If this trend holds RBION will be a perfect 10 by 2045.

BSD seems to keep climbing

Given the relatively short period (6 months), is this data statistically valid? Any number crunchers out there?

Who cares, rankings are meaningless.

The ranking on this site tends to attract the new shiny mentality. In other words, it's pretty much guaranteed that any new pin released will end up in the top 25. I personally think there is a hole in the ranking process and as stated above think it has become meaningless.

How bout Tommy? The pinsound is pretty new, and see only 44 downloads of the OST sound package. (which makes the game killer) I think that's gonna bring it up.. a little or a lot, who knows?

I vote weekly . I like to have the option of a ranking system . A frame of reference is a good thing . The comments left by Pinside members is also interesting and I deem an asset .

If only these rankings meant something....

why are people downvoting this? thanks for the cool little infographic!!!

And they don't. I've never bought a game because of its ranking. It is a minor I fluence of "hey, popular game", but it doesn't factor into my decision much. Any increase or decrease over time is simply manipulation. No game is a one, and no game is a ten, yet there are thousands of rankings with both of those numbers. Total manipulation.

Nope, still says "ranking".

Okay, so here are my 2 cents.

I think the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg. If you really want to get to know the iceberg, you have to read the comments. Is the game unreliable? Is there a wizard mode that's unattainable?

Or...are people as a whole getting worse at playing pinball, because there are more new players? There's also the new/wow factor. As the top ten games get older and more expensive, they're vulnerable to assault from people who have played newer games for less money.

Rankings are broken. Tom and Totan are good examples of this. They are both amazing looking, but the code/rules are meh. The way these rankings are setup tom is top 10 material? Really? A game with a known glaring lack of rules is top 10? Totan is 11...

That right there says the rankings are broken.

KISS will trump every other pinball machine to become the HOTTEST MACHINE IN THE WORLD!!!

Pinside will need to add a long-tongued-smiley-face icon.

Or JPOP has 67 fake Pinside accounts.

I'd be curious to see a graph for I500. When I traded one last year I noticed that it had climbed rankings more rapidly than other 90s games I looked at to compare.

You don't need to follow Pinside ratings, just download my Pin-Ticker app on iTunes.

pin-ticker.png

Oh...here's what I think is really happening for the B titles. Pin's ratings climb while they are underpriced, and they level out when the game's price reaches its true value. That's certainly true for Congo, which was a steal for $1600 when I bought it, but not as much of a no-brainer at $3600.

3
2
1
DRAW!

Rules alone dont make a pin for one thing and the rankings take every aspect of a pin into consideration. Bsd dont have alot of rules but I have the most fun playing it and ft for that matter.

Its still a really good pin for under 4k and take into consideration there aren't many of them and lots of people want one so then supply and demand come into effect

In the end people like what they like for one reason or another and thats what matters

I take the rankings system here with a rather spicy boulder of salt. They're a good guide, but I'm sure there's a margin of error and I have personally witnessed what I would call "shenannigans", even in my short time here.

See, ever hear of Joust? I was fortunate to encounter it at Louisville Expo this year, and it was a blast! But it's incredibly rare and rather odd and not many people have even heard of it. And for what it is, could be rather polarizing.

So how many years has it been listed in the Pinside Archive? Several, at least. But it was never ranked until March because it only had 14 votes - which I discovered when I looked it up after Expo to learn more.

And then I thought, "Hey! I could be the 15th review / rating it needs! And since there's no way of knowing what the 'rated consensus at large' is to this point, it will be neat to see where my opinion fits in!"

So I reviewed it as objectively as possible. I was the 15th vote to get the game ranked. When it was counted, to my surprise Joust debuted with a rank of #86 - not bad for a 33-year-old game few have played or heard of, that's not a traditional pinball at that, which took years to even get enough votes to rank!

Well apparently people stalk and scam this system, because since then there has been a flurry of new rankings, sufficient to knock it to #135. A 50-point plunge in one month, from a 30% increase in votes in that time, after years of languishing. I don't think it got THAT much exposure at Louisville - in fact, I've been told it's kind of an annual feature.

I'm not stumping for Joust specifically. I just found that whole episode rather fishy. Apparently people are really protective / invested in their personal favorites and ratings.

Nuts to all that. I find a good objective review to be FAR more valuable than an arbitrary ratings / ranking system.

Yep happens all the time

Yep, absolutely. 5 people saw Joust suddenly surpass their pet game so they gave it low ratings to compensate. Just another reason to not get worked up over the top 100. I mean it's a nice feature but taking it seriously as a measure of anything of value is really foolish. Too much incentive for people to game that system and they absolutely unquestionably do.

Should just discount most of the ratings that don't have a comment. Same goes for 0 ratings, I don't believe any pinball machine is that bad. I also think any time somethings given an above average high or low score it needs a comment explaining why it's being given that low of a score.

Who cares about the list anyway, I would rather play Funhouse than MM and enjoy Centaur as much as MB so its all relative to the person and his/her preference. The list should only be used as a very loose guide when purchasing pins.

Yes. It be interesting if there was a filter so you could see the raw scores (essentially what we have today), but then click a button and see the "qualified scores" - only counting those scores that are accompanied by the rater and the comments.

I would BET you'd see some serious shuffling of titles...

I assume there's no way of doing it, but a graph showing the combined average rating for all machines would provide some useful context for the above graphs.

I did something similar in 9/2013. Average then was about 7.3. I agree with all of the points regarding vote manipulation but this was a fun exercise for me.

http://toddnappi.blogspot.com/2013/09/an-analysis-of-pinside-pinball-rankings.html