Top tournament players Bowen Kerins and Colin MacAlpine have joined pinball manufacturer Multimorphic to help develop rules for upcoming titles on the company’s P3 pinball platform.
Fans of competitive pinball will be familiar with the new additions to the Multimorphic team as they are both multiple major tournament winners and regulars on the tournament circuit both in the US and internationally.
Bowen Kerins is a three-time winner of the PAPA World Championship, achieving his first win in 1994 and his most recent in 2013. He also won the IPFA World Championship in 2008 and 2009.
Until recently Bowen worked with Spooky Pinball as Rules Director and has created numerous tutorial videos for the Replay Foundation, demonstrating the rules and scoring strategies for assorted popular titles. He was also tournament Director for the Pinburgh tournament at ReplayFX until the event was permanently cancelled in 2020. He’s also a mathematical whizz, a maths tutor, author of maths textbooks and an advisor to TV game shows, once appearing as a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in the US. He lives in New England.
Colin is much more local to Multimorphic’s Round Rock, Texas headquarters, living in Austin, Texas.
Colin has been playing competitively for ten years, winning Pinburgh in 2017 as well as several Texas Pinball Festival main and classics tournaments. He helped establish the Bat City Pinball Club to promote pinball in and around the Texas capital and and also runs multiple tournaments. Colin has also been an adviser to Multimorphic on some of their previous titles prior to this official announcement.
Pinball News asked Multimorphic head, Gerry Stellenberg, about the two appointments and how they will work together to enhance the company’s titles.
We asked how, given the physical distance between their homes, they would be able to collaborate effectively. He told us, “Our development team was already spread out across the world. We use collaboration tools to share files and edit documents, and we communicate heavily via messaging and video conferencing tools. Communicating isn’t an issue. The bigger challenge is getting everybody onto machines with early playfields so they can see how the rules are progressing and come up with changes, but we ship things out as necessary and we also leverage live-streaming and video sharing.”
With a pipeline of upcoming titles, we asked if Bowen and Colin would concentrate their efforts of separate games or whether they would work together on all future titles. Gerry said the company would be flexible but in general they would work together.
He said, “It depends on the depth we want in each game and also how many games we’re developing in parallel. Our design process generally involves everybody on the team. We all have a voice in the entire creative process, but when hard decisions need to be made about rules, we’ll generally defer to them. Right now they’re both providing input on all of the games we’re developing.“
Along with working on future releases for the P3 pinball platform, we asked if they might revisit some of Multimorphic’s earlier titles to enhance the rulesets of those games.
Gerry said, “We’re not looking to overhaul any of our older titles, but we do occasionally update them with new features and rules tweaks, and we’ll absolutely listen to suggestions from them. That said, their primary focus is to make sure our new games are amazing.“
Not all titles for the P3 are produced in-house. Games such as Ranger in the Ruins, Silver Falls, Grand Slam Rally and Hoopin’ It Up! come from third-party developers, with even more expected. Will Colin and Bowen be able to help those developers with their projects too?
Gerry said that wasn’t their primary goal but it was a possibility. “We’re always willing to discuss ways of helping 3rd-party P3 developers succeed with their projects, and the bigger we grow our team, the more resources we’ll have to share. Anybody interested should contact us, and we can talk through possible arrangements.“
Once potential concern about having top competitive players designing rules is that they may end up creating rulesets which appeal more to top competitors rather than making them accessible to more casual players. We asked Gerry if Colin’s and Bowen’s appointments meant a greater emphasis on getting P3 games used competitively.
Gerry told us, “Not at all; we just want to make games that people love to play. The best competitive players in the world tend to know the rules of hundreds of games inside and out. They have a good sense for what rules are fun to play and which rules aren’t. Both Bowen and Colin are excellent at explaining what makes certain games more fun than others, and they have a good sense for what new ideas will work well too.“
Here’s how Multimorphic announced Bowen’s and Colin’s additions to the team.
| Multimorphic, Inc. is excited to announce two new team members, Bowen Kerins and Colin MacAlpine! As incredibly accomplished pinball players, rules experts, and creative geniuses, Bowen and Colin bring a wealth of pinball knowledge and experience to the Multimorphic development team. They’ll be involved in the full creative process on current and future Multimorphic titles with a special focus on game rules and ensuring P3 games are fun and engaging for players of all skill levels. Bowen has been playing pinball his entire life. He won his first of five World Championship titles in 1994, was a tournament director at Pinburgh, the world’s largest pinball tournament, and most recently acted as rules director on two titles from Spooky Pinball. Throughout his career as a competitive player and through video tutorials for countless games, Bowen has demonstrated expert knowledge of a vast array of pinball rulesets and strategies, and he’s excited to help deliver both traditional and new playing experiences on the P3. Outside of pinball, Bowen writes math textbooks, is a tutor for grades 5 and up, and has been a mathematical advisor for over 20 game shows. He loves Slurpees and once won $1000 for knowing the number of degrees in a right angle! Colin lives with his wife and three children in Austin, TX, where he works as Director of Product Management for a specialty chemical manufacturer. His infatuation with the silver ball began as a kid at a local pizza joint in Minnesota, and after years of battling only against high score tables, he started playing competitive pinball events in 2011. Since then, Colin helped found Austin’s Bat City Pinball Club, has traveled around the world to find the greatest levels of competition, winning many tournaments along the way, and has developed a deep knowledge of pinball rulesets and what makes games fun to play. Colin has advised Multimorphic informally on a few existing P3 games and is excited to officially join the team and help develop fun, exciting, approachable, and novel rules for the ever-growing library of P3 titles. The additions of Bowen and Colin show Multimorphic’s continued emphasis on building a world-class team and connecting new ideas and the unrivaled features of the P3 with the raw pinball experiences that everybody loves. We welcome them with open arms and look forward to building amazing games together. For more information about Multimorphic, the P3, and P3 games, please visit www.multimorphic.com. |
