If VR pinball lowers the price of entry and increases the fan base... great! It will be good for the pinball hobby as a whole. It's not an either/or thing. The pinball pie just gets bigger for everyone.

(now summoning my inner Alan Watts)

By now you've probably noticed the increasing number of video screens which have been steadily consuming "real" things and experiences for years. Things like restaurant menus, billboards, airplane arrivals/departures, car navigation, and of course our ubiquitous smartphones which serve as the master key to this digital frontier. And yet, ironically... the more we delegate to virtualization... the more important reality becomes as we take it for granted.

Many world religions acknowledge that even their best sculptures, paintings, and writings are "tainted by imperfection" relative to the goal of translating what they consider divine. In other words, virtual reality will only ever be as good as those who create it. It will never trump direct experience... which we all seem to know and appreciate as we leave the movie theater to draw a breath in the open air outside.

One of the reasons I collect and restore EM's is because they are such a huge middle finger to this shrinking world of digitalization. Classic pinball is a shrine to "glorious maximalism"... beautiful, large, and impractical. All of those reassuring clicks, clacks, bells, and buzzes crackle like an electric campfire to gather around and engage others casually. If for only a moment.

Sitting in your home, alone, with goggles on might eventually simulate the noises and gameplay of an EM well enough... but in my experience if you are a pinball owner, you are also a pinball mechanic, and there's a little magic in that manual knowledge which translates through the machine into the experiences of others. "Real" pinball is where it all comes together.

Still, I say bring on the VR games. More pinball is more pinball.

In the beginning of networked gaming, we assumed technology would bring us all together. It did at first (LAN parties), but soon after the debut of high-speed internet everyone split off to do their own thing. Multiplayer deathmatches are fun and popular but they're not social and rarely does cooperative play take precedence over a single-person adventure catering to your every whim.

The only exception I can think of are those fantasy-type RPG's where people team up to defeat enemies and achieve common goals.

Ooooo that Saran Wrap/Triple Thick video... I shudder every time it comes up. Sealing loose/rotating paint chips in the wrong position is the stuff of nightmares to OCD people.

I need to contribute some EM-knowledge vids. 2017 is the year, methinks.