Here are some of the major goals for the cooperative. Anyone who wants to be involved should be 100% on board with the pros and cons of worker cooperatives (your due diligence is needed here, make sure you understand and want this, it’s not necessarily the right kind of workplace culture for everyone — see the Resources section).
You should also agree with the general direction of these goals (this is very much open to constructive feedback and revisions, there are surely things that were missed, and as the cooperative is formed we will make decisions together on all of this):
It will be an employee owned and run worker cooperative with a cap on salary ratio (TBD, but it will be tight, around 8:1) and possibly a hard upper cap that is revisited periodically. We will decide as a group how to manage surplus distributions, based on criteria we agree upon.
All major decisions will be decided together by the worker-owners. Every worker, regardless of their role(s) in the cooperative, will be eligible to become an owner, and all owners will make all major decisions together. Teams working on this or that will be able to decide amongst themselves the best ways to do things, with an emphasis on safety and quality over speed. There will be no single boss person, we will all be accountable for leading each other to choose and accomplish our goals.
It should be the kind of environment where people will want to stay for as long as their love of pinball lasts. To the extent possible, we should provide great benefits, flexible schedules, family leave, child care, allow remote work, etc.
No taking investments that come with significant strings attached that would interfere with our democratic decision making processes. Acceptable funding: small business loans (including crowd-funded ones), donations, possibly pre-orders, possibly equity-only (non-voting) investments which pay out only when we make a significant surplus in a given year, and may only be sold back to the co-op. Never venture capital (really, we want no part of it, don’t @ us).
Stay privately owned by the co-op members forever. No I.P.O., no flipping the company to cash out; our view should be that we’d rather shut down than sell out. We want to make great games and make a good living doing so, we are not out to “scale,” not interested in dominating the industry, nor will we choose to increase profits by treating workers or customers poorly.
We want a team that is diverse, and does not prioritize making games that primarily appeal to old white men. This may be challenging at first because of the way the pinball world is today (too white, too male, leans older); but we must always do our best to diversify the team at every step and help change the culture around pinball to be more inclusive, and do so in ways bigger than our choice of game themes.
We should think lots about who we want to see playing and buying pinball in 5—10 years, and think a lot less about who was playing it yesterday or 20 years ago.
We will respect some of the traditions of pinball (speaking in terms of both game design and the culture generally), but not be bound by them. The ones that drive new players away will be left behind without a second thought.
We will not chase profit with ticket dispensers or other gimmicks that resemble gambling.
Carefully avoid cultural appropriation, awful stereotypes, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, racism, ableism, etc. in our games and culture. When possible, figure out changes to the standard cabinet design and game controls to make pinball physically accessible to more people.
All talent—art, music, voices, etc.—will be named in the game credits (if desired by the artists) and receive fair residuals on future sales, adjusting rates to current economy, even if that means increasing prices and/or less surplus for as us the worker-owners.
While the company will be democratically run in nearly all ways, we’d avoid design-by-committee because that’s how hot garbage gets made.
Strive for environmentally sound facilities, supplies, and production methods.
Design workspaces and processes to:
remain safely usable in pandemic conditions
as much as possible be remote work friendly
be introvert friendly
Dare to create both original and licensed themes that other pinball companies would not.
Make money to make more pinball, never the other way around.
Succeed or fail by making great games and supporting our customers and operators/arcades; never by undermining, diminishing, or harming other people, workers, or pinball companies.
No trash talking other pinball companies, as this helps no one.
When there is a problem, favor calling in over calling out for all but the most grievous things, respecting the wishes of those who were harmed.
Use and contribute to open source hardware and software where appropriate. It’s not always or inherently the best option for everything, we will choose the best tools for the job, within our means.
Different models of games? Not really. There will be one essential game, and a few build-to-order and/or options and upgrades. No option or upgrade will change the rules, shots, gameplay, or scoring at all. Only cosmetic enhancements, extras, toppers, etc. that do not change the game.
For example: either there’s an upper playfield or there is not. That’s a significant change that affects game play dramatically.
Maintaining multiple versions of game code and multiple production models to support different playfields is too much extra work and overhead for little benefit.
Source whatever supplies and services we can from other worker co-ops or ESOPs (employee stock ownership programs).
Work to bring pinball to communities where it’s absent, including people under twenty-one years of age. Pinball needs more young, non-white, non-male players to survive long-term, and that can’t happen if it’s mostly confined to bars in wealthier neighborhoods, even though the various arcade-bar business models are essential to keeping it alive at the moment. Great progress has been made by Belles and Chimes, and bravo to IFPA for adding the Women’s Advisory Board.
Unionization: we will absolutely recognize and work with a union of non-owner employees if one is formed. We will make no attempt to prevent it, other than extending much of our democratic process to include non-owner workers; and by striving to eliminate any conditions that would make workers feel unheard, unsupported, unsafe, under-represented, or any type of badness, really.
Politics: Yes, we will have some!
We should be as open and transparent as possible about most things we are doing and how we do them, except for a few:
Whatever themes we are working on, or are still undecided about. With licensed themes, you have to be very careful what you publish or say for legal reasons, until everything is settled. Being able to surprise the world with a new game soon before release is a wonderful thing. If you over-share your process, the excitement has worn off by the time the game is released. This is one area where we would want to have people sign non-disclosure agreements.
Members will all know one anothers’ salary, but agree not to discuss anyone’s salary but their own outside of the co-op without first getting permission from that person.
All financial/accounting data will be “open book” among worker-owners. We may choose to publish parts of this, excluding certain details to maintain individuals’ privacy.
Research is underway to acquire funding to begin design and production and be able to pay people for their work. The intention is to keep this period of unpaid time as short as possible for as few people as possible. There are indeed organizations who not only fund cooperative startups, but will actually send a person to come and help us work out how to form the cooperative and get things up and running. If we do our best to make an excellent pitch, then there is potential to get this off the ground more quickly. If that fails, we have a much harder and slower road but can still get there.
We are fully and painfully aware that the ability to survive and do unpaid work is one that mostly only comes with privilege, and we will end the practice as quickly as possible. Assembling a small team of founders and possibly a prototype game (or at least detailed plans for it, enough to indicate that we have a viable product) is job #1. Funding is job #2. After this beginning part, we will never seek unpaid work again, not even for internships.
For those who do unpaid work in these early days, there is “sweat equity” that counts towards an ownership share and perhaps offers some priority for our first surplus distributions. We’ll decide together how this works.
Please, learn more about cooperatives by reading: