Quoted from Rarehero:How does the artwork keep getting worse!?!? At what point will they get themselves a Dirty Donnie or Zombie Yeti!? It's massively important that these games LOOK GOOD in order for this endeavor to succeed. I say this as a fan of the platform!
Quoted from Rarehero:If they had a theme that was exciting (unlicensed or licensed) with fantastic art direction, hype and opinions would change 100%. Most pinball people still see this as an interesting tech demo with awful art. Sure they had a ton of "games" at TPF, but they were more concept demos with even worse art! They need a killer art director who understands how to make these things shine on a budget. Being frugal doesn't always have to result in poor art...you just need a good artist who knows how to stretch the budget and create a few appealing assets to manipulate well.
These posts still ring true. Don't shoot the messenger, but as long as these games look like tech demos put together by engineers the appeal is going to stay super limited. People will come to shows, play them and find them fun, and then move on, because the audience for $10k games that aren't polished is extremely small.
My personal recommendation, take it or leave it, is that one really polished game would sell 10x as many P3s as 7 sketchy tech demos. It looks cool at a show to have them all lined up, you're showing the breadth and possibilities, I totally get it, but few people are going to spend that kind money for this level of presentation. IMHO.
Art and theme and presentation matter, you only have to read Pinside for 5 minutes to know that's true, and not just my opinion.