Quoted from benheck:Licenses are important to pinball. And as Chris mentions above, having to create assets from scratch is tough.
Also most original themes aren't original, they're just rip offs of known licenses or tropes. MM is Holy Grail, No Good Gophers is Caddyshack, AFM is every 50s movie, etc. So people know the basic premise when the step up to the machine.
When you do have a truly original theme like Dialed In people warm to it very slowly, though a large part of that is their fault for not pushing a disaster theme.
TWD could have been named Dead Walkers and sold just as well. Speech and sound did not come from the show and neither did playfield art. Guess there is no way to tell if it would have sold same numbers with alternate title.
TWD sales were slow at first and code was a borefest. Some were saying TWD was a throwaway title, like Mustang had been. When Lyman took code in a new direction, interest in the game was rekindled and turned from cold to a warm embrace.
