I set up an Xbox in my office/game room. I will play pinball while my son plays stuff on his xbox. He is starting to spout off phrases when we are out and about. For example: whirlwind call out “here it coo-omes!”. He will say it driving in the car when rain starts hitting the windshield.
I believe those callouts will pull him into playing when he gets older as part of his progression into the hobby.
Quoted from Blitzburgh99:I set up an Xbox in my office/game room. I will play pinball while my son plays stuff on his xbox. He is starting to spout off phrases when we are out and about. For example: whirlwind call out “here it coo-omes!”. He will say it driving in the car when rain starts hitting the windshield.
I believe those callouts will pull him into playing when he gets older as part of his progression into the hobby.
LIONMAN!!!
Quoted from Blitzburgh99:I set up an Xbox in my office/game room.
I set my old Sega Genesis up in my pinball room. Now nobody wants to play pinball anymore. It's all about Arnold Palmer Golf, World Series Baseball, and Mario Andretti Racing.
All the kiddos at the Maker Festival were all over it for two days straight. They loved pinball.
IMG_6593 (resized).JPGIMG_6596 (resized).JPGIMG_6599 (resized).JPGIMG_6602 (resized).JPGIMG_6607 (resized).JPGIMG_6614 (resized).JPG
IMG_6594 (resized).JPGIMG_6595 (resized).JPGIMG_6597 (resized).JPGIMG_6598 (resized).JPGIMG_6600 (resized).JPGIMG_6601 (resized).JPGIMG_6603 (resized).JPGIMG_6608 (resized).JPGIMG_6609 (resized).JPGIMG_6610 (resized).JPGIMG_6611 (resized).JPGIMG_6612 (resized).JPGIMG_6613 (resized).JPGAnother large-format game like Hercules, but done better, with straightforward rules, I think could work in the FEC/beach arcade scene. Pinball looks TINY compared to most games in these places. It's all giant pac man, giant space invaders, rock em sock em robots, etc. Make it big, loud, simple, and fun.
Quoted from jwilson:All the kiddos at the Maker Festival were all over it for two days straight. They loved pinball.
A straightforward game with easy to understand rules and a cool retheme. What's not to love?
When my daughter was young she would only play the older EMs. I asked her why. She said because she could read on the playfield what it was she was supposed to do.
A lot of us take for granted after years of playing that it is easy to figure out what you need to do to succeed on these games.
Quoted from westofrome:Another large-format game like Hercules, but done better, with straightforward rules, I think could work in the FEC/beach arcade scene. Pinball looks TINY compared to most games in these places. It's all giant pac man, giant space invaders, rock em sock em robots, etc. Make it big, loud, simple, and fun.
I just feel like nobody would give a shit unless it were some kind of redemption game.
Quoted from CrazyLevi:I just feel like nobody would give a shit unless it were some kind of redemption game.
No reason it can't dispense tickets. 10 tickets for each jackpot!
Been giving this some thought lately. I've had some of my kidkid's 10-12 year old friends in my game room seeing a pinball machine for the first time. The current market for new machines is toward affluent men equipping private game rooms. The coin door is a vestigial nod to heritage rather than the purpose of the machine. Once the current generation who can afford a machine and played pinball in their youth moves on, it's game over. Pinball may be a victim of its' own success in the end. New machines are becoming g too complex to be reliable on route, too expensive to pay themselves off. I think the key to the future is to look to the past, when pinball was boredom therapy while waiting for a pizza or a load of laundry or for mom to do her shopping at the mall. A pocketful of spare quarters in a bored kid's pocket easily parted with to pay for a $600 new wedgehead.
What is the appeal of pinball at its' essence? Hitting the ball at a target with a well timed flipper shot. Achieving goals. Reaping rewards for your skill in the form of high scores, extra balls, free plays, or just beating your pal. Spare quarters still exist, spare dollars are not as common. Getting one's wallet out to play just isn't as appealing. If there's a 10,000 dollar machine out on route at the local Laundromats I would cost $2 a a play to begin to pay for itself like that $600 wedgehead, not exactly dropping a spare quarter. And the average guy isn't going to invest the time to learn a deep ruleset and play modes necessary to really enjoy the game. SO...
What about a new generation of simple games of skill, stripped down to the essence of pinball, cheap enough to be profitable on route at a spare quarters pricepoint, simple enough to be reliable enough to route? Like the better classic EMus with a cheap, reliable SS system running the solenoids and scoring. Sitting next to a new Iron Maiden machine they may not attract any attention, but that new IM isn't there, it's in some dude's man cave. And you've got a spare quarter....
Here,we have a great operator in SKL Arcades! he single handedly does a tourny here every month at a great location called "The Dip'This has brought together us who are into the hobby,and promotes pinball play! Last month,a guy nobody knew blew away our local high score champ,brought in by the tourny he always wanted to do,so,Just go for it!! Have fun,B safe,peace!!!!
Does pinball really need to grow?
In 2000, Stern was looking in the rear view mirror and wondering if they would go under just like Bally/Williams one year prior. Tournaments back then were 4-8 local people who were considered weirdos. Outside of Chicago EXPO, pinball was small, very small.
Fast forward to today. Pinball and pinball people are everywhere. Custom machines, barcades, boutique pinball game companies, Pinmame emulation and cabinets, huge multi day tournaments with 100's of people, pinball shows in just about every city with a population of 1mil or larger, multiple leagues in nearly every city, it just goes on and on. NONE of that stuff existed at this scale from 2000-2008. The pinball club/culture has expanded for sure.
Historically, the pinball industry is part of Americana. I doubt it will ever completely vanish. How many jukebox collectors do you know? Conversely, how many comic book/ comic toy/ Star Wars enthusiast do you know? Comicon events are huge right now and the market for those related movies and merchandise if off the charts, compared to pinball. In some ways, pinball is a a small section of THAT culture. Just look at recent pinball themes/liscenses.
I have always been content with where pinball has always been. If it grows, that's ok. If it all but vanishes, that's ok too. We can't just be content because we have been raised in a country where you can't help being spoiled by it's current consumer culture.
Your smart phone is old and you will always want a better one. Your sports car is not a Tesla and you will always desire a better one. Your house is not up to the current cultural norm and you will always want a larger one.
Pinball can be an expensive hobby but it doesn't have to be. You can always track down a beater that is a good game for under $1,000 if you make some connections and network a bit...
Pinball is ok right where it is currently and IMHO, society does not need for it to exist in any other way.
This post is long, but touches on the points others have made in this thread about people being drawn to EMs.
I brought my friend into ReplayFX on Saturday, he's in his low 30s, he's done a fair bit of console gaming and is a very talented PC gamer (considered top 5 Dark Age of Camelot player all time, very high rank in Starcraft 2). His first three games of pinball ever were on Wednesday at a bar near his apartment, and then his first exposure to games other than Tron were at ReplayFX on Saturday.
His review was essentially that DMDs are too complicated for a novice. There's too many things to shoot for, which needs to be done too accurately, and the points you receive are not understandable. Even with house balls he was enjoying EMs and early SSs because he understood the goal of the games and how to accomplish it: get points. He didn't need control and didn't need imamaculate aim because the rewards from every flip are clear and the switches are right out in the open, making clear targets, instead of hidden within 7 tight shots at top of the playfield. I think that's an important point to reiterate: the switches are the targets and they look like targets. When I was playing Tron with him and saying "hitting the motorcycle shots will get you a multiball" it wasn't obvious to him that the light cycle inserts correspond with the ramp or lane behind them, because there was no physical target to be seen, only the negative space of that shot.
Since then, I think Team Pinball and their The Mafia game might be on the right track with their back-to-basics design. Sure, the price isn't right, but the simplicity of an EM with a ball saver to help reduce house balls and a clear path to points seems like the right formula to attract new players, instead of foisting them onto the complex scoring of a game like Guardians of the Galaxy.
Any operators want to chime in on how PBR does versus DMD/LCDs?
Quoted from misterschu:Any operators want to chime in on how PBR does versus DMD/LCDs?
PBR was a terrible earning game for me and could not compete with other newer games. Only thing good I can say about it is that it needed very little maintenance. This "make pinball simple" idea may work with a better game, PBR isn't it.
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