This is an "all thumbs, head down" generation.
It's how they like to live their day.

Asking them to use independent fingers, move their vision around a playfield by moving their head a bit more up or down - and to stay focused on a moving ball?

LOL - who we kiddin'?

I know for my kids, it was a combination of factors. It wasn't so much how confusing and complicated pinball can be, it was the reward for figuring it out. The juice was just not worth the squeeze. There have so many more opportunities available to them. The arcades were big back in the day because we were all latch key kids. The alternative to the arcade was doing the same dumb shit you did outside everyday. Once you dropped that quarter, the goal was to make it last. We got better and figured it out because it was a fun and new experience. It was a lot more fun than kicking rocks. Why would any kid invest that time and energy. It's not like they have been carving their initials into trees. They share their lives with millions of people. My kids had shit to do from the moment they woke up until the moment they fell asleep. If the reward was there they would figure it out and that would be the end of any player over 30 winning a tournament ever again

Right, but you can't tell me you remember the soundtrack to 12 Angry Men, Fight Club, Alien and 2001. They would be lacking without soundtracks but they don't have the same recognizable melodies and yet they're all in the top IMDB 100 list, some of which beat those movies you listed.

wot

The thing is that these kids will eventually be our age. I had no nostalgia for pinball and only got into it by playing pinball arcade. Pinball has a lot of weaknesses, but its strength is that it's actually a fun game that stands the test of time -- not just something that taps into nostalgia like arguably a lot of older video games. Not saying pinball will thrive in the future, there are a lot of things working against it, I just don't think old people dying off is going to be what kills it.

The display does gives you a lot of instructions but most people don't look up when playing. Even if the display was right on the pf it's hard to keep reading instructions while playing. More callouts might help but don't think I want to hear "shoot the ramp" or "shoot the whatever target" over and over and over. Plus, sometimes there are a lot of things going on at once. Rarely is there just one thing to shoot. Most games have a whole variety of objectives you could be going for at once. A game that forces you down a linear path is not good. The only thing I can think of is to have a novice or advance game mode selection at beginning of the game. The novice game would have simple rules and objectives. However, that wouldn't be the real game and don't think anyone besides little kids would like that.

i told my 15 year old about this thread and said why don't ya'll play pinball and she answered 'we have the internet'

You DONT remember these?! Absolutely iconic scores & the films would not be the same without them.

This is the most out of touch boomer shit Ive ever heard

2001 may literally be the most iconic score in history
the score at the climax of Aliens with Bishop piloting the drop ship out of the exploding base has been re used about a thousand times in other, lesser movies

fight club is trash not worthy of remembering

His name was Robert Paulsen.
His name was Robert Paulsen.
His name was Robert Paulsen.

Thank you.
You are my hero.

I didn’t know there were others out there!

A pinside poem is born.

This is a “fingers on the flipper buttons, heads down” generation
It’s how they like to live their day.
Asking them to use a game controller with more than 2 buttons, move their vision around a 4k monitor by moving their eyes a bit more up or down - and to stay focused on side quests?
LOL - who we kiddin’?

I don't think there has been a video game controller with less than 2 buttons since... Atari 2600.

Fight Club blew my little 15 year old mind when I saw it, but I haven’t gone back in about 20 years now. However, it did introduce me to The Pixies so I am forever grateful. Not sure if the original score is memorable but it secured “Where is my Mind” a classic.

You know a theme that might work to get kids involved? Dude Perfect. A game designed around “trick shots” (aka combo and such) in order to score points. I think that might be a way to create rules that interest kids, but still complex enough for pinheads.

For everyone who doesn’t know isn’t familiar with Dude Perfect - go back and watch some of their most viewed videos.

Some comments made me think of kids and their stick hoop.

Never heard of this....looked it up. That's a hard NO for me...lol...maybe Ben Heck can incorporate it into his Bible Adventure game.

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Look them up on YouTube…they are great. Also… probably the single most popular thing with kids ages 8 to 15… but still popular with older teens

Nah, I don't watch religious content. Maybe they're big with kids in evangelical circles...

In any case - pinball themes always comes back to "who's buying games?". The goal of pinball factories isn't making games "to get kids into it"...because kids aren't seeking out public spaces for gaming, and they don't buy pinball machines. Any manufacturer makes a game based on Jesus Boyz, they'll sell zero units.

I am not sure where that quote came from, but they definitely do not produce “religious content”. I mean, thinking that they are making content based on religion is so bazaar that it is almost funny.

Literally the front of their own website lol.

Did you watch any of their videos? They throw balls into nets. I don't exactly watch them often but I've never seen anything even remotely religious in their videos. And who cares if they are religious anyways? Does that somehow reduce the enjoyment of hitting a shot in a pinball theme based on throwing balls into nets?

Maybe we need an edgy atheist table. Every callout starts with "actually", there will be an overweight neckbeard basher in the middle, a fedora hat tip shot, a Selfish gene multi ball and the final goal is to get to the pearly gates but all you get is a game over when you achieve it.

but for real, I'm way past the demographic for that youtube content but I've watched a few dude perfect videos and never seen anything remotely religious in them. They literally just throw balls into nets. I think it could make for a fun theme with lots of different trick shots to try and hit.

In all fairness I don't understand ALL the rules to all of my games either....

Sounds boring, and no one would buy that machine. Next.

I have a design on my computer I'm working on. It it's a bi level design that incorporates video game modes and both video and hybrid modes.

In starting out you pay a video game to advance to the pinball mode then after pinball you play another video game mode to complete an objective.

After that the game mixes it up with pinball and hybrid modes.

So...Baby Pac-Man?

Gottlieb Caveman beat them to the punch.

Looks like this thread may have nearly burned itself out for now. FYI, I posed a similar question on Tiltforums a few months ago. You can read that thread and what some top-level players and game designers had to say here:

http://tiltforums.com/t/rules-overload/7217

That was an interesting read.

I was merely suggesting better messaging and possibly some optional "training" modes to help introduce newer players of any age to pinball - not to make the rulesets less complex. Unlike some people, I do think there is value in an optional mode on free play pins that you can select instead of standard game mode that feed you a ball and let you attempt a shot multiple times to figure out the angle without the stress of the lights and callouts. You wouldn't ask a top level athlete to only practice in live game situations so I'm not sure why suggesting this seemed so uncalled for. I don't want the games to be less complex, but modern games have a video screen that has an attract mode...

Something some people don't realize is that it's a lot easier to grasp the more complex rulesets of today if you started playing pinball in the 70's and gradually learned new elements of pinball over time as they were introduced. To make a video game analogy - it's a lot easier to be a master and have a good understanding of an MMO like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV if you played since the beginning. In those games, every year or so, a new patch or expansion would come out that would add a radical new gameplay element and you would learn that new element and adapt. But if you jump in now after maybe 10-15 years of these expansions and patches, you have access to ALL radical gameplay elements from day one and it's super overwhelming - and nobody else wants to teach you because they understood it just fine without help (because it was drip-fed to them) so you're probably just stupid if you don't understand it all and not worth their time.

That being said, I can also see long-timers not exactly thrilled more people like me are getting into the space because it's driving up the price of pinball, so there's probably some merit in keeping new people out so demand eventually lowers and pinball collecting can be a sensible hobby again.

I like this idea. A good analogy would be speedrunning. Speedrunners don't practice new strategies during their live runs, they use savestates to make it more efficient to grind. If pinball is going to be treated as a sport it should become more user friendly without sacrificing depth.

Pinball's not a video game or a sport...it's pinball...so...let's enjoy pinball and stop trying to compare it to & turn it into things that it's not.

As someone who volunteers with the Games Done Quick marathons, I like this analogy.

Pinball has had a competitive element since the 80's when you started having high score lists and initials. Entire conventions exist around pinball tournaments with hundreds, if not thousands, of entrants. The IFPA exists. ESPN The Ocho aired competitive Pinball on ESPN2 just last year.

I guess it's just semantics. I don't consider video games a sport, either...despite the competitions, leagues and prizes.

My point was actually more about comparing it to speed runs and video games. A video game will always be in a controlled digital environment. Speed runners can speed run because they can memorize what they need to do and the results will be expected. Even the best pinball players are going to get caught off guard by the randomness of a sling or target. A great pinball player will never totally perform 100% as intended.

Ah, never seen a speedrun destroyed by bad RNG, I see. (Especially in newer games where the random number generator is seeded by the current time rather than how many seconds since the system was turned on like in previous consoles.)

But, like other activities where you're hitting a ball with a rectangular object, whether that object is made of wood, strings, or plastic and rubber - sometimes practicing in a non-live and a more controlled situation can make it easier for someone to adapt when external forces get in the way.

Everyone learns differently. That's what makes us all unique.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. After playing my home EM exclusively for a few weeks, I played a new game at a bar. What kind of struck me was how much EASIER the new game was than the EM. Until I realized that it wasn't.

My old EM is brutal. You stand at the game and you can figure out what you need to do right away, but doing it is hard. I feel like I've made a ton of progress by not draining just slightly more than people coming by to play.

I think that new machines have figured out a good way to make games fun for a variety of players by having deep rule sets. A new player doesn't notice how complex a new pinball machine is. They put in a quarter, randomly start shooting the balls off, and they start seeing a lot of combos go off and hit ramps without much difficulty and walk away to tell their friends how good they are at it.

A person who plays a lot of pinball knows that what the casual player is seeing isn't REALLY the good combos and high scores, and gets to grinding to pick them out. And there is a lot there for them to find that the casual player would never even know about. (Which is all pretty identical to the speedrunning communities.)

I actually think it's pretty brilliant on new game designers. They've managed to make games that appeal to a lot of different skill levels.

If there is an area that pinball games can work on, it's the intermediate players, who start to realize there's more to the game, but don't have a clear idea on how to progress. But in today's day and age of the internet guide and youtube videos, it doesn't seem like nearly as large of a chasm anymore.

That's pretty much it. Almost ignorance is bliss. I took a friends kids to an arcade last week and one of them was so proud of his score of 110mil compared to his brother who only got 30ish - the game was Demolition Man. He was happy that he'd got what he though was a good score, used the trigger grips, had made the claw work and possibly even got a multiball - he didn't care that there was so much more to see on the game, or that the score wasn't great.

But there seems to be an expectation that any level player should be able to blow the game up and reach wizard modes, and if they can't it's because the game's too complicated - not that they just aren't good enough, people don't seem to be able to accept that - maybe it comes from giving out medals and trophies to all competitors as kids, rather than just the winner getting the trophy and 4th place being told tough luck.

Social media / streams are a double edged sword. Firstly they often show you what is available in the game and what you're currently missing out on, but they often also show you how to get there or at least point you in the right direction.

If they weren't there you wouldn't know you were missing out, just like my friends kids, and would likely be just as happy with a score good for YOU.
Regardless of the game focus on your score, or progress, don't focus on other peoples achievements.

Depends on the parents. I had my son on the glass of my cyclone when he was 6 months old watching the ball. Before he turned two years old he was truly playing pinball. Not just smacking the flippers. He just turned 8 last week. Has played nearly any chance he can get. We’ve had many different machines and he just loves to play. He’s been in tournaments since he was 5. He’s placed first several times and beat out the teenagers he’s plays against. It’s all in how you raise them. I’m a proud parent!

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In my experience, its more the boomers who played casually in the 70's and 80's that complain about new pinball machines being "too complicated" when I bring them over to my house and try to explain the rules on some of my newer games

Most kids can not:

1. Read or write cursive writing.
2. Read and fold a paper map.
3. Read an analog clock.
4. Do face-to-face interactions.
5. Make correct change without using a computer.
6. Live without social media any length of time.
7. Sit still and just relax.
8. Address an envelope correctly to be mailed.

I remember playing a Getaway High Speed 2 at a movie theater when I was probably 10 years old and really enjoying the rules. It was relatively easy to figure out "Ok, now I need to hit this loop 5x more to light the next mode". Hitting shots to unlock modes and then playing through them became addictive. It was never difficult to learn, hell learning and memorizing combo's and fatalities in Mortal Kombat 3 for the SNES was much harder lol.

Where I think pinball has become too complicated for some is with all of these crazy multiplier and other math related rules behind mode scoring. A vast majority of players IMO, myself included, could care less about that stuff. I simply enjoy playing through a deep ruleset that features objective based modes along with great mode choreography. This is why games like LOTR, Hobbit, Ghostbusters, and Turtles are some of my favorite games. There's a story being told through code, there's things to unlock, and while there are some complex multiplier rules at play they appear to be behind the scene rather then the focus.

The games that focus too much on math related rules are the ones I can pass on. The tournament scene that has grown heavily over the past 10 years is probably partially to blame for this. Games that tend to focus on points and math rules tend to suffer in the mode choreography and objective based ruleset areas.

My 10 year old just put up a 1.4 Billion score on Godzilla Prem.

I think it's more social media thing than the participation trophies (which, while real, I think their effect on the next generation is hugely overstated). I can tell from my own personal experience, you find a hobby you like, you go online, maybe watch a twitch streamer, and see how they do it. But the problem is that they make things look EASY. The gap between you and them is debilitating.

I think that's why meetups and amateur leagues are awesome. You start to see people who are in your range of ability, both a little better and a little worse, so you know what improvement gets you. Also, the really good people there can scale back their advice for someone at your skill level. (I also think that streamers like ABE_FLIPS are great, because they produce skill related content for people getting into the game, as well as your typical stream).

1. This skill is outdated and being phased out in schools. It's honestly much more important to teach kids how to type (which I'm sure they're better at than the generation before at their age).
2. Go hiking and camping a lot. Friends' kdis are fine at this. It's pointless for pretty much anyone else.
3. All my friends kids and the kids in the school I worked at (there were analog clocks on the wall) seemed to manage just fine
4. Even during covid, kids seem to be doing alright at hanging out with each other.
5. There probably is a generational gap with this one. I'm better than most of my friends, having worked at an ice cream parlor during my high school years, but older coworkers seem to always be better at it. However, since I'm also card based most of the time, I don't really see a big loss.
6. I won't disagree that kids use social media too much, but they do seem to have some knowledge of how addictive it is and can drop it when they need to. It's my parents generation that seem to not be able to let it go.
7. Yeah, also haven't seen anything that says this is true, outside of just kids naturally being more hyper than older adults, but that isn't something new

I’m Gen X, I’ve noticed the problem is more with the Boomer generation than “kids”. My kids friends all between the ages of 10-16 tend to play the pins a lot more having way more fun than my parents, uncles and aunts. They tend to say the same things about it, “I don’t understand how this works!”, “It has too many rules”, “it’s too fast”, “you kids don’t know how to just sit and chat”. Where the kids just come and play for hours(some are getting pretty good). I think this is another argument meant for the millennials, Gen Z, and the boomers.
I’m just pretty much here shrugging my shoulders and saying “Whatever “.

Everything is too complicated for kids today. Can you imagine the questions the forums will be riddled with when they need to fix a spike 2 system?

My favorite is when 60yr olds are lifting pinballs and carrying them up the stairs and the 15 year old helpers are standing there with phone out or hands in pockets. Like does a door need to be held open or a tailgate opened up?