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The Economics of Pinball (2009)

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Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#11

This whole thing sounds like a case of chasing the wrong market killed it. When I walk up to a pinball machine and put a buck in (or thereabout at my local pinball place) and the game is over in 15 seconds because I suck, I don't put another buck in. So the minimum skill level is too high to attract new players. I'm pretty sure that they can make pinball incrementally more difficult simply by raising/lowering bumpers…

Those bumpers you refer to are the posts at the entrances to the outlanes, which are the channels at the far left and right away from the flippers, where you can lose a ball. Those posts are now almost universally adjustable, for a wider gap to drain more balls or narrow to keep them in play longer.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#12
post #5
post #3

This article is very misleading. Pinball has gone through many eras, and it is true that Addams Family in 1992 was the high water mark, but there's an equivalent peak in late 70s for the EM (Electromechanical, think gas-station price cylinders scoreboard). The article mostly talks about the SS era (Solid State, think 7-segment display scoreboard) which dipped a bit from the late 70s but ended in the late 80s early 90…

Popularity has exploded the last what, 3-5 years? Prices on Pinside are kind of insane as of lately. How much can be attributed to deeper rulesets (plus the beautiful LCD screens and LEDs) vs the uptick in the barcades where pinball co-exists with the 16-bit gaming, providing more exposure? Stern has been able to do what Gottleib could never do-- make a good table using 3P IP (Haunted House was neat). Do they have an…

Stern only does themes that are a licensed intellectual property, since around 2003. And even more specifically, they only do licenses that are a franchise rather than any specific individual movie, since that will become dated. (The one notable movie exception was Avatar, and original property exception was Whoa Nellie.)

Also, Williams' Attack From Mars wasn't a knockoff, it predated the Mars Attacks movie by a year, it was just coincidence that the two industries parodied the same thing around the same time.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#13
post #2

The Japanese Pachinko (pinball) market is bigger than the casinos of Las Vegas, Singapore and Macau combined and is dominated by ethnic Koreans like Masayoshi Son of Softbank whose dad was in the pachinko parlor business. This might explain the "gambling" tendencies of Masayoshi Son and Softbank with investments in WeWork and Better.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/CEO-in-th…

When American pinball was basically just gambling it was also a big market. This led to the mob controlling pinball in many parts of the country. Some cities banned the game, including Chicago, ironically home of most of America's big coin-op manufacturers.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#14
post #8

> All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score. Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software. High Speed changed all that. It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval. If you’re ever at a pinball arcad…

And no equivalent in video games.

Actually, Q*bert has this but the opposite. In stand-up cabinets, when Qbert falls off the board, one of these knockers simulates the sound of him falling on the ground. So it's a signal of failure, not of epic goodness.

https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=9182

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#15

This whole thing sounds like a case of chasing the wrong market killed it. When I walk up to a pinball machine and put a buck in (or thereabout at my local pinball place) and the game is over in 15 seconds because I suck, I don't put another buck in. So the minimum skill level is too high to attract new players. I'm pretty sure that they can make pinball incrementally more difficult simply by raising/lowering bumpers…

Agree 100%. I am OK at pinball but it's depressing to have the balls drain in the first minute on a new game.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#16

This whole thing sounds like a case of chasing the wrong market killed it. When I walk up to a pinball machine and put a buck in (or thereabout at my local pinball place) and the game is over in 15 seconds because I suck, I don't put another buck in. So the minimum skill level is too high to attract new players. I'm pretty sure that they can make pinball incrementally more difficult simply by raising/lowering bumpers…

Those bumpers you refer to are the posts at the entrances to the outlanes, which are the channels at the far left and right away from the flippers, where you can lose a ball. Those posts are now almost universally adjustable, for a wider gap to drain more balls or narrow to keep them in play longer.

There's a few games with a (computer controlled) block for the center drain too. But mostly, early drains have been addressed by kick-back and ball saver. I don't know exactly when ball-saver came around; my Bride of Pinbot (1991) doesn't have it, although it does light an extra ball for free on your last ball if you ran through your first several balls (defaults for three ball play, but configurable) too fast (configurable by the operator, default may be 60 seconds?), but my uncle's Indiana Jones (1993) had it (Indy: Don't touch anything) and the interwebs say The Addams family (1992) had it too, but I didn't play that enough to have the ball saver phrase stuck in my brain.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#17
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those bumpers you refer to are the posts at the entrances to the outlanes, which are the channels at the far left and right away from the flippers, where you can lose a ball. Those posts are now almost universally adjustable, for a wider gap to drain more balls or narrow to keep them in play longer.

There's a few games with a (computer controlled) block for the center drain too. But mostly, early drains have been addressed by kick-back and ball saver. I don't know exactly when ball-saver came around; my Bride of Pinbot (1991) doesn't have it, although it does light an extra ball for free on your last ball if you ran through your first several balls (defaults for three ball play, but configurable) too fast (confi…

Ball saver was invented specifically by Terminator 2 (1991 after Bride), because the plunger sends the ball into the center of the play area, where it could drop down the middle before you got any chance to do anything with it.

Addams supports ball saver in software, but it's not on by default factory settings, as it is for almost all later games, so you only get it if the operator enables it in the menu. Designer Pat Lawlor didn't like the ball saver crutch and also tried to minimize its use in Twilight Zone (1993), though after that it became fully standard.

Addams does have a different form of ball saver like this, though. Almost all games dating back to the early 80's will give you the ball back if it drains without ever hitting any playfield switch at all. This happens because the machine can't distinguish between this case and the ball failing to eject out of the trough to the plunger in the first place, so it errs on the side of letting you play again.

For Addams (and other games but most notable for Addams), exploiting that no-switch-drain became a strategic point: deliberately plunge softly so the ball will get to the flippers without hitting any switch, and if you fail to trap and gain control at the flipper, you'll get it back.

What you mention for Bride is called a "pity extra ball", lighting one for you if you did very badly before starting ball 3 (usually determined by score, not play time.) A fair number of Williams machines had that in some form, and occasionally later Sterns do too. It's functionally the same as an extra ball awarded by any other means, and nothing to do with any kickback or ball saver.

Kickback at the bottom of an outlane dates back to at least Firepower (1980), which has target banks at an angle that will often rebound the ball into the left outlane. I'm not sure if anything earlier than Firepower had that.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#18
post #8

> All pinball machines offer a replay to a player who beats some specified score. Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software. High Speed changed all that. It was pre-loaded with an algorithm that adjusted the replay score according to the distribution of scores on the specified machine over a specific time interval. If you’re ever at a pinball arcad…

50 years of casually playing and I had no idea. As soon as you described it I knew what you were talking about though.

Re: The Economics of Pinball (2009)

#19
post #5
post #3

This article is very misleading. Pinball has gone through many eras, and it is true that Addams Family in 1992 was the high water mark, but there's an equivalent peak in late 70s for the EM (Electromechanical, think gas-station price cylinders scoreboard). The article mostly talks about the SS era (Solid State, think 7-segment display scoreboard) which dipped a bit from the late 70s but ended in the late 80s early 90…

Popularity has exploded the last what, 3-5 years? Prices on Pinside are kind of insane as of lately. How much can be attributed to deeper rulesets (plus the beautiful LCD screens and LEDs) vs the uptick in the barcades where pinball co-exists with the 16-bit gaming, providing more exposure? Stern has been able to do what Gottleib could never do-- make a good table using 3P IP (Haunted House was neat). Do they have an…

Haunted House is one of my favorites. 3 floors of pinball fun. I was fortunate enough to be given a Medieval Madness machine. Love it.
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