Ed Robertson. Slash. Pete Davidson. Which one does not belong?

Curious why anyone in the hobby would Want it to grow beyond what it is and where its heading unless your an OEM manufacturer? As it is most can't Get a game or they have to pay an extortion rate to find one.

Cheaper games for the good of the sport….hahahahahaha

You sound like the perfect ambassador for pinball

A price equilibrizes supply and demand. That's the only excuse Stern needs. It's not a matter of whether Stern are good guys or bad guys, the prices are a reflection of the underlying market forces. I don't expect my brief explanation to convince you, but I encourage you to trust an economist who says the same thing or study economics yourself. Or provide your reason for dismissing an entire field, which is your prerogative.

ambASSador

Fixed it.

Well, JLo likes JP pro.
Mainstream enough yet?

7123DD64-DA6C-445B-BECB-58C7611C9917 (resized).jpeg

I'm pretty sure this statement will offend 99.93% of everyone on Pinside. For a greenhorn, you're off to a great start!

Thanks for making all my drunken posts look sane.

Start a stupid thread asking for people’s opinions and then down vote anyone who disagrees with you.
Very nice.

Only a total doofus would need to rely on a celebrity to validate an attraction to pinball, of all things.

I can tell from the style of writing that this post smells like Andrew MacBain/Pinball Adventures/Punny Factory. Just a crazy hunch I have. Hit me like a bus when I entered the thread.

Or maybe Kaneda.

Actually, probably Kaneda.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/kaneda-is-back-501-airing-now/page/19#post-6365554 .

In a world under glass …..

12 Years a Slave
Spotlight
Greenbook
Nomadland
Parasite

Good luck ambass

Pinball needs some phresh ideaz from dudes with white stitched jeans and bleached teeth. Yeah, beat it nerd.

No celebrities. Please.

Too much of them privileged, hypocritical degenerates as it is.

And why make it mainstream? Would just turn everything lame. Kdrama and kpop used to be good. Suddenly it became trendy and it's all shit now. No different than American shit, except for a lack of diversity.

So no thank you. Pinball as-is is good. In fact, maybe already too many people considering the difficulty of getting NIB and even used.

I reckon go for it. Your idea just might work out.
There is an audience for everything out there, why not pinball?
Unfortunately the I’m cool cause I have pinball is long gone. It is very much a rich man’s game now and needs refreshing a tad instead of the “look at me and what I’ve got approach.”

It could very well be included with the e-sports crew as a division of its own. We have some characters out there that could make it very watchable.
My thought would be to get some top e-sport players and ask the to have a competition and see how that goes.

Appears to be too many narrow minded people here, the downvotes indicate lack of enthusiasm.
I think it could go very well.
Good luck

I think the closest pinball ever got to being mainstream was when Space Cadet came pre-installed on Windows. Outside of something like that witch makes some form of pinball readily available to nearly everyone, I don't think there's any way to really force it to become mainstream.

A lot of it just comes down to cost, and the availability of nearby locations. The celebrity idea probably wouldn't make much difference for that reason. If a celebrity/influencer talks about a fashion item, mobile app, or snack food, most people can just go out and buy those things on a whim. A pinball machine takes deliberately saving up for a while, and unless you already know you're really into pinball, you're probably not going to do that. Jack Black actually has a pretty popular YouTube channel where he's done a few videos about pinball, and while everyone thought it was really cool, you didn't see all his subscribers flocking to their nearest distributor. I suppose locations may have seen a small boost in attendance, but I don't have the numbers to know for sure.

As for themes, I definitely think we could use some more modern themes. Video game themes would be huge. It boggles my mind that the last video game themed pinball was Big Buck Hunter. A Pokemon pinball machine for example is an idea that writes itself and would be super popular on location (And *would* see extra sales from some big Pokemon collectors, though I doubt many of those people would end up getting into pinball beyond that one game). Most of the more modern themed games are based on movies and TV shows, so it would be cool to see current manufacturers broaden they're horizons a bit for modern IPs and include current IPs beyond what we've seen.

Making games cheaper? That just isn't happening haha. At this point dropping prices even by a few thousand wouldn't really catch the attention of someone who isn't already in the hobby. You tell someone a new pin costs $6,000 or $8,000, their reaction is going to be the same. Maybe cheaper games could allow for more locations to show up, but then you'd start sacrificing quality (Unless current profit margins are *that* big).

Maybe if the OP could get some time on the Stephen Colbert Show, he could popularize it with the few hundred viewers they have.

Well we need another manufacturer with no track record, you down?

I want to see pinball proliferate and on one hand I empathize with your sentiment. On the other hand, nothing great in this world is mainstream. If pinball started feeling like watching the New Years Rockin Eve with Ryan Seacrest, I would be very sad.

I can’t help but notice your 6% upvote percentage, OP. Something in my gut tells me you enjoy that, because not sure one can just stumble into that.

Just think-in the last two years pinball has gone more mainstream than the last 40 years? Social media and people realizing games are good for the home has made everything explode. The secret is out folks-now can manufactures keep up? When the guy posted about pinball in China-it got me thinking. If China and others catch onto American pop culture games-it could be a game changer. America pop culture is hot and pinball is on fire. We had a secret club for many years and I really enjoyed it while it lasted.

OP might have the lowest down vote percentage on pinside.com

Ed Robertson and Jason Sudekus right off the top of my head.

If only it were that easy.

How is the younger audience ever going to afford a pinball machine? Also, most locations are 21 and up that have pinball machines. I definitely want to see more brick and mortar arcades, but they just don’t do well. At least in my area.

Young audiences don’t give two shits about the academy awards.

Make a pin off of current hip hop and rap artists, or video game properties, and you might have their attention, but it’s no guarantee it gonna move the needle at all. Some of the young players I know, don’t care about theme at all, they just want a game that is fun to play.

The biggest issue with pinball not going mainstream is it’s a nightmare to watch for the most part. Heads up challenges help with that, but I still don’t think it’s a game that’s all that fun to watch someone play for the average person.

Most kids that get into pinball are into it because their parents are. So just make babies and force your love of pinball onto them.

Maybe because he says dumb stuff about things he doesn’t understand?

That's what worked for me!

So glad Karl Urban was the difference maker in making Star Trek such a hit.

Colbert sucks

Check out the High Speed 20K thread. Moparjoe .6

There's a logistical problem you'd have to solve as well. Machines are heavy, bulky and take up a lot of space. You can't expect pinball to become mainstream if it's like dealing with an appliance.

I think arcade1up and others have done some interesting things in this space with 3/4 cabs and the use of mdf. However, they lost the feel of a real machine and nudging is a little bit of risk to slide the whole machine easily.

Not sure how you'd solve this problem with all the constraints but in a day and age where most other entertainment mediums are portable you'd have a hard time going mainstream with the current state of machines.

Tens of people agree with you. About Colbert, and your idea to market Pinball.

No thanks, fuck the mainstream

Another brand new account posting troll bait. Let me guess. The author is BallPin's uncle Marc...

Good call on using the French spelling!

Good thing you have all the information and fully understand Stern's cost structure and overhead.
Also, good thing that Stern does not need an excuse to set pricing where people are buying at a rate that has created a months long production backlog.

Also, if pinball goes "mainstream" with "celebrity" support, I'm out.

Pinball was mainstream once or twice in the past. it's not happening again.

It's too expensive, they're too big, they're too expensive, they're too heavy, and they're too expensive.

Also, they're too expensive.

Must be opposite day in Unknownsville.

No thank you. Pinball used to be a somewhat off the beaten path hobby. It has gotten more mainstream as of late and aside from the technological advances with led's and better processing power, I would argue that pinball has not gotten better for it. Prices have gotten higher, folks buying games not to play them but to collect the for theme alone, people being neurotic about how "Limited" their addition of a machine is and then bitch about anything that affects the value of it (be it a topper, a dumb sticker or a remake), not even going to bring up the flipping of games. It is not the same hobby as it was and it is regrettable. What you're suggesting would further erode an enjoyable and somewhat affordable hobby from what it once was. The prices of machines from the manufacturers won't go down (they currently have the unenviable task of making pinball machines in the this supply chain/covid era). The last thing I care to hear about is some instagrammer/influencer babbling on about pinball. No thank you. It is fine (err. . . good enough) as it is.

OP, I understand the sentiment and why you are promulgating this idea, but it would have been a lot better received in 2012!

At this juncture, when prices are increasing, long lead-times are the norm, and it’s a perpetual mad dash to secure a new game, I’d say pinball is plenty “mainstream” enough as it is!

In fact, if it gets any MORE mainstream, everything will start sinking to the lowest common denominator as even the “good guys” join the race to the bottom, and the hobby will ultimately die with a pitiful whimper, crushed beneath the weight of its own mediocrity (and a landfill’s worth of discarded cost-cut flipper mechs and ink-jet printed MDF playfields).

This is so true it almost hurts!

No better way to strip all passion and joy out of something than to sanitize it into universal inoffensiveness.

Imagine your disappointment when Metallica went “soft” and suddenly became palatable your girlfriend, the local AOR program director, your English teacher, and maybe even your mother, then shudder at the thought of the equivalent happening to this hobby!

He’s as good as Trevor Noah!

If only all the networks had someone as funny as Gutfeld!