Modern code has only so much to do with the entirety design. It's a big part of the design but all parts must be awesome or the entirety of the project doesn't achieve greatness.
There are many examples of great playfield designs that don't have great rules. Much less common is a great rule set that is hindered by for playfield design. To be clear, there are many great playfield layouts that are specificall hindered by their rule design. Pat Lawlor's games between TZ and Rbion are prime examples of this happening. Why? Ask Larry DeMar.
Conversely, the best rule sets in the world will not save a poor pinball shot layout. The best rule sets in the world will not make a pinball design like Gilligan's Island, WWE or Rob Zombie ever come to anything that the limitations of the physical layout will allow for.
This is why Lyman Shears (risk/reward) and Keith Johnson (story driven) have been such influences on our modern pinball game and its history. And while their philosophies in relation to rule design we're very different, both of them achieved excellence within their own pinball rule philosophies. Strangely enough, the power of limitations seem to be beneficial for Keith Johnson as some of his more recent games have been so complex, just because he could do it. That the player ends up getting lost in the detail and complexity of the designs.
Lyman's philosophy is very much about building to a crescendo and then collecting on the work that has been built up through gameplay. This is especially evident in games that were not always received that well by casual players but were incredibly challenging for competitive play. Avatar and iron Man are excellent examples of this.
Keith Johnson's best rule designs seem to have come in the mid-90s. Games like Lord of The rings, Simpsons pinball party and world poker tour offered incredible rule sets that required stops along the way. To get to the bigger rewards. Even world poker tours more literal interpretation of score 25 million points in a number of different features on the playfield to achieve the one of the six qualifiers for the final wizard mode is the makings of an incredible pinball journey. Even though, it may be a long one.
Overly complex and convoluted real sets do nothing more than confuse players who are trying to understand them and fly over the heads of people that aren't sincerely interested in them. Pirates of the Caribbean is a perfect example of this. Strangely enough, the Jersey Jack pinball team has been getting a better balance between complexity and effectively communicating with the player and having enough for casuals to enjoy and the depth that is required for serious players to really dig their teeth into. Willy Wonka may be the best example of this so far.
Rule design is something that has changed in pinball permanently. Keith Elwin has introduced a singular integration of a pinball designer and a rule designer within the same name. This encompassing vision is the next level of pinball design. Traditionally, pinball designers had to rely on programmers for their rules. Now the collaboration has changed. And the quality of a game design is now finally realizing that if the rule set does not equal or surpass playfield layout and the quality of the feel, of the shots, it comes up short.
This is also one of the things that amazes me about the quality of gameplay with earlier designs. Especially with em games, pinball designers were usually electrical engineers. They had to have a mind for being able to visualize the electronic pathways and logic that would make up the rules of the game play. Strangely enough, communication with a player was usually much more literal. With the scores and the text being printed directly on the playfield. Telling you exactly what was going to happen when you were going to hit a Target and if there was a difference if a light was on, or not. This continued through the early solid state era and eventually got lost in the early 2000s. Visual cues became different colored lights as compared to iconic, or graphical text that would tell the player what was happening on the playfield. Strangely enough, this is not lost on certain designers.
Compare the playfield on Jurassic park, as compared to the playfield on LED zeppelin. Icons and lighting and text is integrated in a way that there isn't confusion with what the player needs to do as compared to just having different colder lights to guide a player's eye around the playfield.
Even so, rule design is still of a higher value. How do you entertain and captivate someone? You can have the most modern and sleek of designs, but if it doesn't come together, the player either becomes frustrated, or bored. Neither are conducive to a full coin box.
I was at Lyons classic pinball hanging out last night and they did a count of the game plays and earnings over the past week. The number one game? Attack from mars. 75 cents, three pleys for $2. The mandalorian on the other hand, was set to a dollar a play and was the 8th highest earner on the floor. This is the operator's dilemma. If you're doing this for a living, and the design isn't pulling in money, you're not going to keep the game around.
Many players will not play older vintage games. Whether it's the technical limitations of electromechanical technology and simpler rules. Or the fact that designers kept the stopwatch in their test facilities. They broke down profitability of a game by how long the ball stayed on the playfield in averaged it out. Contrasting this to how much a game cost you could quickly estimate how much money a game might take in if it was being played with some consistency. A designers client was the person who operated the game on the street. It was a money-making proposition.
Personally, I adore older electromechanical games. Especially when their rule set (Atlantis, El Dorado, Grand Prix, Time Zone) blends well with the layout design and the technology available to the manufacturers at the time. This is brilliant design. And this is what all the modern games of today (playfield, rules and mechanical devices) stand upon. I can't tell you how many times I've met pinball players who can't stand the luck boxes and then we play a game or two. After we play a bit and talk a bit, they start to see the connections between what was then, and what is today. They may still have their preferences, but an appreciation of pinball, or anything for that matter. Requires an appreciation of how it came to be.
Today, with collectors buying games, they're looking for a longer game for a longer term investment. We see interwebs streams of games lasting over an hour with frequency on different media platforms. The consumer base as well as the smaller segments of pinball culture are driving pinball design in to new and in some ways more refined directions. The industry used to be operator driven. Games made money on the street. As an operator, even at a dollar a play, I can't afford to make a dollar an hour. Can you? Today, a large proportion of pinball players are home consumers. The end usage of the game is different. The purpose of the game is different. And to ignore one, or the other is to ignore good game design. Even though those directions between consumers are different, they're still intertwined. They both drive each other. They just do it in different ways. Getting this balance right is one of the biggest challenges for a pinball designer. I still believe that the savviest pinball game designers design games with the operator on the street in mind first.
Modern code, for the modern player. Game design and getting the balance right between entertainment, longevity, both immediate and over the years and most importantly. The ever elusive one more game addictive poll that great games and great designs all seem to embody.
Rule design is a big (but not a complete) part of game design... In total. Are we spoiled by these new fanglesd rules? Yes, yes we are. Just like modern mechanisms. Just like televisions bigger than the ones we grew up with in our living room. Just like higher fidelity audio. Just like... But that is the challenge of game design. And that pinball game designer's quest keeps moving forward every day. The job of a designer is to identify needs and to fulfill them as completely as possible. That's what pinball game designers were doing 50 years ago, that's what they're doing today. The biggest difference between those errors is the technology and the tool set that they have to work with to make these projects fulfill the desires of the customer base. Personally, I feel very fortunate to live in a world like that.
Today a great day to play pinball!
