them for the Pinball Expo audience.

Because Jim's presentation is video-based, there is no audio recording of his seminar. We do, however, bring you his introductory speech.

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Jody introduced himself, explaining his role at Stern Pinball and his background in the music business.

He spoke about the plans the company has to help promote pinball, such as the new website, the videos of each new game, promotion through Facebook and Twitter and making it easier to contact people at the company. He defended the removal of negative comments on their forum, saying it's their space to promote pinball outside the small group of enthusiasts to the much wider on-line audience.

He said everyone loves pinball, but not everyone could afford the full-featured model which is why they introduced the different versions at different price points.

Audience questions covered the possibilities of improved marketing by promoting pinball through DVDs of the licensed movies, the needs for increased technical support with more direct sales to the home, the proposed expansion into the Chinese market, ways to use technology to connect machines and identify players and the use of product placement to promote pinball.

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Dave began by describing how backglasses were produced in the past from paintings which were then scanned and films made. He then talked about the legal issues involved in the reproduction of licensed and unlicensed themes, showing examples of unlicensed themes which came up for sale.

After listing a number of companies or individuals who are currently making or selling licensed reproductions, Dave explained the different options for printing repro backglasses, using a Mars - God of War as an example of an upcoming product from Classic Playfield Reproductions.

Another CPR product just released is the Target Alpha backglass. Dave explained the process of cutting each the masks for each colour by hand which took around 12 months for Target Alpha and is currently being done to reproduce the Earthshaker backglass.

Dave then played a video from Kevin at CPR which showed how the Target Alpha backglass was reproduced, from choosing the correct paint colours, to making the screens, printing them on the press.

Dave then showed some example of alternative backglasses for games such as The Shadow and World Poker Tour and revealed that CPR is thinking of creating real backglasses for games which only had translites, starting with Elvira & The Party Monsters.

Throughout his presentation, Dave got the audience to guess which games small segments of backglasses came from, with the first correct guesser winning themselves a translite.

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Matt began by explaining who he and Rick are, exactly what they (as PPS) have bought, what they haven't and which copyrights exist in common pinball parts.

Rick then picked up by describing some of the problems in the past with delays in getting parts to market and how PPS can reduce those by reducing shipping times. He continued by saying what they had planned for the pinball.com and other websites and how they intend to bring new products to the market. Rick said they have spoken to existing parts suppliers to see how they can speed up their manufacturing of urgently needed parts.

He also said new EPROMS for WMS games will be available which will work better with LEDs to help eliminate ghosting through the lamp matrix. He also appealed for anyone with plans or ideas for making new parts to contact PPS so they can work out a way to make things happen.

Matt and Rick then handed over to Sam Harvey who asked a number of pinball trivia questions where the first correct answer earned either a PPS T-shirt or a Wizard Blocks poster.

Rick and Matt then answered questions from the audience. They clarified the role of Wayne in making parts (or even games) under licence through PPS, the possible rewriting of game code to alter or enhance the game play, whether they would remake games themselves, their relationship with Gene Cunningham and Illinois Pinball, which tooling they received (or gained access to) as part of their deal, their priorities in which parts they will be making, how they might bring some of the low run artwork pieces to market, their involvement and intentions with Wizard Blocks, ways for buyers to request specific parts, which parts they got as part of the deal, does Wayne retain any rights or licences, and how they intend to ensure only properly-licensed products come to market.

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Brian explained what PinMAME is, who is involved in developing it and presented a timeline of the development of the system. The initial release in April 1999 was followed 18 months later by full WPC emulation. In January 20001, it was integrated with Visual Pinball, after which Alvin G and Capcom support was added, Allied Leisure followed and it then became an open source project. PinMAME has since been used in UltraPin by GlobalVR, the Metallica Pinball, PinMAME-HW (the hardware version) as well as other systems.

Paul and Brian invited those with laptops to download the latest version of Visual Pinball and take part in a tutorial which included a basic table layout with two flippers. Brian showed an outline for Avatar which will be developed and released later. It is common practice not to release games currently in production to avoid harming machine sales.

Brian then talked through setting up a basic flippable game while Paul went around the audience solving their problems and getting then up and running. Brian and Paul then spoke about the pros and cons of Future Pinball and how that system doesn't support the use of existing ROMs which is seen as a major drawback.

A different option is to use the P-ROC hardware interface system which is scheduled to have PinMAME support in about six months' time and will produce an easier way to connect a real playfield to the PinMAME software.

Maddes Buecher then spoke about the possibilities of modifying the original ROM code and the problems which are likely to be encountered which showed how making significant changes to the way a game works is not a trivial affair.

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The regular annual began, as is customary, with all 15 participants introducing themselves to their fellow audience members, describing their involvement in pinball and whether they post on rec.games.pinball and what their user name is.

Dave then related the origins of rec.games.pinball as a break-away group from rec.games.video 20 years ago on November 20th 1990. Dave reviewed the original briefs of the newsgroup to see how they had been achieved or not. There was discussion of how r.g.p. worked outside the US and how it interacted with other pinball discussion forums and resources around the world.

Dave then announced the first edition of a new pinball fanzine called Drop Target which is being published shortly, featuring pinball reviews, location reviews, fantasy machines and personal pinball stories.

Discussion then turned to the a database of machines on location, the different sites and systems available, the problems with keeping them up-to-date and the trouble with having too many different systems and the data spread across too many sites. The issue of pinball sites was then developed when talk turned to the use of a forum on the new Stern site and the moderation of certain types of messages.