They need to be more concerned with the probability that Millenials aren't going to like their games.
(Topic ID: 185260)
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Quoted from o-din:Even some pre Gen xrs are starting to notice the staleness of licensed themes from the last century.
As a millennial and someone who is usually ahead of the millennial trends, the draw to pinball is that it is more physical and less digital, which is a trend that is starting across the whole generation applicable to all things.
Playing from one Stern to the next doesn't just feel like playing the same game; it feels like playing the same boring game. And the just being the former is the firm feeling of, "hell, may as well just be playing redundant kick-off games on my phone."
JJP and Spooky games are fun. Williams games are fun. Gotlieb games are fun. Bally games are fun. Sega games are fun. Early Stern games are fun. Stern games from like 90 on are not fun.
Quoted from o-din:Probably why I have no more than one at a time. That and I don't need a long line up of pricey monuments to pop culture I left behind a long time ago.
Almost feels like their games are 100% theme, with no effort into gameplay. The only one I like is Tron: Legacy, and that's simply because of the theme being one of my favorite movies. Closest example I can think of is like Sterns are like Multimorphics P3: same game different graphics and sounds.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:When I was your age I used to bitch about how shitty Stern games were and how I just wanted to play classics and 90s williams. Then I got over it and started enjoying them. You will too one day, sonny!
There's a certain charm and attention to detail that the 90s Williams game have that nobody is ever going to replicate. But once you accept that you'll realize that Stern puts out some perfectly awesome pinball machines.
That's really not an appropriate argument. We're referring to generations. The start of my generation has seen nothing but the trend of more technology. We grew up surrounded by this. It's not appealing for the reasons I already listed, nor will it ever be. We've already beaten the digital knockoff horse dead.
Quoted from o-din:I liked Tron when I had it. It was a fast fun game.
I'd have to play it more. I'd probably have one at some point in time, just so I can deck half my game room out in Tron:Legacy memorabilia lol.
Quoted from o-din:To use the cargument, for me trying to decide which new Stern to buy is like going back to the 80s and trying to decide which K car to buy.
This is a text between me and my best friend. His son is 8 or so. This is the way I see the trend going for the generation that is becoming of market age. Previous two generations started and secured going from physical to virtual. Current is going the opposite way. Games such as pinball, Top Golf, Pokemon Go, etc. are actually Millenials going from virtual, to the in-between level of virtual/physical, and then more to physical. Kinda a balancing of physical/immaterial over half a century of generations.
Quoted from JY64:A JJP fan started a Stern price thread they did the math and came up with this. between 2010 and 2017 there has been a 29% increase in price = 4.14% a year but quite variable over the individual years. Can you say jack price increase are less and he has been cutting features all the while game 2 & 3 do not hold a candle to game 1
Wiz 75th is awesome. Hobbit wasn't as good as it, but still much better than Stern games. Dialed In I watched people play for about 30 minutes and it seemed really fun. They all play way the he'll differently, though. WoZ is my preferred playstyle, but Dialed In reminded me of Junk Yard, which is also a very fun style to me. Are you sure you aren't just similar and confusing your own playstyle preference for quality?
Quoted from Gryszzz:This thread needs more 20 something years old fucking genuises screenshotting their bff texts.
Please, tell me more.
I'm 32. Don't confuse your opinion for intelligence.
Quoted from dmbjunky:30 is the new 20 in terms of intelligence and maturity.
Think you mean knowledge, not intelligence.
Quoted from dmbjunky:Many definitions for intelligence but I like "the ability to perceive information and retain it as knowledge to be applied to actions."
Intelligence can be raised and lowered through experience and repetition.It's not only 20 somethings that do this. When I go out to dinner with my parents that's the first thing they do.
Then my initial statement of "don't mistake your opinion for intelligence" still applies.
Quoted from Gryszzz:Can't wait till we start texting, sweetpea. I'm gonna screenshot them all to put them in my special memories book. They may have some hearts drawn on them.
You're weird.
Quoted from Dee-Bow:Your gonna buy him ice cream, a pedicure and then threaten to knock his teeth out? Creep online much? Where is the catch a predator guy's when u need them? Jeremy, start yelling STRANGER DANGER and run
No need. He's just looking for friends. Not someone I'd ever get along with, though.
Quoted from Gryszzz:Well Jeremy after that tongue-lashing you threw on me this morning I decided I was gonna pick up all my hurt feelings and go make some friends! Went down to the local pub, bought a round for everyone, and made about 30. But none named Tristan or Blake, so I'm gonna have to start all over tomorrow.
Not a tongue lashing, I just don't get along well with your personality type, is all.
Quoted from Gryszzz:Should I have read after this?
Means my birth year is the start of the generation, and I am more intelligent than my peers, so I tend to do all the trends for my generation half a decade to a decade ahead of the curve.
Nope. I don't set set trends. I just learn them ahead of time to help others in their trends. Tends to save them time.
Quoted from Luckydogg420:I'm just glad that I started this yesterday instead of starting this thread today (April 1st). Because we would have probably missed out on all of the the great posts that were made the last 36hours. I don't think Stern will be gone anytime soon, but the pinball world is changing and I hope they can roll with the punches. Competition is finally knocking on their door and 2017 could be the first year that us consumers will have a lot of choice. The 1st post in this thread has got me more down votes then all of my other posts combined. Well done crew. Although I have learned a couple interesting things through all this static.
Thanks.
They just need to learn how to not be boring.
Quoted from o-din:In the 30s there were hundreds of pinball manufactures so I don't know about 2017 as being the first year pinball consumers will have a choice.
It'd be education and homebrew. I mean, hell, if you're a regular guys guy and want something cool, why not spend a couple weekends in the shop and make your own custom themed pinball machine? If it's EM era or early SS era, then it's fun enough to play a bunch.
Woodworking skills, electronics skills, soldering skills, and boards compliant with WYSIWYG application development. If the methods are built, then the results exist as well.
They'd probably buy older, and cheaper, and more fun, as I did. I don't think they have a target audience in the 30 and under club. Why pay even 5k for a game that is a duplicate of another game of another game, when you can pay half to a quarter of the cost for something more fun, more original and with more of a "cool factor?" I can see the average Joe going out and buying a pinball machine, but it wouldn't be like buying one so he could sit there and obsess over it for hours a day every day... it would be as an addition to his cool stuff that he could just go mess around on and have friends play. An average Joe is not going to spend more on a pinball machine than a top of the line TV, and what happens if the average Joe becomes the primary "new purchaser" of pinball machines? The existing purchasers sell their old cheap machines to buy increasingly more expensive Sterns until that market flops, in the face of practical and inexpensive homebrews.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:You two need to get a fucking room already.
You're weird as he is lol.
Quoted from Otaku:I think being obnoxious is already in style it seems like
Really? I would have gone with resentful
Quoted from DBLM:If you are half a decade to a decade ahead of your peers, that means you helped lead the charge on ironic PBR drinking, horrible facial hair, riding penny farthings, and other general hipster douchebaggery. What trends do we need be prepared to see unleashed in the wild based upon your efforts? Gen X and above wants to know.
Most of that is Gen X.
Quoted from DBLM:Not at all. As part of near the end of Gen X we did none of those things. Blame us for flannel and angst for no reason, but do not try to put this crap on us.
It's the same thing. That's Gen X. The Millenials that are doing such things are just doing the same things as Gen X. That's not the curve of Millenials. That's the slow ones behind the curve, which is why it's Gen X. Hipsters are people who try and fad their poverty. Do you actually remember last century?
Quoted from DBLM:Remeber it? Hell, I lived it. Although with all that being said, I do not understand your comment above about slow people in front of and behind curves doing stupid stuff as those things were associated with a time period and group that was not Gen X. Maybe if I had only had that superior education Millenials got based upon common core education and receiving participation trophies I could understand it
You have your generations confused, as well as your sense of time.
Gen X changed the adult environment into such things. Millenials entered it, and will be changing that environment into other things, as will whatever the generation from the end of the last millennium until present will be called.
"Hipster" is a very small minority, as are the other things you spoke of, in the Millenial generation, and all are associated with Gen X by the vast manority of Millenials.
Ever seen the show "Friends"?
Quoted from DBLM:I think we will just have to agreee to disagree. Hated these discussions back in college when we had to debate "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture" and all of the cultural training related to managing and relating to Millennials that I got when I was a sales manager at a major three letter technology company. The short answer to all of this is that no particular generation in and of itself is unique, every generation thinks their generation is the most important ever and the ones prior to them are stupid and barbaric in their thoughts, and that the vast majority of individuals have an inflated sense of their self worth compared to how others view them. Done and done.
Back on topic: Stern has no real competition, most of the boutique companies are not going to survive unless they focus specifically on their particular target markets and stay focused on their P & L statements, and you are going to have companies either exit the market or sell their assets/ outsource their manufacturing to others.
Well, anyways, to answer your question... barring another major war, coming next would be an increase in attention to physical labor and trade skills, due to the necessity that an entire culture of workforce cannot exist as white collar (hence the worthless degrees), a decrease in the trends that lead away from the physical (smart phones, social media, paths of least physical resistance, etc.) and towards the physical when able, and a general cultural shift towards focus on others. It would be the subsequent generation where such things are considered noticeable, however.
If a company develops a platform for building homebrews, it would pretty much tank the opposite of that model, which is basically Stern from what I can gather.
Quoted from Stones:Finally up to speed on this thread....Stern is in trouble, but more importantly......Millinnials who are slow....think like Gen X peeps.
Got it.
Because they are further behind the present.
The really slow ones are hippies lol.
Quoted from DaveH:I think the name of that company will be... Multimorphic. Not that they are going to produce thousands and thousands of games, but that platform seems to have a lot of potential.
I originally thought they were what I was thinking after reading their advertisements language, but then saw that what they were talking about was a lot different than I was, at least with the stuff I saw at TPF.
Quoted from jwilson:http://pinballmakers.com/
As a Gen-X, who sits forgotten and quiet between two self-centred, egotistical generations, I guess I'd rather "do" than just talk about it. So, there's your homebrew link.
I've looked at that before. Still not really what I'm thinking of.
You originally from Canada? I've been to Toronto before. Went to some zoo. Watched some clowns perform some anti or play in French.
Quoted from chadderack:Strange that it's the thread with the most ignored user comment messages for me
Are most of these people typical dbags?
Quoted from DBLM:I forgot about the man bun. If you wear one, are you for or against Stearn?
For Stern.
Quoted from Astropin:Well shit, I messed up then.
It's cool, you can always cut the man bun off. No harm, no foul.
Quoted from Law:Sounds like the P3, no?
Thought so originally, but upon seeing it, their mods are higher level. I was thinking lower level standardization and end-user ease of use for modification.
I sent the following to a friend of mine who is more into all the IT stuff than I am. (Don't feel like reformulating my thoughts for this audience)
"Well, like right now on new and old machines, you pull up the playfield and it's a ton of wires that are all like analog electronics back to circuit boards and lights and junk. But it seems to me like in this age, you should just be able to go to a hobby store, buy a cabinet/playfield kit that's the wood with grid marks on it, buy some packs of bumpers, targets, lights, spinners, flippers, etc., go home, open up an app on your phone, drag and drop all the various parts onto a virtual snap-to grid playfield, cut/drill the holes on the actual playfield where the virtual one's snap-to grid, screw the parts on from the bottom, plug in USB cables into each part (instead of the 5 million analog wires) and then into the designated USB hub attached to the small box inside the cabinet that main power supplies to and has the memory/cpu junk, get back on the phone app and set score values and rules and such, xfer from phone via Bluetooth to the pinball box, and then start playing and modifying your scoring and rules and such as you go.
Could just print out art to stick on the crap via online service or a special printer.
But like $150 for the main kit materials, a few hundred more for the playfield parts, usb cords, a few hundred more for the control box, a free app, a couple days on the weekend to assemble, and you have your own custom pinball machine.
Like... simplified, end-user based, standardized parts and game software, so you can make your own custom one for cheap."
Quoted from Law:The P-Roc and P3-Roc hardware are really as close as you're going to get to that, for now anyways. The P3 platform with customizable slide-in assemblies and a rear module that you can customize on a work bench, plus an open software developer kit sounds pretty close to what you're asking for as well, or at least the closest that actually exists at this time. In the future, who knows?
USB sounds friendly but realistically it probably isn't going to work in an environment with any kind of EM interference and suffers from latency and addressing issues. 10 or 20 USB cables going back to some kind of hub sounds no bueno to me. No matter what you do you're also still going to need to deal with power supplies and driver circuits too, so you're back to these "analog wires".
The upper playfield mod drop-ins seems like "meh... close but no cigar" to me, but, as you say, they may end up developing deeper.
The USB seems like it would work to me. You'd just have to make sure all the stuff had adequate supports/suspensions. If they break after a while? Cords are cheap, and standardized parts would be cheap enough probably. They supply power, so they have the capabilities for that. The bunch of USB cords would just rely on building the hub capable of handling it to send a singular stream from there to the control box, which would basically be a mass manufacturered mini computer in a box specifically designed for such. Have like say 10 USBs per hub, a power cord for hub, an Ethernet between hub and control box, and potentially a few different tiers of control boxes that could handle more Ethernet connections to more than just one hub for an increase in price.
Not really sure why it wouldn't be able to be done. All sorts of other stuff is computerized. Currently, pinball machines are just giant custom computers. Surely there's a way to localize the computing and have peripherals for the inputs/outputs. P3 already has one peripheral.
For the software, I was thinking of RAD software. Most tech companies at some point develop software that people can learn to use within a day or so that does all the lower level programming work for them. Seems kinda goofy to be making pinball machines for decades and programming each one from actual programming language.
Quoted from Law:USB 3.0 supplies maximum 900 milliamps (.9A)per port. Flipper drive power for one flipper is going to be ~35A at that voltage if it'll even work. Not even the same ballpark.
Even with a separate power supply, USB does not work reliably in environments with fluctuating magnetic fields (such as inside pinball machines).
I agree that it's a cool idea, it'd be awesome to see a plug-and-play platform.
Ah, so what do fluctuating metal fields stuff use for data?
Quoted from T7:Your prices are crazy low!!!
Even a cardboard pinball DIY starts at $50: http://makezine.com/2016/02/09/building-pinbox-3000-cardboard-pinball-machine/
Crazy low for what? The existing market of pinball?
Cool link.
Quoted from DBLM:Understand where you are coming from but as we have seen with JPOP, SKIT-B, and every other company out there, building pinball is hard. Very hard. You have physics, physical construction, wiring, logic programming, safety, etc to all accommodate for. Most people would not have the ability to do even a little bit of what is involved and those that do (Rosh, guy that build Total Annihilation), etc have spent tons of money and time building these things. i don't think you will ever get to the point where you can grab pieces and put them together like "little bits" and some of the other plug and play modules out there.
Quoted from DBLM:Dedicated wiring for things like cars, boats, and aircraft, all of which have fluctuating magnetic fields.
It does look hard, which is why I am thinking about the facilities of operation to make them easier to build lol. You know? Like SS from EM.
Hmmmm.... hmmmmmmmmm.... 
How about fiber optics?
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