No.

Maybe... don't?

My own brain glazes over when a competitive player stands next to me and starts telling me those things. I just want to play, in my own way, and have fun.

Pinball is fun, even if you don't know the rules. Stuff happens, a lot of stuff, lights flash, sounds, and when you don't know the rules it's all happening magically.

As for the question of this topic;

It's a lot easier to convince someone to put a buck into something than think they're going to buy a machine of several thousand dollars. So the answer has to rely on public play.

Us nutjubs who insist on buying commercial machines for our homes should be considered the fringe, and the business would be more healthy the more in the fringe we are.

That’s the whole point... if you try to explain, you lose them nearly instantly

Location Pinball doesn’t make financial sense. It needs too much space, and too much maintenance to justify the costs. Rents keep going up. So there are only a couple kinds of ops left. Those that do it for the passion of the hobby, and those that do it to push something else (like drinks at a bar).

I look at the two amazing locations near me that closed last year. Both of them were clipped because of real estate prices. And how many games through the coin box does it take to pay for a full shop job on a game? And crazy customer expectations where they always want the latest $5600 game? It just doesn’t add up anymore. That’s why location Pinball is almost dead.

WD40 & lots of sunlight! lol

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It's been almost dead for 20 years. But you just can't kill it!

The most obvious answer that nobody has mentioned yet is: Make Pinball part of a new fad diet.

That’s it. That’s all you have to do.

How about "Bowflex Pinball", or maybe "Nordic Trac" Pinball themes?

I'm having a bunch of non-pinball people over tonight and set the outlanes to their smallest position. Might get some anecdotal evidence about whether an easier game makes people more interested.

You need a young "Antihero" that withdraws from his annoying friends and retreats to a lonely 1-player machine in the corner of a Bar, dance hall,whatever. Curt Cobain and James Dean are gone,but theres another one waiting in the wings. The whole movie doesn't have to be based around pinball, but the story must be good.
This 4-player happy,fun, social nonsense doesn't apply to pinball, it was a mechanism for shy introverts who had a panic attack walking into a club to retreat to,and still be a part of the party. It also attracted girls from the same mode,looking for a guy they could relate to.
Movie,cool loner, cool loner girlfriend, cool machine.
No Teenage mutants or Simpsons here. We need a Rebel Without a Life SS with missing paint and stained cabinet.
Pinball will return and all the lonely people will return and hook up and want their own machines.

As others have noted, pinball machines cost too much and require too much maintenance. The Dave & Busters in our area used to have some pins, but got rid of all of them years ago. Barcades offer pinball to draw customers who will pay for the machines by buying overpriced alcohol, but that won't last. Over time people will lose interest and barcades will dwindle just like bars that used foosball tables to draw customers years ago. The cycle is inevitable.

Donate a project game to a new protege, and teach them how to restore it properly.

It works.

I actually believe Atari had it right all along.

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Don't you guys think this whole pinball growth thing is starting to get a little out of hand?

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Feed me (quarters), Seymour!

perhaps deeproots alice in wonderland will help grow the hobby.

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Totally...lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=24&v=lYmd5mME2kE

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...And yes

...yep lol

...uhhh yea?

...yes! lol

https://vimeo.com/204316711

and...I'm done lol

...nope

In the end it all comes back to Tommy. As he is the only one that has ever officially made pinballs grow. Big ones! With handles.

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WHY does it always come back to Tommy why?!?!? lol

Stern growing pinball, ca. 1977

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The wife & I don't have kids but most of our friends do. They LOVE coming over to see our dogs and play some Pinball. I think you gotta get them hooked while they are young.

The kid on the right is actually really good...and he's only 7.

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massaging them seems to work

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got you all beat.

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CPR’s new business model will help. It will likely drive some new niche industries as well with new printing methods and 3 D printing becoming more mainstream. There’s a lot more people with mechanical, electronic and woodworking skills looking for interesting things to get involved in than there are those with the patience or skills to do playfield or backglass painting. As a result more machines become available for a lower cost. The 10 year search for expensive rare parts will be a thing of the past with less reason for people to hoard machines or parts. Want to drive the hobby? More working machines that people can actually play even if they’re in basements all over the country. It will drive itself.

Reverse engineer the Stern SPIKE II system and offer those on the market. This will allay obsolescence fears for those who like the machines now but aren't willing to risk not having it working in the future. Could also provide someone a meager existence (the only kind pinball offers...)

The USB connector is the proper level for the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for pinball electronics. Run it with Windows, Linux, Commodore 64, whatever.

FAST & Multimorphic are on this path now, JJP & Stern are not.

JJP runs Linux on a fairly standard motherboard connected via USB to their I/O board.

This will help save a lot of old machines. Compared to restoring an old car at today's prices, restoring pinball machines is a cheap replacement hobby. And cleaner to work on, too.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-exibit-at-the-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-museum-opening-july-1#post-4478339

The old business model of selling machines needs to go. It's outdated. Those machines existing need to generate more revenue in other ways.

One new vlaue stream should be services. Don't SELL machines. Lease them in a subscription. In stead of paying 7k for a new machine, why not lease machine time for S150 per month and have a different machine every three months. That is not liited to experts who like to repair machines, but opens the market to those who JUST want to use them. I'm sure there are more models out there.

Also, stuff is happening in gaming, which pinball needs to understand and adopt. The opportunity in WiFi and web connectivity for example.
This will allow
- virtual tournaments with machines that automatically sync their settings over the internet in order to let people compete
- high score lists on the cloud that get fed by the machines over the web
- be able to challenge a specific player to a head to head game, in order to win digital assests to a game, a special skin to the screen or a virtual medal.
- also pinball needs to find a connection to the purely digital gaming world, as this is a big driver nowadays. how can pinball enter e-sports without being awkward?
- in-game purchases to enhance the experience, like digital accessories to the games.

So yeah. Change the business model to today'S audience. That'S my two cents.

Anyone could create that business... if it made business sense.

.

1800 bucks a year, and in the end, I have... nothing except a year of fun. That's actually much more expensive than buying them, playing them for a year, and selling them. I can buy a Stern Pro at the current (insane) price of 5600 bucks. Play it for a year, and sell it for 4000 bucks. It would be cheaper, and the game would be snapped up in a second at 4k.

https://tntamusements.com/rental/

TNT does the rental practice.

Keep decent working games in places that people can play them. Get younger people interested. Explain to people that these games are easy to maintain and come in at all different price levels. I work with a guy and recently convinced him to buy his first game.. Volley for $200 (what a steal). I helped him fix a couple things and pointed him to Clay's repair guide. His kids love it and he's looking for a 2nd pin and building a mame cabinet.

All of these reproduction backglasses, plastics and playfields are going help save a lot of games.

I was going to say o-din, modern themes are a good way of getting new people exposed and interested in pinball.

GOTG is proof that the thing is a hit in home and out on location. The 2 I know on location near me always have people on them and a lot of the time it’s people that have never played before.

I have a number of friends who would buy their first ever pin with a theme like Fast and Furious, Jurassic World (yeah we have had two JP pins but it’s still a modern billion dollar franchise along with F&F, the mission impossible franchise has been growing rapidly with each release, films with cult followings like DREDD and SAW would be modern and appeal to people - if people are willing to spend nearly 13k on a prop beartrap from SAW and thousands on other collectibles they will buy a 6k pin.

Pinball used to be purchased almost exclusively by operators and game times needed to be long enough to keep people interested and playing but short enough to keep earnings up. Now that a significant number of machines are being purchased new for home use there is a need for deeper rulesets, but different skill levels mean some people will never reach the ultimate wizard mode on certain games. Stern should add programming to allow a player to input his initials prior to starting a game and then have the player choose whether they want to start a new game or resume their saved game in progress (much like some home video games). Separate high scores should be kept for games completed at one time and for games completed in stages (much like some machines already save high scores separate from extra ball buy-in scores). This would make really deep rulesets appeal to more players and allow some people to play modes they wouldn't often reach otherwise.

People walk into the barcade room where my pins are, excited to play pinball. They play a solo game, next to their friend who does the same. Each ball lasts about 10 seconds or less, each time with an accompanying complaint to their friend (last one I heard: “God, I hate it when it goes under the flipper!!!”).

They leave the room after playing one game.

There’s little point in figuring out other ways to grow pinball until the above is solved.

Ball savers. Shoot again. These guarantee a player will get a minimum seconds before the ball gets sucked down for good. The pinball equivalent to a video game giving you 5 lives.

Don't all of the new games have ball savers?

I mean, I most people who don't play pinball don't know that there's a point, game, or even technique. They approach it like a pachinko machine with flippers. Sometimes they get lucky and something happens but the rest of the time it's just mad flipping when the ball gets near the bottom and it stinks when the ball goes down the hole. I don't say this as a slam on non-pinball players, pins can seem forbiddingly byzantine if you know nothing about them, and there's no reason for anyone to know anything about them, which makes them an interactive, money-eating curio. I don't know what the solution is for that, besides having lots of people who play pinball go and play on location near people who don't play pinball, and hoping the gravitational force of an enthusiastic crowd might draw some people away from Pac Man to find out what this pinball thing is about.

Yep. Ball savers are on wherever they can be...some as long as 9 seconds. Outlane posts are all the way in on the shortest playing games.

Ball savers only give terrible players a few extra seconds. They can save you from the bad luck of your first or second shot brick draining, but they barely extend the game for new players. How helpful is a mulligan in golf to someone who slices all their shots out of bounds?

Average ball times are 45-60 seconds, but when experienced players are lasting several minutes, it means that lots of people are draining almost instantly.

Having actual guaranteed ball times, which you can do on Jersey Jack games I believe, would be a lot more helpful.

But still, modern arcade games don’t kill you instantly if to suck. Look at something like Cruisin USA (and the rest of the series). You pay for one race, and you get to finish no matter how bad you are. Imagine if it was over as soon as three other cars passed you?

Hey, watch it.

And would also help keep older farts like myself who already lived through the past and have no desire whatsoever to relive it enthused.