while I'm not a fan of 'the pin', I'm not going to bash their efforts. Its bad enough that most the world has turned its back to pinball without its fans trying to burn whats left of it.

I hope the Pin does well, and Stern sells a ton of them. Even if it's a sub-par experience, if it gets a young generation hooked, it means a larger audience, which is only good for pinball as a whole.

Redemption machines are hot with the kids, and I personally think its sad that pinball has refused to acknowledge that. In fact pinball has been pretty stubborn in its ways for the past 30 years, probably says something for the state that it is in. The standard game has been 3 balls, and get the highest score you can, and unless your in the top 5, you walk away with nothing but the experience. Even if your in the top 5 players, all you get is your initials on the leader board. Its been that way sense the 70's...

Why not do something different? How about a redemption machine (tickets) where for $1.00 you get 3 mins of play, unlimited balls, and the higher the score, the more tickets you get? If the table is designed right (even allowing for score reduction for balls lost) you could make pinball very appealing for kids again in arcades.

150 tickets for a high score is obviously not very appealing. The fact that there is a problem with pinball and what kids want to play, doesn't mean that there are no solutions to that problem. You just need to be able to adapt and exploit what they want, while still giving the operator a profit.

Giving (x) number of tickets (lets say, a ticket for every 10k points for the sake of example) is a very appealing prospect for players, but not one for the operator. While most small kids would walk away with a handful of tickets for there efforts, some pin-head will come along and with a few bucks walk away with multi-million scores and the entire spool of tickets.

Solution 1: you need to have a reward curve. While your first few thousand points awards a ticket for every 10k, once you get to a certain score you only get a ticket for every 20k, then every 50k, etc, until you can limit the amount of tickets any player can walk away with to an amount that the operator is comfortable with. While still allowing a 'bonus' amount for getting a high score, or for completing missions within the playfield.

Solution 2: if you are on the timed 'infinite balls' mode of play I suggested before, you loose 10% of your score for loosing a ball. While you may have gathered 10 million points and a hundred tickets, a few balls lost and your back down to 8 million and seventy or so tickets.

Solution 3: you get 5 balls during play. when you loose your first ball you loose 10% of your score, when you loose your second ball you loose 20% of your score, etc... untill your 5th ball removes 50% of your score and your game ends. However, your able to 'tilt out' with a button at any time to Bank the points you have scored and end the game. Its a 'push your luck' feature I have never seen on a pin before.

Kids love playing games, and if there is a pin sitting in someones basement free to play they will spend hours on it. But when a pin is sitting in an arcade flanked by 2 redemption machines they know they will get tickets out of no matter how bad they are at them, they would rather walk away with tickets. If you sat down and figured out how to exploit that desire with a pin, kids will play them in the arcades.