![]() ![]() Sexton says there’s nothing else he can imagine doing. They create fun, and that's what keeps everybody excited.” “A lot of them come from pinball, one way or another: family, working in it, competing in it, what have you. “People here are pinball people,” says Gary Stern, founder of Stern. ![]() That collaborative component is what makes the games great. ![]() “The best designers empower all of those people to bring their best stuff to the table. “They need art assets, images, video assets to create sizzle videos and other marketing materials.”Įven though Gomez leads the creative department, he says every member of his team makes a contribution. “As we're getting ready to launch a game, sales and marketing guys are needing assets,” says George Gomez, Chief Creative Officer. In addition to being a collaborative tool within teams, Dropbox is used to connect people across the company. They’re getting really fast iterations through Dropbox, updating the scenes, and making them as polished as they can be before they go into the game.” “All the different pieces of a project are shared through Dropbox to all other members of the team. “Dropbox is used heavily in file sharing and collaboration in order to put the pieces of a scene together,” says Sexton. Building a pinball machine not only takes time, teamwork, and a love for the game it also requires the right tools. Each game has a theme, around which the art and play field components are designed. Sexton is among thousands of employees, distributors, suppliers, and other pinball professionals who work together to create and deliver the game that has brought joy to so many generations. “When people love, they spend that much more time and energy thinking about ‘how do I make this better?’ And here at Stern, we're trying to make the best products we can,” says Tim Sexton, lead software developer. But one thing remains: the makers’ passion for the game. Throughout the years, the game has evolved as technology in the world has changed. He also writes software for a company called Stern Pinball.Founded in Chicago in 1986, Stern Pinball is the oldest continually active pinball manufacturer in the world. Watching Davidson in action is a lesson in the levels of pinball - the complexities of the game you'd never see without the skill to get there.ĭavidson said the most he has ever won competing in pinball was $7,600 for finishing second at Pinburgh - the big tournament in Pittsburgh - and a new pinball machine which he won in Denmark.Īnd you could say pinball is Davidson's life. You get the timing dialed in so where before you might be missing a ramp, now every time you can just hit it and you can just keep going and going. "But then once you start hitting a couple of shots and getting some ball time, then you can start flowing and as you're playing. "At first, it's very nerve-wracking because you don't want the ball to immediately get drained - which is referred to as a house ball – and you're just kind of paranoid that like, it's going to go immediately and you're not going to get a chance to do anything," he said. Every game has a different set of rules, and Davidson says he doesn't always know the games he'll be playing ahead of time. ![]()
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