By Todd Russell
On Monday March 3, 2025, a short week ago, PGM sat down virtually with Stern Pinball programmer Elizabeth Gieske for an hour and learned what it’s really like working on the code of modern pinball games: Jaws (Stern 2024) and Dungeons & Dragons (Stern 2025).
This exclusive PlayGamesMore interview was streamed live at Twitch (follow). Unfortunately, they do not keep permanent archives of the videos, so uploaded it to YouTube and embedded and linked below so that it could be shared with others here, completely unedited.
There’s a lot to unpack in this interview about the world of coding at Stern Pinball in 2025, something you hear a lot as a player and we’ve personally complained about at PGM: why are games launched new without the code at 1.0? We can speculate or go to the source, to the people actually working at Stern Pinball to understand better. Are there secrets in these games we don’t know about yet? What does it take to program fun modes in games?
All these questions answered and much more.
Note: my volume is low in the beginning, but Elizabeth’s volume is clear, strong and good throughout.
Full Interview transcript
(Ed. Below you’ll find the entire transcript of the interview. It’s not a 100% perfect transcription, but for those that wish to follow along it’s very close to what was actually said, including pauses and other speech artifacts. Also, there was some crosstalk, where both parties are talking at the same time and that doesn’t translate as well to text. The goal was to edit as little as possible, so that people could read the responses more naturally, but did remove some of the “ums” and “ahs” that occur in most people when they speak.
NOTE: have italicized the host questions, put speakers and any editor comments in brackets. Some actions taken on camera have been put in parenthesis for clarity.)
BEGIN INTERVIEW (brief intro Jaws Pinball song: “Ballad of The Hungry Shark” by AI Kills)
[Todd Russell] (0:23 – 0:44)
I’m here with a very special guest, Elizabeth Gieske from Stern Pinball. Thank you so much for coming to talk with us today. I want to just start right out of the gate here, go right to who you are for who might be listening and doesn’t know.
I just announced where you’re from, but tell us a little bit about yourself.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (0:45 – 4:00)
Yeah, I work for Stern. I live in Kentucky, so I’m fully remote, but I write software for pinball, and I worked on Jaws, and I just worked on D&D, which was really cool. When I first joined Stern, they were in the talks about D&D, and when I heard about it, or actually, it was, I first started in the interview.
They asked what board games I play, and I’m like, well, you know, I play this and that, but I got really into D&D, which isn’t a board game, it’s a tabletop game, and they’re like, oh, okay, they kind of perked up there, and I’m like, oh, great, a bunch of nerds, and I’m going to fit right in, and I didn’t even realize, but they were in the talks with D&D, so they’re like, all right, you’re going to be working on Jaws for a while, but we got this other project that you might want to check out afterwards.
I was like, okay, cool, so that was fun. So yeah, big nerd, big pinball fan. I was super competitive in the scene and played a lot of pinball here and there.
[Todd Russell]
75th in the world?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
No, I think my top was like 140. I never broke 100. I was in the top 200 for a good bit, although since working at Stern, I’ve kind of been not playing as much competitive, but hopefully I can still jam whenever.
[Todd Russell]
There was somebody in chat earlier, Boots, said he played against you.
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Yeah, I think Pincinnati, that sounds familiar.
[Todd Russell]
So, when did you decide you wanted to do programming? When did you want to get into code, when did this all begin?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Yeah, that was in college. I didn’t have coding courses in high school, so I wasn’t really, I didn’t breach in that area.
I wasn’t exposed to it, but in college, I went to school for animation, which is hilarious, because I’m terrible at animation, and it was fun. I enjoyed it, but I was slow, and I’m not a good artist, but I kind of just wanted to do something with computers. I always knew I kind of liked computers, but I didn’t know what to do, and I wanted to be a little more creative then just, um, like what I thought computer engineering was, so I did take a like gen ed science course, and it was a elementary programming course that counted as a science credit, and immediately in the first class, I remember sitting there being a little bit intimidated, because I walked in it was just all guys, and I’m like, man, this is like really guy heavy, and you know, whatever, and I’m sitting there, and they’re all talking about the computers that they built a year ago, and how they’ve been programming since they were four, and all these words I didn’t understand. I was a little, I’m like, I don’t know if I belong here, but the professor walks in, and he’s, he like drew a tic-tac-toe board, and he talked through how a computer would program a tic-tac-toe game, and I’m like, this is crazy. I was immediately hooked.
It was a whole new way of thinking. I thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I didn’t, I added a computer science as a major. I ended up keeping the previous one, which turned out to be good, because it introduced me to pinball in this weird way, so it all, in the end, made sense.
[Todd Russell] (4:00 – 4:03)
Did you play pinball as a child? Did you?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (4:04 – 4:18)
No, no. My first, I think, I mean, I played Space Cadet pinball, which is awesome. Windows 95, that, that stuff’s great, but in turn, and a Fisher-Price pinball machine at my cousin’s house that was like plastic.
[Ed. You can play Space Cadet, 30+ years old btw, in the browser here: https://alula.github.io/SpaceCadetPinball/]
[Todd Russell] (4:19 – 4:20)
Fisher, Fisher-Price.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (4:20 – 4:32)
Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, but no, in terms of pinball, I didn’t play a real machine. My first machine I can actually remember playing was a Lord of the Rings my, like, sophomore year in college. Really?
[Todd Russell] (4:32 – 4:46)
Really? So not, in no, as a child, not on the boardwalk, nowhere encountered pinball that you can remember, so literally, it wasn’t until your, your later, later years, your, you say college, was it, or?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (4:46 – 4:47)
Yep, college, yeah.
[Todd Russell] (4:47 – 5:30)
You literally didn’t play any pinball till college, and then now you’re, you’re still way, you’re a better pinball player than me from your rank, I can tell you that. That’s pretty impressive.
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Thank you.
[Todd Russell]
And so, what I want to talk about today, because we just have a short time, and I want to talk about the, what it’s like, how you got with Stern. You’ve, you’ve told that story before, but I want to know what it’s like a day in your life. Do you just, like, wake up, do you wake, did you wake up this morning, go, D&D, I need to make a mode for D&D, or what, what, how did this happen?
How, how do you come up with this? What do you, what is a day in the life of Elizabeth Gieske? What does she do as a Stern programmer? What happens?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (5:30 – 6:18)
Yeah, it, I mean, it depends on the day, but, so, like, I mean, is this a game that has already come out, or a game that we’re still working on, and, and is in pre-development, but on the, on the daily, it’s more of a weekly thing, I feel like. It takes me about a week to lay down a groundwork for a new mode or something, and then another week to make it appear to be, in a way, finished, like, testable, so it kind of takes for me, like, two weeks to get a bare game, a bare mode in, and it takes about a month to get a fleshed out, usually, like, a complicated mode done, right, unless I’m, like, burning, and I’m just on fire, and I’m, like, I need to get this done!
[Todd Russell] (6:18 – 6:27)
I need to get this done! Are you like any other creative person, like, Taylor Swift, say, she wake up in the middle of the night, she’s got an idea, she runs to the piano, is that how this happens for you?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (6:27 – 6:48)
Oh, yeah, gosh, if you could see how many notebooks I have just, like, scattered around my condo, it’s, like, a crazy person lives here. I have all these, like, little pieces of paper, and these little notebooks I keep, I keep everywhere, (Elizabeth holds up notebook papers) I gotta make sure this doesn’t say something (she reads the note and then holds up to camera) but, yeah, this is a dandy one.
[Todd Russell] (6:48 – 6:48)
Okay.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (6:49 – 7:00)
Yeah, there’s (Elizabeth holds up a Pac-Man notebook) I have, someone gave this notebook to me, actually, at Expo, I don’t even think they knew who I was, but I’m, like, I’m gonna be writing stuff into this, and there’s gonna be a lot of good.
[Todd Russell] (7:01 – 7:06)
You do a lot of handwriting, you’re not taking, like, in your phone, or noting, and you like to write?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (7:06 – 7:32)
Well, I have that, too, I have the notes app, and I Slack myself messages to remember later ideas. I’ve attempted to, like, color code blue and black here. Yeah, (Elizabeth looks at her notes to confirm) this is all D&D stuff, so this is fine, but, yeah, it’s just, like, oh, party doesn’t heal during this time, I gotta fix that and add grace period to this lich shot, and the lich moves too fast, and, you know, just crazy.
[Todd Russell] (7:33 – 7:37)
So, how does, but how does that actually work, is what I’m curious about.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (7:38 – 7:38)
Yeah.
[Todd Russell] (7:38 – 7:56)
How, like, you, you decide you want to put in [the game], you’ve been tasked with a mode, share with me the, the, the way it works. So, I know Dwight’s the, the primary, primary guy, so, like, you, does he just say, hey, Elizabeth, come up with some modes, or, or how does that, how does it become?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (7:56 – 11:26)
Yeah, so, initially, different for every project, D&D, Dwight has this overarching story in his head of how it’s going to work and everything, but he doesn’t know how the pinball’s going to be, like, played, right? That’s kind of, you know, details we’ll figure out later type of thing, which is so crazy. D&D is so special in that the story is the primary, and then, like, okay, let’s now create the game, but, so, yeah, first you have to be, you have to start with a clear idea of what you want to put in the game, like, the worst thing in the world is when you have this, like, generic, like, just general idea, and you’re, like, some sort of single ball roving shots, maybe, or whatever.
With computing and programming, I mean, you have to be extremely, extremely specific on what you, like, the game isn’t going to make itself. You have to tell every single detail and code it in. So, first, I’ll start with just writing out the entire idea, because if I don’t start there, then it’s not, it’s just not going to get started at all.
You know, you really can’t. So, that’s why I do have all these notebooks, and I write it out, and, so, for example…
[Todd Russell]
Are you pitching this to Dwight?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
It depends. No, actually, I’m not. Dwight had a lot of trust. Maybe too much.
I’m like, oh my gosh, I’m coming up with these crazy ideas, but I was pretty much left to my own devices on how I wanted to write out the mode. With D&D, I wanted to be really, like, thematic, so I don’t have it behind me, but I used to keep the monster manual, like, right here next to me, and I would open it up, and I would read about the monster, and I’m like, oh, they have this thing called Earthglide. Okay, I’m going to try to work that into the game, and I’m going to use the shaker motor and stuff, and oh, yeah, that’ll be cool.
And, like, oh, the Lich, he can turn invisible. That’s one of his spells. I’m like, oh, okay, so that will work really great here, and, you know, we’ll have these perception checks, and that’ll be in the targets.
So, you know, I’m trying to translate everything, but I’m writing it all down first, and then I have to talk to the artists, especially the D&D, which is completely in-house. All of the art had to be done by somebody. We couldn’t just steal it from a movie.
It was so much easier, well, hard with Jaws in some ways and easier with Jaws in other ways, but that’s a different story with how that, you know, with everything, you have to find a video that matches what you’re trying to do, so it’s kind of a little backwards here, but now I’m like, okay, I have this idea, and now I can just tell the artists, like, okay, so I have this idea. Let’s say I’m writing a mode with the, for example, the Abishai attack. It’s this ranged idea where you need to shoot a shot and then use a ranged weapon to attack the monsters, and I’m like, it’s really important that the screen says, like, use action button, and they’re like, what should it show?
So I have to be thinking while I’m writing the rules, like, what should be displayed on the pinball game that would actually make sense here? So we’re kind of like, well, it might make sense for the arrows to be dipped in silver, and I’m like, it’s kind of static. That’s not quite right, and, you know, this and that.
We finally landed on this, like, first-person view of the arm with the bow, and it has silver on it, and you’re drawn back, so it feels like you’re the one shooting the bow and arrow, so I was rather proud of that when I’m like, oh, thank goodness.
[Todd Russell] (11:26 – 12:03)
Are the artists doing all the animation portion, or are you having to do some of that as well? I mean, where they’re just giving you the files, and you’re just mapping it to your program, to the events as they happen.
Is that what’s occurring as a certain event happens? I’m imagining you’re playing with the glass off so that you can roll a ball up over, you know, hit a switch or whatever. That’s how you’re doing it, right?
You’re triggering these switches, and then you must have, like, a laptop or computer somehow connected probably right to this, right to the machine.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (12:03 – 12:35)
Yeah, I’m directly connected. I can debug, which means I can stop the game somewhere and check the code and check all the variables and then step through everything and see what’s going on. The display is tricky.
It’s hard. There’s a lot of knobs and little entry points. Looking at it literally gives me a headache, because it’s just so much text.
It’s just crazy to look at. It was really hard to learn at first. I’m like, what the heck is going on?
A lot of copy and pasting in the beginning, but now I can kind of figure it out.
[Todd Russell] (12:35 – 12:38)
It’s all visual C+, right? C+, you’re doing all this?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (12:38 – 13:07)
It’s C++, yeah, and with the display, we use something called Radium, and so with a display, I mean, gosh, displays take so long to get right, because you have to, the video clip is a thing, and you have to make sure you’re playing the right one. It might be in an array, and then you have to keep track of the index of where you are and make sure you’re not out of the bounds, or maybe certain awards have certain videos that are specific. It takes a lot of time to get everything mapped out.
[Todd Russell] (13:07 – 13:08)
Zero is one, one is two.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (13:09 – 13:14)
Yeah, it’s all zeros and ones, but yeah, it starts from zero. That can trip a beginner up.
[Todd Russell] (13:15 – 13:21)
Arrays was something I always, people had trouble. It’s like, punch is zero. Zero is the first one.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (13:22 – 14:14)
Yeah, it’s really smart. It’s really smart to start with zero, because you can, I use something called the modulus. It’s on everybody’s calculator, but no one really knows what to do with it.
It’s odd. I’m like, yes, there’s this awesome thing, and no one uses it, but I’m going to pull it up here. It’s called the modulus.
It’s right there, this little percentage sign, but it gives you the remainder of a division. Say I have an array of five, and my award is the eighth award, but I only have five elements, so I will just five mod that eight, and it will return, other way, other way. Yeah, it returns the remainder, remainder three, but doing this, you’re always going to return something within the bounds of your size of the array.
That’s super in-depth. That’s weird.
[Todd Russell] (14:15 – 14:18)
Well, I hope we would go some places that you haven’t gone.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (14:19 – 14:52)
I’ve never shared that, but that’s how I do it. I like to use the modulus to make sure I’m still in the bounds. That’s just the video clip.
Then you have the animation. You might have a sound effect that plays on a certain frame, so you got to line that up right. You have this light show that might be played outside of the bounds of the whole clip and the animation, and you want to match things up.
It’s a lot of trial and error, and the majority of my time is spent trying to get the display correct. It takes a lot of time.
[Todd Russell] (14:53 – 14:58)
The actual interacting with what’s happening to switches on the game, that part’s the easier part.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (14:58 – 15:19)
That’s the easy part. Yeah, the easy part is writing the rule. The easy part is implementing the rule.
That’s even easier, and then, yeah, the hard part is getting what we call the polish done or the choreography figured out. That takes a long time, and then testing takes just as amount. Testing and getting the display is really time-intensive.
[Todd Russell] (15:20 – 15:29)
Let’s go back in time for a minute to Jaws, since that’s where you started. You’ve been working for Stern about a year and 10 months, 11 months. Is that about right?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (15:30 – 15:32)
Yeah, a year and a half. That’s about right.
[Todd Russell] (15:33 – 15:48)
Okay. You’ve told the story in other streams how you got with Stern. Maybe you could briefly just touch on it, because somebody’s listening here and hasn’t heard that, how you actually landed the position.
That might be an interesting place.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (15:49 – 15:53)
Yeah, sure. Oh, I see a comment, Todd. You need to increase your volume, by the way.
[Todd Russell] (15:55 – 15:58)
Is my volume bad? Normally, I’m so low that they can’t …
[Elizabeth Gieske] (15:58 – 18:19)
I hear you fine, but I think our levels are just not the same.
[Todd Russell]
Well, you should be louder anyway, Elizabeth. They want to hear you, not me. (Todd adjusts up his volume)
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Well, we’ll see. I don’t know. Hearing my own voice talk-ish.
But yeah, okay. The initial getting this job, so weird. Oh, my gosh.
I was sort of known, I suppose, in some circles of, yeah, she’s that person that can play pinball pretty well, and she also programs, which is two things that you really do need to be able to have a software developer position. Being able to play pinball and understand how things work with rules and why it’s fun. Why is a big thing.
I’m like, why is that fun? If it’s not fun, how do you make it better? Anyways, I was living in Louisville at the time, and there’s a great pinball community there.
I would hang out at this place called Wreck Bar. There’s like 80 games on site, and we have tournaments every Sunday. So, I was there.
And a guy named Corey Stupp, who is a Louisville native, who happens to work for Stern as a contractor, you know, I’d be in talking with him, and he’s like, oh, yeah, I programmed this machine. We’re standing in front of Godzilla. And I’m like, what?
He’s like, yeah, I did the guiding [?] mode. I’m like, this is crazy. I’m like, what language do you write in and all this stuff?
And I’m like, how much work is this? Because I never really considered how much programming. And I don’t think I really knew before doing this.
I don’t think anyone could know how much goes into a pinball machine in terms of software, which is a real shame because it’s so, it’s just beautifully architected, a lot of the software is. Anyways, I digress. But like after maybe five years of knowing Corey, he reached out and said, well, actually, it was really encrypted, like this cryptic message of, hey, seek me out at Expo.
And let’s talk about pinball.
[Todd Russell]
(laughs) Meet me in the corner to talk about Stern?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
I’m like, okay, like, sure. Yeah, I’m like, gosh, if it was someone, if it was anybody else, I’d be like, what are you talking about?
Like, whatever. But no, we meet. And it took a while for us to meet.
But we finally did.
[Todd Russell] (18:20 – 18:25)
And he gave me the super secret handshake to get in. Is that how it went?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (18:25 – 18:33)
Oh, yeah, totally. No, we were at this great burrito place. It was so, I was just, I was just happy to be there, you know, and I’m going to eat my delicious burrito.
[Todd Russell] (18:34 – 18:39)
But you see George Gomez with a taco in the background and Keith Elwin there with a burrito.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (18:39 – 20:34)
Oh, my gosh. No, actually, I’ll tell you this. I was really hesitant on accepting any position or even entertaining the idea of working for, because I took this, I’m like, all right, what do I know about the video game industry?
It’s a lot of work. And it’s a lot of work. And it’s a lot of work.
Like, that’s, that’s what I knew. And you know, pinball is different than video games, but it’s very similar. So I talked to Corey about it.
I’m like, I’m nervous about the work life balance. And what if I care about this thing too much, which all is true and very valid. And I’m glad that I thought these thoughts and prepared myself.
Because if I came in thinking, this was going to be easy, or that I was going to have my same life that I did before, I would have been wrong. But even with all of that stuff, and talking with Corey, I’m like, if I’m going to do this, I want to make sure like, how much of a say do I have on these things? Am I just coding like somebody else’s game?
Or do I have a creative input on this? And if any point, I was like, if I would have gotten a no on any of these concerns of like, do I have a say? And, you know, if he was like, no, it’s not really like that.
I’m like, I’m out. I’m not gonna, I’m not gonna do this. It’s not worth it.
But with every step, we met for like three hours, we were talking for three hours. And everything was like, okay, like, yes, this is what I would want it to be. This, this feels worth it.
I was just, I mean, I should try this out. I want to see if I can be any good at it. Plus, he was like, well, the interviews would be with George Gomez.
And he’s like saying all these names. I was like, Oh, yeah, you know, I could interview like, sure. Like talk with all these people.
Yeah, why not? So yeah, there’s like three interviews, or maybe four, and each with a different team. So like, Keith and Rick was one.
[Todd Russell] (20:34 – 20:50)
Did they ask you any strange, like, interview questions? Any, any odd stuff? Anything you remember?
Like, hey, can you give us the square root of…? Did they throw any weird interview question at you that like, stuck out in your mind? Like?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (20:51 – 21:19)
No, you know, it was concerningly not. It was concerningly not about software. You know, like, they didn’t ask me any software or math related or anything like that.
Anything that I was used to, you know, which I would have gladly, at the end, I was like, do you guys want to ask a programming question? And I think Rick ended up did and he’s like, you know, what’s the benefit of C++? And I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s a fine question.
[Todd Russell] (21:19 – 21:33)
So is Rick Naegele ultimately who you report to? Or is it George? Or who, or is it changed based on who the project lead is?
Or how does that? How does that? Who do you answer to? With your work?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (21:33 – 22:28)
Yeah, you know, it feels like I have three different people at sometimes, you know, but my first is Mark Guidarelli. He was the first person I actually interviewed with along with George. And he’s, he’s kind of in charge of all of the software people.
So I would first report to him. But yeah, in terms of like a project, the, with D&D, it felt like I reported to Dwight in a lot of ways, and with Jaws, I reported with Keith, in a lot of ways, like, you know, and Rick, of course, if Rick were to tell me to do something, you know, I’d do it. But if Keith were to tell me, I’m like, man, I really gotta get that done.
And then if, if George, George kind of comes in, and if he tells anybody, it needs to be this way, then like the whole thing is going to change and make sure that George gets his way on that. So there’s, there’s a lot of, it’s not really hierarchy, but yeah, I suppose it is kind of, kind of like that. It’s a business.
[Todd Russell] (22:28 – 22:44)
Sure. So you’re, so you’re purely contract or you’re, because I know you work remotely, but just trying to understand the structure or, so that’s, so do you ever have to go to, to the office and work there? Is everything 100% remote?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (22:45 – 23:26)
I am fully remote. I am a full employee. So not, not contracted.
And I do go to Stern maybe like four times a year. Kind of, I, I like to go when a game is launched. Definitely when I, the game that I worked on was launched.
So D&D, I went up for a week and then the Pinball Expo is like a whole thing. So we, we go up, you know, everybody comes in for that.
[Todd Russell]
TPF [The Texas Pinball Festival 2025], are you going in two weeks or three weeks?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
I don’t know. I haven’t been told. Last time, last year I did, but I think that’s just because Keith was unable to go.
So they’re like, all right, well, we’ll stick Elizabeth in there. It was really fun though. It was a good time.
[Todd Russell] (23:26 – 23:46)
Well, if you’re there, I’m sure you’ll meet some folks. And by the way, the folks in the chat, let me make sure I open it up to you guys in the chat. If you have questions and a few of them have come in, Elizabeth is watching it and she’s got full permission to grab any of your questions.
I think the next one we’re going to get to might be a little sticky. So if there’s one in particular you saw you wanted to answer real quick?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (23:46 – 23:48)
Yeah, I can rapid fire.
[Todd Russell] (23:48 – 23:49)
Yeah.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (23:49 – 25:22)
When do you consider the code is complete? It’s never really complete. When it reached, even when it reaches 1.0, there might be some other stuff, but in the beginning you, you have, that’s why it’s so important to have like a roadmap of where you want the game to be, or else it’s just going to balloon into huge, huge amount of work. But I mean, it’s already a lot of work, but yeah, in the beginning you write out this thing. It’s like a code document, but it’s like the overview of what the software should be. And once all of those things are done, then yeah, I guess it’s code complete, but that’s kind of huge.
What I consider as 1.0 code complete is all the inserts are doing something. And if an insert says Ritual of the Chosen, Ritual of the Chosen is done. If it says Great White, then Great White is done.
And you know, all the inserts need to have something. If all the inserts do something, in my mind, code complete. But we might still be working on it.
And then someone else, can you talk a little bit more about incorporating music and audio assets with how that works in Stern programming? That’s actually a lot, that’s a big question. I think we might have to go back to that later. That’s a whole, it’s like with the art, you have to talk with the artists and with the sound.
So I’m like, I’ll send it off to Jerry Thompson or the sound, I call him the sound guy. I’m sure the sound designer. And I usually have to have some sort of like, with the art too, you know, you have this vision and you’re just like, yeah, so I want the bow and arrow like this.
And with the sound, I’m like, I want this specific like sound or, you know, a click.
[Todd Russell] (25:22 – 25:30)
The dice sound is cool, by the way, when you rip that spinner and the dice, I don’t know whose sound that is, but that’s a cool sound.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (25:30 – 25:38)
Yeah, the spinner’s a great sound. You gotta have a good sound on the spinner. Very important.
But yeah, I think that’s about, I think I’m caught up here. Primary coding language is C++.
[Todd Russell] (25:39 – 26:27)
The code, the code, let’s talk about that for a minute. This is a delicate area. So I’ll try to phrase this carefully here.
One of the things that people ask about, or I’ve heard many, many, many times from players is these things launch. And I know you as the programmer wish everything was done right when it launched, right? You want to launch this game and everything to be 1.0 or not? Is that sort of the mindset of, hey, we need to workshop this with the pinball community? We need to be at a certain stage and then, and then no, we need to get feedback from the public to finish this. We know where we want to go, but I mean, am I making myself clear?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (26:27 – 27:13)
Yeah, I understand. Okay. Yeah.
I think I’ve only been in the industry for a year and a half, so it’s, yeah, this is what, this is just me speaking here. But we definitely, I know for sure, try to get the game as complete as possible for release. And we are pushing the limit on how much we can get into a machine.
But it’s not just, if we miss a release, that’s a huge problem. It can be your grounds on breaching a contract. You might have issues with licensing contracts, you might have, we have a whole line and if the line isn’t working, then that’s a huge loss.
Feeding the beast, as they call it, you got to make sure that…
[Todd Russell]
So, it’s generated by the, it’s generated by production schedule. Cause I used to work at a candy factory. So it’s purely like, we got to have X game, whatever it is, just not talking about specific, but X game on January 1st, we got to have that game.
We got to have X game two by April 1st and wherever you’re at in the code at that point in time, that’s pretty much what you got to do. Is that, is that, am I understanding that correctly? Is that?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (27:45 – 28:59)
I, that’s what the, I mean, that’s what we are, are allotted. It’s where I know we’re making pushes to get the code more complete. And, oh, D&D is so big.
It’s such a big game. That game is like four games in one. It’s so massive.
There was just no way they were going to get it to 1.0. But I think we’re really lucky to have like a, you know, the community so receptive. And I think it is, I think it’s a really special thing. I think it’s really cool that I get to have this plug into the community and they get to say something.
And then on the next update, they get to see that thing implemented. I, it’s, it’s a unique thing that would be a loss if, you know, it was at 1.0 and we were really strict about, all right, 1.0, no more work on this game where we got, you know, we’re moving on, but we want to see this game as good as possible. And I know that I have a lot of good ideas, but I know that a lot of other people have equally as good, if not better.
And it’s, it’s humbling a lot of times when I see a comment and I’m like, oh, that’s so much better than the better idea that I had. All right. You know, I’m going to stick to it.
[Todd Russell] (28:59 – 29:13)
Really? So the community has given, can you think of an awesome idea for Jaws or Dungeons and Dragons that the community gave you? Can you think off the top of your head of something that got into the actual game, could you share with us please?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (29:13 – 29:13)
Yeah.
[Todd Russell] (29:14 – 29:16)
Like one of, or more of those might’ve been?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (29:16 – 30:23)
I can’t recall if we were already had the idea and we were going to get to it, but with, with the online forums and stuff being so vocal, we decided to at least quicken it to make sure it was in. Cause it was kind of a great idea, but it was the night modes for Night Swim and Night Search in Jaws to have the play feel dim while you’re in those night modes to match what was going on with the video. So I remember there was not like a huge upcry, you know, like, oh, we got to get this in.
But I’m like, hey, this is a, this is good. Like, let’s do it. You know?
So Keith was like, yeah, okay. But in competition mode, it’s going to be lit. Like, okay, whatever.
So we’ll have a handshake agreement on that one. And yeah, I think a lot of times it’s ideas that I did have, but maybe didn’t want to prioritize because I wasn’t, you know, it’s hard to gauge how much, how important this aspect is to a player.
[Todd Russell] (30:24 – 30:48)
So let’s say today, let’s say today, Elizabeth, that we, you came up with an idea today for Dungeons and Dragons that wasn’t in there. What’s the realistic chance, how long from today to it, when we see it out here in the game.
How long, what do you think is a realistic amount of time that, that something like, are we talking a month, two months, three months, six months? It just depends?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (30:49 – 31:45)
I mean, ironically there it’s sometimes it’s the day of I, I put it in, I’m like, I read it. There was a, especially with bugs, especially with bugs. You know, someone says like, this isn’t working.
And I’m like, oh, immediately fix that’s high priority with ideas. It depends on how large the ask is. So, you know, I’ll be like, oh my goodness.
Like, let’s just put a whole new mode in here. Right. And like, ah, we just can’t get to that.
Or maybe it’s too much on the artists. And cause a lot of, a lot of the ask might be more, more in that realm. But with anything that’s like strictly software and it’s under my control it’s, it’s a big, it’s, it’s a huge responsibility.
I take it really seriously. So you’ll make sure that this game is, you know, getting, is being, is pleasing to everybody that is buying or playing the game. But it’s all up to the code update.
Right. And usually code updates are like a monthly thing.
[Todd Russell] (31:46 – 31:52)
Is that a marketing person or is that somewhere above you that decides when those things are pushed out?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (31:52 – 32:33)
It’s usually the software lead will determine. Cause you don’t, you don’t want to rush an update. You’re going to, you’re going to be ending, ending up rushing something that might be broken.
Cause you’re not taking the time to test it. Like, sure. I can get something fixed and programs like pretty quickly, but like I said before, testing is, takes longer than actually implementing a, a change.
So yeah, I, I don’t think you want to have something that is constantly updating because you’re likely going to get broken stuff. If you do, you really do have to go through the proper, you know, creation, the ideation.
[Todd Russell] (32:34 – 32:53)
Is there anybody else that helps you in turn? Are there other contract people? I know you’re not contract person, but are there other people within Stern?
You got to get hand this off to, Hey, play this for 25 times and this mode or, you know, is it pretty much you’re the primary as you’re doing it to get the testing?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (32:53 – 34:19)
Yeah, we do have some co-testers that are, they’re very good pinball players and we have a lot of trust in them to test the game. D&D is really hard to test though. Cause it’s like something might be broken one week and not the other because of the the, how the seed works with the random numbers.
Also, it might be broken at level 10, but not level five, right? So you have to make sure everything works for, you know, across all of the levels. And then what if you’re on a multiplayer game?
What if you’re in co-op mode? What if you’re on ball two? You know, what if you hit it in grace, whatever it is, there’s just a lot of things that you got to think through when you’re testing.
So for, I do, I would say that person that created the mode is the best person to work on it because they’re less likely to fall into some, might misinterpret something that’s already there. So it is best if the original creator is the one to, to work on it. And then the initial round of testing is also best if that initial person writing the code also tests it because, you know, they’re, they have given it the most thought and, you know, has the most, has the deepest understanding of, of what’s going on.
And maybe some things that one might not think about, like, oh, what if, you know, multiball’s running against the grace period thing? And then, yeah, pass it off to, to one of our testers. And then it finally is like, okay, yeah, this is good.
[Todd Russell] (34:20 – 34:49)
So it’s not like a, it’s not like a management decision on when these things are getting pushed out. It’s some, the software lead is after it’s been tested and deemed. Those aren’t on schedule, I guess, is what I’m asking.
Like, cause it seems like JAWS, right? We’re waiting for the final, some are waiting for the final. I’m sure it’s probably done.
I’m not going to ask you if it is or not, but I, you know, it seems like it’s been over a year. So somebody’s decided when that’s going to happen somewhere, or you don’t know, that’s above?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (34:49 – 35:28)
It’s still a matter of scheduling. Resources have to go in other directions. Like, you know, JAWS lost me at some point cause I needed to be on D&D.
And frankly, I probably needed to be on D&D a little bit sooner, right? Even though as much as I wanted to get JAWS across that finish line, it, you know, it’s the next game is demanding and you gotta, you gotta switch over. And also JAWS, my goodness, JAWS would have been at 1.0. So, so long ago, if it weren’t for the shark is, or I mean the 16-bit mode that took three months.
[Todd Russell] (35:28 – 35:35)
It was an amazing mode, by the way. Amazing mode, JAWS: The Revenge. If you haven’t played it, great mode. I call it one of, if not the best, it’s one of the best challenge modes ever.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (35:35 – 35:37)
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah.
Hands down.
[Todd Russell] (35:37 – 35:49)
Smashing the button and, and what an incredible experience that is. How much, how involved is that? Like, were you heavily involved in that mode or how?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (35:50 – 36:14)
No, I, at that point when, when, when that mode was being created, I was busy trying to finish everything else about JAWS, right? Like the actual game. So Rick, it was pretty much all Rick because, you know, with the assets, the sound having to replace, replace everything, you know, you have another game.
This game has two games. I know it’s awesome.
[Todd Russell] (36:15 – 36:18)
Let’s not forget Shark Hunter. Shark Hunter is a game.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (36:18 – 36:32)
Shark Hunter took a long time. And I mean the topper mode took, I, I did that for, for a while as well. So there’s, there’s a lot of things that were kind of on the side of on the peripheal of what the main game was, but it’s just so cool.
[Todd Russell] (36:32 – 37:11)
You guys did it. I feel like JAWS launched in a good place. The code just telling you, thank you for the code at this point that that launched you know, other games, it’s rough and some, but now I’m understanding a little bit better with what you’re saying that it, you got to meet a certain schedule.
The schedule is set and you kind of got to do with what resources you have. What is the sizes of these teams? I mean, are we talking like Pinside only gives credit to Rick Neagel and, and you, and originally I didn’t even see you on JAWS.
I was kind of angry. Elizabeth, like I know Elizabeth Gieske’s doing programming on JAWS. Why is she not listed?
And then you did get listed eventually. Somebody must’ve got you in there.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (37:11 – 38:23)
Yeah. I don’t think I’m on like Pinside or, you know, I think it’s still just as Rick, which is fine. I, I always say like with JAWS, Keith and Rick carried the couch and I carried the cushions.
You know, they, cushions are important, but you know, it is a lot of Rick. But the teams are small. The, these are really complex systems and not always, it’s not always the case when you add more people that the job is going to get done faster.
It’s, you know, so the with, with JAWS, we had me, Rick, Mark or Mike Kizovat did some of the stuff or a lot of stuff, a lot of like instant info, bonus skill shot. And then Brett Rubin did all the light shows and he’s just, he’s really good at light shows. I don’t understand the code at all.
I looked at it. I’m like, I don’t know where I am. Whatever.
Later I learned there’s a, a simplified way of doing it, but his way is very cool and it works really great. Those light shows and JAWS are fantastic. Anyways.
Yeah. So that’s the, that was the software team. I don’t think I’m forgetting anybody that, that helped out.
[Todd Russell] (38:23 – 38:31)
So you’re talking three or four, you look at these video games with 150 people, JAWS has five or four, like what?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (38:32 – 39:07)
Yeah. It’s, it’s a lot. Yeah.
And it was the same with D&D. It was Dwight, me, David Sullivan, and then Corey Stubb. Corey does a lot of the heavy He’s, if, you know, if we’re moving a couch, he’s moving, he’s moving the room, you know, he’s making sure the room is going to come along with.
Yeah. He, he did, he does a lot of the devices. He does a lot of mechanical stuff.
And he does a lot with the display. So D&D works as well as it does because of, because of people like Corey and especially, you know, Corey.
[Todd Russell] (39:08 – 39:26)
Yeah. The modes are, the modes are undersold. I see a comment in the chat about advertising those modes.
I know I, I wish more every game had these modes, you know, like a shark hunter or a video mode, Dungeons and Dragons. I was, I was thinking, okay, yeah, man, there’s so many options, opportunities here, but yeah, you got to get somebody to code it.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (39:26 – 39:50)
Yeah. And you have to have the vision for it too. Like right from the beginning, you know, you kind of, you have to know what the game is going to entail.
The 16 bit or the 8 bit mode was, I thought of, and in the works and in the plan, I mean, since the beginning, but you know, we had to finish the game or get the game nearly finished before we could start, start on challenge modes.
[Todd Russell] (39:51 – 40:01)
So what, what code, somebody’s asked here, do you like to work on most of the lights? You just said the lights, you’re not, you’re not a true great. I keep talking about things I’m not good at.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (40:01 – 41:57)
I don’t love doing the display and I don’t love the lights.
[Todd Russell]
Max asked, do you want to, do you want to make the dragon go up and down? Is that, that sounds like.
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Oh, I’m not good at Max. I, or I can, I can work on them. I just, that’s not why I enjoy it.
Um, I think when I said the implementation of rules is the fastest thing that I get through is because it’s for me, the most fun thing to do. Um, I love when, when I have a blank slate and I’m like, all right, time to get these trolls done. You know, that is my happy place.
I love it when it’s just a pure, you know, you’re implementing a rule that you just wrote. That’s so much fun. And that’s when I get to have the most creative fit, like creative, creative, um, process or whatever.
I don’t know what I’m saying. Anyways, it’s fun for me as a programmer to figure out how to get this working in code. Um, and that like, oh man, it’s so cool.
Like, and that’s the thing that I can’t share with people because it’s, you have to know so, so much about the code base and you know, about programming in general. Like, um, I was really proud of JAWS’s fourth of July mode. That was really cool in the, in the code.
It looks cool. It’s fun to play, but like, it’s all timers. There’s like, there’s this array of timers and these callback functions for when the timer is expired.
So the grace period can start and then a callback function on the grace period to make sure that, you know, the lights do what they’re supposed to and the mode progresses as it should. And then, um, there’s a lot of careful coding I had to do with when something is hit in grace, so it retracts properly and all this stuff, so much consideration went into the fourth of July mode. I was really proud of how well it worked.
And, um, and you know, it was one of those things I kind of done, I did quickly because I just enjoyed it so much.
[Todd Russell] (41:59 – 42:58)
Well, I think the elephant in the room would be this. I mean, I, as you can see, I’m an old white guy. That’s me.
I, that’s, that’s what I am. And that’s supposedly who buys all these machines. Okay.
It’s my, and I, I don’t, I, I push back on that, that idea, but I suppose it’s true. Cause I’ve been playing since I was, you know, five, six years old. I’m not like you. I’ve been playing these all along. I played all different versions of them.
Um, but you are special. You are special in this. What do you want to say to other young women or that want to get into doing what you’re doing?
It’s exciting to see you in the position you’re in. It’s somewhat of a rarity, right? You said earlier that it was, it felt like a little bit of a boys, like there was a lot of boys, you know, you see where I’m going with this, where I’m asking, it’s like, how do you get more, more women into this?
How do we get more to come and do what you’re doing? Cause it’s exciting to see.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (42:58 – 45:46)
Yeah. I mean, I think it’s, it’s beginning to flip. I, there’s a lot of programs and high schools now that introduce coding at a, at a younger age, that’s open for everybody.
I think there was a, um, kind of a, a gate. So it was a little gate kept because the, you don’t, you never see an engineer, you never, uh, you just don’t visually see this, you know, you, you, you see your doctor, you see your dentist, you see, you know, like these professions. Um, but for something like software, it’s so hidden, um, by nature of what software is, it’s, you know, it’s behind the scenes.
So I, I just, I don’t think there was a lot of, um, like there, there was a lot, not a lot of impressions on people, um, that this was even, you know, a, a thing. And I think there’s a lot of misconceptions with what software is and they’re scary and everyone thinks it’s called code. Like what, what is this?
Like, that’s so mystical. And, you know, so people are like, I’m not smart enough to do that. And, you know, I’m not good at math.
And I’m like, I’m not good at math either. That’s what calculators are for. That’s not what we’re doing here.
Um, you know, we’re thinking, and it’s all about just being able to break down complex problems into simple steps. And that’s what it is. So really, I just think not, you know, you gotta, you gotta get past that intimidation factor and you gotta believe, like if someone, if this other person can figure it out, so can I, you know, and if this first can learn, then, you know, the capacity of learning, like we can do anything, right?
Like I didn’t know how to program a pinball machine, but it was like, I’m afraid to try, right? You gotta say, no, you gotta just go in. And if Rick can do it, I can and try it out and not be afraid to fail.
Like if you aren’t failing, you’re not learning. Okay. If you were, I was, I was skiing with my cousin once, he was learning to snowboard.
And by the end of the day, I asked him, you know, how it went. And he’s like, it was, you know, it was a good day, but I didn’t fall the entire time. And I’m like, well, isn’t that good?
And he’s like, no, I didn’t learn anything. I didn’t, I didn’t improve at all because he wasn’t pushing himself to the point of failure. Okay.
And being, being comfortable with that idea is, is what’s, that’s, what’s going to allow you to be in a position where I am now. You just have to be comfortable with, with pushing that and being, okay, like, I’m going to try this and we’re going to see how it, so it is. And just be confident that like, if you, if you do fall, you’re going to learn from it.
You’re not going to make that same mistake again. You’re gonna, you’re going to go forward. So anyways, I don’t remember what the initial question was.
[Todd Russell] (45:47 – 46:22)
I’m more or less how to get, to get more people like you. I was into the hobby, more, more women into key positions of companies. When you’re coming up with modes for games that are out right now, that’s a pretty key position.
I would say. And yeah, to see, I’m excited for it. Congratulations.
And thank you for being into the community and interested in this and, and being a part of this. I don’t think guys like me are not going around. Oh, well, we just need more guys like me doing this.
No, that’s not what’s really happening. I don’t believe that to be the case.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (46:22 – 46:34)
I mean, I just, I think it’s, I don’t think in terms of like, we need more of this person. I just think we need more people that love what they’re doing. That’d be great.
Like I want more people that are just on fire for this stuff.
[Todd Russell] (46:34 – 46:41)
Well, you said you didn’t, you didn’t get into this originally. You were going to be, what was it? An animator?
You said earlier, you’re going to get into animation.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (46:41 – 46:42)
Yeah.
[Todd Russell] (46:42 – 47:16)
It’s interesting. You had a career shift like that to more of a technical role. I find that fascinating.
And I just wonder why more people might’ve, might’ve had that. It’s looks like somebody’s trying a huge ask. You have a minute to answer the direct questions, how to showcase your work to such a niche community.
You ran into this guy. Corey was his name. What was the guy?
[Elizabeth Gieske]
Yeah, Corey Stubb. Corey. Yeah.
[Todd Russell]
Is he just at shows? Is this, he’s the guy that’s deep in the mines coding, right? So he probably never comes out very often, out of coding, right?
It is a problem.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (47:16 – 47:17)
We’re always stuck inside coding.
[Todd Russell] (47:18 – 47:20)
You never get so much to show.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (47:20 – 48:30)
Yeah, right. And Raymond Davidson, he’s more in the public. He’s like at shows and stuff all the time.
No, I lucked into meeting Corey and I don’t know how you’re supposed to go around meeting somebody that’s in this specific position. I definitely just fell, you know, headfirst into it. But I, I don’t think, I don’t think it starts with, you know, you have to learn how to love where you are, regardless of if you care about the, like the product that you’re making or not.
Like I, I was just as happy for different reasons, but I was really happy with the position I had at my previous job and the job that I had previous to that. And I think, you know, a lot of people, it’s nice to, it’s great to have goals and aspirations and trying to get to, you know, a specific thing. But if you’re not ever enjoying where you are now, I doubt you’re going to enjoy, you know, your, your end goal or whatever, you know, cause then where’s your motivation.
But I don’t know. I think I it’s, of course I want more people in playing pinball, but I don’t really associate that.
[Todd Russell] (48:30 – 48:39)
Wouldn’t that be though, Elizabeth, wouldn’t be like playing in the tournaments, go to the Stern, try to become really good, like Raymond Davidson or that. I mean, that’s one way to get noticed in a hurry.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (48:39 – 49:15)
Oh yeah. Your goal is sure. Yeah.
No, if your goal is to, you know, I, I know what I want and I’m like, that’s so cool that people do have that. I just never did of, you know, having a key, like right here, point on it with a pin, like this is where I want it to be. But yeah, no, if you want to, if you want to be where I am now, you know, I suppose you can try what I did and see if you have the, as much as I, and I think it is no for most, everybody that works at Stern works here because they knew somebody else.
It’s all about who, you know, for sure.
[Todd Russell] (49:15 – 49:43)
George has said in interviews too, that they like, you like Stern is about people that are in the hobby playing. They like to hire people that are in the, so if you want to get in this play pinball, be out there playing, get involved locally, get places that don’t have insider connected, become a, what is it? The Stern Army.
I would assume you would become one of those people for a business that has a bunch of Stern machines, organize tournaments, get on the radar. I would think that’s the first thing to be noticed.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (49:43 – 50:19)
Oh, for sure. Yeah. You got to be a champion for pinball.
Oh yeah. There’s, you got to be not a, not a doubt. And I think if you really want to be like, all right, I’m going to take this thing to the next level.
I don’t want to just be playing it. I want to be making it. Then guess where Keith Elwin started, right?
He created a homebrew and he like, there’s no way, there is no better teacher than to, to do it, you know, like doing, doing the thing. If you’re making a thing, if you’re, if you make a virtual pinball machine, cause you’re not confident with like machinery, I I’m sure not. Then yeah, that would be, that speaks volumes.
[Todd Russell] (50:19 – 50:27)
And great question in the chat, Elizabeth, how many times have you beaten Keith Elwin? He’s must be the best person to beat playing. He has to be.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (50:27 – 50:28)
Oh, beats? Oh.
[Todd Russell] (50:29 – 50:33)
Who’s your favorite person at Stern to beat [playing against]? That’s a wonderful question. I like that.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (50:33 – 51:10)
Well, yeah, I, I have kind of took a step of letting go of points, I think. If I do beat him, I hardly notice because we’re just having fun and we’re usually doing something super stupid. Like, like he has a Seawitch in his office and all we were trying to do was like alley pass or something.
And it’s like, that’s not how you play the game, but that’s what we were doing. You know, we were like tap passing and he’s, he always comes up. He’s like, he’s always thinking rules.
Of course we all are. And he’s like, do you think there’s a way? He’s like, no, he never, he never poses those questions.
[Todd Russell] (51:10 – 51:20)
Elwin has a Seawitch, but yet George Gomez did Beatles, which is based on Seawitch. How did that work? How does that occur?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (51:20 – 51:37)
Yeah, I don’t know if the Seawitch was there at the same time. He has a bunch of games in his, his office. It’s funny.
He’s supposed to be in his office with Rick, but the pinball machines, like Rick’s desk is like cuddled away in this corner, like around an Eight Ball Deluxe.
[Todd Russell] (51:38 – 51:43)
You don’t need a desk at a pinball company. You just use a pinball as a desk, right?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (51:43 – 51:43)
Yeah.
[Todd Russell] (51:44 – 52:46)
We have about eight minutes left. I want you to think of a question you wish, Elizabeth, in the next eight minutes that somebody had asked you, that’s never asked you. You’re like, I keep waiting for somebody to ask me this and nobody has.
So think, ponder that question. What might be something that, that you just wish somebody was in, in one of these interviews, which by the way, you’ve been wonderful and we really appreciate having you today. Thank you for coming and thank you to George if you’re watching somewhere, hopefully I didn’t get her in trouble. I’m not trying to, but hopefully trying to discover things in areas we haven’t been in and you haven’t really had a chance to speak about. It’s exciting what you’re doing.
And I think that I hope that they will continue to, what is your dream? I guess that’s my question. What is your dream?
Do you want to someday design one of these? Is that the next level for you? Would you like to be the next Keith Elwin on a machine or?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (52:46 – 53:37)
I don’t know. I’m not, you know, you got to know like who you are and I don’t think play field design is who I am. But I, cause it’s just, I don’t get as excited about the toys and the mechs and the flow and all this stuff that you should be with pinball.
I’ve always been crazy, just crazy about a rule, just something small. And I’m like, wow, that, that spinner just fun. And it gave me this amount of points and it did that because I worked at it and I shot these shots and it made it happen.
So, I mean, yeah, I think being the lead software on a, on a project and being able to write a complete rule set and being control of, of everything in terms of.
[Todd Russell] (53:38 – 53:44)
Is there a dream theme? I mean, you, you supposedly, did you really watch 500 hours of Critical Role?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (53:47 – 53:56)
I’m provoked. I did that before I started working at Stern. I was, I was, yeah, I listened to the entire first campaign of Critical Role.
[Todd Russell] (53:56 – 53:58)
And who in your family is good at chocolate chip cookies?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (53:58 – 54:04)
Totally random. Yeah, that would be my, my mother. She is, she is, it’s making a name for herself.
[Todd Russell] (54:06 – 54:17)
If I don’t bring this up, I’m so I’m, I’m derelict in my duties as an interviewer. I don’t mention the dirty two word, two letter word. Do you know which two letter word I’m talking about?
Starts with an A. AI
[Elizabeth Gieske] (54:19 – 54:19)
(grimaces) Ew.
[Todd Russell] (54:19 – 54:38)
Oh, yeah. Is there any, is there any world of which you’re, you’re adopting into your, like using AI in the code? Is there any world of which that is at all desirable to you?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (54:38 – 55:30)
No, no, they are. It, like I said, my, it would be taken, it would suck in the joy out of this thing.
You know, why would I want some, some program to program for me? Like what’s that’s not fun. And, ah, it would be so lazy.
Half of the things that I do is because I want to figure out how to do it. And that sparks more creativity and more like the, I said this before with the shark of broken mode, which is so fun. And it’s a funky little mode.
I only did it because I wanted to learn how to mess with the flippers. You know, like this whole thing stems from something else, being able to struggle with something as the point. Okay.
Like I wouldn’t, I don’t want this to be easy. If it were I would stop. Like there would be, there wouldn’t be a point to do this.
No way. AI, no, we’re not, I’m not using it.
[Todd Russell] (55:30 – 56:11)
So there’s no, there’s no directive coming down. I mean, you know, the naysayers out there, the negative publications, the negative thing is like, it’s turning into AI and it’s, there’s no reality in that. There’s no direction push on you.
Actually, this is somebody actually doing work on these games right now. You hear AI everywhere. And it’s like all of a sudden we’re being adopted and every company’s just going to use it.
Artists want to draw, they want to draw this magnificent artwork themselves. They don’t want to, they don’t want to use something that’s there. So anyway, it’s fascinating.
Pixel Titans [said in chat, Elizabeth] has given me full confidence in every game she works on. There’s a compliment for you.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (56:11 – 56:17)
Oh, that’s very sweet. That’s a lot to live up to. I’ll do my best always.
[Todd Russell] (56:18 – 56:28)
So what haven’t you been asked? It’s been a few minutes. We only have a couple minutes left.
As you think of something that you haven’t been asked that you wish somebody would have asked you, can you think of anything?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (56:29 – 57:31)
Oh, I mean, that’s so, I think, you know, as they say, like the best gift given is the one you didn’t know that you needed. I think the question, I’m sure there’s the best question out there. I just, I don’t think I have, I’m not aware of it and I guess I haven’t been asked it yet.
There’s, you know, of course there’s a ton, like what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever worked on? And I think the answer would be surprising. I think the hardest thing I did in Jaws was getting the cast and catch background effect to work correctly.
It took so long. I had to constantly go back because I didn’t do it right. But it’s a foreground element that works as a background element, which is already cheating and breaking the rules.
And it’s this, this number that’s counting up. But having that display, being displayed always was really hard. So, but like these answers oftentimes might not be very fun and interesting.
So I think for the most part, people are asking the right questions.
[Todd Russell] (57:31 – 57:46)
So do you, do you play any pranks on each other when you do get in the office? I mean, are you like, you know, leaving some something for Keith Elwin? Oh, Easter eggs.
I didn’t ask you about that. Oh, Easter eggs. Easter eggs. Are they allowed?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (57:47 – 57:54)
Yeah, they’re, they’re more than allowed. They’re, um, what’s the word?
Encouraged? Yes. Encouraged.
Yes. Very much so.
[Todd Russell] (57:55 – 58:00)
So there’s a lot of secrets in Jaws we don’t know about or Dungeons and Dragons we don’t know about?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (58:00 – 59:20)
There’s a lot of things that I put in specifically and I haven’t seen anyone like jump through the rooftop and yell it and be like, this thing is in Jaws. But that, that’s not the point. A lot of times we put Easter eggs just because we want to, and we think it’s funny and enjoy it.
A lot of times those things are found out. Like the, you know, there’s a 5% chance that the shark roars like a, like a dinosaur in Jaws. The, the knot tying, it displays, for a while I just put in a garlic knot, like 5% of the time I might just say garlic knot.
But then Mark Guidarelli caught wind of that and added all these other, other ones. So we for, we often just went in and added another type of knot, you know, Gordian knot, marriage knot, why not? And then there’s, like Scars has a clip that only plays if you play the mode perfectly.
There’s, D&D has a lot as well, like a little nods, stuff that isn’t in the game yet because the, like the character isn’t there. Like the Barbarian has a lot of fun lines that he says and until you unlock them, you won’t know about it. But there’s, yeah, there’s a lot of speech in D&D, a ton of speech in D&D, and we still need that a lot.
[Todd Russell] (59:21 – 59:24)
More Worf or something probably in there that we haven’t gotten?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (59:24 – 59:30)
Yeah. He has some Star Trek references. There’s some Ghostbusters references.
There’s, we do a lot of reference things.
[Todd Russell] (59:32 – 59:45)
That’s great. That is amazing. Elizabeth, thank you so much.
You’ve been a wonderful, very, I thought this was a very good interview that you did. And I, I hope again, that you had a good time. Did you have a good time?
Did we relax you?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (59:46 – 59:55)
Yeah, this is good. I, I, I wasn’t nervous and I, I don’t think I have any regrets of like, oh, why did I say this or whatever? I think this was well done and this was enjoyable.
[Todd Russell] (59:55 – 1:00:13)
I can’t wait for this to come up. This’ll be on playgamesmore.com. I’m going to transcribe some of this and I’ll remove my cookie references in my battery, but, but I can’t, I just, I hope you’ll come back when you do another game.
Would you come back again someday for us?
[Elizabeth Gieske] (1:00:14 – 1:00:15)
Yeah, sure Reach out. I love talking about pinball.
[Todd Russell] (1:00:15 – 1:00:32)
I think this is great. And if you are a TPF, please, please say hello. I’ll be there with my wife of 35 years and my two adult sons.
He bought this Jaws game. My son did. He was the first and now we have three of them, Iron Maiden and James Bond and they multiply.
They’re like extra children, my grandchildren.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (1:00:33 – 1:00:34)
Yeah, they tend to do that. That’s why I hear.
[Todd Russell] (1:00:35 – 1:00:40)
Have a wonderful day out there in Kentucky and thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Yeah.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (1:00:40 – 1:00:41)
Thanks man. This was fun.
[Todd Russell] (1:00:41 – 1:00:46)
This was fun. All right. Thank you everybody.
Have a great day out there. Thanks Elizabeth. Bye now.
[Elizabeth Gieske] (1:00:46 – 1:00:46)
See ya.
Very good interview Todd. So great to see how passionate Elizabeth is, and how much care, and thought goes into her work.