How y'all doing?
So, I'm not used to it.
Good. Jerry,
thank you for coming. My name is Gerry Stellenberg, founder of Multimorphic. You'll talk to these other guys soon enough, but I have some things to say. Nine years ago, a friend and I started with an idea. We had an idea to create a pinball machine that could track the position of the ball. and have an LCD in the play field. And we built a prototype in my garage. We chose to make it modular because if you have a screen, you might as well be able to add different mechanics to it and theme around those mechanics in different ways using a screen. We actually did that way more than 9 years ago, but nine years ago we started selling it commercially. Now we have nine full playfield modules, 27 games for the platform. It's the best value for your money in the entire industry by far. It's not even close. You can buy a new game for $3,000, $4,000, not 12,000. If you already have a P3, it's the best deal in pinball. We take care of our customers. We want your machines running. We want you to be able to enjoy all of our games. And here I am as the founder telling you all these cool things, but I want you to hear experiences from our developers, from our customers. And that's what that's what we're going to do. So, I'm going to turn it over to Kevin. Kevin joined the team recently. He's been a longtime streamer and fan of the P3. He joined the team recently, and he's going to walk you through this.
Sounds good. Thanks, Jerry. Hi, everybody. Thanks for coming out tonight. I'm Kevin Manny. Uh, I'm the newest guy in the company and they gave me the mic. So, that's pretty cool. Um, exactly. Uh, so we're going to start off. So, we're you're going to hear from some developers, some owners. Uh, first off, we're going to have everybody briefly because it's a pet peeve of mine when I go to a panel discussion that people talk about themselves for the first 20 minutes. So, we're not going to do that. We're going to ask you, you know, one sentence, who you are, what do you do, what do you want people to know about you, and how long you've had your P3. And we'll start with Stephen Silver down at the end. I am Stephen Silver. Uh, I'm a creative director on a lot of our games and I help out in a lot of other ways around the company and I first got into the P3 in 2012 when I saw it at TPF. Hi, I'm Nicholas Baldridge and I work as part of Multimmorphic support team. Uh, I got into the P3 in 2019 when I picked up my first P3, but I've been following it since the inception. and uh I'm also a third party developer.
Hi, I'm Manu Smith aka MPT3K Mystery Pinball Theater on Twitch. When did I when did Weird Al come out? That's when I first got my
2022.
2022.
So, I've been a P3 owner since 2022.
Nice.
Uh my name is Dave Susa. Uh let's see. I think I've had my P3 for about three years. Three-ish years. So, and uh you know, I'm just a general collector and enthusiast who loves restoring games and uh you know, all things pinball.
All right, thanks everybody. Good job sticking to the assignment. I appreciate it. Um I don't know if can we show what's up on the screen to the audience or no? Because I wanted to show them this. Uh this is my first P3 experience. Um no, I guess we can't. Uh but the people on the chat are seeing it's I so I recently joined Multimorphic and I've been doing a lot of there it is uh a lot of the uh social media for them and I as part of that I went back through their social media their Facebook feed and I found this picture. This is from uh Replay FX 2015. That's me waiting in line to play the P3 for the very first time. That was the first time I heard from Jerry about what the platform was and I was very intrigued. got to play Lexi Lightseed there. And so that was my first experience with the with the P3. So uh and uh it's been a great relationship ever since. So uh this is Dave's P3 setup. Just wanted to to show you that. That's his uh his basement right there. Amanu his he's got his out in the garage. I love his uh mystery pinball theater 3000 there in the back. Uh Steven just redid his game room there. That's uh
nice.
It's looking good. The Silvercade. And then uh you know there's Nick and his game with a with a bonus TJ. So uh we're gonna hear more about Dream as we go here. But uh let's get into it. So question number one, let's let's start with the audience. Who who here has a P3 already?
All right, we got good good showing of hands. Everybody else is P3 curious, I guess. Thanks for coming out, learning more about it. Um so Manu and Dave, let's start with Manu. Uh, what gamer moment sold you on becoming a P3 owner?
It would I could cheat and say Weirdowl, but it wasn't. It was Ranger in the ruins.
Yeah.
Um,
Baldridge game.
Yeah. Um, I've played it at an expo and I it blew my mind that someone just wrote that on top of a pre-existing and I went, "Wait, you could do that?" And they said, "Yeah, you could do that, too?" I was like, but that game just I don't know. And then I got into the I got into it later, but that was the thing that sold me.
Nice. Dave, what about you?
So, I think to use some of your words here, I think I was I was P3 curious for a while, right? uh you know, having uh a few in in our city, so we've had the opportunity to play at leagues and stuff and and you know, going to one event and being like, "Oh, hey, here's Sorcerers Apprentice." And I'm like, "Wait, that was CCR like like a week ago." Like just my mind was like, "Wait, huh? This is this is wild." Uh Weirdowl was awesome. And then my jumpin moment was when, you know, was it Project Carbon? You know, Final Resistance came out, right? Uh I'm a huge Scott Danesi fan, like just everything Scott Danesi. And for me, Final Resistance is is the, you know, spiritual successor to TNA. And it's just it's an absolute delight of a game. So that was my jump in moment. And then once you jump in, it's, you know, the flood dams open up. So that's for sure. For sure. Awesome. Thank you guys. Um, let's move over to kind of the developer side. So this is one for Stephen and Nick. Uh, what is your favorite thing about the platform and what do you find intriguing? Let's start with Nick. It's a creative playground. It's it's a wonderland really. So, as uh Dave was saying, you can have a game playing on a particular module one moment and switch it to another uh really at the push of a button. And there's nothing quite like it. And developing games on it is an absolute joy. Uh everything about it is uh just really exciting to me. Uh personally, it just ticks all of the boxes. uh electronics, um artwork, um exciting gameplay moments, shot paths, all the all the fun things that make pinball what it is.
Nice, Stephen.
So, um I'm going to cheat here and I'm going to say two things. Uh, one thing, this is the only commercial third-party platform in Pinball where anybody who has an idea can download the the free SDK and spend some time noodling around, talk with the community of developers, make their idea come to life, and then ship it to an audience of people who are hungry for content and get games out. We've got people here that have done really cool games on the system and all that adds to this platform which leads into my second point which is um when I first saw this white box at 2012 I saw like all the potential it had. I was like I can't imagine like can you imagine someday we're going to have like five games on this system and it's going to be amazing. And to watch that, to watch the people who bought that game in 2018 get every single update and every single thing, every technical advancement we've made, every single uh u every new game that came out, whether or not they liked it or not, this included this added to the library of games that were available to them. And now that we have 27 games on the system, it just blows my mind. uh one of the first uh concept commercials that we did when we had Lexi and we were trying to show people that this was possible, me and TJ sat down and I was like, "What's a what's a ridiculous number of games that we could do that we can show modules dropping in and we came up with like six games, right? We're like, man, I can't even imagine a world where we have six games." And now that there's nine hardware games on this system and 27 total games, just blows my mind. I love that.
Insane. Thank you. Uh, so we're going to stick with Stephen for this next one. So, in your role as creative director with Multimmorphic, how do you think about designing games for the P3 and compare that to a traditional platform? So, I mean, I'm I'm like most people. My hobby experience was I started collecting games. I started fixing games, restoring games, and I was like getting that itch. It's like, I want to make something new. And my ambitions were kind of limited to, well, maybe I can get an old EM that I can I don't know how to code. maybe get an old EM that I can rethe as something and do that. And then uh I started getting involved with Jerry and them and and I realized you can team up with a a a team of really smart people and bring these ideas together. And then you realize when you're not limited to a painted piece of wood, it opens up a whole lot of opportunities and creativity. And this comes back to the third party game system. Every time a new game is released, I'm seeing some new insane idea that's awesome that couldn't exist. Like there's no market. You couldn't go to another manufacturer and say, "Hey, I want to make a game about bird watching or young martial artist that that and I want you to package this up on a system and sell it to people." Cuz nobody could. But people can do that and come up with really cool new ideas on playfields that weren't even designed for that. And I love that. I love seeing it every single time. And so like from a developer perspective, from our perspective, I one thing that Jerry has been really good about is saying don't, you know, don't limit yourself on just selfediting on stuff. And so we get to be the stupid idea guy that says, can we do this, can we do that? And you find out that physics gets in the way sometimes, but you can do some really cool creative things uh when you really open your mind and the features that the P3 allows you to do. So
all right, thanks Stephen. Uh, let's go back to Nick. As a developer, what is an idea that you had that only works on the P3?
Pretty much all of my ideas only work on the P3. And I got my start uh working on software only games. So, I would take an existing Playfield module, as Stephen was saying, and I would make my own game that utilized the shots, the features, the mechanics in completely different ways. And there is nothing else at all like that in all of pinball where you can take an existing game, still play that existing game, but also create an entirely new experience for players. Uh so being able to provide a different emotional connection to a different piece of software gaming uh was very very exciting.
Nice. So Stephen, back to you. Uh you've been with Blackboard pretty much the same one. So it was TPF 2012 when you first really made that connection, right? So this is this is a connection that started here at this very show, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I came that so 2012 was my first TPF that I ever went to and there was a pinball news article that came out that talked about these three idiots who made a box in in their garage in Austin that had a ball tracking screen. And I was like, that's the only thing I want to see at this show. This is amazing. And I showed up and I watched it and they had a rudimentary game of rocks on it, rudimentary game of barnyard and something called holes and like a whole bunch of stuff. But I was just blown away by it and I introduced myself to Jerry after his seminar because I watched Jerry build a pinball machine on a table in 30 minutes and it I was I said a bunch of stupid stuff I'm sure. But then I got involved like uh later on he was coming to the Houston show and we went and was like he had advanced the prototype pretty far at that point. and I was like, "Hey, let's shoot let's go to our studio and shoot a new promo video for it." And I do video stuff, so let me help you out. And it's it's been we've been working together ever since.
So since that, you know, the white box days.
Yeah.
And if you've been to the multimmorphic uh showroom, they've got kind of all the evolution of the platform. So talk to me about how the platform has changed from that day from, you know, back then into like the first modern machines that ship to consumers to now. like talk talk everybody in the room through that process.
We did we did a video for the prototype too which again in the beginning if if any of you were around back then and saw it it had no backbox head. It was more like a piece of furniture like painted piece of furniture. It was it it had a fixed play field in the background. It was an idea that was we were looking for stuff. Excuse me. And then Jerry and TJ and them disappeared for a while and came back like 6 months later and all of a sudden had this completely modular design machine designed with swappable playfields and they had this Dennis Nordman designed game that was Blexi Lightseed and we started seeing this. It just blew my mind that they they could in that little time come back with something and and and again thinking about the modularity, swapping all the parts. Everything's on Rails in that game where you can pull it out and swap it out with other stuff. And and so that's what the final product was when it was shipping. And since then, there's been just a ton of upgrades with Heist. We added the upper right flipper mech that uh can do a bunch of things. So that side target module included that. And we we always when we're adding new features, we're always like, what's something that's going to be super useful for future games and things like that. And and then with uh weird out, we added the the left one, the left flipper mech, and we did the crossing wire form. And then we we kept pushing the envelope. And then we've always talked about adding stuff down lower on the screen. portal. We finally have this these these mechanisms that can float over the screen that we envisions back with that first um concept video with extra things floating over the screen. And in addition to that, there's been the flipper upgrade kit that everybody got like that we we got this quality upgrade kit that we we sent to everybody that that improved all their machines. There was the backbox display monitor. When we originally shipped this, it had translates and and once Jerry saw how well this worked with the machine, it's like this this is we're just going to do the standard from here on out. And there's the lightest speaker kit, we started adding front art to these things and expanding the art cataloges that we've got and went back and added front art for all of our past titles. And you know, there's there's been all these little advances over the year and and what's what's great is that the person who bought that machine in 2018 has been able to buy those upgrades most of the time. and and get them into machine and and and bring it along with the system and grow with the system. And so I like what's what's something that you guys bought in 2018 that the manufacturer is still like sending you new upgrades to make it better over time. You know, most of the time they just want you to go buy a new one. And so that's always been something that's really I've really appreciated about the platform.
Yeah, that's you know that speaks to you know multimmorphics stopping assessing you know taking the steps to make their customers happy. Obviously, you've talked about how you want these machines to keep running because you want to keep providing more content for it, right?
Because the the motivation of the company is to it's not that, hey, we want you to take this machine and sell it so you can buy our next machine or whatever. It's like we want to keep you a customer for life. And so, like the whole idea is that as long as you've got this thing and you love this thing, you you know, like we're going to keep making content for you and you're going to keep being a customer with us. And so, like that's that's something that separates us in the industry, right? because it's not we don't need you to go and you know sell your old games to to buy every new full box. We we want to keep this thing working and and uh and producing joy for you going forward. So
awesome. Thank you. So here's a question for everybody. So given all of that change since way back in 2012, uh what's one misconception that people have about the P3 that you wish more players understood? Uh let's start with uh with Dave.
Okay. So, I'm going to go with two two main things that come to mind. First, um the screen, right? The IR grid. Uh I'm an engineer by profession and like the IR grid just blew my mind. The first time I actually opened up diagnostics and saw like, you know, the Mission Impossible like light grid that shows, you know, on the screen to see, you know, for troubleshooting, I was like, "Wow, this is a serious amount of like contact points, right?" So the, you know, the IR grid on top of the screen, you know, allows for dynamic rollovers, you know, a lot of different elements that are interactive. Um, I notice when I have people come over, they're like, "Wow, that that rollover just lit. How like, how did it do that?" I'm like, "Well, that's the ball can track like on the screen, so it knows." So that's probably the the biggest thing I think people see and they're like, "I I had no idea. I thought it was just a screen." I'm like, "No, not at all." And then uh the second thing I would probably mention is serviceability. Um, so you know, I have 30 plus games in my collection ranging from the, you know, late 50s to to now, right? Uh, and the first time I got the service upgrade kit, right, from from Multimmorphic, uh, you know, first time I had to work on the flippers and just being able to like pop it up, slide the flippers out, like walk over to my bench, and just be like, "Wow, this is really convenient." Like, it's just so nice. as someone who's constantly working on games, maybe like it's probably like a 70 30% ratio that I'm I'm working versus playing just to be able to pull it out, work on the bench, pull out a module. I had uh I have a copy of Nick Strength and I was really trying to dial in like the sensitivity on the on the upper slings because, you know, it's you want them really spicy and like just fine-tuning it and just having it on the bench versus like, you know, having the game lifted up or doing one of these. Yeah. You know, everyone knows if you how to adjust flippers, you know, you're doing like the all right, I cranked it down and you're like, "Oh my god, it's now it's a hair five degrees off and I got to re loosen it and go back together." So, uh, serviceability is is excellent. Um, once you dive in. So, it's different, but it's really well engineered. So,
thanks Dave. Manu, what's uh one misconception you think people have about the P3 that you wish uh more players understood? Well, I might pivot a little on that question and just say there was a misconception that I kept hearing being a a pinball streamer, a physical pinball streamer streamer and a virtual pinball streamer cuz I stream virtual pinball. Um, I got a lot of people saying, "Oh, the P3 is I don't want to play virtual pinball." And I'm like, there's nothing virtual about a steel ball running around your game trying to break everything at every moment. Um, this is not a virtual pinball machine. I can tell you that much. It's a real physical pin with real mechs, real coils. Uh, I don't know where that conception came. Maybe it's because the screen is an added feature that's interactive with the ball. I could see the ball, but and you can create virtual targets, but everything else, trust me, is very physical. Um, so that's one of the things that I want to be clear to people that you're not playing virtual pinball. You're you're you're in a physical box. You're you're playing more than that, right? Do you remember um Pinball 2000?
Mhm.
Right. So there was a a Williams came out. The last thing they did was pinball 2000, which was a pinball machine with a CRT that projected over the playfield so you could shoot the ball and hit like a alien or whatever. Um, and so you know it I I just want to be clear to people this is not that this is probably pinball 3000. All right, because there's even more things to do. The other thing I just want to say that like speaking to what you said about taking parts off, I work at Fregal Watch, so I have to fix games every single day. Um, and just recently a buddy of mine bought a P3 and sent me a picture on Discord and just said the coolest thing about this system. And I looked at the picture and it was a picture of him with his flipper module at his desk with a cup of coffee.
Yes. Yes.
And I'm like, the coolest thing is you're fixing pinball. He goes, "No, I'm I'm fixing at my desk."
Yeah.
Like cuz he's in a busy arcade. He can just go
pop it back in. I go, you know, I can understand that being a a pinball person who's done this before.
Well, plus then you're not in an arcade. you're not like in the way blocking other people.
Well, that's the thing. Yeah, I get two hours to fix with no interruptions. But with a P3, you just you take it away from the crowd. Um, one nice thing is if you have multiple modules, if one goes down for any reason, you know, cuz it's pinball, right? Steel ball hitting things constantly, you pop out the one, you put in the other, you take the one you got to work on in the back. Game's still up.
Game's still up. You're still making money, right? So, nice. Thanks. Uh Nick, what do you think?
Modularity. So, one comment that I hear frequently is that certain aspects of the modularity aren't well thought through or something of that nature, but I uh will tell you that they are extremely well thought through. Uh everything comes apart extremely easily. It's usually just a couple of fasteners and then pop it off. as they were talking about being able to remove uh the flipper assembly, single connector, pull the entire flipper and slingshot assembly out of the machine to be able to work on it. Uh that modular mindset extends to everything including all of the playfield modules within the game. So that ability also coming from a pinball tech background. I worked on games from the 30s to the present. And all of those games each have an Achilles heel as far as being able to service them. The P3 removes that Achilles heel. So you're not doing that maneuver. Uh as we've talked about, everybody's favorite. Um but you're also not dealing with very unusual uh setups for things. Everything is very well thought through. The trough management is extremely well thought through. It's all modular. Uh the walls and scoops well thought through, extremely modular. Uh flipper assembly extremely modular. So everything in the game comes apart super easily and it's very accessible. The other part that I'll mention is the software. So the software framework for the P3, which is provided as part of the SDK, uh includes things like trough management. This is one of the hardest things to get right in a pinball machine when you're programming it. Uh so having that leg up on things like uh accepting coins, being able to um set different audits, uh being able to change different game options. Those things are all built into the SDK as well as the ability to control the physical features. Uh this is really an incredible thing if you're developing a game. You get so much out of the box.
Nice. Thanks, Nick. Uh, Stephen, misconception.
I don't know what you guys are talking about. Nobody ever has any misconceptions about the P3.
Um, no. The big thing I'll say is that we're all pinball fans. We all love pinball. We love physical pinball. We love uh we've all got machines in our houses that are traditional pinball machines and everything. And the screen is some people come and see the screen and they think that is because it's different what they normally do. They make a bunch of misconceptions about it and everything, but the screen is one of the biggest assets of the P3. It is absolutely magical to come up to a game that you've owned forever and then it's new pinball day and you went on the store, you paid 150, 200 bucks or something. You get a brand new experience and it plays completely differently than the one that you just had in there. And you can switch between them instantly and do that within a game. We can do storytelling that isn't possible on another pinball machine because we can change the environment you're in as you make your way through the narrative of the game. Um, and the ball tracking screen allows us to do really incredible stuff. Uh, the interacting with the ball in ways that you just can't do anywhere else. And so like that I absolutely love the screen. is the first thing I saw whenever I saw this article pinball news all that time ago that I that I couldn't wait to see this game and see how it actually I it was just blew my mind that this ball would interact with the screen and I'm excited about what we've made and I'm excited about what's to come. C can I say one more thing?
Yeah, go for it real quick. Um there's a there's one of the other misconceptions I just want to say is um I did a seminar at Golden State. Um, I don't work for Multimorphic, but I wanted to do this seminar at Golden State showing the the insides of P3 because people think that Multimorphic has like reinvented pinball, but I would more define it as remixing because if you look at it from a mechanical standpoint, there's there's everything's there that there's no like we created a coil, we did new flipper things, we reinvented gravity, right? It's you look at you lift a playful and you go, "Oh, there's a coil, there's a MOSFET, there's a freaking you know, everything. There's a leaf switch, right?" So, it may I mean, all the pimple stuff is still there. Um, and so people look at the system and I think to see the screen and go, it's completely different, but it's not. I fix this the P3 with the same tools I fix, you know, the Jersey Jacks and the Sterns and the same tools.
Yeah.
Yep. Absolutely. And shout out to Nick's been doing these P3 pinball service 101 videos. If you haven't seen them, they're up on our YouTube channel. He does a great job of comparing traditional pinball mechs to the multimorphic mechs and how they're actually a lot more similar than people might think, right, Nick? You have any thoughts on that?
Yeah, absolutely. um trying to demystify some of the unique aspects of the P3. So the floating flipper assembly, how is it different? How is it the same? And the conclusion that uh that video in particular comes to is that the maintenance is so much easier. It's so much faster to change a linkage. It's so much faster to change a flipper entirely than it is on a traditional machine. There's no alignment that you have to worry about. There's nothing uh that typically causes problems when you're doing that maintenance on a traditional machine. So
that's the remix. So yes, exactly. Yeah.
Okay. This one's for Dave and Manu. Um we'll start with Dave Port is with Portal extended, you know. So Portal came out. It's got this extended playfield module. How did that change your perception of the P3? So, I know this is probably uh the the same conclusion most people made, right? That extended playfield is just like such a nice additional step forward to show like we've been talking about modularity, right? Um you know, it's just it's just great having those shots really close because it adds that new level of like uh gameplay. Um not the I really love what they did with the standard edition with like the virtual spinner and stuff like that. still really cool, but to have that additional factor is is really neat. And um you know, we were we were talking earlier the the old you know, 2012 the old like old old promotional video they had where they were showing like oh well hey these side targets they could be a pop bumper now. And it's just like you know these computerenerated images you're like yeah that's like that's awesome. That's all part of like original vision where you're you're swapping out all these components. So, uh, it's just, and then shout out to TJ because like when you're actually installing it from an engineering standpoint, I'm like, "Wow." So, that's how they got like the whole new flipper up top to integrate into the lower flippers. Like, this is just it's it's really pretty pretty awesome to see. So,
yeah. M
I I just want to find the person who said, "Hey, it'd be great to have shots close to the flippers and just killed them."
Yeah.
Like, who thought that was a great idea? like I suck at Portal unless I take the extended out and then I have all this free space to shoot. I mean, from a from a from a mechanical standpoint, it was a it was like a checkbox feature that you guys eventually were going to get to. Anyway, um um it's I was just waiting for it. It was It's brilliant. It it is very you you you get what you ask for. You shoot it and if posts were points, I'd be making billions of points.
But I keep hitting those what are those? Those turret shots. I slam into the turret goes right down the middle. I go, "Who wanted this?"
You ask for shots close to the flippers. That's
You ask for shots close to the flippers. That's pretty good. Um, but in all seriousness, it's it's it's like getting two games in one portal. like my my son has a little trouble with the close shot. So when we play I'll take the extended out and then it's like yeah and then he plays Barnyard all day.
Nice. Thanks guys. U another one for you for Manu and Dave. Um we'll start with Mu this time. As an enthusiast and owner, what is the best part of having a P3 in your collection?
I mean I'm kind of the the customer that Multimorphic is targeting. I only have space for one game. Um, and I had a lot of games in the garage, you know, Deadpool, Star Trek, Wonka, this and that, that, Avengers. I got tired of I got tired of flipping games and moving games around. Um, and I'm like, I just need that one. I'm a games guy, right? So, it's like getting a console, right? where you get a new game, you get a new cartridge, you pop it in. Um, so I got my Weirdowl right now. My Weirdowl is in a box behind the thing. I think Erica's got my Princess Bride. Erica and I, we trade. We're like console people. We trade modules. Um, but that's really it. Like I'm the poster boy for like that kind of thing because I only have the space for one game and I didn't want to just have one game. So when I have company come over, I flex. I put in weirdowl and I go, "Hey, you want to play some pinball? They've got play. Let's go upstairs and get some lunch."
Come on down. Oh, you want to play more Weirdo. What's this?
Drop moment. I love it.
Dave, what about you? So, uh, I I guess anyone who might be watching online that knows me personally, like my my toxic trait is like I I just never sell anything and I buy way too much. You know, I have 30ome games, right? I'm I'm like it's like a lost puppy. If I see a project, I'm like, I I need this. Like, I need to fix this project. And so, hence why I'm constantly working on on games and projects and stuff. So, um, the ability to like like Manu said, like, you know, hey, you're just swapping in a new game and it's a whole new experience, right? I have two little kids and you know we keep a lot of their toys in like a toy room and like we rotate out and like oh yeah it's a brand new toy now like I'll have Portal in and then I slap in Drain. I'm like yeah this is like it's a whole new experience and it's it's just it's surreal until you actually experience it.
Drained is awesome by the way.
Yes.
Shout out for Drain.
Um and then uh so in my main most of my games are in my basement. You know I have games in in friends houses. I have games in storage that I share with my friend. Shout out to Scott if he's watching. So, they're all over the place, my my games. So, uh getting in my basement is is a challenge, you know, usually involves removing heads cuz I have an older house that has like a tight turn. It's a nightmare, right? So, being able to like, hey, I got Portal and it's in this nice box and it's 40 pounds. I'm like, all right, we're downstairs. I'm not like uh you know, World Cup soccer. It's like an hourong process to take away. I how many connectors on a WPC game? 50. I don't know. It's a lot, right? And you're just like, h it's a nightmare. So, like this is just easy. You know, you're good to go. And uh yeah, so that's probably my my absolute favorite part. Uh other than the variety and the add-on games. I mean, there's a slew of like just random third party guys showing up on Discord and, you know, releasing games that are just like really pleasant surprises. So, um yeah, I think that's that's probably about it. My son Micah brought brought my princess bride to me. Wait, that sounded weird. Okay, let me my module because it was in a box. It just came in a box and he brought it upstairs. He goes, "Dad, new pinball is here." I just went, "That never happens. You get a crate and a PL pallet and a guy who almost drops it over. And my 16-year-old just, "Hey, Dad, new pinballs here." And I'm like, "All right, let's go put it in."
Yeah. Slip it in. We're good to go.
Weird. It was weird.
I'm actually going to throw an answer in for this one, too. Uh, so we have a in Buffalo, we have a home league that's been running since 2013. And what's cool I like about having the P3 in my collection is that I can change the game every time I was league. So, I have space for like nine pinball machines in my game room, but the one machine can be a different one every time. So, it's cool. and you know guys like Dave and another a bunch of the other guys in our league have come over and played the P3 and ended up buying it because they liked it so much. So uh it's been a it's been a great uh addition to my collection as well. So one one closing questions then we are going to do Q&A. Uh we got some giveaways for every anybody who asks a question. So uh after this question we'll move into Q&A and we can hear from what what you guys want. Um, so for so for our panel, for somebody at Texas Pinball Festival who hasn't tried the P3 yet or who may have played one years ago and hasn't in a while, what should they go play first and why, Stephen? And don't just say your games. Okay.
Good luck.
And what should you play first? If you if you get a chance to go over there and play heads up, heads head headto head with somebody else and watch the ball portal from one machine to the other and then back and forth when and see somebody get all the balls on their side, try to trap up and try to play lawyer ball and then your flipper energy runs out and it drains them all and then it all comes back to the other side. I think that's a really magical moment to to play that. But really just go through and and you know sample them all and realize that as you're going through these 13 machines that we all set up uh you know every single one of these can be in one machine in your house. And then if you want to play a different game that you don't see, ask us. We might be able to go over and swap the game over for you to show you another another third party game or another another experience on that playfield if you want to. So
thanks Nick.
Well I have to say drained because I make it
drained. But um there is uh no other game quite like it on the market. It's the first game since 1964 that has a true gobble hole uh that has been commercially produced. Um definitely something to experience. But seconding what Steven says, play heads up. Play all the experiences in our booth if you get the chance and you will have a different experience with every game. And some may connect with you and some may not. But there are many different experiences developed for many different players. Uh give them all a go.
Finer.
This is not fair to ask. I like own one, two, three, four. Okay. My jam is just Weirdowl. I the game is so stupid and fun. Um I I just love that game too. Too much. So if you have never played Weird Al, go play. We have a weird owl here.
Yes.
Okay, good. Um and um do we have a dungeon door defender
or no?
Yeah.
So So those weird dungeon door defender.
So with with the amount of variety, I think it's hard to to give like a one one size fits all, right? So
you can cheat a little bit.
Yeah. So if like I'm I'm a big EM fan, right? Uh I when when I saw Drain come out like I have a mini poolool which is like the add ball version of target pool and it's you know there's some similarities there and so I'm like yes it's like one of my favorite EM. So if you're an EM enthusiast give drained a shot right obviously do not hit the gobble hole that is bad. Well it's good but it's bad. You got to know when to do it. Uh you know just be careful for that. So gobble holes are tricky. Um I say generally like if you want a game that you can just start up to I think from a rules perspective the easiest game for me is Final Resistance. Um, I think it transitions from like a just a normal game to to like the rule sets and the shots are pretty pretty easy to see. Um, even though it is like brutally fast, the definitely try to get multiball going because that spaceship, it's like it it makes you jump the first time you actually see it. Um, and then in terms of just like pure like wow factor, like Portal is just crazy, right? The faith the faith plate mech is like one of the wildest things I've ever seen. and the fact that it's like it's a launchpad and then also it can be like a scoop like it's I'm like how I don't I can't fathom how that works. Uh you know all the shots um you know Reggie is delightful. Uh so that's probably what I would go with.
Nice.
You just named all the games
pretty much pretty much try everything. Yeah.
I think you all said just go play everything. So
if you want to play heads up play Stephen. He's he's pretty good.
If you want to win at Heads Up come and play me. I will
He was really generous. will make you feel better about ask that guy.
He was he was generous with the points. So
awesome. Well, thank thank you to our panel. We're going to open it up to the floor. I've got a box of goodies uh for anybody who uh has questions. Multimmorphix's own Gerry Stellenberg is going to run out and let you pick something. So, uh who's got a question for us?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
We sell pinball machines and games. We also sell anti-reflective glass for pinball games. Um, so we have our own brand of anti-reflective glass. We also have these things called corner cushions. These are super cool silicon cushions that you put on the corners of your glass. You can sit them down on concrete surfaces without risking your glass. So, whoever has a question, we got a set of corner cushions for you.
Sounds good. Thanks. Uh, first one up.
Is that live? Is
is the mic on?
There you go. I think you're on now.
Okay,
there you go.
It is on now. My name is Douglas. Uh I live in Arizona. I recently received my second P3 cabinet with Portal this week, which is great. One quick comment was, you know, you're talking about like the engineering and the modularity. I forgot like how well designed even the box is in the fact that like you can take it out of the box much easier than just a standard other manufactured game. Uh so it's it's very well thought out. My question is uh and and maybe I'm unaware of I think there's maybe one or one third party modular storage system
but are you considering making modular storage because I would say as somebody who's very invested in the platform has many of the modules that is a bit of a a pain point or something I' I'd like a better solution for
it This feels like a Jerry question.
We're not looking at you, Jerry.
The the the question for those of you online is, are we considering building some kind of storage mechanism for the game modules? Um, we're a small team. We're heavily focused on creating really cool content for everybody. The shipping boxes are designed to be storage boxes as well. And we would love to design a furniture quality cabinet to store games in, but right now we're heavily focused on games. So, there are a couple of options. There's a third party option. Uh, ap3shop.com is selling
an option to store your m store your game kits. Um, Nicholas Baldridge designed an undermachine carrier that you can build out of 2x4s and plans that he publishes and you can store two game kits under your machine in a in a in kind of a roll out a roll out drawer. But
we don't have anything in the works now, but
Okay, that that would actually be my my question. So, I'll I'll ask you, Nick, to just share share the plans because I think that that would be great. And
they're freely available online. So, I'll I'll catch up with you.
If I could toss in too, if you're if you are uh on Discord or anything like that, I would highly recommend the Discord first of all. There's a lot of great conversations, but um Borg Dog on Discord made like a an amazing and he he's shared some of the files. I don't have a CNC like I'm an electrical engineer, so like I can do circuits. I can't like hammer wood together. Like I don't know why. So, it's well beyond my capability. But yeah, you know, there's there's some a lot of people sharing cool ideas out there. So,
yeah. And uh I was able to build uh Nick Waldridge's cart. And if I can build it, you all can build it, too. So, thanks for the question. Appreciate it. Yes. What's your name?
Cool. My name's Chris. I live in East Texas. Been looking at the P3 since I started coming to the pinball festival. Love it. Eventually, I'm going to own one, but just hadn't afforded yet. But anyway, uh my question is y'all talking about you can have people download the development kit and be able to build their own games and everything. Have y'all ran into any problems or is there kind of I don't know how to put it in this best way, but almost a little underground community for the people that make games that they have a passion for, but the IP is something that you can't officially support or sell because it'll get you into trouble. Uh, do you all have like a not a secret community, but a community that allows people that have a passion game, like say somebody wanted to make a Legend of Zelda game, Nintendo's going to say, "No, stop. if y'all tried to put it on your website supporting it, but have y'all ran into like groups or Discords or anything that have got people developing like that? Because that's something I would do if I was doing
Yeah, let me just repeat the question. So, for the folks watching online, the question is about, you know, independent developer. Is there a support group online? What what kind of things exist out there for people who might be interested in making their own P3 games?
Nick, you want to take it?
Well, thank you. Um, so as far as lensure, you know, that's obviously very important if you're releasing a game commercially. One thing I will say is that the P3 is the ultimate homebrew pinball platform. So, if you're thinking of making a game and you don't want to do the boring and tedious work of designing your own cabinet and making your own modular system or something like that, uh, having to compromise on board sets or anything of that nature, you can go with the multimmorphic solution and develop your own game. It doesn't have to be released to other people, right? You can have your own homebrew just as you would if you were designing a traditional homebrew. And that's how I got my start developing games on the P3. I developed a homebrew game first.
And I I think it's important to know too that you don't even need to have a P3 to make a game.
Correct. Talk about a little bit about how that works.
The SDK is freely available as has been stated. Uh it is built on top of the Unity game engine uh which is very popular game engine used uh primarily for video games and the P3 framework sits on top of that Unity game engine and controls the physical features. However, Unity has a feature that allows you to simulate a game. So you can press keys on your keyboard to simulate uh switch hits. You can generate events through those uh different key presses and it will simulate all the LEDs and the lights that are happening. With the logging that's available in Unity, you can debug all sorts of situations before you even put it into a game uh into a physical platform. So, it's very convenient to develop,
which by the way, we do that in real and when we're developing the real games, too. spend a ton of time playing the game on our keyboard before it ever sees the white wood. So,
I was say if you if you have anything cool and you want any beta testers, just like shoot me a DM. I'm always like down to try stuff. I'll sign an NDA. I'm cool. You know, like we're good. So,
so one quick comment about the licensing and and the other topic you brought up. Um you're right. as a platform manager, we can't have people just creating any kind of content. And and the thing is we're we're kind of like the Apple the the Apple store where we host for download all of the purchasable apps. So, we have a whole approval process and review process. And we need to make sure that that one, the content is licensed and approved. Two, that you're not doing anything that's going to damage customer machines if you're activating a coil and leaving it on. That would be bad and customers are going to are going to see problems. So, um there's a whole review process. Submit your ideas to us when you start if you want to. We don't suggest people go all the way to the end of the development road and then submit it for review and then we say sorry there there are reasons we can't release this. So as soon as you're willing and and ready to share, do that and I'll confidentially we'll we'll review it and tell you what what needs to happen.
Thanks. Next question.
Hey I'm Bill. Um just I don't have a question. I just want to comment on my experience with multimorphic. I was an early adopter and uh and along the way, you know, trying to put some mods in and things, I ran into problems and unlike other manufacturers, I called in and got on got a phone calls with some of your engineers and working me working help working alongside on the phone fixing some of these things early on. And I really appreciated that cuz you know never seen any other company do anything similar and the and the package of repair part the repair upgrade parts that you sent was just something you'd never ever see from anyone else either. So I'm always very big on this company and looking at
everything going forward. I get some of these.
You know I know this is always like the the cliche thing to say. you know, you're on a panel talking about a platform you love, but it like
in all honesty, this is hands down like the most amazing like service team, like support team. Um, you know, professional like multimorphic support team and community, right? Like on the Discord, you know, just little things when I was first getting acclimated to like the the platform and Nick's helped me out a ton asking just, you know, general questions I had. And it's just it's it's with other manufacturers where I've had to submit tickets, you know, it's like weird for me now to like have to like wait a few days and you're like, well, wait, like where's the reply? Like, do I have to submit it again? Like, let me check on Jira or whatever, you know, source software they use to to manage her tickets and it's like, oh, this this is wild. I'm so used to like, you know, snappy response and thorough responses. So, uh it's it's really refreshing.
I do have like at least five extra modules. It's very helpful if you have if you just built your own basement and were able to put in a awkward closet. And so I have some pinball machines in front of a closet door and behind there I've got like these boxes lined up. So I'm also interested in the storage concept. But the only thing would be just getting them out faster. But but uh it is so impressive. I have so many times I come into the house and just change the game just because I show everybody. No, I I I go with just the generic the machinery type uh uh side art. So, I don't I'm not changing I don't feel like changing the side art all the time. So, it's always blaring P3 all the time out there, which I like. But, it's so it's so fun showing somebody how that works. So,
thank you. Thank you.
Wide bodies wide bodies are also perfect for sliding modules underneath in the box. They're if you ever need a reason to get a widebody game, it's, you know, there you go. That's why my paragon doesn't leave just cuz it's like the modules fit so nicely underneath. So
yeah, it's a good game.
For everybody at home, you know, he was just sharing how much he loves his P3 and he thinks the support is amazing and uh we appreciate uh your comments. Um anybody else questions in exchange for
Also, while he's walking up, I just want to say we also have a tremendous community.
We got a question from online.
Question from online. Uh I will determine if we're going to answer a question from this question from online. What is it? Jerry says or it's for Jerry if no one else is going to ask what's in the works for license or non-licens and if you can't say drop a hint
next game.
Next game.
It was specifically about the next game.
Yes.
So I announced previously that we had a string of licensed games coming. The next game will be licensed,
he said.
But long-term, we're motivated to do unlicensed and licensed games together. As everybody knows, licensed games come with a term. The term determines how long you can sell it. Sometimes it's three years, five years. You can negot negotiate longer or you can reup your term um by by negotiating again for the license. But at some point, we can't continue selling the licensed games that we've made. Whereas original games Lexi Lightseed, Final Resistance, Cosmic Cart Racing, those games we can sell forever. We created them. We own the IP. So if in some point in the future you buy a licensed, if you buy a P3 to get whatever licensed game appeals to you, you'll still be able to get all of the old original games we've ever created. We're still making them. We still keep inventory on them. Um, we're motivated to keep doing original content, but obviously licenses also sell very well. So, the next one will be licensed. Yes.
Thanks, sir.
Next question.
Well, more of a comment. Um, I feel like we're living in a world where shots are the new toys. Everybody's heard that phrase. And one of the things I enjoy about being a P3 owner is that y'all, I feel have returned the mechanical whimsy is what I kind of consider it back into the game. You have mechanical toys that interact with the ball. Um, I feel like when I'm playing Portal, it's almost like a flea circuit, the circus, the balls jumping around and it's so aerial.
I was just My question is maybe for Jerry or for the team. What is your favorite mechanical mech that y'all made in any of the modules? If you have a favorite,
let me just uh repeat for online. So, that's a question was uh you know, loves loves the mechanical whimsy of the the mechs on the P3 uh games. What's everybody's favorite? And we'll just go down the line for this one.
Good. Hamster wheel.
The hamster wheel is really good. Like I love the hamster wheel. I love I don't know. I I'm still I love the hamster wheel. I love the how hard Scott ship fires balls at your face like whatever you you start that multiball. Um I'm going to I I'm going to stop myself because I will rob all these guys of every by listing them all. But I think it comes out to me that I really
I'm still amazed at what TJ was able to do with the crane and heist like that we have this threeaxis multi- angled crane that can pick balls up. It can dangle them over the playfield. It can fling the balls at you and you can smack the crane right in the face and and knock it out of the way and it it can provide this huge variety of short shots um all over the playfield. So that's my favorite I'll say. And I'll have to say the gobble hole on drained of course. However, I will also add the crane on heist. And I'll approach this uh Stephen talked about all the amazing features that are available in that crane, but I'll talk about it from a developer perspective momentarily. So all those features he mentioned, being able to pick up a ball, move it around, being able to knock the ball off of the crane, being able to hit the front face of the crane and register that as a target, being able to move it from here to there, above, below, wherever you want it to be. Those are all available to developers and I use those in a game called Silver Falls that was developed uh in cooperation with my daughter Sophia and uh we designed that game to utilize the crane in a different way than is used in Heist and because the SDK allows us to create these experiences which differ from the main game on that module uh it's really a fantastic fantastic system for developing games as I keep mentioning. But the crane is spectacular and being able to use it in ways that the developers didn't necessarily intend but enabled other developers to do is one of my favorite things.
You know what the crane can't do?
What's that?
Gobble a ball.
That's true. And that's why the gobble hole is the best.
Where did the gentleman go to ask the question? Right there. Okay. Um I think multimarket has some serious coonas if that's the word. That's the proper term, right? serious coonas to uh we usually scared of airballs in games and they made a module literally to shoot air balls all over the place. So I'm like that's a bold move right there. Um so my one of my favorite shots feels really good. I don't know why cuz I'm not connected to it at all. But when you can go into a portal and you can do the loop three times and it shoots all the way to the top platform. Another mic drop right there. The
faith plays fine. No, get all the way around. Green. Boom. Top platform. You're like, I just won.
You're a drain right there. So, I think I think I might go a little different route with this one because obviously we know all the games have pretty pretty amazing mechs, but uh one of my favorite like you know we always talk about pinball moments, right? One of my favorite pinball unexpected pinball moments was in Final Resistance. Like the first time I wasn't like just getting my butt completely kicked and made it past a few stages and I got swarm multiball and like when all the scoops and walls came up because I mean that's part of every module, right? Every it's base platform and how they use that in different games. And on Swarm Multiball, if you haven't played it yet, the whole bank opens up and it loads all the like what six balls behind, you know, all these walls and it just they all kind of stage back there and then they all just the whole wall just drops and you just have like a waterfall of balls coming down and it's just like it's surreal like there's no other multiball out there like it. Yeah, it's just it's wild. So, um you know, so how they use the scoops and walls is pretty is pretty neat. So,
quick shout out for the um gliss of insanity and the princess bride. Amazing.
Another great one.
What? Oh, Jerry's got one, too.
Give me Give me Give me
I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but my favorite mech, and we have a lot of awesome mechs. I would say best mechs in pinball, right? My favorite mech of all the ones we've developed, no joke, is the next one.
Is the next one. There you go.
The next one.
What's the best?
It's pretty cool.
What's Which number's on the line. Yeah,
we have a couple more online questions.
We got time for one more. One more question.
Yeah,
we got an online question.
Online question. Well, all right. Let's go in person and then if we got time, we'll do the online.
When working on
Oh, go.
Yeah. All right. Go ahead. Sorry about that.
Trent, uh, I'm curious. What are some tools that you guys would recommend people use if they want to create their own games? Art tools, video tools, um, design, programming, those kind of things.
Um, number one tool you need to get is a TJ. You'll find you a TJ. TJ is your director of whimsy.
You give He's a machine that turns dumb ideas into brilliant mechanisms. So, find yourself a TJ. I mean, that's that's the biggest thing. It's like, go find smart people that are smart in ways that you aren't and work together and make something cool. But tools, I I do I use standard Adobe tools to do animations and and content creation and and things like that. Um, of course, Unity is the main main tool that we use whenever we're uh building the games and testing them out. And um yeah, I mean, the the software, you can tell us some software tools that are good. Here's a list of software. I'm going to start alphabetically here. Uh, no, I'm just kidding. But, uh, developing art and developing music and editing and mixing and all the things that need to happen to make a game. And there are a lot of things that need to happen to make a game. Uh, while the P3 makes a lot of things very easy, you do need to use some other tools. Uh, particularly if you're making your own music or doing your own artwork. But even if you're not, you may need to remix the music that comes from a composer or something like that. And uh I use primarily open source tools. So uh for artwork uh there's a program called Critter K R I T A uh which I find very useful. Works with tablets uh drawing tablets and um the like. And I also use uh on the sound side, I use Audacity a lot for quick editing and then a larger digital audio workstation type of program for um heavier duty mixing, multitracking.
Thanks. Uh my question and then I think we got to wrap it up. Did you design the rules first or the physical mechanic uh mechanisms first or develop them in parallel? And when did the cliff of insanity get decided to put on the playfield?
Um the answer to the first two questions is yes. We we typically when we tackle a game, we we tackle the layout and we think about rules and we talk about moments in pinball that we want to see happen. And along those lines, the cliffs of insanity were one of those things from like day one. Everybody's like, we need to figure out how to do the ball rising up the mountain trick with the real ball and make that happen. And so that was kind of a day one thing that we just decided on and and then just put that in TJ's hands and make it happen. But yeah, we we work uh we're very theme focused on our games and we'll come in with different layout ideas and stuff like that. will all work and the the best ideas find their way to the top. But we're we're basically, you know, we we will work through the process of getting a layout finalized, but the whole time we're talking about how would these things work in the context of our rules and the context of modes and things like that that will interact with these mechs. And it's it's not just, you know, lay something out then figure it all out later. It's always working together. At least that's the way we everything they did to make this easy for us. Uh, thanks for our panelists for coming out and have a good rest of your uh, TPF and hope to see you in the P3 booth.