"That's because it always goes up."(TM)

The above phrase is a registered trademark of the Real Estate Crash

Yes, I agree that a significant technical innovation will cause dollars to start flowing to new games. The primary reasons I'm interested in a predator are for its relatively budget price and built-in scarcity.

For the same basic reason people still go to movie theaters to watch an "unproven" movie instead of re-watching the Godfather. There is something in human nature that wants to be part of the social experience that goes with things that are new, exciting and maybe, just maybe, epic.

The LCD has the potential to be a game changer. It totally comes down to what they do with it.

The DMD allows for more effective communication with the player which in turn enables the design of deeper games. However, the depth of some games exceeded the limits of the DMD a long time ago. Games like LoTR and TSPP are still incomprehensible to 90% of the players.

With a LCD, the display could now do essentially what Bowen is doing in his tutorial videos. Imagine you complete an objective that locks the ball. That "unlocks" a 15 second strategy video that shows you that you could have also stacked a mode with the objective for bigger points, which in turn encourages you to put more money in and try to replay the mode using the new strategy. Or you could unlock flipper technique videos that show you how to do a drop a catch, nudge, etc.

The storylines could get a lot deeper and engage the player more and in interesting ways: moral choices that affect the storyline and scoring, for example.

On the other hand, they could use it to just show the score and some crap 3D animations and video clips, in which case we'll have the equivalent of the interactive movie games of the 3DO and Sega CD.

In many urban areas there is still decent location pinball. We have 450 games, 250 venues, 2 pinball museums, and 3 pinball leagues in the bay area.

Exactly.

Learning the rules to pinball has traditionally been a matter of "bumping around in the dark". It's an extremely old school and frustrating approach. Some games included tutorials and novice modes, but a combination of the limited tech and poor design limited their usefulness. At best they served to inform, but fun? No.

Besides, if for nothing else than "attract mode" alone, with respect to WOZ, what better way to attract newbies to pinball than with a clip from the most popular movie of all time? Can't you see the game, sitting in the corner of a bar or amusement area, nobody playing it and then a clip comes on the LCD screen of the witch saying "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too!" or some other famous line from the movie? Who in the world who has seen the movie won't at least turn their head and look, let a lone walk over and investigate? If it gets them to drop in some quarters, mission accomplished.

Also spot on. Aesthetically, the DMD is basically a car with roll down windows and no electronic key option. You can argue all day long how those things don't affect the "driving experience", but you cannot tell me that new car shoppers don't insist on purchasing them.

It will never be like it was, but can it evolve and keep going? I think so. The main thing is we have to forget the arcades of yesteryear in any vision of keeping pinball alive.

I used to be hardcore Street Fighter player in the 90s. By 1996, the scene was dying and arcades were closing up left and right. Fighting games were becoming increasingly harder to learn, effectively shutting out new players.

In the late 90s the fan base launched web sites, started putting videos online, started organizing
meet-ups at peoples' houses to play on the consoles and started doing tournaments using consoles. The internet infrastructure finally caught up and online play became a reality. And while many in the scene decry internet play, it's brought tons into the scene. I honestly did not think the scene would survive till now, but it has, and the tournaments are bigger and better than ever.

Pinball can do the same. Not the same way, but it can find a way. As evidence of that, some dedicated players are "working the web" to make it happen. You have sites like pinballmap.com showing players where to find games. You have sites like this one bringing the community together.

Guys like Bowen and orgs like PAPA are creating video tutorials, and Pinball 101 showing how to do the moves - In the last couple years alone I have seen these efforts elevate play at tournaments. Novices tend to have a *much* better grasp of rules, stacking and flipper technique, and more and more people of my generation (gen X) are learning the tech side, to keep games in shape. One the reasons I run as many tournaments as I do is because of the help and amount of "template" information, software and knowledge on the internet that explains how to do it.

Let me get this right, you're in Pittsburgh?