I'm always disappointed when a pinball manufacturer makes a presentation at a show and I don't get to see it. So for a week or two afterwards I always scan the Internet to see if some kind soul filmed it for the world to see. Sure enough, the YouTube channel COOLTOY filmed and uploaded Stern Pinball's recent presentation at San Diego Comic-Con. Sweet!
The majority of the presentation was obviously focused on Stern Pinball's newest title, Venom. The panel interview at the show featured, Venom's designer Brian Eddy, Stern Pinball's Director of Marketing Zach Sharpe and the Company's new CEO Seth Davis.
I've written a tremendous amount about Venom here already, so I'll let anyone who is interested in hearing about the process of creating Stern's newest game watch the panel talk about it in their own words in the embedded video below. One other interesting aspect of the video was a discussion about Stern Pinball's relationship with Marvel:
Seth Davis: "We've done a number of [Marvel] titles over the years. This is just the most recent of the titles that we've done for them. That's a relationship that we see sticking together for the foreseeable future. It's a very collaborative process in how we decide which titles we should do..."
It sure sounds like we are going to get another Stern Marvel pin in the future. I get why Stern does so many Marvel pins. In a lot of ways Marvel IP is very low-hanging fruit for Stern. The IP is recognizable and Marvel is easy for Stern to work with at this point, much easier than say the James Bond license holders for example. Still, I personally can't help but wonder if the pinball market, more so home collectors than locations, is getting a little Marvel fatigue. I'm a huge Marvel fan, I personally own two Stern Marvel pins and I still am.
I was all ready for the Q&A session at the end of the presentation. That's often where a lot of the good stuff gets talked about. Alas, that part of the Stern discussion was not included in the video. Still a big thanks to the COOLTOY YouTube channel for filming and uploading the presentation at the show for all of us to see.
