Insert Coin: The Arcade Video Game Revolution

For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, the arcade was a home away from home. And most likely we were playing a video game that was the creative genius of a scrappy group of renegade designers in Chicago.

In his film Insert Coin (2020), director Josh Tsui captures what it was like for the fellows at Midway Games to revolutionize the video game industry. And along the way, Josh perfectly captures 1990s pop culture.

Insert Coin is an interesting take on the arcade gaming world, showing us its business side and how games were designed to be addictive and suck in quarters. 

“Once you make a game you can’t get that out of your system. It’s one of the most fulfilling and frustrating creative mediums out there and it’s intoxicating. ” - Josh Tsui

Time Stamps:

03:39 - How things are going for Josh in Chicago.
04:49 - Where you can see the film right now.
06:40 - A brief synopsis of Insert Coin.
07:56 - What arcade games were like when they first came out and how they evolved.
09:21 - Eugene Jarvis’s influence on the gaming industry.
10:20 - The creation of ‘Narc’.
12:14 - Our first clip showing how Narc revolutionised the gaming industry.
14:35 - How Narc was the kickstarter to live-action animation gaming.
16:47 - The creation of Mortal Kombat.
19:23 - How Josh made contact with so many of the game developers.
20:16 - A clip from the film showing what Mortal Kombat was all about.
24:16 - A clip showing the success of the game NBA Jam.
26:17 - What made the arcade industry obsolete.
28:16 - Our last clip from the show showing the economics of arcade games.
29:24 - How the business model for arcades worked.
32:30 - What the film is really about.
35:41 - How management of gaming companies has changed over years.
37:49 - How Josh got started making video games.
40:31 - What drove him to make this film. 
44:55 - What it’s like working in the gaming industry.
46:29 - Why they couldn’t interview Ed Boon.
47:50 - How they’ve had to adapt the film's release because of the virus.
52:23 - The projects Josh is working on next.  

Resources:

Midway Games
Insert Coin Website
Follow Insert Coin on Twitter and Facebook
Eugene Jarvis
Narc
Mortal Kombat
NBA Jam
Alamo Pictures

Connect with Josh Tsui:

Twitter

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Transcript for Factual America Episode 24 - Insert Coin: The Arcade Video Game Revolution

Josh Tsui 0:00
Hi, I'm Josh Tsui and I'm the director of Insert Coin.

Speaker 1 0:05
Midway is the punk rock, you know, they're like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols of the video game industry.

Speaker 2 0:14
If their game became very successful, you're gonna make a lot of money.

Speaker 3 0:23
I always thought with video games, when you make them, somebody would come with this book. This is what we're gonna make and we start page one and we start making it. It was never like that. It was like - so what do you guys want to do?

Speaker 4 0:33
The games are louder. The graphics are more detailed.

Speaker 5 0:37
More, more blood, more blood.

Speaker 6 0:38
"Toasty!" What game does that?

Speaker 7 0:44
They've got this game - Mortal Kombat and you can kill people.

Speaker 8 0:49
Yeah, isn't that really cool, what the hell.

Speaker 9 0:51
We could do whatever we want.

Speaker 10 0:54
We want it to crush the player.

Speaker 11 0:56
We want to give them a greater challenge.

Speaker 12 1:03
This is probably the greatest story of Midway.

Speaker 13 1:07
They call it like the Big Bang of the video game universe. I mean, we went from blank screens to all of a sudden no one had seen anything like that in a video game.

Speaker 14 1:18
We went to the well too many times.

Speaker 17 1:20
And that was the end of coin op.

Speaker 15 1:22
We're going to sue the crap out of them.

Speaker 16 1:26
I don't think it hit me until decades later that my image is still in there. I have daughters now. They're gonna see this.

Speaker 17 1:32
Sometimes I'd sneak up behind them, the guy would take a shot and I'll go "Ugly shot. Boomshakalaka". he turns around and goes - Hey, you sound like the guy. I am the guy, dude.

Speaker 18 1:43
I remember thinking to myself - wow, I'm working with Gods.

Speaker 19 1:47
Mortal Kombat.

Speaker 12 1:48
NARC.

Speaker 11 1:49
T2.

Speaker 10 1:49
The Grid.

Speaker 20 1:51
You know what a game is? A game is 100 of those cool things. And now you have one.

Speaker 21 1:58
We've got the Godfather, the doctor of video games. What do you call yourself?

Speaker 13 2:03
(beep) face.

Matthew 2:15
That is the trailer for the soon to be released documentary Insert Coin. And this is Factual America.

Intro 2:24
Factual America is produced by Alamo pictures, a production company specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for an international audience. I'm your host Matthew Sherwood and every week we look at America through the lens of documentary filmmaking by interviewing filmmakers and experts on the American experience. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Alamo pictures to be the first to hear about new productions, to find out where you can see our films and to connect with our team.

Matthew 3:01
For those of us who grew up in the 1980s and 90s, the arcade was a home away from home. And most likely we were playing a video game that was the creative genius of a scrappy group of Renegade designers in Chicago. In his film Insert Coin, director Josh Tsui captures what it was like for the fellows at Midway Games to revolutionize the video game industry. And along the way, Josh perfectly captures 1990s pop culture. We catch up with Josh from his home in Chicago.

Josh Tsui, welcome to Factual America. Josh, how're things there in Chicago?

Joshua Tsui 3:41
It's great, thanks. Well, I mean, as great as it can be under the circumstances. Yeah, Chicago is a great town. And so if I'm going to be sheltered in place, I can't think of a better city.

Matthew 3:53
I mean, have things settled down there anytime recently, or is it still kind of as it was a few months ago when the peak of the virus?

Joshua Tsui 4:03
Yeah, it had gotten better and the city started opening up again but just recently it started to, things started to rise a little bit. So there are some concerns that there's a chance we might kind of take a step back. So, you know, it's okay. We get everything delivered and, yeah, we're not suffering that badly so I can't really complain.

Matthew 4:25
Yeah, exactly. I think of the people who actually are suffering now. I can't complain whatsoever. We were supposed to meet up at South by Southwest, I think. Maybe we'll talk more about that later. But it's good to finally meet you and get you on the podcast. The film is Insert Coin. 2020. Now, Josh, where can we see this film?

Joshua Tsui 4:49
So right now it's currently winding its way around the quote unquote film festival circuit. And it was supposed to world premiere at South by Southwest but, as you know, the entire world shut down. And so a lot of plans have changed. But since then, the film has been accepted at quite a few other film festivals. And so a lot of them have been going online instead of being physical. Also, it just recently had this Australian premiere at the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival. And there are a few other film festivals that are coming up that haven't announced their lineup yet. I can't say which ones they are currently. But there's another four or five festivals, that's where we're going along here.

Matthew 5:32
That's great. I mean, it's maybe something we can talk about later as well. I mean, you're the second, one we've had in the last three of these recordings that have had a premiere at the Melbourne Film Festival. So well done. I know these are not the easiest of times, as we all try to figure out how this is all going to play out now and in the future. But I imagine once you've been through these festivals, I mean, I'm sure you're gonna get picked up quickly because this was, if I may say, one of the most entertaining times I've had watching a film. I just, I highly recommend it to everyone, once it finally comes out, because it's so, well, I think we're going to talk to also about your background. Because I think it comes through, in terms of how tight and entertaining this is, in terms of the story. But people have heard or watched the clip, which is part of our intro, but maybe you can, for those of, well most of our listeners will not have heard or seen the film unless they were at the film festival circuit. Maybe you can give us a little synopsis of what this film is about.

Joshua Tsui 6:40
Absolutely. Yeah. The story is about a company called Midway Games that was previously called Williams Electronics back in the 80s and became Midway in 90s. And they were known for their incredibly bold and brash and for the most part violent video games for the arcades of that era, and they really made a name for themselves with these games that just really broke all the rules. And so, you know, as many people may or may not know, there was a big video game crash in the 80s. And so when the 90s came around, video games had to change and a lot of the changes were these things that Midway's game developers were creating. And so I wanted to make a documentary about that company in that era and how they changed games forever after that, and just, what their, we call it the punk rock attitude of game development.

Matthew 7:35
Yeah, I think you capture that extremely well. I mean, maybe for our listeners as well, because a lot of people will not even appreciate. In fact, I lived through this era. I didn't know about the 80s crash. But what was, I mean, set the stage - what was it like pre-Midway Games? I mean, you know, what were arcades like, the games themselves?

Joshua Tsui 7:55
Yeah, so you know, in the first heyday of video games, especially arcade games, you know, there were games like Pac Man and Donkey Kong. And, you know, a lot of really fun family friendly games, very colorful. And back then everybody was a gamer. You know, you go to an arcade and you see families out there, you see little kids, you see the parents playing with them. And they're all very fun abstract type of games. And that's, you know, when the medium was really starting to develop. By the time you got to the mid to late 80s, there were so many video games out there that people just got tired of video games. And especially if you look at when games came home, with, you know, systems like Atari 2600 there was very little quality control. Everybody wanted to make a quick buck and basically ruined the industry. And that's what kind of led into this rebirth in the 90s. It was basically video games died so badly that there was nowhere to go, but up and restart the entire medium all over again. And so that's what the 90s represented.

Matthew 9:04
Okay. And then that takes us to a fella named Eugene Jarvis, sort of voice in the wilderness, maybe still is in some ways. So he'd been active in the 80s, right. I mean, he's got some big name games, at least from my era, Defender, Robotron.

Joshua Tsui 9:22
Yeah, he was, he was huge. You know, he was basically the Steve Jobs of video games in the 80s. He single handedly, you know, he made a game called Defender. That game single handedly made just hundreds of millions of dollars for what was back then called Williams Electronics. And so he made hit game after hit game, and was just a psychotic genius for lack of a better way of explaining it. And, you know, and as we get into the 90s, he basically, we called him the godfather of video games, because he left such an impression on entire generation of developers that grew up in the 90s.

Matthew 10:04
And so he, I gather he left for a little bit, tried to go back to school or something. But then he's lured back to Williams. So the next, you then focus on a game called NARC.

Joshua Tsui 10:19
Yeah.

Matthew 10:21
That was actually late 80s, wasn't it?

Joshua Tsui 10:23
That was late, the very, very late 80s. And so yes, Eugene, when the crash happened in the late 80s, like mid to late 80s, Eugene decided that he just didn't want to do video games anymore. He went off to grad school back in California. And, you know, he, after grad school, he felt the pull of video games. And you know, that's one of the deep, dark secrets of game developers is once you make a game, you can't get it out of your system. It's one of the most fulfilling and frustrating, creative mediums out there and you get, it's intoxicating. And so he had to come back. And he came back to Williams. And Williams at that time was, you know, their pinball division was doing pretty well. But they had almost no video games going on. And he wanted to come back and do one more video game and he wanted to do it for Williams. And he pitched this game called NARC that was influenced by, you know, what was back then the late 80s violent movie streak that was going on. We're talking about movies like Robocop and The Exterminator and all these things. And Hollywood was all about the ultra violent movies. And so he wanted to make a video game that was basically the video game equivalent of these, these action films. And so he went in and he wanted to basically make an interactive movie using actual actors instead of cartoon characters.

Well, I want to talk a little bit more about that, but I think this takes us to a good point to watch or listen to a clip that you've gracefully shared with us. Thank you so much. About NARC. And it's about a minute and a half long and so let's listen to that now.

Speaker 1 12:14
I did have a question. At that point we had filmed a few characters. We had filmed the environments, and I asked, okay, a rocket launcher is one of your weapons now. And I said, okay, when a player fires the rocket launcher, what happens? And people so what do you mean? I go, well, I can make it look real. These are real people. The mission was to know, make it look real.

Speaker 2 12:42
Body parts would fly. I mean, I guess this was one of the first, you know, body part games. I think maybe the first.

Speaker 3 12:49
I remember like, George was like, God, this is so cool. I can't believe this is so cool. And I came up and I was really being very gentle about it. I just said, I mean, it is cool. But do you think, do you think that's a good thing to put in an arcade? Where little kids are there?

Speaker 4 13:09
You have to understand, arcades at that point were still very democratic environments. Any family any age could walk in without concern.

Speaker 5 13:20
And this escalated into a huge argument. I just remember it was a huge, huge screaming magic. All I'm saying is, I'm just saying we should think about it. I'm not trying to limit your creativity. I'm not trying to censor you.

Speaker 6 13:32
You know, I think, and I think too, with a game that involved realistic content, when we cross that bridge of digitizing life. The game was no longer an escape.

Matthew 13:51
So that clip talks about NARC and the violence. But I think, just before going into that, you talked about, I mean, this is what was really cutting edge, wasn't it? This whole use of live action digitizing actual individuals.

Joshua Tsui 14:07
Yeah, that was something that a couple of companies have dabbled in it, you know, a little bit here and there, but they were just executed very badly. And so Eugene really wanted to use real actors for two reasons. One, he just, you know, he wanted to get that Hollywood feel to it, the Hollywood action movie feel to it. But the other one is really for economics. And it's, you know, back in the late 80s or so in Japan, you know, some of the best arcade games came from Japan, and they had huge teams of people working on animation, just making incredible art. Williams electronics and even Midway after that was known to be very frugal. Very, very just kind of, you know, down and dirty. And so there was never enough money to bring in, you know, a team of artists. And so he thought to himself, you know what, if we can, instead of having a bunch of animators making art that's very expensive, why don't we just bring in people, put them on tape, digitize, you know, the images, frame by frame and get them into the game and see how that looks. And that, you know, that technology that they built there basically, kick started everything that Midway did in the 90s after that.

Matthew 15:24
I mean, so basically this leads to a video game revolution, doesn't it?

Joshua Tsui 15:30
Yeah, it does. Because suddenly, people were looking at NARC and thinking like, wow, this looks like a movie. And yeah, it seems kind of silly to look back and look at it now cause they're very low resolution sprites running around, but back then, you know, it was revolutionary, and people really went nuts over it. And, you know, you couple that with just the sheer violence of the game itself and it was just a whole new world was born. And that does set the tone for Midway.

Matthew 16:00
And then they were in, so Williams and Midway were right at the center of all this, weren't they?

Joshua Tsui 16:04
Yeah, they, you know, they took advantage of it. They took advantage of the controversy of NARC and really wanted to run with it. And, and they just thought wow, this is, you know, looks like this is what consumers want at this point. So let's dive in.

Matthew 16:19
I think you've captured, I just noticed it, it's sort of subtle, but at the end of one of the games, NARC the sort of FBI, you know, public address, public service announcement comes up saying, you know, the war on drugs and everything. So they, I mean, it just goes from better to even better. I mean, Mortal Kombat is next, isn't that right?

Joshua Tsui 16:46
Yeah. So there are a couple of games in between as they're tweaking the technology and improving upon it. Yeah, but like one of the key games before that was Terminator 2, and they really furthered the look of the game. But then, you know, Mortal Kombat comes around. And that was originally supposed to be a very small project that a couple of guys wanted to try out. Because another game was delayed and so, you know, because we're making arcade games, there's a whole assembly line that's there. And so if a game is late or ends up getting cancelled, something has to go in. There are otherwise a lot of people working in assembly lines are going to get laid off. And so Mortal Kombat was just supposed to be a small six month game. Let's just put it together. And two guys John Tobias and Ed Boone came up with this idea of, well, you know what, Street Fighter 2 is doing fantastic. People love fighting games. Why don't we try this digitizing technique on a fighting game? And by that point, you know, after NARC and Terminator 2, the process was a little bit more perfected and really, Mortal Kombat is a culmination of how good that process became because it just blew people's minds away. Just big characters on screen that look completely realistic, incredible background, that were a combination of hand drawn art and photographs. And it just all came together.

Matthew 19:16
And they were supposed to originally have Jean Claude Van Damme on it, weren't they or they were just trying, wasn't it?

Joshua Tsui 19:16
Yeah, Jean Claude Van Damme, you know, as people may or may not know, was a huge star at the time. And so they, you know, after Terminator 2, Midway got very excited about licensing IP. And so they wanted to hit up Jean Claude Van Damme, and they actually signed him up to, you know, to be in the game. But he, at that point was at the height of stardom, and he was just, you know, from what I've been told he was just a real jerk, being very uncooperative. And again for a scrappy little Chicago company and you know, it's just, it's all about the work, you know, we don't need those, let's just do a small project, let's just move on. And so they ended up creating their own characters, which was, if you look back on it now, it's just amazing because that's, you know, it's billion dollar franchise that's still going on now. It's because Jean Claude Van Damme was just being a jerk.

Matthew 19:16
Yes, exactly, and you gotta like, like you said, you've got still some of the actors that they brought into for the live action. You know, you had the guy who played John Cage. I recognized him immediately, actually. No, I didn't really even play the game. But I was like, wait a minute. And it's amazing. I mean, I guess you had to track down all these people?

Joshua Tsui 19:23
Yeah, it was, it's, uh, I was very fortunate that I knew a lot of these people who make the games and stardom and everything. And they, you know, the majority of them all still live in Chicago. For some reason people who live in Chicago never, never leave the town. And so it was very easy to get most of them and you know, 20 years have passed so they were just very excited to be talking about, you know, the work that they've done.

Matthew 19:49
Yeah, I think that's a, if you don't mind, we've got a good clip here. We had a few Mortal Kombat clips, but this is one titled The Mortal Kombat fatalities. And I think it kind of gives a little, for those who don't know, or don't remember or have decided not to remember, this gives you a little insight into what Mortal Kombat was all about, especially when it got started out in the early 90s.

Speaker 1 20:17
You know, while I may, you know, have created maybe the visual qualities of the characters, you know, the backstory and whatnot, really, the core of the product was its playability. And that started with Ed. You know, that always came from him sort of playing the game. And he would sit in his office for hours and you know, call people in to kind of - hey, try this, hey, try that.

Speaker 2 20:40
His games reflect his personality. I think his games bring out the way that Ed really feels about things because his nature is outrageous.

Speaker 1 20:50
There was a period at the end of a match where you kind of got a free hit off of your opponent. And we wanted to kind of put an exclamation point on it. And for us, it was always, you know - Hey, watch me go do an uppercut. Somewhere along the way Ed put in Johnny Cage punching off, you know, the opponent's head.

Speaker 3 21:10
I was like, you can't. I was like in shock. I was like, you can't do that. Holy cow. I was like, it looks so real to me that I was like, Boon you just killed me.

Speaker 4 21:22
And he's like, yeah, isn't that really cool? And I was like, dude, you can't do that. And he goes, we could do whatever we want. And I was like, what? And I was like, you're right. We can because no bosses ever let it. I've never seen a boss hanging out with us. We could just do whatever we want. And that's what they get.

Speaker 5 21:36
I was never telling Ed Boon, hey, don't pull that, don't decapitate that guy's head. Okay, instead, you know, I remember suggesting to him - can't you do a fatality where you rip the guy's leg off, beat the crap out of him with it, with his own leg? (game sounds) From a management standpoint, we also believed that's what the customer wanted.

Matthew 22:04
First of all, that's another great clip from the film. I think the things also went in a slightly different direction. It wasn't all violence. And very soon they followed that up with the NBA Jam, didn't they?

Joshua Tsui 22:21
Yeah, NBA Jam was, you know, as big as Mortal Kombat was, at the time. A lot of people forget that. NBA Jam was just as big, if not bigger. It was definitely, you know, a lot of people don't realize that, that game by itself in its first year, it grossed a billion dollars. And this is the same year that Jurassic Park came out and it made three times the amount that Jurassic Park made.

Matthew 22:44
All in quarters, as one of your...

Joshua Tsui 22:45
All in quarters, that's the thing, a quarter at a time. And that game is an example of how, you know, arcade games made a lot of money in the 80s. But in the 90s a game like NBA Jam really showed how designers were able to master the art of, you know, a fun game that monetizes extremely well. And, you know, one of the quotes from the film is that, you know, the designers were tasked to make a game that will suck in a quarter every 45 seconds. And NBA Jam did that. It did more than that every 45 seconds. And it was a combination, you know, it had to be fun, ultimately, but, you know, can you make a game fun, and in some ways manipulate people to keep putting in quarters because it's so fun.

Matthew 23:36
Okay, so I think that brings us to a really another great clip that looks at NBA Jam and the success they had and how initially they were a little concerned because they were getting reports that the game was actually breaking down. We'll go to the clip and we'll also take a little break for our listeners at home.

Factual America midroll 23:56
You're listening to Factual America. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter at Alamo pictures to keep up to date with new releases or upcoming shows. Check out the show notes to learn more about the program, our guests and the team behind the production. Now back to Factual America.

Speaker 1 24:16
We were getting calls about games that were broken. I said - what? Because it's one of the things. You put a game on a test, you know. It's got to work. Okay, and to have a game that's not working, it's like the height of stupidity.

Speaker 2 24:32
And the game was supposedly down and we said what the heck's going on here? Cause you would go out there, and you couldn't put any more quarters in the game.

Speaker 3 24:38
He had accumulated so many quarters that had jammed the coin mech and you couldn't put any more quarters.

Speaker 4 24:44
Unheard of collections. At all of our test locations, NBA Jam is collecting between 124 and 167% of what Mortal Kombat did during its first six weeks.

Speaker 5 24:58
Jurassic Park was the biggest film at the time, and it was breaking all kinds of earning records. It made 350 million dolars. And that was a milestone that people said, we can't believe it. It's incomprehensible. And here comes NBA Jam. And Mark said, I said, no can you tell me about how popular this really is? I can tell you this - NBA Jam made a billion dollars. And I said - in quarters?!

Matthew 25:26
Welcome back to Factual America. I'm with Josh Tsui, director, writer and producer of Insert Coin. So, Josh, you're talking about the, it become, at least video game arcade games had become a billion dollar industry. And, you know, let's cut to the chase because I think, hopefully, our listeners will get to see this film relatively soon. So don't want to just give away the whole film. But, you were sort of alluding to this business model and I think you even call that segment in your film "Homecoming". But basically, tell us what was the downfall for, well, Williams and Midway specifically, but for the industry in general?

Joshua Tsui 26:17
Well, I mean, you know, with the industry, with the arcade industry. It was about people leaving their house, coming to an arcade, sinking in quarters to keep playing on and on. And for a while, that was fine because it was really kind of, I won't say the only option but it was the best option for video games, you know. At the time arcade machines were technologically at the top of the food chain. You know, you can, if you had a Nintendo at home, it's fine, but just didn't match that power. But what ultimately ended up happening is, you know, the CD ROM became a new medium that allowed for huge storage. Much more powerful systems were starting to be developed such as the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. And that comes in. And basically, people started realizing that, wow, these systems at home are just as powerful as what we're getting in the arcade, and I can just buy a game for $40 - $50 and never have to pay again. And yeah, it's like, you know, 30 to 40 hours of gameplay. I'm in. So, you know, as a consumer, it just made sense. And so arcades really had a hard time trying to keep up with that. And, you know, arcades, as we knew it at that time, started disappearing because, just because of the economics.

Matthew 27:38
Yeah, cuz what I remember is people, you know, people would have stacks of quarters like that and just put them on top of the game and just keep playing.

Joshua Tsui 27:45
And their parents can't do laundry because the quarters all are missing.

Matthew 27:48
Exactly. I think we've got, this will take us to what I think will be our last clip. But I think it quite eloquently and very succinctly kind of gets to the economics of it all. And it's about, about a game called, that I don't remember, I wasn't familiar with it. What was it? Not Generation X, what was it?

Joshua Tsui 28:08
Oh, Revolution X.

Matthew 28:09
Revolution X. Yes. So let's watch that clip. And then we'll come back and discuss Insert Coin some more with Josh Tsui.

Speaker 1 28:17
We have this thing where we were supposed to take a quarter every 45 seconds. That's what you were aiming to do with these arcade games. And NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat did that actually. But most of the other games didn't. And you ended up having to try and make story games really, really difficult to be constantly taking money. Well, there's only so much difficulty that someone is going to do in order to play through it once. Because you play it through once and it cost you an arm and a leg. You don't want to do it again now.

Speaker 2 28:38
But the game just did earn. I mean, it's all about the earnings. It's always about the cashbox. How does the cash box - is it filled or isn't filled? What's my return investment? I pay $4,000 or $5,000 for a game, I expect the operators looking for the return on investment in six to nine months.

Matthew 28:53
So, I mean, you talk a lot about the business model and the economics of it all. I mean, for a company like Williams Midway, how did that business model work? Did they actually sell the games, the consoles, and then the arcade would just, it would keep all the quarters? So it was all about, is that how it worked?

Joshua Tsui 29:18
It was a very strange business model. And this is something that a lot of people didn't realize is that what happens, in general is, you know, Williams / Midway would create the software for the games and the hardware, which is the arcade cabinets. So you have these giant arcade cabinets and they sold anywhere from between $4,000 to $5,000 for an arcade unit. And so what would happen though, is that they don't sell directly to the arcades themselves. What they do, they sell them to a distributor. So the distributor buys it from Midway and then the distributors from there then sells it to an operator. And the operator has, they have basically territories that they send their machines to. And they go, and those territories have arcades. And so then you have the arcade owners. So there's multiple levels going on. And so what happens is that, you know, when the arcades are placed, well when the machines are placed in the arcade, the arcade owners, they're not necessarily buying the machine, they're basically allowing them to put the machines into their space, and they split the revenue of the machine. And so it's very interesting because I kind of, I knew the dynamics of those, but when I got really deep in documentary and figured out this whole business model, it was kind of mind boggling at the time. So, you know, a good example is if Mortal Kombat costs, you know, they, they sold it for $4,000, you know, they sold over 50,000 units have them. Now, when I talked to some video game people, their mind is - oh, you're selling, you know, a disk of games. And they're thinking - oh, you know, a game on disk is like $50. And you only sell 50,000 units of this game. So no, no, you got to remember, we sell 50,000 units of a game that cost $4,000 each. And so you multiply that and it's, it's insane. And our budgets were super low. So the profit margins were nuts.

Matthew 29:28
Yeah. I mean, I think you've, again, you just reminded me there's a point in the film towards the end, I think, where they talked about how some of these people were or were not compensated, in terms of the work they did, or how much they were compensated. This is, I found it extremely riveting, and I'm not even really wasn't a big video gamer. I just don't have the eye-hand coordination for that, my limit was Battlezone back in the 80s.

Joshua Tsui 31:41
Oh, that's a good game. It's one of the, I think that's like the first VR game that was ever made, if you really think about it.

Matthew 31:56
That's what, I looked that up today. I had no idea but that's, maybe that's why I liked it or something. It was at our local Pizza Hut. That was the only place that had it. And whenever we'd go out for pizza, I would be on there. And that's my stack of quarters. Didn't last very long, I can tell you. But what is this, like all great documentaries, obviously it's about Williams and Midway and these incredibly, you know, these dynamic people who design the games, but what do you think, what is this film really about?

Joshua Tsui 32:31
It's about quite a few different things. You know, for me, ultimately, it's about how design and commerce comes together to create the entertainment that we grew up with. You know, a lot of people, when they see entertainment, they don't understand, you know, that sometimes it's designed with the business side in mind. And so that's why the film really concentrates so much on the business side of things because, you know, those games were designed that way for a reason, which is to suck in the quarters. It wasn't designed so to tell a grand story for five hours long that, you know, you could sit there and watch, you know, that you can go watch in one sitting. So, because of that, you know, some of the games are super fun because of that style of design. While other games were not super fun because of it. And it just, you know, a lot of it came down to just how people, you know, can really lean into this type of business model.

Matthew 33:32
And there was also, they had, these guys had, no offense, but for a bunch of geeky guys, I mean, they had some insights into human nature and psychology. I mean, it was interesting, even comments about depending on the type of person you were killed by in a game would determine if you would want to put your quarter in or not, you know.

Joshua Tsui 33:52
And that goes back to what I was telling about Eugene Jarvis. He affected, you know, the entire team because he literally is a genius. I can't even begin to describe how incredibly smart he is. And not just academically, but just on an emotional level. He really was just very insightful on how people behave. And so his, you know, his comment about like, hey, I know that people are not gonna want to die in a video game by some small little person, you know. You want to get killed by the biggest badass thing out there.

I think that's a quote, yeah.

Yeah. And so it just, you know, and that permeated through all of Midways game design. Some of the most successful game, was that acting on those emotions, acting on those instincts, and not so much, you know, writing a script, trying to analyze everything ahead of time. A lot of it was really just like this gut feeling. But you know, these guys made so many games that they knew what the recipe was, you know, just like the back of their hand.

Matthew 34:59
Yeah, I mean, as you say, you touch on the business side. One thing you also touch on, it's got a business element as well. But it's also the dynamics of teams, I thought was well done. Because I know from my own experience, in the business world, I mean, the best teams I've ever been a part of, were the ones that had a bit of tension to them. And there seemed to be a decent amount of tension there. It's a fine balance. Obviously, they can become dysfunctional if there's too much. But it seemed like even the guy who is the CEO had an, will say the interesting view of management, but it was all about creating this competition between everyone.

Joshua Tsui 35:41
Yeah. And Neil Nicastro, CEO, I mean, he came from New York. He had a very New York attitude about things. And so he comes to Chicago, you know, to the Midwest, which has a very different personality. And he's, you know, he is just as in influential on the design of the games as anybody, because, not that he designed the games, but he designed the way the teams interacted. And it was all about conflict and challenging each other and competition. And it wasn't in, you know, it wasn't in a mean way. It was in a very informal way. But he wanted everyone to fend for themselves. So it's kind of like it was like Lord of the Flies, basically. And so, with arcade games, at least in the early days, it worked very well. You know, and everybody was very cooperative with each other. If somebody needed help, everyone was more than happy to help and give feedback and everything else. But there was also that layer of, you know, I need to make sure that I'm making more money than this person. It was a constant contest. I need to make sure I'm selling more units. And a lot of it again, is from this New York sales attitude that was kind of infused throughout the company. And so it worked great in the arcade days when games were small. Our teams were really small. There were maybe four or five people or so. Later on, as the game industry got bigger, and they talked about these CD ROM games, you know, like the PlayStation games that had much larger scope, that type of management would start to fall apart. You can't do that when you're dealing now with 50 to 100 people. And so it's just, it was great for that era. But, yeah, it didn't last long after that.

Matthew 37:28
It was sort of survival of the fittest school of management. But I want to talk about your insights that I think are very interesting. Because you went to, you originally went to film school, you were gonna go do film, but how did you get into video games?

Joshua Tsui 37:49
Yeah, I originally went to film school and I thought I was going to graduate, move back to California and get into the film industry. And in my last year in film school in Chicago, I got really into computer graphics. And that computer graphics were just starting to come around at that point. And so one of the things that I was really interested in was combining my film video knowledge into the computer, digitizing video, manipulating it and having all kinds of fun with it. And this is, you know, this is before Photoshop or even After Effects or Windows Pro. We do it manually. And at that point, Midway had just released the first Mortal Kombat and, you know, had a huge success. And they were looking to really just get into the whole idea of using video for all their games. And so they were looking for people that have this type of knowledge. Up until then most of their artists were really, you know, they're great illustrators, more comic artists, but they needed, you know, more people who do video. And so a friend of mine was working on a game there, and he called me in. I went and interviewed. I ended up interviewing nine times over the course of a year before I got hired. And then I got hired. And I thought I would be there for maybe, you know, a year or two and then come back to filmmaking. And, you know, 25 years later, I was still stuck making video games.

Matthew 39:11
Well, you say stuck, but I mean, this is not that uncommon these days, is it now? I mean, this is what the business has become. I mean, I know in this country video games are bigger than the film industry now.

Joshua Tsui 39:22
Yeah, it's amazing, the technology, the video game technology has just grown so much. It's leaps and bounds. And now it's getting, you know, that technology is starting to, you know, enter the film industry. And so, I feel very lucky that I've been able to keep up with the technology. And so it was like to show, such as Disney's Mandalorian, you know, they're using a game engine for their, you know, for their backdrops and everything. And for us, that's like, you know, that's stuff we've been working on for years. It's really fun. It's really fun to see that all coming together. And so, for me personally, it's like it's nice to see that and, you know, and I still straddle the video game / film world, back and forth, so it's been very fulfilling.

Matthew 40:08
And so where did you, so you've been, as you say, you've worked on Mortal Kombat, Fight Night, Tony Hawk and some of the other games you've worked on. What made you decide - wait a minute, I want to get back to filmmaking and this is the film I want to make. Is this is your debut?

Joshua Tsui 40:28
Yeah, this is my debut. And, you know, I chalk it up to having a midlife crisis, a while back ago. And I had always known that I wanted to eventually make at least one film in my life. I just felt like it was just some, you know, I had gone to school for it and I never got to do it. And so, you know, when I started getting the itch to do that, one of the things that I had learned from somebody, I can't remember who it was, but they basically said, for your first time film whether it's documentary or whatever it's going to be, make it about something you know. You know, it's a low hanging fruit, you know. And so that way, you're learning the technical job, you're learning by storying it, you know, telling the thing, and you're not spending so much time trying to discover the story. And so I thought that was a great advice. And, you know, I was profiled on this website called Polygon. They did a profile about my career in video games. And after that article, I started thinking to myself, I was talking about Midway Games, I had worked on Midway Games during the 90s, during the era that the film was about. And I thought, you know what, people know the games and they know some information, but nobody's ever really did a holistic view of that entire era. And I felt like I was kind of uniquely positioned to do that. And it was getting to a point where, you know, it's 20 years later and people are starting to get nostalgic for it. And so I thought the time was right to do that, and I figured, if I don't do it, somebody else is going to do it. So I just kind of, you know, we've grabed for the brass ring and just go for.

Matthew 42:01
I think, I mean except for the Coronavirus, I think your timing is perfect because you've got - the 90s are hot. We've got The Last Dance so Chicago is hot. You've got NBA Jam, NBA is hot again. I mean it never was not hot I guess. So I think you're there. I mean we had, people may not know there's going to be a Baywatch documentary made and we had them on.

Joshua Tsui 42:30
I've heard about that.

Matthew 42:31
Yes, so then we've had them on. And this I was just not aware that, because that's the type of person I am, but not aware of how hot the 90s are at the moment. But, it seems to me this captures it, at least the way I remember it. Captures greatly well.

Joshua Tsui 42:49
That's great to hear.

Matthew 42:51
I mean, what was the receptiveness to this project? Because there you are. Here's Josh showing up saying hey guys, I want to interview you, you used to work with me and I know some of you may not even talk to each other anymore. I mean, how was that?

Joshua Tsui 43:05
You know what. Everybody was so happy that somebody was doing this. Almost everybody said, like, I can't believe nobody has done this yet. And they were really happy that somebody they knew was doing it, you know. And so, yeah, it was just great to talk to everybody again and hear their sides of the story. So it was interesting because I went in pretty much knowing what the story was. But, you know, once I started talking to people, it became a little bit of kind of like a Rashomon situation where you had the same story from different points of view. That was really fun to hear. And originally, I didn't think I was going to do much in regards to the business side of things. I'd only talk to the developers, cause that's who I was comfortable with. But as time went along, I started really getting interested in the business end of things because it was kind of territory for me. And I felt that that really made the documentary. And I was very lucky to get the CEO of the company, he remembered me. And so, but you know, at the time, I was just some punk kid. But I was very, I was very grateful for him to do this interview because he's never been interviewed ever about any of this stuff. And so, you know, so for him to sit down with me for a few hours to go over things, it was just amazing. So yeah, it was a, it was almost like a family reunion in many ways.

Matthew 44:31
Gosh, it sounds like, I mean, sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, I think you definitely get a flavor for what it was like working there. Is it, is that pretty? I mean, you know, that's the way it was in the 90s. Is that the way it is in this industry? I mean, it seems pretty, pretty...

Joshua Tsui 44:50
Yeah, scrappy. I mean, there are many... Back then it was very scrappy. But you know, Midway was a big company and they kept it scrappy. Yeah. Nowadays, the game industry is much more professional and much larger though in nature. So if you go to an EA or Microsoft or an Activision, it's not gonna be that scrappy. But, you know, there are still a lot of game developers that are like that, are like this. You know, most of them are, you know, indie game developers. And I always, you know, I always say, the Midway, the way we're managed the way we've made games, we were the most well funded indie video game team out there. You know, because they left us alone, we do whatever we wanted to do, all they cared about was just be on time and on budget, and just tell us what the game is and we're done with it. And so that's the way the indie game development does. But yeah, but in terms of large studios, it's not like that anymore. Which may or may not be a bad thing, you know, games a little bit less scrappy than they used to be.

Matthew 45:50
Exactly. But I think, I mean, that is an interesting point. It struck me, it's almost like what you sometimes hear, whether it's true or not, about Google and letting guys just go off and do whatever they want. I don't think that actually really happens. But it's quite, and the competition between everyone, I think, it's very interesting. One thing in watching this that struck me is that there is a person missing in it. I even looked him up to make sure he hadn't died. And that's did you try to get Ed Boon in on this project?

Joshua Tsui 46:26
Yeah, we, I know Ed really well. We've, we've met up more than a few times, and I was trying to get him on there. And, you know, there's just, it just can't get worked out. A lot of it has to do with, you know, he still works on Mortal Kombat, you know. That IP is now owned by Warner Brothers. And there are just certain sensitivities to it. I wanted to be very respectful to him. And, you know, make sure that he was in the film, and, you know, we talk about him extensively. But yeah, it was just one of those things that we can work out. But yeah, ultimately, you know, there's a lot of Mortal Kombat in there. But ultimately, it's really about the entire output of that team and so, it's definitely missed though.

Matthew 47:11
Yeah, but I think you still get a, you have some interesting, I won't give it away, but there's some interesting points people make about, well especially how Mortal Kombat sort of reflects Ed Boon's personality but maybe we'll leave it at that. So we've been talking about, will continue talking about this great film you've made. But there's the project - now we've got, you're supposed to do the debut at SXSW. Coronavirus is happened. I mean, how are you making the best of a difficult situation from that standpoint?

Joshua Tsui 47:50
Yeah, I think, you know, like many filmmakers that are, that were supposed to be at South by and so on, a lot of it is, we're kind of figuring it out as we go along. Because, you know, there's still a lot of value in the film festivals and just getting the word out, getting the excitement. But yeah, now being online, you know, it makes it, it's a little different. So everyone's still kind of figuring that out. You know, my thing is that, you know, I wanted to, I've worked on the film for a long time, and I don't want to rush it out and just, you know, panic and just, just get it out there. So well, you know, we're still going to go through these various film festivals, just to get the word out. You know, working with Cargo, releasing in films out in New York City, and they're, you know, working on the plans for various distribution for the film itself. And so, haven't gotten everything nailed down yet, but we're kind of marching our way towards it. And hopefully, it'll be out very soon. That's all I can say at this point.

Matthew 48:55
I hope so too, because, I mean, I'm probably the one of the few people, certainly on this side of the pond that's had a chance to see it. But I do hope people do get a chance to see it. I really enjoyed it. I think, back to this thing with festivals. I mean, for many of our listeners, one of the points, well besides festivals seeing, networking and things, you know, festivals have played this really important part in terms of helping independent filmmakers get distribution. Now that everything's gone online, is that completely gone? That element is gone from these festivals, isn't it?

Joshua Tsui 49:34
I mean, it's, you know, it remains to be seen how much of an impact, impact change it's going to be. But, you know, it's one of those things where there's also the prestige of the festivals themselves. Getting accepted and it's a nice stamp of approval for the film itself. So even if the presence of, like even if the sales presence is different from it, you know, when I look at the long tail of things, you know, having those, the stamp of approval from this festivals will help the film in the long run. Because it differentiate the film from, you know, from other films obviously. Like for me, you know, for Insert Coin, there's, you know, it's about video games. And there's a ton of stuff about video games out on YouTube and other channels and such, and they're all really great, you know. But for me having gone through this current process, you know, it's something I wanted to do because I wanted to differentiate my film from, you know, from that. And not saying that one is better than the other, but I wanted to really just go the traditional documentary route with this, with this subject matter. And so that's why I'm kind of sticking with, you know, with what we're doing right now.

Matthew 50:54
Well, I think the thing is, is there's no wrong or right answer because no one knows. I know some who aren't doing festivals, some who are, still are, such as yourself. Did you take part in that - the South by tried to put everything on Amazon, didn't they? But a decent number of the documentary filmmakers didn't go along with that.

Joshua Tsui 51:16
Yeah, it was, you know, I definitely appreciated what they were, what they were doing with that. And so, you know, what an amazing opportunity to get your film out and just to meet people. I think the thing that kind of held us back just a little bit on that was, it was still very early on, in those days, you know. We're still reeling from the fact that South by got canceled. And so when this was put together, there were just a lot of unanswered questions about it. So it wasn't that, it wasn't like a positive or negative thing. It was just like, yeah, we don't know what the long term impact of this may be. Because you're, suddenly you're putting your film out to hundreds of millions of people. How does that change the dynamics for sales of the film later on, and nobody knew the answer. So, we just wanted to be a little cautious about that.

Matthew 52:04
And I think the thing is we still don't know the answer, do we? That's where we are. So Josh, I mean, what is, what's next? So you've done the like, they tell authors, like they tell filmmakers, your first project should be something about something you're passionate about or know. What's next for you?

Joshua Tsui 52:23
That's a really good question. I have...

Matthew 52:27
I'm sure your family wants to know too.

Joshua Tsui 52:28
Yeah, they want to know. Yeah, they're like can you get out of the house? Go do something. Now, there are three or four different projects that I'm kind of looking at. They're mostly all pop culture based because I really like pop culture a lot. And, you know, one of them, and I don't mean to be coy about it, I'm just being still trying to figure this out. One of them is video game related, but the others are not. My one concern I have is that this is my first film. And you know, making it about video games has been great. I don't know if I want to do a second film on video games, because then suddenly I'd become the video game documentary guy. Nothing wrong with that. But there might be some other things I want to do that might be harder to do later on, if I were to do that. But I love, you know, I love music, video games, comic books and skateboarding. So something, and Chicago, so something, you know, hovering around those things. And so we'll see. Yeah, I definitely, you know, I'm taking a long break from video games and really focusing on films and some other interactive projects.

Matthew 53:21
So if we want to keep tabs on you, and where you move to next, what's the best way of doing that?

Joshua Tsui 53:43
Well, you know, I'm pretty active on Twitter. So @JoshYTsui. And I'm not necessarily saying that it's great content I'm putting out there, but just mind dribble. There's that. And then the @insertcoindoc is the other Twitter feed for the film itself. But those two accounts are probably the best way of keeping, you know, keeping track of where I am.

Matthew 54:11
Well I wish you luck. I mean if you do the same production value and editing and everything that you did with this one, I think you'll do, I'm sure you'll do quite well. It was, I tell you it was that, certainly, I was talking to Alex here who does, who is in the studio. I think my attention span is not what it used to be, but that first hour was just like, it flew by. And I found myself just really like laughing and being entertained. And I think it's very insightful into a world that's, and it's not just nostalgia. I think there's a lot that you, that comes out of this, besides just remembering how all that stuff we thought was so cutting edge maybe doesn't look quite so cutting edge anymore, you know. But yeah. Hey, well, unfortunately, I think that takes us to the end of our time, Josh. So I just want to thank you again for coming on to the podcast. It's been a joy having you. Just to remind our listeners that we've been speaking with Josh Tsui the director, writer and producer of Insert Coin. Also want to give a shout out to This Is Distorted here in Leeds, England, where we record the podcast. And please do remember to like us and share us with your friends and family wherever you happen to listen or watch podcasts. This is Factual America, signing off.

Factual America Outro 55:40
You've been listening to Factual America. This podcast is produced by Alamo pictures specializing in documentaries, television and shorts about the USA for international audiences. Head on down to the show notes for more information about today's episode, our guests and the team behind the podcast. Subscribe to our mailing list or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter at Alamo pictures. Be the first to hear about new productions, festival showing our films and to connect with our team. Our homepage is alamopictures.co.uk