I'm not surprised the IFPA has started doing this. I think it is more motivated by their attempt to stay relevant in the competitive community and compete with the PAPA big-money tournaments than it is to encourage and nurture competitive pinball in general.

IMO, the IFPA is in a kind of "competitive purgatory." Their circuit doesn't have the respect and prestige of PAPA due to the WPPR system which most people don't really understand how it works, and their regular re-balancing and arbitrary re-assignment of points for special promotions. There's not much consistency to it. It favors smaller numbers of obsessive competitors who rank among the top, over more consistently-performing players. Their system also allows people to easily cross borders and compete in less competitive markets in order to bypass their peers and jump into the nationals. The whole competitive scene under that umbrella is a mess.

So now adding more money to the mix, just amplifies the existing issues IMO. Some will like it. Others won't. I see both sides.

Me personally, as someone who ran multiple SCS events and then walked away, I am glad I am not participating in this much any more. The sanctioned events didn't do anything positive for our scene. Adding more money just means more of the same hyper-competitive people that discouraged casual players will show up. If you have a very competitive state, the changes will be more welcome. If you have a more casual scene, the changes mean that your casual leagues will be targeted by, and/or feed more competitive players, many of whom have a tendency of discouraging casual players.

In a general sense, IMO, modern pinball competition is about information/game access more than it is raw skills. As such, in order to be competitive in the high end, you have to know something other players don't, which means a lack of cooperation or secrecy is part of the formula for success, which is antithetical to the conventional idea of competitive pinball as a fun, social sport. So I just don't enjoy the higher-end competition, and especially if the money becomes significant, we'll see more of that unseemly approach towards the sport. I don't think pinball is big or popular enough to withstand a lot of that. No doubt, these changes will energize the competitive markets, but I fear they will do so at the expense of the more casual markets, and end up polarizing the competitive/casual scene even more.

I understand your perspective. You're in one of the most competitive states in the country. It's not like that in some other states.

We've worked very hard to make our scene very friendly and sociable. I'm not saying the high end competitive scene is anti-social. The majority that I've met are very nice, but there is something different about the higher-end competition.

When I got started in the scene, I volunteered at all the major tourneys I could. I saw a lot of mistakes made. I vowed to try and be a better TD, but also encourage more growth in the scene. I met a lot of awesome people, and some less friendly super-competitive players. But it wasn't until I stepped out of the scene altogether, how much more companionship and camaraderie I found. I now look at the sanctioned events at the big shows, with people crammed into small rooms ten degrees warmer than everybody else, the entire weekend, and I'm relieved I'm not doing that any more. It's fun, but I found more fun getting off that hamster wheel. I think the one-off events like PAPA better bridge the gap between the different types of competitive players.

It's funny, but when we started doing competitive events, we went all out. I used to host IFPA tourneys and we'd hook up all the cameras, video displays, do themed events, and have huge parties... early on we had live bands playing - most thought it was a lot of fun.

But the more competitive players, usually from outside our area, would come to the events and complain that it was "un-professional" to have live music playing, interfering with their competitive zone. There were two different worlds colliding.

I guess it just goes to show that you can't please everybody. I don't envy Josh's situation. There's no way to pander to everybody in the hobby without alienating some people. I'm glad I'm not having to juggle that. We still run some sanctioned stuff, but only in our public venues now. We still want to encourage competition, but we're just not sure what the right approach is now. But I think the SCS system leaves a bit to be desired. The competitive levels vary dramatically from state to state, so a one-size-fits-all set of rules doesn't always work well. In our scene, when we started offering more lucrative prizes, the ringers would show up and cherry pick the prizes and discourage the newbies. When we started not offering lucrative prizes, we stabilized our competitive scene and it was more balanced. We needed to do this because we didn't have a vibrant enough high-end competitive scene. It's no fun when the same people win every tournament. I think different areas need to be handled differently.

Among high-level players, I agree, but in markets that don't have 16+ regular high level competitive players, you sometimes end up having a small number of high end players trouncing casual players.

Again, if you're in Texas, it's different from other states like Louisiana. TX probably hosted more sanctioned tournaments in one month than LA did the entire year. Which is why people from Texas who qualified for their state's SCS, instead, zipped across the border this year to sweep the neighboring SCS and get a free pass to the nationals. Ironically, one thing that probably kept this from being more common was the lack of decent prize money. Now I predict there will be even more border-jumping because the chance to win more money will outweigh the need to prove oneself the best pinball player.

I think compared to a more active state, it won't be much, but if you crunch the numbers, the amount of money will still, even in small markets, be significant. We traditionally had somewhat high entry fees because every tourney we did, we custom-designed our own trophies and put a lot of effort into the events. We used to give away really nice prizes... but we found the more lucrative the prizes were, the more disparity there was between our casual players and more serious people who would only show up for the prizes and otherwise not support the scene. I guess it depends upon what the objective is. Some people will be into it. Some won't.

It is fun when you can do that, but the possibility for that to happen is based on how well the tournament is run.

The Texas people joked about how easy it was to cherry-pick neighboring states. But that's because the SCS was run in a haphazard manner. In our state this year, there was not even any EM machines in the SCS. It was all late-model stuff (none of which are on location anywhere in the state) and a few solid state games that were arguably appropriate for high level competition ("one shot wonders" that were easily pwn'd by power players.) (believe it or not but Varkon was in the Louisiana SCS!) This is a testament to the IFPA's rather indiscriminate selection of TDs who are more cooperative than competent when it comes to running a bona fide tournament that fairly challenges all competitors. Note that I'm not complaining about the local TDs and their limited selection of games... they worked with what they had, but it wasn't, in the big picture, a "world class" competition by any stretch of the imagination, and in the end, the IFPA doesn't really care as long as the event is run.

In the end, it is what it is.

I look at sanctioned competitive pinball the way I look at the pinball industry in general: It's not growing as much as it's aggressively trying to figure out creative ways to extract the maximum amount of money from the remaining enthusiasts. I think there are other ways to encourage the hobby without pandering to a small subset of mercenaries and super-collectors.

Super LEs, pre-order mania, games released with unfinished code, taxes on every sanctioned pinball player that goes to a larger pot... these are all desperate measures to extract money from a dying market. They're not designed to expand the market. If pinball was growing, like other eGames, there would be increased prizes from third parties, sports teams and sponsorship opportunities -- players wouldn't be paying more, industry would, but that's not happening. It's a telling sign of what's going on in this hobby.

In most other sports industries, the competitors don't make up the prize pool. Why should it be that way in pinball?

I feel the fee is basically a tax on all sanctioned competitive pinball events and players that ends up in the hands of the top 1% competitors.

I don't see how making it more lucrative will grow the industry. The vast majority of competitors aren't in it for the money and the money doesn't make that much difference. The onus is on the TDs to act as cashiers -- not something they necessarily are excited about doing when there's no real incentive for them.

In traditional competitive industries, it's sponsors that fund the prize money pool. The fact that the IFPA wants players to fund it says a lot about the state of pinball and the degree to which those in the industry who profit from it, aren't motivated or can't see a return from traditionally funding competition the way it is in virtually every other competitive field.

Rather than get players to fund the hobby, I would have liked to have seen the IFPA approach Stern and get sponsorship of $50-100k for the tournament series. That would have been a win-win for everybody. The fee system is a losing proposition for the majority of competitive players. And it offers absolutely nothing to the one group that works the hardest for the IFPA and never sees hardly any return: Tournament Directors. The real value and asset to the competitive scene are the TDs, who in this latest proposal, get another 8 foot length of the shaft.

The pinball version of trickle-down-economics