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Quoted from blondetall:I am female and while I think WOZ is pretty, I don't want to just play pretty. I want to play fun. I have Predator ordered and no intentions of buying WOZ. All my female friends that come over love the pinball machines, but there are none in our area to play. I wholeheartedly agree that access to machines is much more prevalant than theme. Yes, a WOZ in this area would be great. But so would a T2, SS, Playboy, DW... anything to play beats nothing to play.
+1
Quoted from Rick432:Well, yeah, but society changes. Women, thank goodness, aren't in the same place they were 20, heck 10, years ago. They are present and perform well in just about every job men do, even the hard ass ones! And unfortunately, like men, they're smoking more, drinking more, etc. Female athletes get more and more attention. My daughter is much much more likely to want to PLAY basketball than cheerlead for it. They're certainly more present in videogames than ever before (though it remains male dominated, but not nearly as much as it used to be).
Quoted from blondetall:I'm not one in a million... there are at least 6 girls on the forums now. Rabscuttle above is one of them. Yes, I have a sister. No, she does not like pinball. But my mom does to the point that she's bought TAF, RFM, MSF, PM, and Flintstones all since last July. I guess it runs in the family.
(Mom is dragging me to the Atlanta Pin Swap in 3 weeks too, "just in case they have something else I might want.")
You're one in a million, blondetall, just not in THAT way! 
I have multiple female friends of mine that like to come over and play pinball. This whole discussion isn't new to us as women, though. I remember being the only female in a room of like 100 guys in the early Magic: the Gathering days, or being one of like 2 girls at junior high that owned an NES. Maybe all those things will be forever majority-male, but there is a healthy female percentage to all of them now. The times they are a'changin.
My daughter is 7. She loves AC/DC, mainly for the light show and ringing the bell. Or more specifically, making the bell hit the glass... She also loves WHO dunnit. Those are her top 2 favorites, but she kicked up quite a fuss when we let RBION leave the house.
SO, AC/DC, W?D, and RBION. Probably not the ones people would peg as kid-attracting themes. It's so easy to underestimate what kids are capable of and where their interests lie these days. They like the Wizard of Oz movie, yes, so that won't be a bad thing. But the focus has to be on one thing, and one thing only: fun.
The difficulty of a pin and the general ball time is a more legitimate area to focus on to try and attract new players. If a new player can make SOMETHING compelling happen in the first session playing a pin, that, above any assumed demographic-targeted theme, will have an impact.
Avengers is a majorly hard pin for me, but my 6 year old son likes it. And is probably as good or better than I am at it, if the frequency of multiball he gets is any indication. But that's what I'm talking about. He knows it's possible to get to this super cool multiball and Hulk bridge raising experience, and that is a great incentive to keep playing, get into it, gain experience, and maybe eventually start to understand the overall strategy.
That's a tricky divide. Seasoned pinball enthusiasts want a deeper more challenging experience. Newbies want to make something flash and go crazy in the first 5 minutes. That seems like more of a barrier to me than the theme.
Quoted from ChadTower:Here's a good example!
Saturday was the New England Pinball League spring session finals in Pelham, NH. 40 or so people in all split up into three divisions that had been determined by league standings. A/B/C divisions with equal prizes in all divisions. Also a Z division for those who either didn't post enough scores to qualify or wanted to try the concept out for the first time. Entrant quality ranges literally from past PAPA World Champion to newbie player.
A 13 year old ties for first place in B division and loses the tiebreak to end up in second place. C division is won by a ~14 year old and third goes to a ~14 year old. There are a couple of kids in Z as well.
This is a wonderful example of kids not only interested in pinball but succeeding in truly competitive play. Granted, I'm pretty sure all of these kids have pins at home so it's not a typical example, but these kids are playing in the adult pool and winning.
That's AWESOME!
Quoted from ChadTower:http://www.ustream.tv/geekgamertv
PAPA Circuit Finals happening LIVE *right now*. Streaming video with excellent color commentary. Very cool.
Really like the video presentation approach, all the info is on the screen. Watching/listening now, very cool!
Quoted from toyotaboy:Remember that guy that always won at Monopoly, nobody ever wanted to play against him.
to this day.
Women are not all that inclined to hang out in areas where people make a big honkin' deal about them "being female", it's annoying. If you're in an area where there aren't enough ladies playing, it isn't pinball's fault, it's likely the environment. For instance, I would not want to hang out with people who think I want a cheesy Coach purse because of my gender, that's completely asinine and borderline offensive, though it's clear you're just trying to stir the pot with a comment like that.
There are men who are cool to hang out with and don't get all tripped up on gender, and there are men who are weird and truly can't handle having women around in their boys' club. If you don't want women around then keep making a fuss about the "ooooh a GIRL" thing and offering them purses and candy. If you want more women around, then make gender a non-issue in your pin-vironment and trust me, we flock.
+1!!
I'm so not into purses. Though I do have a shoe fetish. This is the last pair I bought:
On a related note:
In particular, Kwiatkowski noticed Headquarters' females customers taking to pinball.
“Girls tend not to be as interested in video games as the guys, but they automatically gravitate towards pinball,” Kwiatkowski said. “I think everyone understands the game, and the basics are fairly simple.”
Joy Doyle agreed. “I think more girls will come here because pinball is more of a gender-neutral game,” said Doyle, 25, of Wicker Park, between her first and second shots on the “Playboy” pinball game at Headquarters. “It’s logical--something you can figure out right away.”
Quoted from navajas:Nobody's saying there's anything wrong with that, unless you're an operator or an industry that is so blinded by traditional and outdated prejudice you can't figure out that "appeals more to men" does not equate to "no potential market for women and children". One of the points of the thread was that Jack's insistence that the theme for Oz will entice women and kids to play while perhaps commendable, is erroneous. Women and kids don't play as much pinball as they might not because themes don't exist to entice (or given the response to this topic, apparently, pander to) them, but because of access.
Right, and, unargued. However, say given saturation, a potential market of pinball customers exist that might be 80/20 men/women&children. Keep in mind that where I live that ratio is probably conservative almost to the point of absurdity. Why wouldn't you want to increase your profits by 20%? And that's assuming you're meeting the other side of the market. By including women and kids in your business model you're by definition also tapping into more adult males, AND, importantly, reaching a new and more varied base of future customers.
The women who are potential pinball players don't give a damn about hamfisted attempts to patronize them and insult their intelligence with stupid shit themes. One of Molly's favorite games is centered around a giant space vagina. Do you think suits were sitting around brainstorming ideas about how to get more women to play pinball when they gave Embryon the green light? The games I see women play most are Madness, Lord of the Rings and Bram's Dracula. The cool women who would play pinball given the chance have probably seen all the Ironman movies, all the X-Men movies, can't wait for Avengers 2, scream at sporting events, and may have flicked it thinking about that dude who plays Thor.
If "women" to this thread equals a polarity of stiletto heeled chopped up surgery harlots with fake tits and 2D noses, and/or, 250lb trailer park house wives who glue stick pictures of Jerry Springer cut out of the National Enquirer next to their 3rd husband as he grills up Wal*Mart brand hot dogs for the inbred family reunion in their scrapbook, then yes, this is pointless. However, in my experience "women and children" happen to be far more varied demographic, and, yes, willing, interested and able to play pinball if given a reasonable venue to do so.
Huh? What? I'm sorry, I don't speak Spanish...
Quoted from Dragonpingirl:I have loved Pin Ball since I was 12 years old. Would love to have the budget to buy lots of machines and fill my house up with them. Being a woman in our house who loves pins and retro arcades is hard as I share a great interest in them along with my partner, but most of the places, events and parties I go to with him are full of men. Not that it bothers me I expect it to some degree, but it would be nice to have a few more females around. Anyway a player is a player regardless of what sex they are, besides I love pins, good company and beer wouldn't have it any other way .
I can relate to that. When I went with friends to play paintball, only two of us were female. Back in the early days of Magic the Gathering, I WAS literally the only girl in the room at at least one tournament. You can't avoid noticing it, I just tried to ignore the fact and enjoy the games. Weirdly, when I started a Magic the Gathering club in college, it was like 80% women. So women players were certainly out there, there was a "market" of them, but they weren't at the tournaments, or maybe just didn't like that feeling, like you said, of being the "oddity" in the room. These things are so complex to try and puzzle out the cause/effect relationships.
Also... I love your forum icon.
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Nashua, NH