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<\/a><\/a>When they arrived, guests entered the Stern building to congregate in the area usually reserved for staff dining.\u00a0 Here they were welcomed to the factory by Jody Dankberg, Stern’s Senior Director of Licensing and New Business.<\/p>\n Jody then passed the microphone to George Gomez who introduced several members of the Stern Pinball team.<\/p>\n Then the tour began, with guests being shown around the factory in groups of ten.<\/p>\n While we returned to the hotel to prepare for the seminars, M.G. Brown. took these pictures of the tour.<\/p>\n At 1:30pm, the seminar schedule began.<\/p>\n The first seminar featured Romain Fontaine from Team Pinball talking about the making of the company’s first title, The Mafia<\/em>.<\/p>\n He explained how the conceived the idea of building their own machine and how they went about it, designing their own hardware, getting the playfield design from a designer in Hungary, Balint, the control system they created using a Raspberry Pi, the wiring under the playfield and the testing procedure they use once the playfield is complete.\u00a0 He stressed how they tried to keep things simple and clean inside the game.<\/p>\n Romain explained how they got the sound and music and then built ten sample machines before going public, inviting Pinball News to help launch the project.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>