Quoted from Potatoloco:
This isn't exactly well researched, but I feel I have a decent sample size.
My wife and I have 4 kids under the age of 10. We have a game room in our house that has roughly 10-12 pins at any given time with a wide variety of themes. To give a general idea we've had Ghostbusters, Nascar, Metallica, and Simpsons in the past. Currently, Avengers, WWE, Star Wars, Walking Dead, Stern POTC, Iron Maiden are the modern pins. Most of these themes kids can identify. We also have a dedicated gaming area that has several monitors each with it's own Xbox One. Immediately we get to see decision making happen in real time with what kids want to play.
We've hosted several youth team parties, other hangouts with friends whose children ranged from 4-16 years old, neighborhood kids hanging out with my kids. We're talking probably 150+ different kids have been in this game room. It never fails, the kids never care about the pinball. Across the board, the most common reason I hear is "it's boring." Sure some of them will start a game and play one ball, but that's it. A lot of them don't even bother getting that far with it. It simply does not resonate with the majority of them at all, no matter what the theme is. Out of those 150+ kids, 1 has stuck it out and kept playing occasionally and that's my 2nd oldest son. That's literally it. The ones that come back again, never play the pins a second time, never ask questions. But they sure do want to know if they can hop on the Xbox or PS4.
Ive had young girls and guys over in their 20's and ive only found one to like pinball. The girls stand there and flip a few times with a very bored look on their face and then walk away in the middle of the game. They literally don't like it enough to play 3 balls.
Take that back, i did have 3 teenage kids one time over ranging from age 13-18 and they were brothers and they actually had a blast. Other than those three though most of them dont care about pinball anymore than a man on the moon.
