I know I’ve asked this elsewhere here, but I don’t remember getting a direct answer, so I’ll ask this to everybody here: The opinion that pinball would benefit from having more people playing, more companies making the machines, more competitions going on, and increased mainstream awareness is pretty widespread among pinball fans. I am of that opinion too. But I noticed in most of the other fandoms I am a part of or observe from inside, when I get close enough to the hardcore, the consensus turns towards the other side: Whatever it is they’re a fan of, most of the core fans don’t want it to be more popular, as they feel it will irreversibly change the nature of it for the worse. Sometimes, they just don’t want outsiders intruding into their hobbies. Or sometimes, there is quite a noticeable tinge of cynicism embedded in it: They consider John Q. Public as annoying to be around and get into niche hobbies to escape from the mainstream.
So I ask this to anyone who will read this: Why do you want pinball to break out of its niche? Why are you unhappy with the niche it’s in?
It came back to the top of my head when I was reading about the recent Ghost in the Shell movie and its box office problems. Some anime fans were quick to say that they WANTED it to fail and that Hollywood should stop adapting anime, and I saw sentiments as such:
These replies, by the way they’re written, show that there are people who want anime and Hollywood adaptations of anime to succeed, but at the same time, you can see that there are fans who simply do not understand why other fans want it to be more popular.
I want pinball to be more popular so that I can play more pinball. I want location pinball, and I want leagues, and I don’t just want them in the 10 or 20 best pinball cities in the world.
More popularity means more games on location, larger leagues, more sponsors, large prize money, lower prices for machines with more room for other manufacturers to make a living, and more innovation born from that competition. Good for everyone.
Yeah I mean the supply has to meet the demand so all these new people getting into the hobby and finding out how awesome all the older games that aren’t being made anymore are, that’s driving up prices.
For new games, there just needs to be enough new games shipping timely and reliably and prices will come down on those for sure. Just a matter of time.
Unless someone can compete with Stern the pricing of new pins will not go down no matter how much time passes.
More folks entering the hobby will drive up prices on secondary market since there is a limited supply.
I assume most people want pinball to be more popular because its fun and they want more people to share the experience with.
Some people have large collections and the more popular the more their games will be worth.
Some people work in the industry by either getting money or are a thankless TD and both benefit by having pinball become more popular.
I benefit because i love pinball, have some games on location and also like seeing new manufacturers like Spooky , JJP and PPS with remakes enter the industry. The jury is out for the other manufacturers
Another factor is rarity. While I didn’t pay tons of money for my Warlok, 9ball, seawitch, quicksilver, baracorra, beat the clock ect… I am afraid to sell them due to knowing that if the collector base keeps growing they will be even harder to come by if I want to re-acquire.
I picked up an NOS playfield for Frontier for $150 about 10 years ago. There were 3(!!!) listed on Ebay within a couple months. Those were the days lol
I think a large part of pinball’s current “growing pains” are caused by the fact that there are two separate “make pinball more popular” conversations going on simultaneously:
How do we make pinball more widespread in our communities? How do we increase the number of players, the number of location machines, the number of tournaments available? How do we create vibrant local pinball scenes globally, not just in certain urban centers on the West Coast?
How do we make competitive pinball a bigger deal for spectators, especially those who are more casual in their level of interest? How do we make competitive pinball attractive to large-scale sponsors, so that we can grow the competitive scene in a way similar to the growth and popularity of esports?
From combing through the many #DollarGate threads on Facebook and TF, it seems like many people consider these two goals antithetical. In their minds, #DollarGate, which is intended to grow the State and National prize pools to a level that might actually attract interest from large sponsors (aim 2 above), will stifle the inroads they’ve already made in building a large casual scene in their city (aim 1 above).
It seems like the future state that the IFPA is working toward is one where competitive pinball, with highly ranked and highly skilled participants, is large, wide-spread, easily watched and discussed by “fans.” The hope is that there is also a thriving amateur pinball scene as well, one that may or may not participate in the WPPR system. In my mind, this is very similar to both esports and “traditional” sports, where not every player is going to vie for $100,000 prizes in the DOTA2 International but everyone can choose to play a game on their own time or participate in a weekly Battle Cup, or not everyone participates in the NBA draft but there are plenty of opportunities to play pick-up basketball.
I think it remains to be seen whether focusing on Aim 2 (focused on competitive prestige) also encourages Aim 1 (increased participation at the community level). I personally have no interest in pinball becoming a more prominent, competitive hobby, even though I have the potential to benefit from the increased prize pool as someone who has competed at the State and National levels. I just play because it’s fun and I enjoy sharing my hobby with others on a local level. So I do care about pinball becoming more popular on a community level, and it might be that making it more popular with a viewing audience is the way to do so.
Pinball was not long ago so unpopular it almost went away (well, new machines at least). We want pinball to be more popular because that memory is still fresh and the risk that it could happen again still real.
Oh no please tell me there aren’t people in the pinball community actually saying this. #Gamergate made me shut down my twitter account.
…Getting back to the topic, though, I don’t think pinball could have the same problems other forms of entertainment has as they enter the mainstream popularity. For one, pinball’s been around much longer than most video games and anime. It’s gone through so many changes already, some that became permanent and many that were individual attractions on specific machines.
I totally want pinball to grow in popularity! Since I’m fortunate to work in a pinball parlor, I get to see the faces of many young people play pinball for the first time, and many folks that are older with eyes that light up as they play the game they did in their youth. The right game can inspire such awe in people, it’s fantastic to see. That enough is reason for me to want more people to be aware of it.
Ha, no, just me trying to make a hashtag happen. I will say, having been featured in some media about women and pinball, as well as moderating the “Sexism in Pinball” thread, I have been incredibly pleased about how little similarity there has been between pinball “drama” and #Gamergate. I hope that if pinball gains additional popularity, we’ll still be better behaved than other games communities.
Before I say anything else, I will say that I, also, want pinball to be more popular. But because I want to understand why more clearly, I hope you all don’t mind if I play devil’s advocate.
I’ve observed in some fighting game circles, some pretty livid opposition to fighting game competitions entering the Esports umbrella, as the increased growth will lead to increased visibility, and that would require their pro players to behave, well, more professionally. There are some fighting game fans who really like the drunk party feel that some competitions, even some high-level ones have, and stuff like corporate sponsorship from Pepsi and Wells Fargo and the like means they can no longer hurl trash talk, swear like sailors, shout out memes, and otherwise scream.
I know pinball is nothing like that, but I wanted to point out an example of a group of people who oppose large sponsorship.
Heh, that’s pretty succinct. “FAME.” On the other hand, there are plenty of fans of things who don’t want fame, as it means there’ll be an influx of newcomers coming in, which can get annoying for them real fast. A good example is the Eternal September, a derogatory term coined by Usenet people to refer to the hordes of newcomers going online and using the Internet, which overwhelmed the small communities that were there before. (The “Steptember” part refers to how a college year would begin on a September, and with new students joining computer science classes, there’d be lots of newcomers the veterans would have to endure very September.)
In other words, to some, fame is a bad thing because it means the end of the small communities they’ve grown attached to.
[quote=“ZenTron, post:7, topic:2658, full:true”]I assume most people want pinball to be more popular because its fun and they want more people to share the experience with.
Some people have large collections and the more popular the more their games will be worth.
Some people work in the industry by either getting money or are a thankless TD and both benefit by having pinball become more popular.
I benefit because i love pinball, have some games on location and also like seeing new manufacturers like Spooky , JJP and PPS with remakes enter the industry. The jury is out for the other manufacturers
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For the first point, I can argue that there are already plenty of people into pinball you can socialize with and that you don’t really need more. (I can’t argue with the other three points though.)
That’s a good point. I’d guess that while all of the people who make replacement parts do so out of a labor of love, they can’t just give them away for free the way people can do wit, say, fan translations or game mods.
See, I’ve been in some fanbases that were on the verge of extinction or have had brushes with death, and I STILL would see some people choose to let it die instead of appealing to the masses.
This happened with fans of Sonic the Hedgehog when SEGA was near bankruptcy, for instance. SEGA became a third-party company in response and pulled out of the brink, but the sheer rage in some circles were hard to believe. There were plenty of fans who would rather SEGA meet its end than alternatives (the most bizarre being fervent soldiers in the Console Wars, who were terrified at SEGA games being on Nintendo systems).
The idea behind this mindset is that while there would be no new work for whatever they’re a fan of, they can still enjoy the past work for the remainder of their days.
I’m actually a bit surprised we didn’t see this happening with the departure of Bally and Williams in 1999 to 2000, considering the Stern hate right afterwards.
[quote=“ChubbyGoomba, post:16, topic:2658, full:true”]…Getting back to the topic, though, I don’t think pinball could have the same problems other forms of entertainment has as they enter the mainstream popularity. For one, pinball’s been around much longer than most video games and anime. It’s gone through so many changes already, some that became permanent and many that were individual attractions on specific machines.
I totally want pinball to grow in popularity! Since I’m fortunate to work in a pinball parlor, I get to see the faces of many young people play pinball for the first time, and many folks that are older with eyes that light up as they play the game they did in their youth. The right game can inspire such awe in people, it’s fantastic to see. That enough is reason for me to want more people to be aware of it.
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Hmm, now that I think about it, video games and anime have gone through a lot of changes in their fanbases too. The anime fans of the 80’s would be totally different than today’s, for instance, as anime in the 80’s was largely about hyperviolence, post-apocalyptic settings, and hot-blooded manliness, and are nothing like today’s anime, which have much softer character design and writing, are commonly set in schools, and often aimed at people of the opposite sex as the protagonist. The people modern anime would appeal to are totally different than the ones from thirty years ago. And video games, with evolving technology and fads and trends coming and going, have had shifts too. The Minecraft kids would’ve likely found 8-bit gaming unplayable. In both cases, the fans of the older stuff have pretty much cut themselves off from the rest of society at large, or at least keep their interests a secret, knowing most of their co-workers and family would have little in common with them.
I wonder if what people are actually fearing is sudden change, considering in both cases, as trends changed, some people would leave and be replaced by newcomers, but it happens gradually, over a course of many years, and the size of people into anime and video games is growing, but slowly.
It’s why I find it a bit curious that pinball, and seemingly only pinball (among the fanbases I’ve observed), is willing and ready to bring in large amounts of newcomers. Everywhere else I went to, while the casual and semi-casual fans feel that way too, the hardcore really like the secluded nature of what they’re into. I guess an analogy would be living in a very small town with a low population–some people move there because they don’t like the company of a lot of people and are at their happiest in small groups, and big cities simply have too many people.
I would say though, while I don’t working anything pinball-related, seeing the faces light up on people when they play pinball is a very, very nice feeling to have, and I’d like to see more of that too. Unfortunately, the experiences I’ve had with other fandoms has created a little devil on the shoulder that tells me, “This might be trouble.”
Phew! That’s a relief. I’ve been pretty surprised too, honestly. As someone that’s played video games most of my life, I’ve seen how toxic certain areas are, and I’m glad pinball doesn’t seem to share as much of that particular crowd. It helps that many of the competetive leagues are putting a focus on making sure people feel comfortable and included.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but I think the social aspect of pinball has been helping keep the community in an overall positive nature. Having to interact with others in person is so much easier than trying to douse a flame war. When there’s issues that occur in real life, it’s easier to address any problems in a way that doesn’t feel like a dogpile.
To be fair I’ve definitely observed some gatekeeping in the pinball community. It’s not super common, but it generally goes like this: “All you new players who watch tutorials and read rulesheets are tryhard nerds. And even with all your tryharding I’m still better than you.”
I don’t think it’s super common, but there are definitely some machismo posturing pinball players who don’t like new outsiders ‘nerding up’ their super secret club.
This website is a pretty self-selecting group of people who actually care enough about competitive pinball to sign up for a forum and geek out about rules (which is awesome) so you don’t really find that attitude here. But it does exist.
