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Free Play Pinball Podcast Ep 14: Weasel Elimination Tips With Multimorphic

The Pinball Network·video·1h 8m·analyzed·Mar 31, 2022
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.031

TL;DR

Multimorphic discusses Weird Al P3 launch success and P3 platform evolution.

Summary

Free Play Pinball Podcast episode featuring Jerry Stellenberg (CEO) and Alex Campbell (PR/Marketing) from Multimorphic discussing the Weird Al pinball machine on the P3 platform. The conversation covers the successful Texas Pinball Festival debut with nine P3 machines and minimal downtime, the design philosophy behind the modular P3 system, the impact of the P-ROC board on homebrew pinball development, and the rapid development timeline from licensing to production-ready machines.

Key Claims

  • Weird Al had 30-45 minute lines at Texas Pinball Festival until 2 AM on Saturday, with nine total P3 machines showing minimal downtime

    high confidence · Jerry Stellenberg describing booth experience at TPF

  • Weird Al's Twitter post reached 350,000 views in the first day after announcement

    high confidence · Alex Campbell citing marketing metrics

  • P3 platform first prototype shown at TPF 2012

    high confidence · Jerry Stellenberg confirming P3 history

  • Heist features 15-ball multiball, making Multimorphic the answer to that trivia question

    high confidence · Amanda Hamilton and Jerry discussing Heist mechanics

  • Weird Al license negotiations signed in March/April 2021 timeframe; playfield whitewood with all features completed by July 7th

    high confidence · Jerry Stellenberg providing development timeline

  • P3 playfield modules can be swapped in 30-50 seconds

    high confidence · Alex Campbell demonstrating module swap speed

  • P-ROC board became foundational for homebrew pinball community, with representatives from every major manufacturer having P-ROC projects

    high confidence · Jerry Stellenberg describing P-ROC impact on industry

  • Weird Al playfield module is identical between Standard and Limited Edition machines

    high confidence · Jerry Stellenberg on product differentiation philosophy

Notable Quotes

  • “I wanted to create this machine which led to creating this board that had a huge impact on the industry. It's really fun to see.”

    Jerry Stellenberg @ N/A — Reflects on accidental but profound contribution to homebrew pinball ecosystem through P-ROC development

  • “I don't like that model. I like giving super fans a way to make their machine look better... But the playfields themselves are the same.”

    Jerry Stellenberg @ N/A — Articulates Multimorphic's philosophy on pricing tiers and feature differentiation

  • “Built like tanks. If I brought any of my games, I guarantee it's going to be one of those that's infamously off for half of the show.”

    Alex Campbell @ N/A — Compares P3 reliability to legacy solid-state machines

  • “The P-Rock community has become kind of a who's who of the pinball industry.”

    Jerry Stellenberg @ N/A — Acknowledges the industry-wide influence and talent pipeline created by P-ROC

  • “Anybody who lets me stomp weasels, I love. It's tradition.”

    Amanda Hamilton @ N/A — References iconic Weird Al mode gameplay feature

Entities

Jerry StellenbergpersonAlex CampbellpersonAmanda HamiltonpersonBill WebbpersonTJpersonLespersonScott DenisepersonKeith ElwinpersonEric Priepkeperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Multimorphic showcased playfield module on public display table at TPF, enabling hands-on inspection of mechanical complexity and technical innovation

    high · Extra Weird Al playfield on table allowed visitors to examine spiral ramp geometry, hamster wheel, camera system, and internal mechanics without installation constraints

  • ?

    event_signal: Texas Pinball Festival featured nine Multimorphic P3 machines with minimal downtime and strong player engagement, establishing P3 platform visibility in competitive market

    high · 30-45 minute lines for Weird Al, booth had only mechanical issue on one machine requiring glass removal, TJ and Les handled rapid repairs

  • ?

    competitive_signal: P3 platform positioned as faster production alternative with lower shipping costs and parallel manufacturing capability for playfield modules independent of full cabinet assembly

    high · Alex: 'Instead of having to wait for entire new cabinet, we have parallel manufacturing line for playfields... shipping through local mail carrier without freight process'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Multimorphic prioritizes playfield mechanical depth over cosmetic tier differentiation, contrasting with three-tier model common in Stern/JJP pricing strategy

    high · Jerry: 'I like giving super fans a way to make their machine look better or have different artwork... But the playfields themselves are the same.'

  • $

    market_signal: Weird Al announcement generated significant external awareness through celebrity Twitter amplification, reaching 350,000 views beyond core pinball audience

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.206

0:00
The Pinball Network is online. Launching Freeplay Pinball Podcast. I am Amanda Hamilton here with my co-host Bill Webb, and we are joined with two very special guests tonight. Coming off of their release of the Weird Al Pinball Machine on the P3 platform, we have Jerry Stellenberg, the president and CEO of Multimorphic, as well as Alex Campbell, who is the public relations and marketing manager. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Hi, Amanda. Thanks for having us. Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks so much. no problem i'm just so glad that you guys could join us this evening we're fresh off of tpf we got to see weird owl in the wild we got to play weird owl in the wild what do you guys think oh it was a a busy show to say the the least i have to say um i'm just impressed that you're out here already recording podcasts uh i feel like our all our voices needed a well-deserved break but the show was amazing yeah yeah but the show was amazing i mean we had lines non-stop I want to say probably 30 to 45 minutes for Weird Al specifically up until two in the morning on even Saturday. But all of our all of our games had very little downtime. I think we brought nine machines in total, nine P3s. I mean, like you said, very little downtime. I was one of those people in line. I put a couple of games on multiple machines because the lines were ridiculous to play Weird Al, but I still got a couple of games in. That game is so good. It is so good. I it just blows my mind so what was it like for you guys standing back and watching people play it for the first time and kind of seeing the reaction of the public at this show well even before they played it we had the perfect spot in this in this exhibit hall people would walk in the door look around and staring at him in the face would be a big topper with weird al's face on it Because they could see the machine straight from the door, right? So you would just see people's face light up. Oh, my God, that's the game. Or, oh, my God, there's a Weird Al machine. Or they were just already excited. And they, I don't know, people just seemed to jump straight in line when they walked in the hall. It was an easy line to jump into because, like you said, it was right there. I know there was a lot of buzz. There weren't a lot of, quote, unquote, brand new releases at the show. A lot of people have already played Rush. there were there was an alien there but that had a lot of downtime it felt like to me you guys didn't seem to have that issue like i i walked around quite a bit i came over and chatted with you guys not only am i excited about this product but also i was obviously excited to see you both again so i didn't see i think the most i ever saw was tj taking off the glass to change out a game so we had a couple issues it wasn't perfect this is the first time it's been in the wild so we learned a few new things the le machine limited edition machine which was on the left had basically no issues at all there were a couple software bugs we discovered one of which we solved or fixed friday night and had it running saturday morning with updated code but the one on the right had it had a couple issues some ball hang-ups a couple of mechanical things we need to tweak but over all those machines and tj and less by the way did a fantastic job they were working their butts off if something went wrong they sprinted over there fixed it kept that line of people happy they were they were fantastic i was about to say there's like a formula one pit stop over there um having the whole crew um yeah compared to when it was just jerry and i at expo it was really nice to just be able to to rely on their expertise and again just a huge shout out to two less and tj i don't think i can get enough credit to them um tj was the mechanical engineer responsible for all of the the ingenuity when it came to making that spiral ramp work making the uh the hamster wheel work and and all the the diverters and everything too so um again it was amazing having them on the floor and just uh defer to them if there was ever something that we need to fix it they'd get it up and running in a second and we did something different at this show that we hadn't done before we brought an extra play field to show off but also to serve as a backup just in case something went catastrophically wrong. So we could swap it in if we needed to. So we had this third Weird Al play field on the table in our booth. So kind of to the right of the booth. It was on the right over by where the glass was. Right. So the P3, for those who don't know, is a modular machine, and you can swap out the back third, which is the play field module. So we have the new Weird Al play field module. We also have ones like Lexi and Cosmic Kart Racing, and the one we didn't get to show two years ago at CPF, which is Heist. This was the first show that people could see that in person. But so now people, we could explain the story a lot better because we had nine machines there. We could say this machine, every one of these nine machines is the same. They just have different content installed or different upgrades installed in the machine. So we had games like Cannon Lagoon and Sorcerer's Apprentice and Heist, Lexi Lightspeed, Heads Up, two Heads Up machines. The Heads Up machines, they were so cool. And Weird Al. And then we had this Weird Al play field on the table so people could see exactly what size our play field modules are. They could look at the top side, the bottom side of it. They could see the complexity of it. They could talk to TJ and Les about the mechanical design. It was really, really neat to have it there and show people what the P3 is all about. I can imagine just people walking up to that being in awe, being able to see it, touch it, feel it, experience it, just, you know, from a technical standpoint. because no one ever really sees, you know, unless you're really ingrained into pinball, a lot of people don't see that kind of stuff. I mean, there's people that own machines that never see the play field really out of the machine anyway. You know, they just see the aftermath of all the wires and get scared and everything else. But that's an awesome feature to have that on the table just so everyone can actually see it and touch it and ask questions. Yeah, and being able to look directly at it and kind of put your head in positions that you couldn't do if it were installed on a machine so you could see, like, the geometry of the spiral. The spiral ramp, by the way, is incredible. It's one of the most amazing ramp shots I've ever shot in pinball. And it's this real smooth flowing shot from the upper left flipper that goes upwards, up a spiral ramp, up a spiral wire form ramp, and feeds directly into the upper left, upper, upper playfield area on the machine, which is called the food court area in the Weird Al. But it's this awesome shot and you can see it up close and see exactly how it's tied together and works and what mechs are around it. It's a pretty cool display. One thing tying back into to the downtime and kind of showing off, you know, all the technical capabilities. I kind of wish the machines broke down a bit more because it's always a great, you know, impromptu tech demo. So we can kind of open up the machine, you know, because there's it's not just the play fields that are innovative. I mean, you get to show off the laser grid that tracks the ball in real time. You get to show how the flipper assembly can come out and you can just do all the work on a table versus trying to crawl underneath the machine and get it done that way. Or, you know, even the ball trough, you know, seeing all the UK's with, you know, you could store, I don't know what the official number is, but easily 20 plus balls in there. A lot. A lot. Yeah. All of them. More than you'd want to move around. So there's a lot of really cool things that, again, I think the biggest thing about any of these shows. And now that we have so many machines going out into the wild and so many machines going on route is getting a P3 on people's hands, like really getting people to to feel it. They've heard about it. They've seen streams and videos, but it's not the same thing as is feeling the tactile elements of pinball. That's what we all love and getting to experience it, what it feels like to them. That's the biggest thing. So it was amazing having so many people out and getting to flip some pinball. absolutely and and i thought it was really cool too we do have we have a weird la on order um that sarah has assured us we will get before george fisher period like we just have to um but she has assured us of that you know customer service was peak on that day i won't tell you what she promised to george he already told us it's going to be an ongoing battle but since he's in mountain time and we're eastern time we'll have ours two hours earlier than him no matter what So it's fine. They'll be on the same truck. Yeah, right?
Dutch Pinball
company
Multimorphiccompany
Weird Algame
P3 platformproduct
P-ROC boardproduct
Texas Pinball Festivalevent
Heistgame
Cosmic Kart Racinggame
Spooky Pinballcompany
Weird Al Yankovicperson
Free Play Pinball Podcastmedia

high · Alex: 'When you shared it on his Twitter account, we got up to 350,000 views in the first day.' Drove awareness among non-pinball consumers.

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Multimorphic demonstrated organized technical team structure with specialized roles (TJ mechanical engineer, Les prototype builder) supporting rapid field repairs and machine reliability

    high · TJ responsible for spiral ramp and hamster wheel mechanics; Les hand-built original P3 prototypes; both worked continuously through TPF show

  • ?

    product_strategy: Multimorphic explicitly rejects playfield feature differentiation between Standard and Limited Edition tiers, maintaining identical mechanical features across price points

    high · Jerry Stellenberg: 'I don't like that model. The playfields themselves are the same.' Cosmetic differences only in artwork/references.

  • ?

    product_strategy: P3 platform designed with upgrade pathway strategy to prevent obsolescence; customers can retrofit new flipper kits, LCD backbox, and speaker upgrades independently

    high · Alex: 'The system was designed to be modular... if people had the old flippers and want upgraded flipper kit, that's an option.' Jerry: 'We don't want you to have to trade out a game each time.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: P-ROC board catalyzed industry-wide shift in homebrew pinball development, creating pipeline of talent now employed across major manufacturers

    high · Scott Denise (Spooky), Eric Priepke (Spooky), Dutch Pinball, Keith Elwin all traced to P-ROC community; Jerry notes 'representatives who built P-ROC projects in almost every major manufacturing company'

  • ?

    licensing_signal: First licensed IP acquisition for Multimorphic (Weird Al) represents strategic expansion beyond original IP; negotiations with music studios separate from personality licensing

    high · Weird Al license signed March/April 2021 with separate music studio negotiations; rapid development from whitewood (July 7, 2021) to production

    • 8:50
    So it was really cool, though, as somebody who has one in order to be able to see that module out and just kind of sitting there. And for those of you, again, who aren't necessarily familiar with the P3 platform, and as Jerry was saying, where you can remove that upper third play field, it's about the size of one of the large single-serve free-to-lay chip boxes you would get at Costco. I just went to Costco, so this is where you're coming from. I mean, a case of water, maybe. It's about that size. So if you tell me, oh, it's part of a play field, I'm thinking my mind is automatically going to wide-body JJP game. It's going to be this massive, gigantic thing. It's really not.
    9:36
    It's something that's feasible to move around. Yeah, it is comfortable. That's one of the beauties of it as well. Also, I mean, if you already have a P3, so a lot of our customers, instead of having to wait for an entire new cabinet to be assembled or anything, we have a parallel manufacturing line that can produce the playfields independent of a full P3 platform, which, of course, is going to make things move down the line faster, which is amazing. but also shipping logistics instead of having to, you know, go through a traditional freight process of getting a boxing day and having a pallet and straps and all that nonsense. If you have a P3, it's just going to be straight through your local mail carrier and arrive in a box in your doorstep without having to deal with all that headache. So there's definitely a lot of advantages. I'm looking forward into the future. I think my husband will have an issue with that part the most because I'm pretty sure that he is now collecting the pallets. We have like six of them sitting in our garage. Don't know why. I don't want a reason.
    10:36
    Sorry. He's a mess. So what's really cool about this game, it's your first licensed title. I know this has been something that was rumored and teased and very, very poorly teased, Alex.
    10:48
    I will take all blame for that. That is fair. Alex would send me these messages as soon as you guys released anything on social media, he would message me whatever the teaser was for that day right before Weird Al came out. And I'm guessing everything from like Dollywood to Fraggle Rock. I was like, I don't know. These are terrible. And then when I heard Weird Al, I was like, listen, we got to talk. I couldn't guess it. These weren't good. I'd say, therefore, the teases were perfect. They got you talking about all the possibilities and you didn't guess it. It didn't spoil the reveal. It just got you excited about it. So good job, Alex. Yes. No, it was good. We'll go with that. Yeah. it was an internal struggle to see how much we wanted to give away and how much we wanted to leave up to mystery but ultimately that's half the fun right like you don't want to be it's spoilers right you don't want to be told about a movie you don't want to be told about a book you want to go and see it for yourself so we definitely wanted to give enough away and if you look back you can kind of see the details but going forward we wanted just to kind of hey those sculptures came straight out of the game I was educated on the sculptures because I guessed wrong on that significantly it was to give you an idea I did have to shave off about maybe one inch of the hair on that statue because everybody was like oh that's going to give it away and I'm like yep it looks like it looks like another part of anatomy like this but uh ultimately we got pushed through and uh again another reason to get people talking get the buzz going so and the buzz was there yeah any any press is good press we'll take that it to an extent i think people were kind of in shock when they heard weird al jerry and bill and i are very familiar with weird al and his prime alex you're a little bit younger than us so this was more classic rock for you and classic rap you guys are the first game to contain a rap song which is cool but it wasn't something like i remember in high school and middle school weird al songs came out and you know you walked around singing amish paradise or you know white nerdy or like a surgeon. So I think it's really cool too, that everybody went from kind of Weird Al to, Ooh, Weird Al. I think a big part of that too, was just getting so many people maybe outside of pinball excited as well. I mean, we were incredibly lucky to have Weird Al's team behind us on the launch and some of the marketing releases. And I think when you shared it on his or his Twitter account, we got up to 350,000 views in the first day, I want to say.
    13:20
    So it was crazy, right? So we were getting people who'd never really seen a pinball machine since, you know, maybe in their grandpa's basement or something now, like, oh my gosh, they're still making pinball machines and, you know, reaching out and getting excited about that. And so, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, as we've been seeing it and I've been wandering the forums and pin side closely um i was very surprised to see as little kind of kickback usually when it's a music pin of any type there's going to be very polarizing opinions but across the board people are i haven't yet to hear about somebody really disliking weird i've i've said this since day one the theme weird out nobody hates weird out everyone either absolutely loves him or just enjoys his music and has an affinity for other things, but nobody has a problem with him because he's the greatest guy in the world. He's ethical. He doesn't curse. He doesn't do anything bad. Yeah, and he lets you stomp weasels. And anybody who lets me stomp weasels, I love. It's tradition. Oh my, right, it is. I love that mode. That was one of my favorite modes. And I love Harvey the Hamster. Harvey is super cool. It's a good use of the scoops on that one, I gotta say. It is, it is. Now, a lot of people until this may not have been as aware of the P3 platform compared to more conventional, full-on solid-state pinball machines.
    14:46
    You guys have both been deeply ingrained in this hobby, and I mean, even the P3 platform's been around since 2012. Am I correct with that, Jerry? First prototype was shown at TPF 2012, yes. But you have actually, you kind of started making boards and the really fancy complicated stuff kind of in the nighttime when you were working your quote unquote corporate job way prior to that. And people may not realize how much they owe you because of the P-Rock system and the P3 Rock system. Because you let people like Scott Tenisi create a brand new pinball machine that was not a retheme. and you let people like Keith Elwin create Archer. He used a P-Rock system.
    15:33
    And there's a lot of other home pins that are on this. Well, now you have the P3 platform where people are doing, again, homebrews using that platform. They're creating their own games from it. How is that? Has that computed in your mind when you stop to think about it of, holy crap, look what I've done? It started so small and it became so big. and so impactful. But at the beginning, I kind of had a concept for a custom game that I wanted to make. I wanted it to track the position of a ball on a play field and have an LCD under the ball. So you could have a physical ball interacting with some graphics and things. I had no real concept for a modular system or any of that stuff. I just had this idea to track a ball over an LCD. So I created a board to tie into these infrared devices to shine light across the surface of a play field and have a ball breaking the beams of light. And I was like, well, now I either have to build a machine to test the board or just test the features of the board on a table, or I could make this board backwards compatible with existing machines because I had 12 in my house at the time. And that's what I did. I made the board backwards compatible. It's a plug-in replacement for the CPU board on Williams machines and some of the Stern machines. And that's how the P-Rock got started.
    16:58
    Some people wanted one to test things or to write new code on their machines. And it just kind of grew from the community from there Dutch Pinball was one of the first people to get a hold of one They created Bride of Pinball 2 They were the first 2 project
    17:14
    Eric Priepke got a hold of it and developed Cactus Cannon Continued for himself. And everyone loved it. Eric Priepke, by the way, turned into a programmer at Spooky on Rick and Morty. Dutch Pinball obviously transitioned into the modern Dutch Pinball, which made the Billy Gabalski. Scott Denisey got a hold of one, made Earthshaker Aftershock, then TNA, and Spooky bought that, and then he developed Rick and Morty. Keith Elwin, Josh Kugler, who works at American… He's done a couple things. You see me gloss over him because he's a nobody pretty much. Yeah, nobody knows who that is. We can skip him. He's our news. I met Keith at a show out in California. He had Archer and we had the P3 and we were literally right across the aisle from each other just kind of watching people play each other's games. We talked a lot. His brother Randy was there who did the software for Archer. Both great guys. It was fun to talk through the projects. But the P-Rock community has become kind of a who's who of the pinball industry. There's representatives who built P-Rock projects in almost every major manufacturing company that exists, every pinball company. I look back and I did this thing because it was fun. I enjoyed supporting people's projects, giving them a chance or a way to create their dream theme or their own project. it's really cool to see how the industry's changed because of that single board that one day i woke up and i said i want to create this machine which led to creating this board that had had has had a huge impact on the industry it's really fun to see and of course the machine that we wanted to build has turned into the p3 which also has far-reaching ramifications and a lot of growth ahead of it and We still have a lot of cool things that we want to do. I learned something while preparing for this interview that P3 is actually an abbreviation of physical pinball platform. And I think that a lot of people may not necessarily realize this isn't virtual pinball. There's physical flippers. This is a physical play field. You have ramps. You have shooter lanes. Like, this is a legit. No, we don't have a shooter lane. We have everything else. You have a button. We have literally everything else. Ball trough, balls, bumpers, targets, ramps, toys, yes. You have the works of what makes a pinball machine a pinball machine. Right.
    19:47
    You have the use of magnets in certain games. You have ball locks. You have multiballs. What, Heist has a 10-ball multiball or 15-ball multiball? 15. We took the title. It's ours now. Oh, my gosh. Multimorphic is now the answer to that trivia question. For those of you watching and taking note, it's so cool to realize and to see the platform. I played one of your first generation ones on location a few moons ago and then playing it again at Expo, playing the newer generation at Expo and then playing Weird Al at TPF just in, what, that five month time gap?
    20:27
    Seeing evolution and how much has changed on it. The flippers feel great. I love the flippers. I didn't have a problem with the flippers at Expo either, but I love the flippers, except that upper left one. I need TJ to move that for me. It's not where my brain wants it to be. And I asked him to, and he laughed at me and told me no.
    20:48
    The next feature will be flippers on a conveyor belt. I like it. No, what you need, I'm telling you, we tried to get Owen to make a game that was literally a scoop that shot into a scoop that shot into a scoop that shot into a scoop.
    21:01
    Why not? you know but no flippers on a conveyor belt sounds like it would blow my my entire mind i wouldn't be able to do that i don't think we talked it's funny because we talked in the early days about uh motorized flipper angles and motorized outlaying in-lane dividers so you could dynamically change those things based on the content in the game uh super complex stuff that would be a pain in the butt to implement and probably wouldn't help the experience too much but i need ideas and And it'd be like a $20,000 machine if you could actually, you know.
    21:33
    Well, we've packed a ton of features into the P3 as it is. And we're really proud of the experiences we could develop with it. One thing to mention too, just because I think it's important for people to realize that they didn't miss the boat by, you know, getting in early. If anything, they're able to get games faster than everybody who's jumping on board now. But, you know, the system was designed to be modular. So, you know, if people had the old flippers and they want to get the upgraded flipper kit, that's an option. So you can, you know, upgrade your system as time goes on. You know, originally there wasn't a back box with a giant LCD screen in the back. You know, if you want to get that, that's an upgrade. You can get now the speaker, the lit speaker box and everything. So, you know, the main objective with the P3 is we don't want you to have to trade out a game each time you want the newest and greatest thing. We really want to support all of our customers through the entire lifecycle of owning a P3. So we have a lot of responsibility to everybody who supported us early on and anybody who's getting on board now and into the future. We're going to make sure that they have the ability to bring in the newest and greatest aspects of the P3's offerings, regardless when you got your first P3. I think it's important to mention. Absolutely. And Alex, you're a streamer as well as you stream solid state games. You work for Multimorphic on the P3 platforms. You you kind of have that like best of both worlds. Do you ever have to pop open a game and go, man, if I was at work, this would be so much easier. It's definitely a different experience. I am in a constant battle of, you know, troubleshooting and tweaking things here and there. And nothing is working perfectly. But that's pinball. I mean, that's what we all signed up for. And it's not to say that P3 is infallible either. There's things going to pop up and there's going to be little tweaks in here and there. But that's also kind of part of the allure of, you know, being handy and figuring things out. But yes, in general, seeing how many games and what the what the games went through this weekend, they're built like tanks. If I brought any of my games, I guarantee it's going to be one of those that's infamously off for half of the show because something's wrong and I don't know what it is.
    23:49
    I don't care what you do to the old games. You can shop them out, change the coils, blah, blah, blah, blah. Coil wire breaks, you know. You're like, what the hell? You know, 40 hours and this thing's still not right. You know, whatever. One of the guys that we were there with, he actually had a game that a coil wire worked free. And he didn't bring a soldering gun. And he's like, does anybody have one? I didn't pack one because I didn't think I would need it. I should have known, though, because I'm in pinball. you guys don't necessarily have that issue as much well we go to every show at least tpf local shows with a truck full of replacement everything so if there's a problem we can quickly swap them out we had tj and less there tj's our mechanical engineer less is also a mechanical guy he he basically hand built our original prototypes in my garage out of bicycle parts and duct tape and bubble gum. The original P3s were just kind of cobbled together from materials that we all had on hand. They were there to service these machines to make sure they were running. We had nine machines in the booth and some of them are five plus years old. One of them was our original production sample and the rest of them were all from our early, the rest of them excluding the new Weird Al machines we had there. The rest of them were from our first production run because every machine we build nowadays goes to a customer. We have a long backlog and we're building them as fast as we can, shipping them out to customers. And we don't want to take one off the assembly line to refresh our showroom or our sample set. So we're still running really old machines and we have customers running the same versions of the machines and proof's in the pudding you see these machines they're still running we can update them we can we can put the new games on them and basically show off the platform that is the p3 and what was really cool this is doable i can swap out the games i can do a play field swap faster than bill webb with one of these we we keep wanting to re we want to do a race we want to set up races with team members pull out modules and put them who can change them faster because everybody every time we talk about this modular platform someone asks how long does it take to replace just to swap a module because people are used to pinball 2000 or some other concepts that took five or ten minutes to swap play fields alex i don't know how long it takes you i'm so used to it now i can swap a play field in probably 30 or 40 seconds there is a learning curve to it but no i think i could definitely i think you'd i wouldn't bet my lunch money but i could beat it in less than i'd say 50 seconds i could do it from taking the glass off to everything. That is so cool. So yeah, we had this module on the table. People could come up and look at it. It was our third. So we had two machines with Weird Al. This extra module was also a Weird Al module. Oh, by the way, the play field module between the standard edition and the limited edition Weird Al machines is identical. We don't change the play field features based on how much money somebody's paying. I don't like that model. I like giving super fans a way to make their machine look better or have different artwork that might have more references or more hardcore fan features in it or whatever. But the play fields themselves are the same. So we had three play fields. An extra one was on this table. People could walk up to it and see it and look at the UHF camera that's on there, look at the hamster wheel or the spiral ramp or any number of these things we've squeezed into this play field that represent Alan, his music. That upper play field's packed.
    27:27
    For those of you who have not seen it, definitely go online buffalo pinball had a blast with it i got to watch part of that and i think like the two hour mark you guys were all just ear to ear grinning and they're like okay guys we're coming up on our time limit and everybody's still like no no wait we're not done i think part of that was getting to watch the whole team eat uh twin keviner sandwiches and uh i i was just silently videotaping everything in the background and boy was i the the winner of that scenario So come review time. We know where that video is going. Oh, boy. I actually liked it. Stephen, well, no, it was Kevin who didn't like it at all. I actually quite liked it. A hot dog and a Twinkie.
    28:10
    That sounds disgusting. Well, one question, I have a few questions, but one I want to throw in real quick. From the moment you guys knew you were getting the license to the time you had your pre-production sample ready and everything else. What kind of timeline was that? Because it doesn't seem that long ago that you guys released Heist. I feel like I turned my head and now this is... So Heist we released in March of 2020 two years ago. We intended to launch it at TPF that year but it got shut down due to COVID.
    28:45
    So this was actually the first show a lot of people got to see Heist in person as well. But between the launch of Heist and now we released a couple of mini games i think we released shoot and scoot as well in late 2020 in 2021 we developed this entire new rule set for the cosmic kart racing playfield and that's what is sorcerer's apprentice an entire new game people already had the cosmic kart racing playfield this was an entire development cycle a full new software full new rules full new theme full new artwork that people could purchase, download onto their machine, and play something different on their machine with the Cosmic Heart Racing Playfield. But Weird Al, we got the license signed with the music, which was a separate set of negotiations with the music studios and stuff. We signed all that in the March or April time frame of 2021. We had a flipping whitewood. I remember the day because I looked it up recently. July 7th, we had a flipping whitewood with every feature that currently exists on the machine. That's a crazy, crazy amount of time. Because we don't have to design a full play field. We just designed the play field module and we have friends, Trey Jones and TJ and Les are all really skilled mechanical folks who can take a piece of metal and put it in, change it into any shape that you want it to be in. And we have the modular board set that the P-Rock system has evolved into. Do we have, of course, standard pinball parts, targets and drop targets and pop bumpers? This machine or this game, even with all of the ramps and loops and diverters and toys, it still has three traditional pop bumpers as well. We packed it full. But yeah, we designed it in two to three months. TJ took about a month to build it with help from Trey and Les. And we were starting on software flipping on the Whitewood in July. That's that's insane. I mean, I know, you know, it's that's just an insane timeline. Absolutely. And I think what's so cool about it, too, is, you know, earlier you brought up the P-Rock system and how it allowed people like Scott Tenese to create TNA. Scott got to work with you guys directly on the P3 Rock doing all of the non-musical sound for Weird Al.
    31:10
    So that was that was so cool. The sound is so good on it. well yeah i mean his music is so amazing we had no choice but to figure out a way to make the sound amazing too and scott scott's been a big supporter of ours for a long time he bought into the p-rock ecosystem a long time ago he's been active on our forums he started with earthshaker aftershock which was a re-theme of earthshaker then he developed tna spooky picked it up he He designed Rick and Morty for them. That also ran on the P3 Rock system.
    31:44
    Scott and I talk or have talked almost every day over the course of the last seven, eight, nine years. So, yeah, he reached out to us. Yes. Right. Small world. He reached out to us a little while ago and we had some discussions and realized there's some synergy there and we could leverage his expertise. TNA is amazing. It's one of the perfect combinations of sound, light shows, music, rules. The art. Even the art. Yeah, Matt Andrews' art. Matt Andrews also did the Weird Al art. Exactly. Perfect combination for pinball. It's high energy. It's fun to play. It's not super complex. You walk up to it, you kind of figure out what to do pretty quickly. It's a fantastic game. and it's not super complex but it still creates a challenge to make it replayable i mean we have one we got one a year ago i've wanted one for a very long time and and we got one a year ago and my husband brought up the fact that they're going for an extraordinarily ridiculous price now like people are wanting to buy them and i'm looking at him going uh-uh buddy over my dead body no you can't have my game this is mine so we saw how skilled he was with with sound development and We needed someone who could deliver a fantastic experience to supplement the music in this game. And he was a great fit. He did a great job. It was outside of his comfort zone. It wasn't a techno-based kind of game. He had to create sounds that matched the music and the diversity of the music. Because as we all know, the songs in this game, the songs in Weird Al's portfolio, span a very large range in content and in vibe and in rhythms and things. They're all very different. So tying them all together was an interesting challenge. Well, and Scott is crazy, too. I mean, if you ever see his basement, it's just like a whole sound studio. I mean, it looks like, you know, you got nuclear silo keys hanging somewhere ready to launch some stuff. And he's also very dedicated, too, and he doesn't give up easy. That's the one thing about Scott is he is definitely diehard with anything he does. Yeah, that's one anecdote I can share. You know, I had a chance to talk with him over at Expo with a group of us. And he's he's whenever he has an opportunity to have a little bit of downtime, if he's not working on something, he wants to be productive. So I mean that really just kind of alludes to kind of his ability to become really proficient in this hobby that we all so fortunate for him to be a part of is if he going to tinker and figure out something just to entertain himself it ultimately going to end up with some great new song or how to make a new sound or some design for a pinball machine or whatever it might be. Again, he just has that personality where he's going to be wanting to create and be productive, even if it's in his downtime, which I think is a rare but obviously amazing skill set for us to be able to have on our team. He's so awesome. I love that. And in his downtime, he plays Pogs too. I don't know if you guys got any Pogs. Just a little bit. He kicked my butt. He took all my Pogs, but then generously donated even more of that to start with. That's awesome. And he's one of many amazing people that were on this team that created this game. We have a whole team of experts at what they do.
    35:12
    Mechanical people, Matt Andrews on the artwork, Michael Ocean, who developed the skeleton game framework. For those of you who are into custom pinball development, most of the P-Rock users these days are building their games on top of the framework he wrote. He was the lead programmer for this game. Greg Goldie also did software. Just a lot of really talented people came together to build this game. We had a couple friends of friends who are Weird Al encyclopedic experts. They knew everything about it. You pull a song name out and they could tell you all the references in the song, where it's been played, why the lyrics are what they are. What day Weasel Stomping Day is.
    35:57
    How many weasels get stomped on a rainy day versus a sunny day. They helped advise on the game content. And then, of course, we brought in both Bowen and Colin kind of close to the end of the project to help with the rules. They both came in late enough where they didn't define the rules, but they both had really good ideas and continue to have really good ideas that we work into the rules to deliver a playing experience that everybody can enjoy. That's one day that I'm, and it came up a few times at TPF, but I'm really looking forward to the day that we have a P3 with whatever module it might be. in a tournament. And I think having, you know, really talented and, you know, accredited tournament players like Colin and Bowen, I think that's going to be one step closer to getting to that goal. Because again, there's, I can't think of a reason why I shouldn't be there. There's some really amazing shots and some pretty, pretty innovative rule sets to have different strategies to, to get the highest scores possible. I always thought heads up should be the tournament. because it's a whole different experience. You can literally go head to head against someone and play against them. And that's it. Whoever wins is better. I'll win. I beat my husband. My husband beat Alex. Therefore, I am the winner. I've got this. I've always wanted to do competitive pinball. So here was my moment. I'm so glad we decided to bring those guys up. They don't because it's a completely different experience. You know, if you're just in the factory by yourself and you're just playing the games by yourself. But if you have friends and people to play a game head to head with, it's amazing you can do that, you know, remotely with Cosmic Heart Macing over online. But there's something special about, you know, heckling the person right next to you, stealing all their balls and then holding on to them. They're just sitting there twiddling their thumbs while you're. Yeah, for those who don't know, this is two machines, separate pinball machines that are connected over the local network. And what happens on your machine affects what happens on their machine and vice versa. So it's literally a battle where you can help or hurt the other person intentionally.
    38:06
    And what was crazy about it was it wasn't complex. You had, what, five diverting lanes that shot into basically a trough, and that was how you beat them was you aimed for on the LCD on the back. It was lit up green or red. You aimed for green. and there was nothing more defeating and aggravating than seeing you've lost all your balls no it's even worse than that it's your opponent has all your balls your opponent has all your balls yes because because a girlfriend of ours went um her and her husband actually met us they have a machine currently and they're starting to get into the hobby and i told her like let's go play this the boys are going and doing whatever let's go play this and she and i I think we played like three rounds on it and she started getting into it. And it was like, you know, you're nudging each other and you're like talking trash and it was awesome. So that was, that's actually a game. Just kind of the story behind it is we actually had the featured in, in Dave and Buster's for a while. And I don't know what the exact numbers were, but I think they were trying that out as a, as a skew in general. And just the kind of the simple aspect of it in a setting like Dave and Busters, I think it kind of crushed all the other pinball category games that Dave and Busters was testing out. Yeah, they shared the numbers with us, the numbers of our machines, and the numbers, the earnings on the machine was more than I've ever seen anybody report from any location on any pinball game ever. However, of course, at Dave and Busters, they have a lot of redemption machines and stuff that the kids really like to play in those right um earn crazy money but as far as pinball goes if you have a location a family-friendly location heads up two p3s connected together running heads up is a money maker it was so cool and it was it was something that it was still challenging because i mean a lot of times you're in almost like a multi-ball situation so you're trying to pay attention to the lcd directly in front of you you're trying to pay attention to the LCD kind of behind you. You're trying to pay attention to what the person next to you is doing. You're trying not to hit the red shots. I don't want to use the term elementary because it wasn't. The shots were obtainable if you paid attention, but it was still very challenging and it was fulfilling to see that you won. Easy to play, hard to master. Yes, it really was. It was so much fun. Now that said, I wouldn't go against Colin playing it, but I wouldn't go against Colin playing anything. There were actually a few tournament people that came up. They weren't even playing multiplayer. They were just playing to try to get as many gems as possible. And they were getting some pretty impressive scores, and they kept just restarting it immediately afterwards. So they were something about that, just simple, like, hey, I'm going to get as many points as possible. It's satisfying. Well, you know what? That's one of the greatest things.
    40:59
    When you design something great, when somebody literally walks back up and hits the start button, hits the start button just to keep playing it, That is the ultimate qualifier of, okay, this is something wonderful.
    41:12
    Not hit the start button once and walk away. So that kind of feeling. Thunderbirds. It was great to see that on the Weird Al games, actually, because the lines were long the entire time. We probably had 15 people deep all three days the entire length of the show. But we would see people play it, laugh their heads off, have a great time, and then they'd walk around or they'd walk away, and then we'd see him at the back of the line 20 minutes later wanting to play it again which was a huge validation for what we've done and that's awesome yeah and it wasn't just because i mean like i said i walked past there quite a few times i was chit-chatting with you guys i was looking for people you know just i was waiting to see if the line shortened so i could play it again um and it never did but it wasn't just weird al everything had lines i don't think there was I take the back during the twippies. I was able to walk up to heads up.
    42:06
    That was the only time I was able to walk up to a machine without waiting in line. The rest of it, even, I mean, TJ and Les were, would pull a game out. They would start, you know, they'd mess with it for a few minutes. People didn't jump out of line because the fixes were so quick. Those guys were on it. If something went down, they were right there. Hey guys, no worries. We're going to get this taken care of. They had it fixed. they had that game put back together and people didn't jump out of line.
    42:32
    Yeah. And one of the nice things about having all nine of those machines there is we could show off the diversity of the gaming experiences. So there are new modern games like Weird Alan Heist. And there are games that non pinheads can enjoy like Cosmic Heart Racing and Heads Up. And what we didn't show because we've got more than nine games now on the P3 platform, we all actually have 15 different games. We didn't show games like Shoot and Scoot and Barnyard and Rocks and all of the third-party developed games like Flipper Foxtrot, Nick's latest rhythm-based pinball game, and Ranger in the Ruins and Hooping It Up and Grand Slam Rally. All these games, the P3 now is a system that justifies the purchase price for it, even if you only like one or two of the games. Hopefully you like all 15 of them, but just one or two of them justifies that cost. And I know we had at least a couple people at the show who, again, they are creative mindsets and they know that we have an open source. You know how to work with Unity and C Sharp. You can develop your own game and build your own homebrew on the P3 platform and put it out there for people to play. And it's honestly surprising to me how many people, but I guess it just shows kind of what talent we have in this community, is so excited to get a P3 just to share their ideas with the community. And the P3 platform is their best way to do it because they don't have to worry about the hardware. It's just about making. And we even have customers making their own play fields as well, which is I'm just I'm super excited to see what the community is going to do for the platform in the future. Our friend that was with us, he actually is a programmer. and does not work in pinball, but he was very excited when we started talking about it because he's like, oh, you know, this would be so cool to do as a job. Is anybody hiring? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And his wife's looking at him going, you're going to stay where you've been at for the past 15 years. You have a family to feed. You don't need to be going and trying to jump into something new, you know, and doing that whole lecture thing. But it was like, with this being an open platform, you can still do that. You can still create games. You can still, you know, do this unique thing. You can just play with it. You can learn it because of the P3 Rock system that's in these games. It's the hardware system, which is publicly available off-the-shelf hardware. It's also a software framework and sample game. So you can download from our website the P3 Development Kit. Anybody can. It's free. You just need an account on the site.
    45:05
    The Development Kit comes with all the documentation, to understand how to use the features we've built in it to control the trough or to track the position of the ball or to do all the normal pinball things. But it also comes with basically an empty sample game that you hit the start button, it loads up a player, you hit it again, it loads up player two and three and four and all that stuff. It tracks the beginning and the end of a ball when you drain and things. So all you need to do is download this thing and add your specific game content and game rules, and you're off and running. Bill, I want to see you make a game using a computer.
    45:41
    Okay, listen. I apologize. Listen, between WebEx and Skype and all, you know, listen, I'll cut you a play field of something I've never done before before I can ever do that. But you know what? Honestly, you say that and literally kind of challenges me because I have themes in my head that I think would be awesome to do. So, you know, maybe I'll become computer literate and do a game one day. That's kind of how we got started because everyone has ideas. It would be really cool if there was a game that did X and a different one that did Y and a different one that did Z. Everyone's got ideas. Everyone comes to us with ideas. we had ideas. We chose to build them into a machine, but other people have ideas. They want us to do things. And sometimes we agree and want to do what they're suggesting. But sometimes we have other plans and we're like, you can take this dev kit and do it yourself. Well, this is kind of the perfect kit too. If you wanted to use a intellectual property that you knew, you know, you could never actually build, but you could build something that you could be proud of and it's going to flow and, you know, stuff like, I mean, you still got to figure out a little bit of the artwork and stuff like that, but, But the geometry is there. You don't have to figure out all the CAD. Yeah, the hard work's done. Yeah. But what else would you put in that weird Al Spinner besides Harvey, though? You can't really repurpose that very well. I remember, I won't share anything, but I had an idea.
    47:00
    Oh, boy. I got to see the whitewood of this, and I knew it was going to be a hit just when I saw the mechs with the spiral ramp and the camera lock and the hamster wheel and all the diverters. and everything going on with it. It actually kind of gave me a unique ability because I got to see it without the artwork and everything on there. But even with the artwork, I feel like there is some pretty innovative ways you can use, repurpose those mechs for a different theme across the board because nothing's too on the nose with one IP versus another. But I mean, that's the amazing thing we did with Sorcerer Apprentice. You can get a completely different game just by fiddling around with the code. Even if it's the same hardware, it still feels completely different. And I challenge anybody to go play Cosmic Kart Racing and then go play Sorcerer Apprentice and tell me it doesn't feel like a completely different experience. I love Sorcerer's Apprentice. I don't know what it is about the experience of playing a pinball game. You know an example. Lexi Lightspeed is this sci-fi based theme where Lexi crashed on Earth. You're in this government compound. You see the graphics of that on the play field. And then Greg Goldie went and created Hooping It Up, which is a basketball game. And it works with the Lexi Lightspeed play field. And while playing Hooping It Up, you see the basketball court on the LCD. right below this government compound on the artwork on the upper play field. But you don't even notice it while you're playing. You're just so immersed in the basketball experience because of the power and the size and the content on that big LCD screen. It just brings you into the experience. And that's one of the things, tying it back to Weird Al a little bit, that we've been focusing on with the P3 is this LCD screen. which is really just a replacement for the painted piece of wood in any other game. It still has the mechanical mechs over top of it and whatnot. But this LCD allows us to create gameplay experiences like no one else. We can tell the story of a game. We can create modes that tell the story. In the Weird Al game, we tell the story of the songs. And each song has its own unique content. It's about food, or it's about stomping weasels, or it's about business. Doing surgery. Yeah, like a surgeon. Mission statements about business. Being stuck in a P3 dish, which I think still should be, for the record, a P3 dish. I'll throw that out there on the record. I like where your mind's at with this. So this LCD gives us the ability. We could do music. We could do movie pins, TV shows, anything that you can deliver a story through imagery. We can probably deliver an experience that fully immerses you into that game. And that's where I think pinball is going in the future. It started out as dings and bells and stuff. It then added displays in the back box to tell a little bit of, to explain the action on the play field a little bit. And now with this big LCD screen on the surface of the play field, we can tell the full story of the. While it's still physical pinball. It's not virtual pinball. It is. Those slippers are snappy. I like them. everything that i've heard from everybody across the board has been positive like people that i know don't like anything like there's people who don't like puppies that like this game and i can think of a few right off the top of my head i have not heard anything negative about the game from anybody who's played it i've heard nothing negative from people who haven't played it who have watched gameplay i heard a few mumblings you know when the when it was announced oh weird owl weird al of all the licenses weird and then they saw it and it was like oh it makes sense his music makes sense you know like you guys said his music tells a story your platform is able to convey that story very well and and it's so diverse it's not like a concert where you're gonna have the concert theme it's literally you were telling the story of the songs how did that get tied in with the museum though So that was the challenge right How do you take these very diverse lyrical songs and tie them together We brainstormed this for weeks And Steven Silver by the way the creative director was also the creative director from Heist He is a guy who creates videos and video content for other products generally for his day job.
    51:44
    He is a very creative thinker and allowed us to bring a lot of stuff together. But the whole team got together. We brainstormed this for weeks. We were like, should we create a universe? Should we, I don't know, do something with TV shows or time machines? We had all sorts of weird ideas that would be implemented in a very different way. But someone said museum, a museum with physical objects that kind of can connect you with a particular song. And it all came together very quickly after that, because you can take almost any song, you can represent it with some kind of object that might be in a museum. and you can use that as your conduit into that story.
    52:27
    And it's cool because that main screen with the Weird Allosaurus Rex, which is what I've named him now, standing on that pedestal, he dances. And the tiles, it tracks the ball, which is really cool. And for those who aren't quite sure what I'm talking about, go back and watch the Buffalo Pinball, the video on demand of playing this, and you'll see as the ball moves over the screen on the play field, the upper LCD will actually show that tracking across it, and you see the Allosaurus moving along with it. It was just that attention to detail alone is something I kind of pay attention to a little bit more now than I think I did when I first got into pinball, and I think it's so cool that you guys took the time to really look at, you know, whether it be Steven or whether it be Michael Ocean, Steven Silver or Michael Ocean, Bo and Karen's is a huge Weird Al fan. Colin is a huge Weird Al fan. A lot of people. Yeah. Like everybody that's on your team and you guys have such a bigger, your team has grown and, and leaps and bounds. So all of these individuals, they have all contributed to this and really like they've, they've looked at all of it. They've looked at every faucet of it and said, okay, wait, we're missing something over here. Let's, What if we did this? Let's make sure we pay attention to this. Let's make sure, you know, when Harvey the hamster is running, that wheel needs to work. He needs to run, but he can't just like he can't be glued to the wheel. So Harvey actually kind of like wiggles. He kind of moves in the wheel like a hamster would. There is so much innovation in it. What's next for P3? Because you guys have kind of blown it out of the water on this one. So what are you going to do now? Well, if the team had their way, they'd keep working on this one for a couple of years, continuing to add all those details that would build on top of these. And that's saying a lot because if you play this game today and then play it six months from now, you'll still be seeing new things you hadn't seen in the last six months. There are layer upon layer upon layer of weird references and subtle things and things about the UHF movie and little details in all of the songs. And details from other songs that aren't included in the game are also in there. But moving forward, I mean, our whole deal is we want to create fun, new playing experiences for people. We want to create new content. We, of course, are going to continue making games, including both play field modules and add on games and add on features. We want to work with third parties to do additional games. I suspect someday there are so many P3s out there that there are other professional organizations, big companies that are making content for this machine. We're building that user base now, and we will continue to grow it with more games, hopefully some of which that are licensed and some that are original. We'd like to continue doing both.
    55:22
    We have huge plans, high hopes, big expectations, and a large set of features. we want to implement. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the big things to see at TPF, and I knew this was going to be the case, is just it was cool to see it in practice. So many people that have been watching the growth of Multimorphic, watching the growth of the P3 system through all the different iterations, and always thinking it was really cool, but I don't know if it's going to stick around. I don't know if it's going to make the test of time. And a lot of people pulling the trigger and putting deposits down like on the spot because you know they'd been convinced um they didn't get to see heist um unfortunately just because of covid and everything um but you know they come they maybe the line is too long for weird al they play heist they get you know blown away by it they play weird al and they're just like oh my gosh i can't remember seeing this years ago and it's like oh it's a cool concept i wonder how long it's gonna be a gimmick but now you know it's like wow um these are real games that you're putting out and yeah i want to get in line now so I don't have to be waiting you know a year's time when the next game comes out so it's it's really cool to see the user base grow and again we've had the community make so many great games on the limited people who got in early the limited player base up until this point so now with the sales we've had with Weird Al there's going to be so much influx of talent that I really am just excited to watch and see what everybody does. Are you guys going to limit the number of standard edition Weird Al's or cap it? No. No, so pretty much all licenses have a term, a time length that you're allowed to make the game, and this is limited in time duration. But until that limit expires, we're going to make as many as people want us to make. Very cool. And here's the cool thing about the P3, right? Because we come out with another game whenever it is a year later.
    57:17
    New people buy the platform for the new game, and they're going to want to fill up their library of games with some of our really cool old content, maybe all of our old content. We have a lot of Weird Al buyers who are like, I want every play field. I'm buying into the system. I believe in it. I want everything you guys have. So the next few years, when we're coming out with new content, we'll also have people wanting to buy old games, Weird Al, Heist, Lexi Lightspeed, all those things, and they'll still be able to do that.
    57:45
    Awesome. I think a good clarification, too, for people who are just curious how it all works, the play fields, think of it as an old Super Nintendo cartridge or, for my generation, a Nintendo 64 cartridge. The game is tied to... Did he just say he's young and we're all old? Is that what he said? I think that's what he said. I'm playing PlayStation. That's cool. I get it. We know what a disc is for a PS5, Alex. Geez. What's a disc?
    58:17
    I just remember the iPad. like there was discs before uh but no the games so if you did have another buddy that had a different play field of um you know on the p3 platform um they're not tied you know to the specific account so if you buy a mini game that's going to be tied to the cabinet so if you ever did sell the cabinet you're increasing the value of your your p3 because you already have you know xyz mini games installed on the system but the play field themselves um will unlock that code um for your system. So if you get a heist from a friend, he brings it over and you don't have one, you plug it in, you're able to download it right then and there and play it. And then you take it out and you could reinstall a different game. So, you know, it's, if you buy a game, it's not stuck to you. If you wanted to trade the, just the platform or the play field itself away, you are able to do that. So again, it does give flexibility and then you are investing into the machine itself for resale because, you know, pinball is a big thing about, you know, aftermarket. Our goal is to, again, instead of making people have to free up floor space, we want to invest into our customers for the long term and make sure they're happy and give them content on a continuous basis that they can invest in. It'll be cheaper than any other alternative. And just as kind of a quick rundown again, for those who are not familiar with the platform. So you buy the actual P3 module that which, for lack of a better term, is your cabinet um and it comes with a module so we've now broken that up because we now have customers that have so many games they want to actually buy second cabinets and third cabinets to to have multiple games active at the same time but we sell the base we call it the base p3 machine it's an 8300 purchase and then you add whatever games you want to it you can add weird Val game for $3,000 or Heist for $2750 or Cosmic Heart Racing or Lexi Lightspeed for $2,600 now. You can choose what you want to build the machine with. We have discounts if you buy more than one at once with your machine and people can pick and choose what they want. So up front, we ask for a deposit to lock your place in the production line and then we don't ask for any more money until your machine's on the line. We don't even need to know necessarily what games you want to ship with the machine until your machine's on the line because we can we can kind of build the games to order at that point and i can vouch for that because you guys actually reached out we were originally we deposited for heist and when weirdo was released we had the option to change our order because we were quite a ways ahead in line since we had ordered it prior and you know with production issues i completely understand the delay so it's not a big deal it worked out perfect for us because then it was like you guys released your license game we're jumping in front of george we're jumping in front of george we were trying to tell everybody at expo and everything so we again we're really appreciative and everybody i get asked daily you know like oh if we do this can we get a special deal we're we're being we want to honor the people that you know believed in us early and and took a chance and and got in on the system and uh we're not gonna you know cheat anybody in line we want we want you to get your game um you know and then moving forward anybody with the platform now it's going to be the same story with the next big release and launch so and what's really cool too is you know jerry you were just um telling us you know we have these games that are this amount and this amount but if you have these third-party creators so if i have heists or sorcerers or weird al and a third-party content creator actually provides something that game may actually be free so i could actually potentially get almost like a beta type game from a third-party content creator for free and again i'm playing a brand new game right hooping it up was released for free grand slam rally was a few hundred dollars on the candle lagoon play field a few hundred dollars for a pinball machine nick baldridge's ranger in the ruins one of the most the beloved add-on games for the p3 150 that's insane yeah that is so and it increases the value of your machine that's right and and to alex's point um people who bought into the p3 six months ago um and had a four or five month wait queue that since has extended into six or seven months they you made the same point amanda they basically got first dibs at weird out because they were already in the build queue now a year from now so we have a 12 month backlog now 12 to 13 month backlog because we got so many orders for this machine and in 12 or 13 months uh i can't guarantee it but we'll certainly be very close to having a new game and if people wait until then to order P3s for that new game, they're going to probably have a wait list or a time to wait as well. So I actually think there's incentive for people to continue buying P3s now, knowing that there's going to be a continual growth of really cool content coming. And they can basically, it's not jumping the line, it's getting in the line and staying in line as we continue to release content.
    63:37
    So awesome. That's a great point. It is. Well, we have held you guys up for quite a bit. I have one final question. I figure we'll stir the pot a little bit, cause a little controversy, you know, because that's the type of show we are. Jason Knapp from Knapp Arcade released a very interesting kind of op-in today. There is a very minor spot on the upper, on the box, on the back box above the LCD.
    64:05
    Kind of the perfect spot for like, I don't know, a camera or something like that for streamers. So is there a little bit more that we haven't seen yet from this P3 platform that you think could kind of blow people's minds moving forward in the future that other manufacturers haven't even begun to think of yet? Are you talking about that spot in the back box where the printer ran out of ink?
    64:29
    Yes. It's weird that it was the same spot in all of the glasses. It's very odd. And he ran out of ink on every single one of them. It's really wild. Well, no, the problem was when they were designing the artwork, they ran out of black and that kind of stuff. So they just left that little – it's fine. Photoshop has a reserve of how many pixels you can change the color. COVID logistics and supply chain has really made the cost of black in Photoshop go through the roof. I swear. We want to deliver those cost savings to the customers, so we'll do whatever we can to make it as cheap as possible. So all we'll say, Amanda, is that people who bought the first P3 have had access to upgrade their machine for every new feature we've come out with since then. And we are not stopping. We will continue creating really cool features, including add-on hardware features, to improve or enhance the gaming experience. Awesome. I'm excited. I can't wait to see what's to come. I can't wait to see our P3. I can't wait to tell George that we got ours before him.
    65:32
    guys I know you're exhausted I know it was a long weekend thank you so very much for taking the time out and talking to us I think this is the first interview after TPF and after people got hands on it so I'm honored and flattered that you agreed to do this with us I'm stoked I can't wait thank you guys I wish I could have seen you again in TP at TPF but um you guys are going to be up at Expo again right yeah we'll see we certainly hope so we have we have plans to get this machine in of a lot of people. Hopefully we work with distributors and customers who are all excited to show it to people and we'll certainly hope to be there. Thank you both to you, Amanda and Bill. Thank you for having us on. We love talking about it. This weekend was crazy. People loved playing this thing and we can't wait to show it to more people. It's awesome. Looking forward to seeing it. And a pleasure talking with you always. And it was great seeing you at TPF. And I can't wait until the next event where we all get together. And it's, it's amazing getting kind of past this COVID period of the world and hopefully get back to normal a little bit. I think operators everywhere are going to be grateful for that. Absolutely.
    66:42
    Well, I think that's a wrap for episode 14, Bill, any parting words for us? No, hopefully we see you guys at expo. We'll do another tailgate party. You guys are welcome to join again as usual. And thank you for coming on. It's been a great time. technical issues, but it all worked out. Such a great time. So thank you once again, guys. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. And Jerry and Alex, where can our friends that are listening to the podcast, where can they reach you if they have any questions? Multimorphic.com is your starting point. You can get on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter. We have accounts on all of them. We're pretty easy to find. And we're always happy to and looking forward to hearing from people. Awesome. and if anybody has any feedback for the show, as always, email us, freeplaypinballpodcast at gmail.com. Hit us up on the FaceSpace, Free Play Pinball Podcast. You can also see some super awesome pictures from TPF. Not sure why I didn't get any pictures with these two handsome guys, but I was busy in line with Weird Al. I didn't have time for pictures for that. So thanks, everybody, and have a great night.
    67:52
    you