THIS WEEK IN PINBALL – 10/31/22: The Architect: George Gomez, Stern Insider for Operators and Launch Party Badges, and MORE

Silverball Chronicles: The Architect: George Gomez Part 2

David and Ron discuss the later half of George Gomez’s career up to now on the latest episode of Silverball Chronicles.

• George Gomez designed several games on contract for Stern for a while: Playboy, Lord of the Rings, The Sopranos, Batman (The Dark Knight)

• Stern had to layoff a bunch of people around 2008 during the recession

• In July 2011, George Gomez was hired on at Stern as an executive to rebuild the creative and design teams

• Deadpool was Gomez’s first cornerstone game with Stern.  He replaced John Trudeau who is still in prison for procession of child pornography.

• George Gomez has been testing the DB5 VUK on James Bond 007 with a test fixture that has not had any issues over thousands of runs

• George Gomez is one of the most talented designers in pinball; “A modern legend”, per David Dennis

Check out the full episode

Stern Insider Connected: Launch Party Badges and Operator Alerts

Launch Party Badges

Starting with the James Bond 007 launch parties, Insider Connected users will be able to look up launch parties nearby. When a user scans in on any connected machine at a launch party they will achieve a special badge on their Insider Connected account that is only available at an official launch party.

Operator Tech Alerts

Operators that have an Stern Insider Connected Pro account, can now get tech alerts from their connected machines. The announcement didn’t list of the type of tech alerts that could be sent to operators, but they did mention coin door open would be one of them. I think we can assume that most of the warning messages that get displayed on the LCD screen will now be remotely sent messages to the operator. That should be a big win to keeping games up and running at locations.

Check out the full official announcement

Jersey Jack Factory Tour

Spooky Pinball Adds Matt Kemp as Coder