[HN Gopher] The Economics of Pinball (2009)
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The Economics of Pinball (2009)
Author : saadalem
Score : 42 points
Date : 2021-12-08 13:31 UTC (1 days ago)
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| dasil003 wrote:
| 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 90s. Addams
| Family itself is roughly a dividing line to the DMD era (Dot-
| Matrix Display), which many players consider the golden era of
| pinball where game design also became more precise and more
| "flow" was added to the game as well as more sophisticated modes
| and rules. Williams created many of the most beloved games during
| this period through steadily declining sales which did hit a wall
| and they tried to generate new excitement with their "Pinball
| 2000" form factor where there was a screen inset under the glass
| instead of a DMD. They only released a couple of these games and
| they basically killed the company they were so bad. However after
| that, Stern remained, and the 2000s were kind of a wilderness era
| where they sort of picked up the torch of the DMD era, and
| developed their own modern style. Sales were not high during this
| time, but they were surviving. This was the state of the world in
| 2009 when the article was written, so it's understandable they
| didn't know what was coming. In the early 2010s there started a
| resurgence of pinball both with hobbyists and competitive play.
| Stern found a new stride with a series of games with deeper rules
| and more strategic play with layers of much more complexity and
| stacking of multipliers such that top players can achieve scores
| that would take hours or even days of grinding (eg.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdIArp3BW2g). Over the last 5-6
| years they've switched to full video displays, and a culmination
| of deeper rules and more creative and dense playfield layouts
| being created by luminary new designers such as Keith Elwin (the
| Michael Jordan of competitive pinball). I'm not sure if sales
| have reached Addams Family level yet as I don't think Stern
| publishes units sold, but I'm sure they are within spitting
| distance. Additionally several new companies (Jersey Jack,
| Spooky, Pinball Brothers, etc) have emerged designing and
| manufacturing new machines, none of them the market power of
| Stern, but they are bringing a lot of interesting new ideas and
| super fun games in their own right.
|
| There's never been a better time for pinball.
| vgeek wrote:
| 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
| any first party IP tables, or only licensed? Williams had tons
| of great tables (obvious ones like Medieval Madness, High
| Speed/2, Monster Bash, Hurricane series as a modern throwback)
| that were of their own creation, but could also do good
| knockoffs (No Good Gophers, Attack from Mars) and 3P IP
| (Creature, TNG).
| vikingerik wrote:
| 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.
| jasondigitized wrote:
| 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.
| syntheweave wrote:
| Since the 80's all pinball manufacturers have sought licenses
| by default and used originals as a "B-theme" if the license
| falls through. This is the case because it's still a
| manufacturing business - it needs to be a functioning
| physical object first - while the theme is a marketing
| feature, one that needs quick draws for players and known
| quantities for operators. A license derisks both, so it's
| nearly obligatory for new games. But if you look at the
| virtual pinball space it's almost the opposite. While a
| handful of studios(Farsight, Zen, Magic Pixel) have done
| licensed reproduction simulations, over the years there have
| been far more attempts at original IP, since it's all
| software.
|
| Even Stern has done the occasional original, e.g. Whoa
| Nellie, Striker Extreme. But it's very clear that they have a
| formula and don't deviate much from it - the experiments are
| left to competitors like Jersey Jack and Spooky. Pinball in
| the past decade has been defined by collector's market
| dynamics, a generation that, like with retro gaming, wants to
| buy for the home. So the new games are built more like home
| games than operator games - lighter builds with less
| serviceability, price discrimination features (different
| models with minor elements added or removed) and more of a
| focus on sheer quantity of elements - ramps, lights, toys -
| than one or two "centerpieces". It's only going to last as
| long as that collector's demographic does, after that pinball
| may go dormant again or find a new way of expressing itself.
| vgeek wrote:
| Software only tables do have all types of neat features
| that can't be matched mechanically-- namely the variety of
| "mini game" type tables that Zen has used on their own
| tables. I think the Stern AC/DC sub-table + Banzai Run or
| Safe Cracker novelty dynamic, cranked up to 11. It is so
| much easier to do without physical constraints. Physics are
| so much better vs even 5 years ago, but Virtual Pinball X
| still doesn't match the real world physics of balls hopping
| when you hit certain targets, or even the same clinks and
| thuds. It is light years simpler to run & cheaper than a
| real table, though.
|
| I never get the different edition value props besides
| market segmentation. Obviously the Pro/Premium/LE may have
| different shaker motors, speakers, buttons, but some of the
| price difference seems excessive. Even more so with Jersey
| Jack-- especially on the 2nd hand market. Do red rails and
| legs and a topper make the playing experience worth that
| much more, or will it be that much more valuable in the
| future? (Is it like the collectible market, where things
| made specifically to be collected like modern Star Wars
| figures, won't ever be as valuable as the originals? Or is
| it just a bubble where prices revert in another 5 years?)
| If games like Circus Voltaire have consistent issues with
| the main feature, how will the home versions with multiples
| hold up over x,xxx plays?
| vgeek wrote:
| https://www.multimorphic.com/
|
| I have yet to encounter one of these in the wild, but these
| look to combine a digital playfield with modular physical
| components. It is pricier than regular tables, too-- $15k for
| the base table and 3 modules. It does have new features like
| real time competitions and the whole electronic playfield.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I've played a Lexy Lightspeed and it was definitely
| interesting, but had a lot of reliability issues, and
| ultimately I didn't think it was that fun--I play pinball for
| the physical nature of it, the digital stuff feels like an AR
| gimmick. That said, a really well-designed game could change
| my mind.
| StillBored wrote:
| 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 in critical places,
| but I only vaguely remember seeing that at some point in the
| past.
| vikingerik wrote:
| 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.
| toast0 wrote:
| 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.
| vikingerik wrote:
| 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.
| irony123 wrote:
| Agree 100%. I am OK at pinball but it's depressing to have the
| balls drain in the first minute on a new game.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| 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-the-news/SoftBank-Ma...
| gxqoz wrote:
| 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.
| buzzert wrote:
| > 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 arcade and you hear a loud wooden
| CLONK sound, that's the "replay knocker". It's literally a
| solenoid that drives a piston into the case of the machine, and
| it's intention is to let the entire arcade know "this guy/gal is
| really good". Very satisfying sound! And no equivalent in video
| games.
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| _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
| tomcam wrote:
| 50 years of casually playing and I had no idea. As soon as you
| described it I knew what you were talking about though.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _How Pinball Ate itself: The Economics of Pinball_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=947417 - Nov 2009 (27
| comments)
| mansilladev wrote:
| Black Knight was also a machine that had a grand canyon of a gap
| between the flippers. It was sure to lighten your pocket of
| quarters faster than any other game in the arcade.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| > Later designs would allow the threshold to rise quickly to
| combat the wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem
|
| wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem?
| slyall wrote:
| "Later designs would allow the threshold to rise quickly to
| combat the wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem. The WGTTC problem
| is where a machine has adjusted down to a low replay score
| because it is mostly played by novices. "
| jareklupinski wrote:
| ah ty, sry for some reason my brain didnt parse the
| lowercase, then acronym being the same thing :(
|
| a strange name though, how does a wizard going to a cinema
| reflect novices playing a pinball game?
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