What do you notice observing non-players playing pinball?

Awesome! What games are you starting with?

Our line-up is Lord of the Rings, Creature, Attack from Mars, Spiderman, Funhouse and White Water. Gonna be fun to see which games pique peopleā€™s interest the most. If any ā€“ who knowsā€¦ :smile:

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Iā€™ve noticed a big difference in noob behavior based on how busy the place is ā€¦ when they have a chance to watch other people first, they make fewer mistakes like walking away before the game ends. Sadly, many places now have nobody playing when the newby walks in, so they have no reference points. This is especially true at theaters, restaurants, bars, etc. where there may only be one or two machines. Imagine dropping someone whoā€™s never seen golf on a course next to a bag of clubs and thereā€™s just a card saying hit the ball in the holes with the flags in them ā€¦ would they have a clue which club to use? To take the flag out of the hole? What to do if the ball goes in a sand trap ā€¦ or a pond? If there are a bunch of people already playing, they might slowly figure a few things out, but if theyā€™re alone there ā€¦ OTOH, it might be fun to see what they do!

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Man, thats a great start.

Beautiful lineup omo.

It was a lot easier for noobs to develop the passion back in the EM & SS days. Credits were cheap and you got 5 balls, plus you could look at the PF & work out what to do. Today games cost $1 for 3 balls and beginners get hosed within 2 mins while pros can play for half an hour.

What do you think of putting a solid state on site on 25 or 50c and let people learn the basics on that?

One I know I was guilty of when I was newā€¦ in a manual plunger game, always pulling the plunger back as far as possible to send the ball blasting into play.

The price to play has not kept up with inflation, so itā€™s actually cheaper today.

But agree, more people are pros now, so people can play much longer games.

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I have now printed score cards for our location pins, with a different newbie hint on each pin, based on notes from this thread:

ā€œIf you lose a ball quickly, you often get it back automatically, so stay alert. Ball saved!ā€

ā€œDid you hear a loud crack during or immediately after your game? You probably got a replay, i.e. a free extra game!ā€

ā€œThe display shows whose playerā€™s turn it is to launch the ball. Itā€™s easy to get confused if someone gets an extra ball!ā€

ā€¦and so on. Again: Huge thanks for this thread :smile:

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In my experience, newbies have no idea they matched. They walk away and leave a credit that gets sniped by a good player, who goes on then win a replay, and gets two free games out of it. This is one reason I set mine pretty low - I want people to earn free games with skillful play!

Currently, people get replays when they need them the least

  • a newbie getting a match and not realizing it
  • a good player after a great score and a long enough game time that they might not be inclined to play that machine again (and they almost certainly earned a credit from a replay en route to their high score)

As an operator, I would love to see code that strategically gives out free games when it thinks it could earn more money. Like for instance, at the end of a multiplayer game it should be more likely to leave the players with one single credit on the machineā€¦so theyā€™re tempted to put in enough for another multiplayer game. (If one of the players earned a replay, then donā€™t give the free match credit, since there is already one sitting there from the replay).

Really liking these ideasā€¦I was actually just brainstorming game specific posters that call out the basics of a particular game. Maybe stack three on top of each other, so once youā€™ve got the basics down, you can pull back the corner to reveal the intermediate poster beneath!

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An operator in the SF Bay Area have been putting PayRange into his machines (I know he got the idea from either Seattle of Portland).

This gives him more flexibility. E.g. every 8th game is free or special offers for special occasions (heā€™s been giving out 25Ā¢ discounts on tournament nights). Itā€™s pretty cool stuff.

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Point of Informtion: Minnesota did it first - with the East Side Pinball folks who also run the coinbox podcast from an operatorā€™s perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qm2Honyvho

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@keefer can probably tell you for sure, but I believe most newer games do this.

PayRange looks very slick, and their solution is a lot cheaper than card readers (which is the other semi-realistic alternative). Unfortunately they donā€™t welcome non-US customers yet, though.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmayyyyyyyyyyybeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Donā€™t really want to go into too much detail, but there is definitely consideration given to several variables.

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Wow, I didnā€™t expect this topic tobecome so replied-to. Iā€™m glad to see thereā€™s an interest in observing beginners and how to either show them the ropes or preventing them from doing things thatā€™d turn them off of pinball.

Iā€™ve been in some other forums regarding other hobbies, and by and large, beginners are most often quietly ignored, picked on by the long-time fans, or sometimes even shunned from entering. Iā€™d say to them that such behavior will lead to a slow death of their hobby (except for things like Mario Kart, where so many beginners started coming in that they drowned out those elitist long-time fans, forcing those long-time fans to either adapt or leaveā€“most left).

Regarding PayRange, that actually solves another issue I had forgotten about: There are people who, simply put, donā€™t carry cash on them, and this is an issue that will become more pronounced as the years go on and people do more of their shopping online. Even when thereā€™s a change machine available, you still need dollar bills to feed into the machine, and most ATMs only give out larger bills (if thereā€™s an ATM on the premises). Very few pinball machines Iā€™ve seen have credit card acceptors attached to them, and no pinball manufacturer pre-installs them in. Itā€™ll be very handy to give people an option to play the machines if they donā€™t carry any cash on hand.

Oh, I see adults doing that too, where they donā€™t know thereā€™s a start button. It might have something to do with some EMs beginning automatically after you put coins in them, causing the mass media to depict it in that way. Sterns have a ā€œPRESS STARTā€ prompt on the DMD, but it only shows up about once per minute for about 5 seconds, and as you mentioned, beginners donā€™t look at the DMD anyway. I feel like, short of a sign card or someone telling the player directly, the machine must have some sort of sound prompt. The button isnā€™t really that obvious either (but I donā€™t know how it can be made more obvious).

Most beginners do not know there are rules to a pinball game. Unless there are scoring reels, they wonā€™t know thereā€™s a score either. Iā€™d bet they play only one game because they didnā€™t know what was going on or that they felt they didnā€™t really accomplish anything. From what I see, besides an easy-to-start multiball being an incentive for beginners to try for once they stumble across it, some big moving part that gets activated during certain easy-to-start conditions can also do it for people. Lots of people at 82 play Iron Man, for instance, and Iā€™d bet itā€™s because of Iron Monger in the middle. Even more so because hitting Iron Monger enough times begins a multiball (which even the most beginning of beginners figure out). They have AC/DC in there too (I think Premium), and people go CRAZY the first time they hit the bell and it swings, sounding the long ā€œBong!ā€ noise.

Heh, people do that? I donā€™t pay attention to how much money people put in these machines, so I didnā€™t know about that! Do you mean they just play one game and leave?

Definitely though, multiplayer is not the sort of thing that people recognize right away, even on EMs with multiple scoring reels that read ā€œ2 CAN PLAYā€ or ā€œ4 CAN PLAYā€ in brightly-colored letters.

If itā€™s people playing one single-player game, then someone else playing, sometimes itā€™s up to preference. I personally prefer to play a full game by myself, and whenever I go play with someone else, they almost always want to see me play a full game first before they play.

If they STILL donā€™t know there are rules, or they canā€™t hear you, theyā€™ll focus entirely on the on-playfield action and ignore any sounds or DMD animations. The people gasping, Iā€™ll bet, are people who werenā€™t paying attention to what you were saying. Playing through the modes means nothing to them if they donā€™t know what a mode is.

Thanks for listing these things you observed too. Glad to see that youā€™re looking for ways beginners get stopped, sometimes before they even play, in order to prevent them from happening. That being said, nothing stops someone who prefers Giant Jenga or other redemption gamesā€“the allure of winning an iPhone is pretty tempting, and most people donā€™t know theyā€™re rigged. (I could write an equally long post about beginners at redemption games, but hereā€™s not the place for that.)

I noticed children catch on FAST and only need to be told something once to remember it when youā€™re teaching them about pinball machines.

You know what I think? When people get older, they see media with pinball in them or pinball elements (whether it be movies, TV shows, video games, what have you) and create assumptions about what pinball is like based on those depictions. A lot of these weird beginner quirks, I feel, stems from those depictions (such as there not being rules, not knowing a game does not begin automatically, that nudging is illegal, and them being excited at multiballs and big moving parts because they are not commonly depicted in fiction).

But children donā€™t have that ingrained in them yet. Instead, when you show them the way, theyā€™ll trust you on it, and theyā€™ll see that it works and it becomes their way. They donā€™t have an assumed way, which Iā€™m sure is why I try to tell people about start buttons or Fire! buttons or whatnot and they brush it off.

Wow! Even I donā€™t see beginners doing this sort of thing too often. I figured at least everyone whoā€™s heard of pinball knows there are flippers, and the only time I see someone mash flipper buttons constantly are little kids (like, around 6 to 8 years old), and they only start doing it when theyā€™ve been draining rapidly.

Choosing a game due to theme, however, is perfectly valid if youā€™re not familiar with them already. If you know nothing else about these games, the theme is the first thing youā€™ll see.

And I didnā€™t think thereā€™d be many parents whoā€™d refuse to pay 50 cents for a game but still pay 25ā€¦A parent unwilling to part with 50 cents, Iā€™d figure would also be unwilling to part with 25 cents. I didnā€™t play pinball when I was little because my father didnā€™t want me spending ANY money at arcades. Heā€™d drop me off in an arcade and just tell me to watch people play the games there because, to him, itā€™s just as good. Sometimes, heā€™d give me 4 quarters and expect it to last the full two hours I was there, or maybe he figured that, because he never liked playing games at arcades, he assumed I wouldnā€™t either.

[quote=ā€œkeithm, post:16, topic:1001, full:trueā€]If I ever had the opportunity to stock pins in a public place Iā€™d do as much as I could to get people interested in playing them. Powerpoint presentations offering the most basic rules of a game (Metallica: Bash Sparky 5 times to start multiball, etc.) Cool posters offering the most basic tips on playing, such as simply trying to catch the ball so you can aim shots.

Then you hopefully get people drinking their beers, chatting with friends, glancing at these things on the walls and they start thinking about playing a few games to try them out.
[/quote]

I think signage could work very well. Apron cards donā€™t really stand out much compared to if the basic rules are on a wall or above the backbox. Illustrations would really help too, since, in this case, someone whoā€™s never played Metallica before might not know who Sparky is (even though in hindsight, itā€™d be pretty obvious heā€™s the guy in the electric chair).

Yeah, the general impression of pinball by the general public fits MUCH closer to an EM than anything made afterwards, so they can figure whatā€™s going on easier. And with 5 balls, even a first-time player will get to be at the machine for a good while, especially with all the bumpers and slingshots everywhere.

If it werenā€™t for the polarizing theme and the unusually high price, I wouldā€™ve been interested in seeing how well Whoa Nellie! would do on location. I think itā€™s, by far, the easiest pinball machine to understand for a beginner released in the past three decades.

Putting EMs on location could work, but itā€™d have to be something like The Amazing Spider-Man, something with a theme thatā€™s still relevant today. Itā€™ll be more approachable, but people are going to gravitate towards something recognizable and in their immediate interests with flashy lights like The Walking Dead. Heck, The Wizard of Oz, with its large monitor display and neon-like color-changing LEDs, is always an eye-catcher.

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I recall this being part of the code in Wms games, I believe people have talked about it being way more likely to give a single match in a four-player game than you might expect.

Mr. Keefer said as much in a podcast intv, iirc.

Weā€™ve got a Melody in the 11-game collection at my local venue, and it gets tons of action from random casual players! (Funnily enough, itā€™s the competitive pinball crowd that seems to dislike it.) The first few weeks after it arrived, it was the most-played machine overall. Things have evened out since then, but it remains a solid contributor to the line-up after nearly a year in the spot.

Actually all WMS games already adjust match percentages higher for multiplayer games for exactly this reason. (Someone may have already mentioned this in the thread, Iā€™m in the middle of it and thereā€™s like 20 comments left to read.)

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