The Economics of Pinball (2009) | Hacker News Reader

The Economics of Pinball (2009)

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> 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.

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

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

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

When sales declined quitting pinball was an obvious choice for Williams as they had the huge gambling machine market where they already were making much more money.

Stern made the pinball market work because it has gone extremely commercial, with licensed themes to attract casual players and layered game rules to attract advanced players.

That is the only way to survive in the pinball business, it’s a difficult, risky business with high upfront costs and short production runs to recoup the costs. You can only afford a few flops before you’re bust.

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.

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.

Wasn't that the same idea of the Williams Pinball 2000 machines (Revenge from Mars and Star Wars Ep1)?

Oh, I do like the electromechanical machines of the 70's. All the clanking and grinding and clunking and burned out lamps made it real.

Discussed at the time:

How Pinball Ate itself: The Economics of Pinball - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=947417 - Nov 2009 (27 comments)

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.

> Later designs would allow the threshold to rise quickly to combat the wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem

wizard-goes-to-the-cinema problem?

"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. "

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?

Pure speculation on my part, but I would hazard a guess that it's a call out to the song "Pinball Wizard" by The Who (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinball_Wizard). Some pinball wizard goes to the movie theater where it's common to have a few arcade and pinball machines in the lobby and racks up an incredible high score that is unbeatable by your average movie-goer while waiting for popcorn. This discourages other customers from playing and the high score is adjusted down to encourage more play.

Many Cinemas/Multiplexes will have a a room full of video games (and previously some pinball machines). These will be mostly played by novices who are playing a game while they wait for their movie.

Since these novices are not very good the replay score will be automatically tuned down on those machines. Which causes a problem if a "Wizard" starts playing on them since he will easily reach the replay score. Thus the machines need to be programmed to react quickly to a sudden increase in player skill level.

The next sentence addresses that: "Then anytime an above average player gets on the machine, he’s getting free games all day long."

Since the replay score is set based on the top percentage of scores, if the majority of players in the movie theater (novices) lower the average score, a good player (wizard) is more easily at the high end of the score distribution, earning free plays consistently.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Bride of Pinbot is a sadistically difficult game.

It can be, depends a lot on how steep it is and if the flippers are good. Weak center ramp shots can often go back straight down the middle. If you get the ramps down, though, you can just spend all day hitting the center ramp, or go up the left ramp to advance the story (that said, I can never get the billions without cheating, and my machine has had some weird issues for a while, going to try a new cpu board and hope)

Pinbot isn't exactly easy either.

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

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