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Stephen Silver with Multimorphic - Episode 18

JBS Show·podcast_episode·49m 43s·analyzed·Feb 22, 2024
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.033

TL;DR

Multimorphic announces Princess Bride P3 module with immersive design at TPF.

Summary

Stephen Silver, Creative Director at Multimorphic, announces The Princess Bride as the eighth playfield module for the P3 platform, debuting at Texas Pinball Festival. He discusses his background in broadcast television and video production, his path to joining Multimorphic via Jerry Stellenberg in 2012, and the design philosophy and team behind Princess Bride, emphasizing immersive screen-based gameplay and extensive movie asset integration.

Key Claims

  • The Princess Bride will debut at Texas Pinball Festival (TBF) with playable machines at a Multimorphic booth

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'so you're going to debut at a tbf yep we're going to have uh some games there and uh everybody's going to come and get to play it'

  • Stephen Silver has worked with two dream themes in a row (Weird Al and The Princess Bride)

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'I said when we announced Weird Al that this was a dream theme for me to work on. Having two dream themes in a row to be able to work on has been, I feel incredibly lucky.'

  • The Princess Bride license was secured during Weird Al production, with roughly one and a half years of development time

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'We secured the license when we were in production for Weird Al... we've been working on this about a year and a half or so.'

  • The P3 platform is the only third-party development platform in pinball where independent developers can create games

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'We are the only third party platform available in pinball where third party individuals are able to make awesome, creative pinball experiences that you can't get anywhere else'

  • Multimorphic has eight playfield modules available for the P3 system at this point

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'this is the eighth play field on the system. So if you buy the system, you have access to eight different physical play fields at the moment.'

  • The Princess Bride features a Cliffs of Insanity mechanism with a real ball lift similar to but actually functional compared to Pinball Magic's fake version

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'we've got the Cliffs of Insanity... we've got to figure out how to do the trick that they did in Pinball Magic, but they faked it in Pinball Magic... we need that to happen with the real ball'

  • Stephen Silver founded and owned a local broadcast station in Texas

    high confidence · Jamie: 'you actually founded and owned a local broadcast station' and Stephen confirms founding a low-power broadcast station in Curble, Texas

Notable Quotes

  • “We are the only third party platform available in pinball where third party individuals are able to make awesome, creative pinball experiences that you can't get anywhere else”

    Stephen Silver @ mid-episode — Core differentiator of Multimorphic P3 platform positioning in market

  • “You should never have to take your eyes off the screen. We want you to be able to get all the information you need on the screen down below you in front of your eyes.”

    Stephen Silver @ mid-episode — Design philosophy for P3 playfield-focused LCD integration

  • “Our mantra is that you should never have to take your eyes off the screen... The backbox LCD is for your friends. That's for everybody else around you watching.”

    Stephen Silver @ mid-episode — Clarifies dual-screen philosophy and audience engagement strategy

  • “T.J. Weaver is one of the most brilliant engineers in pinball... this mechanism that will attach the ball to this crane and lift it up and drop it off at the top of the cliffs is amazing”

    Stephen Silver @ mid-episode — Recognition of key mechanical engineer; describes Princess Bride marquee feature

  • “I think there's two types of people in this world that are Gen X like us, right? There's those that are addicted to The Princess Bride and those that don't get it.”

    Jamie @ later-episode — Cultural commentary on generational divide regarding Princess Bride fandom

  • “I know where that's going, and I can see where that's going. I can definitely see the potential of that.”

    Stephen Silver @ mid-episode — First impression of Multimorphic prototype at TPF 2012

Entities

Stephen SilverpersonJerry StellenbergpersonMultimorphiccompanyThe Princess BridegameP3 PlatformproductT.J. WeaverpersonLexi Lightspeedgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Buffalo Pinball streaming Princess Bride reveal at TPF this weekend; suggests coordinated media strategy for major announcements

    high · Jamie and Stephen discuss Buffalo Pinball streaming event this Saturday on Twitch

  • ?

    historical_signal: Princess Bride described as culturally significant to multiple generations despite generational divide in fandom; Gen Z awareness of iconic quotes without having seen film

    medium · Jamie notes students know 'My name is...' quote and Stephen confirms 'this is how much cultural impact the movie has had'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Princess Bride development leveraged specialized expertise: Josh Kugler (software), Steve Scheuer (Princess Bride fan consultant), Michael Oshin (live shows), T.J. Weaver (mechanics)

    high · Stephen Silver discusses each team member's role: 'Josh Kugler to sign on to our software team... Steve Scheuer is... our resident expert... Michael Oshin... on live shows... TJ Weaver... brilliant'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: P3 platform emphasizes screen-based immersion with playfield-mounted LCD requiring no head movement; backbox LCD reserved for spectators; represents shift in pinball screen integration strategy

    high · Stephen Silver: 'Our mantra is that you should never have to take your eyes off the screen... The backbox LCD is for your friends'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Multimorphic secured Princess Bride movie license during Weird Al production; reports positive licensor relationship with extensive asset access

    high · Stephen Silver: 'I've always heard that working with licensors is really hard and it's always really restrictive but I've been extremely lucky with these two' and 'we basically were able to work with everything in the movie'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.149

0:00
Hello and welcome to the Wormhole. My name is Jamie Burchill and you are listening and are watching to our podcast called Wormhole Pinball Presents. Today I'm joined by the creator director at Multimorphic, Steven Silver. Welcome back to the Wormhole, Steven. Hey, the guy with the beer. Thank you for having me. Hey, how are you? So much. So you've been pretty busy lately. No, I've been crazy busy. Here, stick that right up in there. No, stick it in there. There you go. Can you hear me? There you go. There we go. That's better. Yeah. So for those of you not heard, Multimorphic announced the past Monday that your newest title on the P3 will be The Princess Bride. The Princess Bride, yes, sir. How excited? Oh, it's amazing. And I've got to say, as somebody who's previewed, I said when we announced Weird Al that this was a dream theme for me to work on. Having two dream themes in a row to be able to work on has been, I feel incredibly lucky. Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations. So from securing the license to where we are now, how long does it take?
0:58
We secured the license when we were in production for Weird Al. So I knew that Princess Bride was next. And so we were really excited about that. And then after Weird Al launched, we still had some work to do in Weird Al to finish some stuff up. But then we've been working on this about a year and a half or so. We had two teams working simultaneously. simultaneously of course the final resistance team was working uh they're bringing final resistance to get that going and then i peeled off and helped them with their launch and get their launch videos going and everything like that and then uh but we've just been pushing through and and getting this done and so exciting it's it's some exciting time and we're a couple of weeks away from tbf so you're going to debut at a tbf yep we're going to have uh some games there and uh everybody's going to come and get to play it along with all the other games on the platform we'll have a big booth and we'll have everything there for everybody to experience we hope you can come out and check it out oh that's that's amazing and then buffalo pinball is going to be streaming it our friends at buffalo are going to stream it this weekend right this saturday i'll be up there in austin and hanging out with kevin he i have to make a game to come see my buddy kevin absolutely there but uh he's coming down to austin we're going to have a good time and uh i'm the the worst pinball player at multimorphic but uh hopefully i get to beat jerry on stream at least once that would be great that would be great he's bringing all his stream stuff down yeah that's fantastic so it looks like you have all of the movie assets yeah yeah we've uh like i said i've always heard that working with licensors is really hard and it's always really restrictive but i've been extremely lucky with these two because we al was extremely uh gracious and easy to work with and we were able to uh uh have a really great working relationship and get everything that we wanted to get done. And we basically were able to work with everything in the movie to get done. And so, like I always say, we challenge people to go in there when there's something you want to hear from that movie or a scene you want to see from that movie that's an iconic scene.

  • Stephen Silver met Jerry Stellenberg at Texas Pinball Festival 2012 after reading a Pinball News article about Multimorphic's P-Rock boards prototype

    high confidence · Stephen Silver: 'I went to TPF 2012, and before I went, Pinball News released an article on this news startup... I saw that little box, and I was just blown away'

    • Heist
    game
    Weird Algame
    Final Resistancegame
    Scott Deniseperson
    Josh Kuglerperson
    Greg Goldieperson
    Steve Scheuerperson
    Michael Oshinperson
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Jamie Burchillperson
    Dungeon Door Defendergame
    Buffalo Pinballorganization
    Jose Fernandezperson
  • $

    market_signal: P3 platform highlighted as only pinball platform enabling third-party game development with active developer community and SDK availability

    high · Stephen Silver: 'We are the only third party platform available in pinball where third party individuals are able to make awesome, creative pinball experiences... The SDK is free to download'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Multimorphic delegated creative director role to Stephen Silver for Heist onwards, moving away from Jerry Stellenberg single-designer model; indicates organizational maturation and role specialization

    high · Stephen Silver: 'Jerry came out to everybody... the next game, I don't want to be the person behind this game. I want to find somebody else to be the lead'

  • ?

    announcement: Multimorphic officially announces The Princess Bride as eighth P3 module, debuting at Texas Pinball Festival

    high · Stephen Silver: 'Multimorphic announced the past Monday that your newest title on the P3 will be The Princess Bride'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Eight P3 modules now available with Princess Bride as latest; indicates sustained development velocity with simultaneous projects (Final Resistance developed parallel to Princess Bride)

    high · Stephen Silver: 'this is the eighth play field on the system' and 'We had two teams working simultaneously'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Princess Bride features innovative Cliffs of Insanity crane mechanism lifting real ball (vs Pinball Magic's fake version); represents advancement in mechanical integration with themed gameplay

    high · Stephen Silver describes working with T.J. Weaver to create crane mechanism 'that will attach the ball to this crane and lift it up and drop it off at the top of the cliffs'

    • 3:03
    Odds are it's in there. That's awesome. We have put a lot of care into making sure that you're going to experience this movie because we're all super fans of this movie. This movie means a lot to people of all generations, right? But especially our generation, right? We all grew up with this. We all know the movie inside and out. And so we wanted to make sure that you got to experience all those scenes and you got to. And that's one great thing about the P3 platform is that we can immerse you in those scenes like no other pinball can. Like you can go in there and when you were playing the Battle of Wits, you were going to go through and experience that entire scene. you're going to go through and and have to build up your iocane immunity and and decide whether or not you're going to drink the cup you know at that moment and we can change change the environment make this stuff happen for you and you never have to take your eyes off the play field to do it you know those kind of things so i love it when the movie clips match up with the game itself right they're not just throwing clips for the sake of throwing clips and i think this is just by watching the trailer it looks like that synced up perfectly yeah because we what we um what happens is is that when and josh talked about this on uh pinball profile that's right and he's he's had a lot of experience dealing dealing making content for games and this is what everybody has to do now because with the switch to lcd driven games so much so much work has to go into and i think a lot of people underestimated how much work has to go into making contents for these screens i didn't because this is what i do for a living i know how much work it takes to put into these screens and it as as everybody knows a lot josh was saying like you you would be working and spending so much time on this screen content and he's like i'm doing all this for the player that's never going to look up and uh you know but it's nice now when we're doing it we have to do it we're doing it for the player down here. And our mantra is that you should never have to take your eyes off the screen. We've also got a back box LCD that's playing stuff. But that is for your friends. That's for everybody else around you watching and everything else. We want you to be able to get all the information you need on the screen down below you in front of your eyes. So you should be able to get everything you need right there without ever having to lift your head. I think the P3 does that brilliantly. Yeah. Okay. And as you know, at the Wormhole we've got one right there and we love it. and we play the hell out of it, and it's really one of the great features of the P3. Yeah. For those that don't know, I can just kind of explain the P3 concept if you don't know. No, please. Let's go into it. So the quick short of it is it's a multi-game system. The lower part of the game is an interactive screen. It's got a ball tracking screen, so that means that we can change the content of that screen. instead of a painted piece of wood, we've got a screen that can give you interactive content. So that can be a static play field with inserts like we do in Final Resistance, where you just have, it's like a static insert plus, so you can show a traditional pinball experience, but you can also have it more interactive where there's more visual feedback and things that are happening to say, hey, this is connected to this or in different ways, right? Or you can completely change the environment when you go into this mode. You switch everything else. It can be more immersive as you go along. And in addition to that, we know where the ball is at all times. So where the ball tracks, we can have it interact with virtual targets anywhere on the screen, right? So in addition to that, the back third of the play field is completely swappable. The entire machine is modular. So you can pull out that back third of the play field and swap it in. And we have – this is the eighth play field on the system. So if you buy the system, you have access to eight different physical play fields at the moment. And then you can, for a fraction of the cost of a regular machine, you buy once, and then you get access to all those play fields. And it's a hell of a deal. Like you've got this hell of a value that you get where you've just got all this content that's available to you. And in addition to that, you've also got all these software games that you can buy as well. So you may not even have to change a play field. You can go and you can select multiple different games that are made by us and also by third party. We are the only third party platform available in pinball where third party individuals are able to make awesome, creative pinball experiences that you can't get anywhere else, which Dungeon Door Defender is one that you guys love. Well, we're going to talk about Dungeon Door Defender later, but you know we love it, right? Yeah. And you know we're addicted to it. And we have the Weird Al play field underneath right now, the P3. and then we have Heist module in there now and the reason that we have Heist in there because one, we love Heist so much but two, we love Dungeon Door Defender and it plays perfectly on the Heist platform and we play the heck out of that machine and by the way, downloading that and from download to install, like 15, not even 15 minutes. It was really fast. Yeah, and it's a couple hundred bucks and you got a whole new gameplay experience and it's something that's almost all going to benefit a third-party developer, right, that did this. And so that's what I love. I love that about the system, that this is getting normal people to go and create new pinball experiences and put them out into the world. And these are such creative, innovative ideas. Dungeon Door Defender is an awesome tower defense game that you played. Yeah. And there's dozens of them out there. There's a ton of them out there that we've got from all different third-party development. And we've got a whole Discord of people all making their own third-party games. The SDK is free to download. Anybody can download it and start playing around and making their own games in Unity and trying to release them. And they've got a market of people willing to buy them and get out there and see them. And I think that's one of the most awesome things about the system that I love. Well, we're fans, right? Yeah. Okay. You know we're fans, and I'm trying not to fanboy too much, okay? But we're really excited about The Princess Bride. We're really excited to play it at TPF. What are some of the features, to go back to Princess Bride, that you're really excited to have people play at TPF? So, of course, the big marquee feature on the play field is we've got the Cliffs of Insanity. Right. And we all had this idea when we were putting it together that, of course, we've got to have the Cliffs of Insanity. We've got to figure out how to do the trick that they did in Pinball Magic, but they faked it in Pinball Magic. They did. It was phony baloney. But it's one of the coolest tricks in pinball where, like, you shoot it in there and you see the pinball rising up and all that. And it's like, but we need that to happen with the real ball. Like, we need to do that with the real ball. And so I happen to believe that T.J. Weaver is one of the most brilliant engineers in pinball. Like, I'm biased because I've worked with him for several games. And he did the crane and heist. And he's done all the stuff in Weird Al, all of our lift ramps and everything in Weird Al. And he's done amazing stuff. but this mechanism that will attach the ball to this crane and lift it up and drop it off at the top of the cliffs is amazing. And we can lift that ball up, we can raise it down, we can do all sorts of stuff with it, and it's not slow. I mean, we make it go along with your shots, so the whole idea is you're shooting ramp shots to go up as you're climbing the cliffs. But it's really well done, and it's got live shows that go with it, and we've got really great stuff that happens as you're climbing the cliffs, And that's the feature that I think everybody's going to want to see and experience in person, right? That's a big one. And so we've got a really cool captive ball, Mac, where you smack the captive ball, and it comes back in the back and hits it. And we've got these, when it hits it, the swords are crossing when it's just triggered by that. Yeah. When you go through. And that's really nice. But it's a really good fast-flowing play field. Like, we've got a lot of these shots that are going back and returning pretty quick. And then we've got this, the inconceivable loop at the side. But it's an interesting design that Jerry's idea that he came up with, which is instead of having a clean feed to this upper flipper, it's coming straight down. And so it's a harder shot, right? Yeah. But you're trying to hit it on the side when it comes down. But when you hit that shot and you pull it off, it's a really great feeling. You've got Vizzini coming up on your face saying, inconceivable when that happens. That's pretty nice. So those are big ones. I think there's two types of people in this world that are Gen X like us, right? There's those that are addicted to The Princess Bride and those that don't get it. Yeah. Okay? I was in the latter. I'm going to be honest with you. I was in the latter. I just didn't get the movie, right? So I watched it again last night, and I could be a convert. I could be a late 50-year-old convert to loving The Princess Bride because I had to watch it last night. I'm like, okay, what's with all these wonderful shout-outs that everyone knows, right? Everyone knows all of these phrases. Like I am, you know. So I don't know them. So I had to watch it again last night. And what's crazy about it, so I'm also a teacher. Like I teach. I've got a lot of jobs. But I also teach on the side. So all my students are kind of Gen Z and they're younger. None of them have seen it Actually I have one of my students that really surprised me He like I love the Princess Bride But I showing them all the trailer and they like what the Princess Bride and everything But I say have you ever heard My Name is an Eagle and One Toy And they were like, oh yeah, I've heard that. And I was like, of course you have, because these things are, this is how much cultural impact the movie has had. Like, it's bigger than that, you know. So, I find that interesting, you know. This is a huge movie, even whether or not you've actually seen it or not, you've been touched by it. absolutely and and you know i'm in the the small minority of the ones that weren't addicted to it growing up but uh you know i i'm gonna be a convert because we're gonna get it anyway so i'm gonna have to i'm gonna have to hear all those those shout outs and everything and i might as well pay attention to it so congratulations on your newest module the princess bride uh our friends at buffalo pinball are going to stream it this weekend uh they're going to be on twitch right yeah it's gonna be on twitch okay good buffalo our friends at buffalo pinball are going to be streaming it this weekend uh follow buffalo pinball and they will you'll you know all you have to do go to buffalo pinball follow them on twitch and you will get an alert when it comes up and i'm sure they will say something about princess bride and the p3 module so all right let's shift gears we're going to go back to multimorphic in a minute but i really want to pick your brain on you weren't always into pinball no okay well i don't know when i was a kid i was really bad at video games like but you always weren't working for a pinball no no not always working for that's what i'm saying right so i don't know if you people know this but steven started working for a local tv station and read this correctly you actually founded and owned a local broadcast station yeah so we um my family like when i was in high school um my my mom worked at radio stations right okay we were coming up and my mom has always been this um jack of all trades She's sort of like me. I get this working a lot of jobs mentality from her. And she worked at banks, but she got this job in promotions and sales at a radio station. And so she was doing that for years and years and years. And so as kids, we would always go along with her to all the remotes and stuff like that. and then she got involved with doing this Saturday morning buy-sell-swap-trade cable access show that we did. Oh, okay.
    14:47
    Like Swap Shop. Yeah, Swap Shop. People call in in this small town I grew up in, Curble, Texas, where it's like, Hey, I got two bales of hay and some forks or something that I want to sell. And then I call this number, and they're like, All right, thank you. Somebody hang up. It's like eBay on telephone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. I remember. Yeah. And this show, like gangbusters in this retirement community. People loved it, right? And so my mom and her, it became a step. They basically went and they decided to make this into a real TV station. And this was about the time I was getting into high school. I at the time for some reason my high school was like probably one of the only high school high schools in the country that had an avid editing system at the time this was like in 96 or something so like avids were brand new not only your editing was brand new and I had a teacher who knew how to write for Krantz and was able to buy like a used like like test bed avid system Right. So I'm learning how to edit on an Avid when most professional editors are still out there doing tape to tape stuff and stuff like that. So I'm doing that. I'm helping my mom build this this cable access station thing. And then my mom was able to they're able to go and write a grant and get a low power broadcast license. And so we build a low power broadcast station in this small town. And what do we do? We we go and we shoot the local high school football teams. Sure. We shoot. We do a local news show. We do all this stuff, learning everything, doing everything wrong, like shoestring budget. Like but I mean, this is this is we had to learn how to do it and figure out how to do it. And so I did that. And then I went to UT, the University of Texas, and they had a student run low power television station. It's the only, like all these college campuses have student TV stations or whatever, but we were the ones that actually had an FCC licensed broadcast. And the transmitter is on top of the UT Tower. Okay. And back then, the UT Tower was still cut off to people because, I don't know if you know your history, but the UT Tower, they didn't really like people climbing up that UT Tower for a while because of reasons. Right. But I got to go up in that UT Tower because that's where our transmitter was. And so, like, we would go up there, and so it was pretty special. But I ended up running that station in college because, you know, you go through the ranks and you end up running that. Fascinating. And so that's my background is I would build the – I would work and I would run that station and I'd go back on the weekends and I'd go shoot football games and run that station and help with speccing out and building all of our facilities there. and we would just basically – and running both. And then I started my career and going and basically getting into post-production in Houston. I came down to Houston and started doing post-production stuff. I'm sorry to take us away from pinball for a second, but it's absolutely fascinating to me when I looked in your LinkedIn profile to see all this TV work, right? I mean, it's really – so any cool projects that you worked on when you got into video production that you can talk about that maybe you haven't signed an NDA for? No, I mean, you know, we worked on various different things. I mean, you know, I've worked on some PBS documentaries and things like that. There's one that they ran like crazy around here. Every year they were doing the fundraiser. They always run this Texas courthouse ones on the local PBS station that they just kept running for years and years and years. Every time they want to get money out of you guys, they'd go and they'd keep running my courthouse documentary. They kept doing that.
    18:46
    But I ran all the – I did all the cons commercials in Houston for like 10 years. And so, like, anytime somebody's out there hustling refrigerators on TV, you saw my commercials and stuff. You saw them on the Super Bowl or whatever. That was me that did that. But, yeah, I basically was just doing a lot of regional broadcast work for a long time and doing that kind of stuff. It's just funny how life – where it takes you, right? And I've said this on the podcast multiple times. This is – I wanted to be in broadcasting, right? So this just scratches my itch for me. because my school, when I went to college in Florida Southern College, canceled the communications program my first semester. So I was like, well, I guess I'll go to business. Well, okay. Or I should have transferred. But as somebody who went down that route, it may have saved you a lot of pain.
    19:41
    That's true. I do love what I do. All right, back to pinball. When did you first meet Jerry Stellenberg and start this pinball adventure? So I went to TPF 2012, and before I went, Pinball News released an article on this news startup that was doing this neat thing with these P-Rock boards. I've seen these P-Rock boards. People are doing stuff with these P-Rock boards. And I was like, oh, wow, custom pinball, because I had gotten to that stage where I was thinking I had already been collecting machines for a while, and I was already thinking about wanting to do a custom machine of some sort. I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted to, like, do something creative with it. And I started seeing, oh, they're making these boards we can actually do all this custom stuff with. And then they did this article about this prototype machine that these three guys had built in their garage. And it was this little white box that had this ball tracking screen for the play field and, like, no back box or anything like that. and it had rudimentary software on that, and they were going to be at TPF. And I was like, I don't care about anything else that's there. That's what I want to see. And so I showed up at TPF, and I saw that little box, and I was just blown away by it because I was like, I know where that's going, and I can see where that's going. I can definitely see the potential of that. I went to Jerry's seminar, and Jerry does what Jerry does. He's like, okay, we're going to build a working pinball machine on this table in 30 minutes. And so he went up there and he, with his boards, went in there and got a flipping pinball machine with working DMD animations in like 30 minutes. And he was still just his board company at the time. Wow. And so I went over and shook his hand afterwards. And I think I said the stupidest thing I've ever said. It's like, hey, are you working with J-Pop?
    21:37
    Whatever. But anyways, like, and then we, then afterwards, it was, I think about a couple months later, we ended up connecting. because I told them I do video work. And, again, I didn't even know how this would fit in. I was like, hey, you know, you need any video help or anything like that. And I ended up doing, when they came to the Houston show with their second prototype, I was like, hey, come to my studio. We've got a shooting space at our studio. Bring the machine over there. We'll shoot it. We'll do a promo video. And I did a promo video for their second prototype machine. and i've been doing their i started doing their promo stuff um at that point i've been i've been working with them ever since awesome yeah that is and what was the first game when you joined in in 2018 was the first game you helped design uh create a designer for so we were i was working with them from the beginning like lexi was the first game like so it was even before lexi existed right they were it was just a concept i was there when they announced uh dennis was the designer i I was in the room when Dennis described the Lexi concept to everybody, right, and did the big reveal. And I actually connected. I helped them with some things on Lexi with the voice calls. I've got some voice actor friends of mine in Austin that are connected in the anime community that do a lot of anime voice work. So I basically helped write the voice call-outs in Lexi and then recorded them all here in Houston, and those are all in the game. Which actually if you ever get a chance to play Lexi And listen to the call outs I'm really proud of the call outs They're very good It's a fun game to listen to John Swayze is the voice actor And his daughter is the voice of Lexi But I think the voice call outs Are very good in that game The game is actually very underrated It's a very good game You go through I've helped out with that And then I've In the background helping out with all the video aspects of everything. And then after Lexi and after Cosmic Kart Racing launched, Jerry came out to everybody that was working in the P3 universe basically and saying the next game, I don't want to be the person behind this game. I want to find somebody else to be the lead of this game. And he's like, you don't have to be the technical designer. You don't have to be an engineer. I'm not looking for somebody to come in and know the CAD design aspect of this. What I'm looking for is a creative director. Somebody to take over the overall story and angle of this game, of what we're looking for. Basically, he was designing something that took all the hard stuff out of it and said, if you want to take the creative side of it and everything. And I was like, you know, I could do that. That's something I think I could step up to do. And I threw my hat in the ring and everything. And he's like, you know what? I think you'd be perfect for it. And that was Heist was our first game that we did together And Heist was TJ suggestion He said you know what Why hasn anybody done a Heist game And we were always like that would be perfect for pinball right And so we all got together and kind of wrote this story and the characters and then built this world. And it was a great experience, your first game being an original theme, because you got to create the entire world and all the characters. The graphics and everything are awesome on Heist. The Houston artist, Houston-based artist, Jose Fernandez, did all the art for the Houston Arcade Expo for years. So I met him through the Houston Arcade Expo, and I was like, hey, I think he'd be awesome. And I worked with Jose to go through there. I mean, just an insane amount of work, though, to go through and, like, all those storyboards for everything else. Because it is a video choose-your-own-adventure for basically a heist story where you're assembling your team. And then when you get to the big final heist, it changes based on what your order of the crew members selected when you get to that big final heist. So we have to have different versions of those cut scenes whenever you go through to make sure it matches with how you ordered them previously. Oh, that's really wild. Yeah. So, I mean, like a lot of you just have to think about how all this stuff works together when you are making all these things. I really enjoyed playing Final Resistance at TPF last year. And that was really one of my favorite games. Oh, man, the team killed it on that. Those guys did awesome. Yeah. So when you get a Scott Denise, because he's an independent pinball builder, if you will, designer. Yeah. You know, when you get Scott in his own module, do you guys come to him and say, does he have the idea? and do you come to him or do you have the idea or or how does that work when you go to an independent designer like that so yeah scott came and he started working with us on weird al so he did the audio on weird al and he was he was already on the team working with weird al and uh he was in there in the early days of when we were pitching ideas on how to handle the weird al universe and and figure all that out but scott came on early on and he was he from the get-go said, you know, I think I got a really great idea for a P3 game. And he always had this idea of this ship that you were battling against in this really fast-paced ship. Yeah, it's really fast-paced, but it's really cool. And so he kind of had the base, like, CAD layout and everything else, and then, like, you know, TJ went in and tweaked it and made it manufacturable and made everything work and everything and put it all together. And that's usually how this stuff works, you know. Like, we give TJ's our magic problem solver guy. Right. Like, you know, only Scott made it a whole lot easier because he gave him much more finished problems versus my chicken scratch that I give TJ. And I'm like, make this stuff real, you know.
    27:40
    So after Final Resistance, now we have Princess Bride coming back to Princess Bride. Let's talk about some of the design team. Can we go through that? Yeah, definitely. Oh, man, I'm just so proud of everybody on this team. Like, everybody just killed it in this game.
    28:00
    Like, we were very, very lucky to be able to get Josh Kugler to sign on to our software team early on, like in this process. And he signed on and was able to start working with us at the beginning of this process with it. And Josh is awesome. You guys know he's had a long history of doing games with American Pinball and did a bunch of awesome stuff with American Pinball early on, and he's just been killing it on software and doing everything with it. And on software also we had Greg Goldie, who was on the heist team with us, the Weird Al team and everything. Steve Scheuer is And Steve Scheuer is A Princess Bride super fan Okay And he's like our resident expert Like he has like Anytime I have a Princess Bride question about Hey is this sacrilegious or are we doing something wrong Like I always go to Steve That's perfect right you need that Yeah and then we brought Michael Oshin over Dungeon Door Defender and Weird Al fame We brought him on too to help us out with live shows And everything else like that to come out and help us out at the end And so we've got a really strong software team that's helping us solve all these things. Of course, mechanicals, we bring TJ Weaver back. And TJ, I always think he's brilliant. TJ solves all the problems, and he gets us. Every time I think, like, how are we going to actually pull this off? I think there's no way we're going to pull this off. And TJ always surprises us. He gets it done. And Trey Jones is always there getting us our mechanicals and getting our whitewoods and stuff, like getting those early stages before we get to manufacturing and getting all this stuff done. And then this year we did something new, and it's a really great addition as we brought Colin McAlpine on to help us with rules. And so this is what's really interesting about this game is that you're going to have a game from somebody who actually cares about score, unlike me, right? And so, like, you've got – and Colin really, really killed it. He comes in and he really puts, he's put in a lot of thought about, and he really did put in a lot of thought about how to make this game approachable for all aspects of players, right? And what we want is, like, anybody to come up to this game and be able to hit the start button and have access to, have a lot of stuff close to the start button for somebody who's a fan of the movie. They want to hear, they want to see scenes from all over the movie. So you're going to be able to get to those things fairly easily by going to these three regions and going and choosing which one you want to go to, right? But he's also got a ton of strategy and a ton of depth in there for the skilled player, right? And for those that don't know, Colin won Pinberg. He's a very talented player. He's a very, very good player. Yeah, and so he knows his stuff. He knows his rules, right? And so he's done some really creative stuff with coming up through these rules. So the rules discussions on those things were really great. Rory Cernuda is our technical artist. He's our Unity guru. So anytime we need to do Unity graphics and all the stuff where we do the built-in game art and stuff like that comes through. And then from the artwork on the machine, we brought Matt Andrews back. That was the Weird Al artist. So this game looks way different from Weird Al, right? This should be a range of Matt Andrews, right? And so, but he just, again, did incredible work. And what's cool about this game, like I said, we came in and we were like, we need a different look than we have with our, and Matt's like, no problem. One thing that, and I was surprised Jerry said this, one of our goals was, like Jerry came in, and this was from Jerry, he's like, I want no visible metal on this upper play field, right? If you look at our upper play field, you don't see any visible metal, like all the metal surfaces are covered with art. We've got them all covered there, right? And so it's a really beautiful upper play field to where you look there and everything is, we've got every surface covered with really high durability, this really high durability decals all over it. But the way Matt's approach to it was, I was working with him on it, is that he pulled the whole thing into his blender model, and he was painting actually on the actual 3D model himself for his first pass and doing that to cover every surface and figure out how it all worked together this first time rather than just doing flat art. And then he pulled it back out and did all the fine detail work and stuff like that. So it was pretty good.
    32:33
    And then for music, and this was a huge deal, Paul Ferrer is a big, big deal over in the U.K. He does a whole bunch of big network shows and stuff like that. He does a whole bunch of stuff. I saw all the U.K. guys that were going, oh, wow, Paul Ferrer. He did The Weakest Link over there. in a bunch of different shows. Yeah, he's a big name, a huge talent, right? Okay. So the game music sounds incredible, right? And in the trailer, you saw our big multiball music, but they all just really killed it there. And then Matt Kern, he's done a bunch of sound effects in other games. He's doing our sound effects in this game, and he's doing really well. Really cool. And then Lucas Pepke. Some of you guys don't know, but maybe you've heard of Macho Pinball, or Puffer Pals. Yeah. Yeah, so we brought him on to do some additional voices in the game. so he's got a really nice stuff so we've got all the we i got all of the video assets in the game so i was able to pull the voice stems and the sound effects stems and stuff like that to play around with in the game but also we've got you know holes in the game where we need some pinball specific parts so we got right to come in with some extra extra voices and stuff like that so what a team yeah no you can see the excitement in your face right i love working with these people right because these guys are so talented and everybody is bringing their a-game and everybody's doing exceptional work and so i always i love bragging on these guys i love love telling people about how great it is to work for these people because these guys every one of these people really care about doing a great job and really doing justice for this theme like really making sure that when you are playing this game you really feel like we're doing justice to the princess pride you're actually experiencing the princess pride in a way that you can't anywhere else yeah so this is your first uh machine that you're building with uh the cabinets that have the the what is it the swords on it and all these different cool things that you guys are putting on the cat you know if if you don't already own a p3 yeah and you want to have the princess bride module and the p3 itself or like this said if like let's say you already did and you wanted the you you're a princess bride super fan right like if you if you wanted the dedicated you wanted this You wanted this collector's edition. We wanted to have a special version for the super fans out there, right? So, I mean, like I said, if I owned another machine and I wanted to get the special edition version or whatever, then you can, like I said, I could go sell mine and find this one, right? But this is for the super fans that are out there. I wanted to have a special thing that was out there. It's still a P3, right? You could still go and you could still swap it. It's got all the features of a P3. I wanted to clear that up because I think some people on Pinside, you know, potato heads, they're not paying attention, but I just wanted to make sure that we're – Yeah, it's still a P3, right? It's still a P3. It's just that the logistics of going and doing a conversion of an older one to that full set is a much harder thing. And then you've got the number. It gets more confusing about the number kit and everything. It's like we wanted a special version that was available if you're going to buy a new one or you're going to buy a second cabinet. This is the thing that happens a lot is that once people get a number of modules, people start considering doing second cabinets as well. Makes sense. You can do different things with P3s. If we get two cabinets, then you can do network-linked play between our games because we've got a lot of network features that other games don't. You can do online head-to-head play between two cosmic cart racing play fields. You can do head-to-head, which is a gameplay thing where you're basically having balls teleport between two different play fields as you're stealing balls off of this game to do the other one. There's a whole lot of network features that people do. But also, you have less swaps. You can have this one over here and this one here. So people, and it's, you know, it's funny because, like, half the comments are like, you know, hey, we want a dedicated one. And half of them are like, oh, wait, no, don't do this. And so you can't make anybody happy, right? No, no, no, no, no. But my deal is like. I learned that a long time ago. But like I said, it's just like we wanted to make something that was special. And if you wanted the special version, we've got it here available. We wanted a collector's edition that was available. It looks beautiful. But we wanted to make sure that this art package and everything there is available in the limited edition version with the topper and everything else. We've got the storybook topper at the top, the fire swamp topper, that way you can track your narrative progress and your mode progress and everything else like that that interacts with the fire swamp mode and everything like that. That comes along with it and everything that comes with that CE besides the powder coat and the swords and the special, the back glass and stuff like that, that comes with the CE kit, right? All that stuff is available at the LE Kit, you know, if you wanted to just get the LE, right? So we got that too and it limited as well So we got options out there We wanted to specifically make out three different options to take care of I think that was a brilliant move right I mean and then for us because we already have the P3 platform we could just get the module Does that also have the side art? So we've got the – when you buy the module, you can get the module, right? We've got the side art that's available for it, right? but a lot of people don't want to deal with side. They just want the module, right? Because they've got side art and they don't want to switch. They don't want to deal with extra side art. So they're like, why am I paying extra for side art when I don't need it? Right? So we sell the module. And then if you want the extra side art, we've got the side art, but it's magnet. It's so cool. Yeah. We've got the magnets and we've got an upgrade kit. We're going to have an upgrade kit for everybody. So if you've got an existing P3 and you want the front side art, you want the front art, you can add front art now to your P3. There you go. And we're going to have front art for every – we're going to go back and do front art for our previous games, most of our previous games. So if you wanted to add front art for a previous game because you're like, you know what? I wish this had it. Or you buy for Princess Bride and you're like, okay, now I want to switch back to System Core. I want to switch back to Cosmic Riot Racing or something like that. We've got the front art for that as well. I mean, how do you beat that? There are some people that you hand them a bar of gold and they're complaining. But for this, I mean – Some people don't complain. Yes, they do. They do? Some of them do, but I think people that are in love with the P3 platform don't complain as much, right? Because we're addicted to it, right? And we know how many different things that we can get from it. It's really a very versatile machine. This is what I'm just saying. When you go and you – and I'll say I work for the company and everything else, so I'm biased. You know that. But this is the thing. I'm also an owner, and as an owner of the system, it is a great ownership experience because every single time a new game comes out whether or not that's your theme or that's something that you're into that increases the value proposition of the machine you own right that's right uh the thing i own now has more content available for it right we just released the princess bride well we got a princess bride now that has a and we just got a play field that is a medieval castle mountain theme to it. Guess what's going to come for that? I've already got everybody in our Discord talking about all the third-party game ideas that they've got swimming around in their head that they want to release on that play field, right? So this one play field is going to spark forth a multitude of awesome, creative, third-party game ideas that are going to come for a fraction of the cost of these things. What a great point. And so, like, my point is that... I just think there's endless possibilities with the platform. Yeah, it keeps getting better with time, and it's like if you don't like the new thing that comes out, that's fine. Nobody's forcing you to buy it. You can wait it out. You can go and do something else, right? But it just keeps getting better with every new release, and we're already at 21 games. We've been shipping these things for six years, and we're at 21 games now. And that blows me away. I did the first – when we first launched, I had to show – I learned early on that people – I had incredible imagination when I saw this white box with rudimentary software that, like, had little drawings of barnyards going across it and rocks. And I was like, I know where this is going, right? But I realized very early on that sometimes people have a really tough time visualizing things that they can't see. So I was like, we need to make an ad that shows people like physically swapping play fields and how this thing can go in the future. And so me and TJ were playing around with it and we're like, what's a crazy number of play fields that we could we could swap out? So we did like, OK, what, like six modules like that'd be nuts. So we did six module design that were that were swapped in the entire ad. It's like, boy, that's going to be crazy in the future. And like we're at eight now. Like it's nuts. It's nuts to me to think that we're already there in six years. And then on top of that, across the whole platform, 21 games. And there's bangers in there. People absolutely adore Ranger in the Ruins. People absolutely adore Dungeon Door Defender. These are third-party games.
    41:30
    There's no other manufacturer in the world that could have brought those ideas to market because it's just not possible technically, but also it's not feasible economically. Right. And these things exist because there's a platform that is out there right now that creates a market for people. It creates a development platform for people and it creates this community of people that love the product and have the passion to work for it and and are putting this stuff out there. And it's enabling people to to create these products. And it's fantastic. That's awesome. I can see the passion in your face. This isn't a salesperson to me. I am the world's worst salesperson, but this is the customer in me that loves this product and loves every single time I see in the Discord one of our users creating awesome goofball ideas, right? Ian Harrow just released Birdwatcher, right? Right. We haven't gotten that yet. We want to get that. I know. I love that, right? Yeah. It's amazing. Birdwatcher hype. I'm always like, every time I get it, I'm like, Birdwatcher, cuckoo. Like, let's get some. Let's go. There's so many, and we're addicted to it. And so we're just, you know, one of the things, real quick for you, is we just put all our stuff on pin map, right? So we're on pin map, and we're only open three days a month, but we're available for rental. And I cannot tell you how many people have emailed us and said, you guys have a P3 on location? And we said, yeah, we have a P3 on location. Which module? Well, right now we have Heist. And I heard Wednesdays you guys have tech night. Can I come on a Wednesday? Yeah, you can come on a Wednesday. And you just don't see them as more out in the wild, you know, especially at a pinball club like the Wormhole. And so I think that's people, when they come in here and we get a rental, P3 Heist has played more than you would expect any other machine. They play Heist and two other machines the most right in here and right now. Yeah, I mean, it's approachable, and it's friendly to people. And it's not guaranteed, like, everybody's going to like every game, right? Some people come in, and they're like, oh, well, I'm not. Like, some people legitimately are like, I love Dungeon Door Defender more than Heist, or I love Ranger to Ruins more than Cosmo Kart Racing, right? None of this stuff hurts my feelings. That's great. Like, that's the beauty of this multi-game system, right? My kids are always asking me to put the pirate game in, which is Cannon Lagoon, because they love shooting the ships and stuff like that, right? And so that's what's great about this system is that you've got something for everybody. Like, you can go and the swaps, people are like, oh, the swaps take like two to three minutes to go. It's really not a big deal. It's not a big deal, right? The main deal with it is that it's different, right? You got to learn a different form of troubleshooting. Okay. Right? And you got to learn a different form of figuring some stuff out, right?
    44:37
    But if you're able to accept those things, if you're able to learn a few minor differences, right? And I use it, people always, the way people always describe it, right? The lazy way to describe it is that it's hybrid pinball, right? It's half virtual and it's half real and whatnot, right? The only quote-unquote virtual thing about it is that instead of a painted piece of wood that the ball's rolling over, is that we've got a dynamic display, right? And I think, like, you look at Final Resistance, right? Final Resistance did basically a static play field that was enhanced static play field. That's right. And so you've got these power-ups that go when you complete things. We've got stuff that go and connect and say, oh, these things connect to here in a way that you couldn't do with just inserts unless you had, like, little static inserts that followed that entire trail. And then that's the only thing that they do, right? And you have these kind of things that add extra dimension to that static play field. So you can do the static play field thing. You can do – but you can also swap out the entire environment when you change environments. So people get this idea when people say it's this hybrid, it's half virtual or half real. No, it's all real pinball. It's all real pinball. It's just that we have a dynamic display underneath that lower third decimal ball tracking display, and what we do with that ball tracking display is that we handle the delivery of information and content to you differently than a painted piece of wood with inserts would do. That's how we handle it. And I, as a visual person, as a video person, I love developing for that because I'm always thinking about ways to better deliver information and better deliver content to people that are playing pinball. Well, we are so excited. I'm so excited that you're here. Thank you so much. I'm so excited for TPF. How many are you bringing? Do you know how many? I don't know. I think we're going to have – we're at least going to have a couple there. I think we may have a third play field there on display That we can swap in and all that But we're going to also have We're going to have a whole lot of P3s So that we can have every game that we have on display there For everything that everybody wants to play If anybody wants to come and play a third party game Or any of the other software games We'll go ahead and swap them out there We've got a huge booth I think it's like 20 by 30 there Good We'd have a huge booth Because you're going to need it I think you're going to get a lot of people lined up to play So you're going to be there, right? Yeah, I'll be there. Okay, good. And we're going to be there as well.
    47:18
    The booth for us, they kind of stuck some of the exhibitors out in the hallway. Oh, they're in the hallway? I think we're in the hallway. Oh, man. I know. We got stuck in the hallway. But I think it's going to be really cool because I think what they're doing is the entrance is going to be further down. Okay. All right? So then the hallway, you'll go by the hallway, and we're bringing a couple of cool machines there. And let's see. Who's here? That's Corey. Oh, okay. No worries. So we're ready to announce one of the machines that we are bringing to our booth. Are you ready? Yeah. Right behind us, trailer, Playmatic 1985.
    47:58
    That's playing beautifully. Nice. And that will be in the Wormhole booth. And then Kiss right there, that's the German Kiss. And the German Kiss will be in the Wizards or the Classics tournament that we are streaming at TPF. So we're pretty excited. My head's blocking the trailer. I'll show it there. Oh, there's the trailer. And then the trailer is really loud, and Brian Foytick likes to screw with me and put it really loud, and then I put it down. It's a little game we play here. Yeah. So you can also, we're going to be streaming the Classics of Wizards and the Women's Tournaments, and you can follow us on Twitch. Just click that little bell, and it'll give you an alert when we're on. Steven, that was good. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. very excited for you I'm very excited for everyone to be playing Princess Bride at TPF and please tune in to Buffalo Pinball this weekend so that you can watch the stream that's going to be done brilliantly of course and Kevin does a good job he's one of the best so thank you so much and congratulations and hopefully on a very very successful launch sir yeah I think so I can't wait for you guys to see when we've gotten a chance to actually play around with an entire movie asset situation and actually see how we treat these scenes and how you actually get to go and experience all these iconic scenes in a movie and how you get to actually go through there and deal with them in a narrative pinball way. Things that I feel like only we can do. Yeah. Well, congratulations again. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. And this will be up this evening both on YouTube and wherever podcasts can be heard. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it, Steven. I think so. Thank you guys so much. Take care.