Will…You…Play…Black Knight Again??
There is a reason I live in Winnetka and not in Evanston. And it’s not because, as Sandeep would put it, I like to get up 30 minutes earlier than otherwise so that my daughters can put their hair up and dress like beautiful little dolls to match all the other dolls in their classes. No, its because after all the dolls are asleep we get to go to their parents’ mansions for parties and there’s always at least one parent who makes a living doing something incredibly interesting.
Tonight I met the guy who once made a living designing the classic pinball machines. And he designed the two pinball machines, Black Knight in 1980 and High Speed in 1986 that are bookends for a period when the most important stuff I was learning about life was learned within a few feet of at least one of these machines.
It turns out these were also major turning points in the history of pinball itself. In 1980, pinball went digital, multi-ball, and multi-media starting with the game Black Knight. Black Knight brought pinball to a new level, literally speaking because it was among the first games with ramps and elevated flippers, but even more importantly because it brought a new challenge that drew in and solidified a pinball crowd. In doing so it also set the pinball market on a path that would eventually lead to its demise.
In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to see how they could take advantage of programmable software to monitor, incentivize, and ultimately exploit the players. They had two instruments at their disposal: the score required for a free game, and the match probability. 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.
The early versions of this algorithm were crude, essentially targeting a weighted moving average. But later implementations were more sophisticated. The goal was to ensure that a fixed percentage, say the top 5% of all scores would win a free game. The score level that would implement this varies with the machine, location, and time. The algorithm would compute a histogram of scores and set the replay threshold at the empirical cutoff of 5%. 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. Then anytime an above average player gets on the machine, he’s getting free games all day long.
The other tool is the match probability: you win a free game if the last two digits of your score match an apparently random draw. While adjustments to the high-score threshold is textbook price theory, the adjustments to the match probability is pure behavioral economics. Let’s clear this up right away. No, the match probability is not uniform and yes, it is strategically manipulated depending on who is playing and when. For example, if the machine has been idle for more than three minutes, the match probability is boosted upward. You will never match if you won a free game by high score. And it gets more complicated than that. Any time there are two or more players and they finish a game with no credits left, one player (but only one) is very likely to match. Empirically, the other players will more often than not put in another quarter to play again.
(The tilt tolerance, by contrast has always been controlled by a physical device which is adjusted manually and rarely in response to user habits.)
Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging.
Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways.
Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.
Today Williams owns Bally but they make slot machines and video poker. There currently exists one botique manufacturer of pinball machines but its fair to say that innovation stopped in 1992.
My new best friend has a basement full of Black Knight, High Speed, Defender, Pac Man, Asteroids, and everything else you inserted quarters into when you were 16. Now I just have to find a supplier of C45, Djarums, and gooney-birds and I’ll be ditching class to hear sirens and “Pull Over Buddy.”
148 comments
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November 17, 2009 at 10:07 am
Storn
Sweet I’m glad at least someone is getting free replays out of those Williams machines….
November 25, 2009 at 11:09 am
Steve D
I grew up playing Defender and Stargate vids. The first time I saw Defender was at the 7-11 I hung out with Marty at. They only had 3 vids and one day they replaced 2 of them. One new game was Tempest and the other was Defender. We watched them play their attract mode and I chose Defender. I got 75 points because you get 25 points for dying. Marty laughed his ass off at me and played Tempest. I told Marty I’d master that game if it took every quarter in the world. I spent hours playing and watching people play Defender. I love those two games Defender and Stargate.
About a year ago I finally got to live one of my childhood dreams. I bought a Stargate off of E-bay. It needed some work but I had it fixed and it’s sitting in my living room much to the dismay of my wife.
We recently had a haloween party and it was a hit.
November 17, 2009 at 1:29 pm
cs
we had High Speed in our basement when we were kids, then i went to college and studied economics.. needless to say, i enjoyed reading this. thanks!
November 17, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Bowen Kerins
I don’t know that I would call replay adjustment an “exploit”. Prior to this, the game manufacturer had to guess at a reasonable replay score. If they guessed too low, the game would give out too many replays, and cost operators money. In general, manufacturers would therefore make very high guesses at the replay score, and free games were less plentiful. Replay adjustment probably allowed players to actually earn more free games than they would without it.
It is possible to match after winning a game from a high score (perhaps not on High Speed?). It’s all percentages; you’re right that 1 match on a 4-player game is made more likely than it should, and this is a sneaky sneaky clever feature. The software designer you mention is responsible for a lot of clever things still in pinball today, including the concept of a “jackpot” shot first seen in High Speed.
The best games in the 90s were those that had good entry points for casual, intermediate, and advanced players. I agree that some of the most popular games of the 90s (Addams, Twilight Zone) were very complicated and tough for novices, but other games, notably 1994’s World Cup Soccer, had something fun for all levels of pinball play. Games today now have increasingly challenging “wizard modes” that can be very difficult to reach and/or finish, and this keeps expert players motivated while the game can still offer something interesting for new players. This is a tough balance to achieve and the best games (including Attack From Mars and Medieval Madness) do it effortlessly.
I think calling Stern, the current manufacturer of pinball games, a “boutique” isn’t accurate — Stern produces about the same quantity of games today per “run” as Williams did around 1998, and has had some successes like Lord of the Rings, Simpsons Pinball Party, and Family Guy. Still, pinball is way down from where it was in the early 90s, and hopefully there is another comeback in it down the line.
Thanks, nice article.
– Bowen
November 17, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Etl World News | Assorted links
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November 17, 2009 at 3:12 pm
The Pinball Economy – spincitydotorg
[…] Pinball Economy The economics of pinball. Nerd cred, secure. […]
November 17, 2009 at 4:48 pm
bbum
Awesome article.
That is only half the story. The other half of pinball economics is what happens when a machine is “on route”; is installed somewhere for play. I used to maintain a handful of machines in New York City and was good friends with a couple of operators.
I wrote a bunch of words on the subject on my weblog a few years ago. You might find it interesting.
http://www.friday.com/bbum/2005/11/23/the-economy-of-pinball-machines-in-the-field/
The auto-adjusting replay both scaled the replay to prevent skilled players from playing forever… or, put in a more positively light, made the challenge for a skilled player to earn a free game harder and harder the longer they played and it played a critical role in lowering maintenance costs on the machine.
In particular, if you see a machine with a replay of — say — 10 million points, but the high scores are only in the 3,000,000 point range, you would immediately know that the machine was poorly maintained.
By scaling the replay value, the route operator could ignore the machine without losing the “look-at-me-I-won-a-free-game-I-kick-butt-at-pinball” incentive to drop quarters in the machine. Thus, that 10 million point free game might be scaled all the way back to 2,500,000 points, allowing people to still win on an otherwise relatively broken machine!
November 17, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Alan
Black Knight was the first, and largely, only pinball game I really enjoyed enough to devote the time to master. Along with the free game software and the ramp and flipper advancements, it had a subtle ‘fairness’ in it’s play. It always felt like you could do better on the next game rather than some poor design element robbing you of your ball. Add in the anything-but-subtle, taunting voice and laugh from the knight and it was a very immersive experience.
My other big obsession during that period was Defender. The complexity of the controls seemed to keep the game free – few wanted to be humbled so. Allowing me and a few others to while away our lunch period so only a quarter or two.
Great times.
November 17, 2009 at 6:07 pm
The Economics of Pinball » prent – art, design, music, tech and everything else. yup.
[…] Read the article here. […]
November 17, 2009 at 8:52 pm
jb
Your friend also had a hand in Jungle Lord I believe which was a predecessor to Black Knight from williams. Jungle Lord was (if I’m not mistaken) the first to have two levels and flippers on the top, but BK was the first to popularize this as JL was a bit of a dud. I owned two Jungle Lords and they are great machines, totally under rated. There’s a company that travels around auctioning pins and arcades and you can pick up a JL for about $400 in good working condition, while a BK will run you about $800-1200.
Great story,
November 18, 2009 at 10:31 am
Richieboy
No, Jungle Lord came after and was a different designer. Black Knight was designed by the great Steve Ritchie. JL was riffing on the success of BL, a pretty common ploy in the pinball world. I owned a JL and agree it was underrated, but BL had better pure game play. I currently own a Williams Whirlwind and while the rule set is limited, the game play physics are beautiful. I agree pinball started going down the tubes when the game companies tried to add video game complexity to pinball, but the enormous size, weight and customized plastics manufacturing needed to build a pinball vs. ever-smaller and cheaper IC chips and electronic components in videos would’ve doomed it anyway.
November 18, 2009 at 10:32 am
Richieboy
Oh, and if you ever want to learn about your favorite pinball from back in the day, the Internet Pinball Database is the place to go: http://www.ipdb.org/
November 17, 2009 at 10:15 pm
Steve Webb
If your new friend also designed Robotron and his initials are E.J., then that guy is my hero! Tell him that he did a great job when he had a cameo on NewsRadio too. 🙂
November 18, 2009 at 12:07 am
links for 2009-11-17 | Nerdcore
[…] The Economics of Pinball « Cheap Talk (tags: Pinball) […]
November 18, 2009 at 3:35 am
Skill Games
Very informative stuff. Thanks very much.
Keep it up!
Regards
Tom
November 18, 2009 at 3:47 am
Jonathan
Wow. That actually answers a lot about my teenage years. As someone who spent an inordinate amount of time in arcades in the 80’s, I was always fascinated by pinball, but I could never get to the point where I was good enough to want to play on a regular basis. I suppose that it was reaching the point where pinball games were too hard for noobs to play well.
As you said, video games were a much bigger attraction for me, because I could get good at them fairly quickly, and without too much effort.
Thanks for the great writeup. I just linked to it from my site, http://www.newsley.com, and I subscribed to your feed. Keep them coming.
November 18, 2009 at 4:05 am
Guitar Tuition Reviews
Despite its limited gameplay environment, pinball will always be superior to videogames.
November 18, 2009 at 4:35 am
Financial Experts
i really found this to be interesting. thanks for sharing
November 18, 2009 at 5:09 am
Steven Harris
My interest in pinball dropped off when they started moving the goalposts and constantly hiking up the high score. I don’t mind a challenge but I do mind being taken advantage of by money-grubbing corporations.
November 19, 2009 at 10:58 am
Anonymous
Then you must have not turned to video because that is exactly what they were doing !
November 19, 2009 at 11:02 am
JuJu Johnny
Then you must have stayed away from video games because that is exactly what they were doing !
November 18, 2009 at 6:29 am
valentin
we had High Speed in our basement when we were kids, then i went to college and studied economics.. needless to say, i enjoyed reading this. thanks!
November 18, 2009 at 7:03 am
botesteanu
that’s a good post, and congrats on making kottke 🙂
makes me regret not having the opportunity to play a real pinball machine (in eastern europe), and now i’m pretty much deep in video game territory
November 18, 2009 at 8:49 am
shapah! » Pinballistic De-Evolution
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November 18, 2009 at 8:53 am
Anthony
Great post. We have a High Speed 2 – Getaway & a Jurassic Park in our office among others. I am a die hard pinball fan. I have such love for the pinball industry.
November 18, 2009 at 11:04 am
axlotl
Note that much of this history (with interviews of the Williams designers, engineers, and programmers) is covered in the documentary film “Tilt: The Battle to Save Pinball.” Although the ostensible focus is on the ill-considered drive to create a “hybrid” pinball/video game in the late ’90s.
November 18, 2009 at 12:01 pm
saeed
Great article. Brings back memories. As a former player of Defender (5,000,000+ was my high score!), Robotron, Missile Command and many pinball games including High Speed — one of my all time favourites — it’s very interesting to read some of the background behind the industry.
Williams was a very innovative company IMHO and it’s too bad that pinball died off the way it did. I’ve recently discovered some vintage pinball machines in downtown SF — in a diner near Powell and O’Farrell. I don’t live in SF, but when I’m there, I try to put a few quarters into those machines and enjoy the experience.
I love video games, but there’s something about the physical nature of pinball that makes it a very distinct, and appealing experience.
November 18, 2009 at 2:19 pm
Anonymous
I still own a High Speed – Love this thing even after so many years.
March 21, 2014 at 1:24 am
Alicia
Not so long ago I asked a question about how to mreakt a work from home business. Many people wrote inviting me to do their program without answering my question. A stay at home mom with young children wrote letting me know what to look for and the company she worked for. I’d like to know more about legitimate companies. I don’t want rebates, putting things together, just honest companies that offer 401K plans and the ability to make money.
November 18, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Cheap Talk – Econ and game theory from Jeff Ely and Sandeep Baliga « Dance4
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November 18, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Pete Ashdown
Eugene Jarvis programmed Defender and Stargate and did the sound for High Speed. However, he is not credited as working on Black Knight. Steve Ritchie was the designer of Black Knight and High Speed, but didn’t have much to do with programming Defender or Stargate. According to Eugene Jarvis, Ritchie gave a conceptual boost to Defender. So it is either one of the two, or a bad liar.
November 23, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Anonymous
The only person that worked on all of those games & played a key role in the group of games mentioned is Larry Demar. BK: SSR & LED, High Speed: SSR & LED, defender & robotron: EJ & LED he wasn’t lying
November 18, 2009 at 8:45 pm
curtis corlew
I know this comment doesn’t fit here, but still: Defender. The best video game EVER. The only game I ever got hooked on. I played so much I got RSI for a while. I loved that game. The computer emulations just aren’t the same. Your new pal is a god.
November 19, 2009 at 5:56 am
1000 When Lit − The Economics of Pinball
[…] have just read through an interesting article on the Cheep talk blog . In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began […]
November 19, 2009 at 7:46 am
plinth
I assume you got to speak with Larry DeMar. Larry created the hardware that ended up driving the early Williams pinball machines. He also worked with Eugene Jarvis, author of Defender who, prior to writing video games, worked on the sound effects used on pinball machines, including Black Knight. I’ve met Eugene Jarvis and spoken to him at length on his work. He has a unique sensibility and practicality towards games and their playability.
November 19, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Craig
Just a quick note on this:
“Pre-1986, the replay score was hard wired into the game unless the operator manually re-programmed the software.”
Many of the older EM pinball games (Captain Fantastic, Royal Flush, Wizard, etc.) simply used pegs to set the replay score(s). I set my games to have incredibly low (and several) replay scores to give the kids lots of positive reinforcement for playing pinball over video games. 🙂
November 19, 2009 at 6:05 pm
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[…] The Economics of Pinball Will…You…Play…Black Knight Again?? There is a reason I live in Winnetka and not in Evanston. And […] […]
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November 20, 2009 at 1:29 pm
fritz freiheit.com blog » Link dump
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November 21, 2009 at 8:40 am
cfh
What’s with the names? Larry Demar was the guy that did all the replay adjustments and fancy footwork. Eugene was not so involved in pinball at that time. It was Larry that did the statical analysis and replay percent ploys.
Anyway, i agree that pinball does not meet the skill set of novice and advanced players. What needs to be done is actually quite simple – movable posts. That is, when a game starts, the outlanes (and i guess the flippers too) should be “closed”. This keeps the ball from draining. But as the game time increases (or set levels are met), the posts auto-adjust wider. That is the outlanes increase in size. And if possible, the distance between the flippers increases.
Now that may sound like a difficult thing to do. But is it? Hell no! Bally did this on the game Carnival. Gee when was that? 1956. (flipper gap distance was variable.)
The problem i have with Stern is their complete failure to examine the past of pinball. Gary Stern demonstrated his ignorance of pinball history at Pinball Expo 2009. As a very famous guy once said, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Apparently Gary Stern is going to do just exactly what his father did some 30 years ago. *sigh*
November 21, 2009 at 9:01 am
cfh
To take that even a step further…
Since a lot of new games are very complex, and most players can’t get it done in 3 balls, why not have the ability to save game progress with initials or codes? Then you could come back to the game, enter your code, and start right where you left off.
This would bring pinball into this decade…
1. auto-moving posts and flipper gap distance.
2. ability to save and retrieve game progress for players.
If you did these two things, it may give the game a different player set.
The down side to saving progress is once you finish the game, there isn’t a lot of incentive to play again. Or is there?… Make it so any time you “restart” a game, the score starts again at ZERO. So in order to win replays, you still need to hit the replay mark. And you have incentive to beat your score.
A lot more could be done in this regard. But unfortunately the ignorance of Gary Stern simply won’t allow it.
November 21, 2009 at 8:44 am
Bryan Roth
Hi great bit of news and comments that it has brought. As I was reading through the comments I noticed a few pointing to the negative side of the technoligy. I started playing when High Speed and Pinbot where popular. I was into video games at that time (Time pilot, Mr Do ect). I was eventually one over by pinball because the video games where better to me at home. Technoligy was not the end but what kept the pinball from disapering in the 80s. I again got back into the arcade seen in the 90s when Attack from Mars Medieval Madness Where hits. Technoligy kept the pinball industry alive. …The torch is now past to Stern Pinball. Lets not loose a great past time….
November 21, 2009 at 7:46 pm
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November 21, 2009 at 9:42 pm
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March 4, 2013 at 3:11 pm
Jesus
Sounds like a great site! But I would have to agree with Kathy. SIMS are nice but simply eat up way too much time. Unless that’s your goal and what you want. Personally, I enjoy going out as a woman and it takes me a bit of time to make myslef look good. I also know I’m simply playing another game, lmao!
November 21, 2009 at 10:08 pm
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November 22, 2009 at 11:25 am
Andreas Kohlbach
Very nice article.
I always had the feeling that “random” was manipulated. We had this Bride Machine Of Pinbot and always when I had not much time waiting for the bus and played badly I received a free game on match too often to be pure random (1/10). Now your article explains why.
But I wonder as you say if more than one player plays and they are out of credits one will get a free game on match. What if both have the same two last digits? May be the machine even takes care of that no one would have the same?
I’d like to add that digital pinballs were already introduced in the mid 70s. I recall I was stunned in about 1976 (could have been earlier the first came out) seeing an Evil Knievel machine with 7 segment score display instead of the rolling digits display. That kind of gave a boost to the industry.
November 22, 2009 at 12:09 pm
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November 22, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Greg Maletic
Nice look at pinball evolution from a technical standpoint through the ’80s. If anyone wants to take a deeper dive into the topic, a documentary I made called “TILT: The Battle to Save Pinball” goes -really- in-depth about how pinball changed through the years, especially from the ’70s on, with first-hand interviews from the guys who affected the changes.
http://www.Tilt-Movie.com.
Available on DVD, iTunes, and Netflix.
November 22, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Franco Campese
Whoa, never knew there was so much going on with pinball machines. Really cool read!
November 22, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Anonymous
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November 22, 2009 at 8:08 pm
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November 23, 2009 at 3:14 am
Anonymous
Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas has over one hundred working playable tables from every era-EVERY era.
http://www.pinballmuseum.org
November 23, 2009 at 4:55 am
Dave Keys
I have so many fond memories of playing pinball while my dad was drinking in the pub 🙂
November 23, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Anonymous
I briefly owned 3 older mechanical pinball machines and have to say that they can get boaring in a hurry – especially if its a reasonably uncluttered playfield. All of the silly gimmicks packed into some of the chip based machines actually make for better play in the long run.
Biggest problem with some of the early computerized machines is that the playfields were totally cluttered with gee-gaws and impossibly steep play field addons. Seems like the thinking that was if we can get 40 quarters per hour out of a kid on a Galaga machine why should we let some other kid play a 10 minute game of pinball for 25c when a pinball machine takes up twice as much real-estate.
The one newer “feature” which really pissed me off is the servo-controlled ball launchers rather than the traditional spring plunger. The skill shot based on a light touch on the plunger is totally lost. Blasphemy!
November 23, 2009 at 2:12 pm
jrawk
THANK YOU FOR BLACK KNIGHT! LOVED THAT GAME!
We unplugged the machine at the DQ before each play. 😉 We knew where the reset was as well. Did not care about initials, or high score. We wanted free plays!
Also we brought one of those pick up all the nails magnets from the garage and before we left we would run the HS up to some insane level off knocking down tombstones and crap.
AHHH AHHH BEAT THE BLACK KNIGHT!
November 23, 2009 at 2:55 pm
jimf
I concur on seeing, “Tilt, the Battle to Save Pinball” …an very well done movie.
November 23, 2009 at 3:19 pm
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November 23, 2009 at 3:23 pm
tkekfs
I didn’t see it mentioned here, but I greatly enjoy the “Pinball hall of fame – The Williams collection” for Nintendo Wii. They digitized their old classic tables (10 or so) for play. Black Night, Pinbot, and others are included.
I know it will seem like blasphemy to the old schoolers, but I find it to be really fun and think they did a nice job making it feel like real pinball. I am too young to remember any of these specific games, but liked pinball when I was younger. I haven’t seen a real table in years so this is as close as I get.
Also when I was in elementary school a friend of mine’s father fixed video games on the side, and had a pacman game that was half pinball half video game that I thought was really cool, take that with a grain of salt though, ’cause I was probably 10 at the time.
November 23, 2009 at 4:33 pm
bbum
@tkekfs Your are talking about Baby PacMan (http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=125). Very cool game, but a total pain in the butt to maintain. Thus, few remain.
@cfh The problem with trying to modernize pinball machines as you suggest is one of complexity. Pinball machines largely lost to video games in the arcade simply because they were comparatively so damned expensive to maintain! As it is, keeping a pinball machine in top shop in a relatively high traffic location requires about an hour a week and several solid hours every few months. Adding complexity would make it even more expensive! I’d love to see such a thing happen, but the economic incentive just doesn’t exist.
(BTW: I commented early on with a link to an article I wrote about the economics of pinball machines once they left the factory. It explains a lot of why pinball died. For Bally/Williams, the undisputed leader in innovation throughout the ’90s, pinball simply couldn’t compete against making slot machines & other gambling devices.)
November 23, 2009 at 5:15 pm
Julie
I never realized that my graduation year was the beginning and end of pinball. Although I put many quarters into PacMan and Asteroids it was the multi level pinball games that I preferred. My husband and I would look for the Elvira game in the NY NY casino in Vegas and would play all night on 50 cents and free games. One year for Xmas he presented me with a velvet box with one round, shiny orb of metal about the diameter of a quarter. I couldn’t figure out the clue to the gift and (sadly) had to be told. He’d bought me the Bally/Williams Judge Dredd multi ball game. The first month we had it we played non stop. We had sore forearms from the flipper action. There is no better pinball game out there and I never get tired of it. I’ve yet to reach the 1 billion mark or win the super game. This is inspiring me to play a few rounds tonight with my husband.
November 23, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Linkjes voor November 23rd
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November 23, 2009 at 7:32 pm
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November 23, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Doug
I don’t think this is the real reason for pinball’s demise. In reality, video games simply offered better economics to arcade operators. The cost of maintaining these Rube Goldberg-like devices was always higher than that of video games. Further, as video games cut into pinball’s market share, it caused a downward spiral wherein fewer people had the skills to repair pinball machines, thereby raising the cost to repair the machines.
Ultimately, though, the real problem is that an arcade machine in the same space earned more money than a pinball machine. This would have doubtlessly been the case no matter how easy or hard it was to earn a pinball replay, as video games had the advantage of constant novelty and infinite variety, whereas pinball is limited in its mechanics (and any novelty in a pinball machine adds additional cost with regard to its manufacture and repair).
It may be anecdotal, I have introduced scores of friends to pinball. And I can honestly say that not a single one of them ever complained of the difficulty in earning a replay.
I think this is an interest economic idea in search of an example. I really do not think difficulty in earning a replay had any bearing at all on pinball’s demise.
November 23, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Mike
Big pinball nut in early 90s here. The roar of MULTIBALL! went up regularly at the local bar we frequented.
I agree with Doug. While the part about matching was interesting, the incrementing high score was obvious and I never heard anyone complain about it. But you did hear people complain when you plunked in your money and a flipper didn’t work, or a drop target was stuck. I could easily see bar owners finding the machines more trouble than they were worth compared to more reliable video games.
The irony of course being that coin operated video games were superseded by home systems, while pinball games would not have been.
November 23, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Cliff
Black Knight was no way the first digital game. The first game I remember as a technician was Bally’s “Freedom,” produced in 1976. It was a Bicentennial game that was manufactured mostly electromechanical (EM) and as an experimental solid state (SS) game. It wasn’t until they produced Evil Kinevil and then Eight Ball that SS games really took off. We couldn’t buy enough of them to keep up with the demand of our locations once the word got out. Gottlieb quickly came out with Cleopatra as their introduction into the new era, followed by Williams with World Cup Soccer. For a year or so games were offered in both EM and SS for operators lacking the skills to repair SS games, were reluctant to make the transition.
Solid state games did not “self adjust” until well after Black Knight and High Speed. I don’t recall the scores being raised or lowered automatically for it was a sin, and I repeat, a SIN! to raise the score in a location that drew a regular crowd. Talk about pissing off the customer! We simply had to switch the game out with another one if we lowered the score too much by accident or change the game features to tighten it up a little. There were many ways to make the game harder by making less obvious changes to game features. For instance, the number of times one had to knock down all the targets before the extra ball lane would light. There were also ways to move the posts on the playfield to open or close the gap on that side outlane where the ball drains. Later games got smarter and adjusted the frequency of match give-a-ways and changed the features automatically. All you had to do is go in and set the “Game Percent of Replays” feature to 30, 40, 50, or whatever percent you felt was necessary to hold the interest of the players.
The real truth to the death of pinballs was indeed the maintenance factor since it was less for a videogame, however the price of the games shot up to such a ridiculous price that operators could not make a profit on them. $5000.00 a piece, that’s a lot of quarters to pay for a game. Do the math. When operators refused to buy them the factories dried up and went away.
Finally another factor that has affected the entire industry was that a lot of states lowered their blood/alcohol levels to where people quit going to bars to drink if fear of getting a DUI after just two beers. Pool tables were the amusement operator’s “bread and butter.” In Virginia there used to be about 60 operators but now they’re down to maybe 10 if that.
November 23, 2009 at 10:19 pm
links for 2009-11-23 « W E Barnes.ca (Billy Barnes)
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November 23, 2009 at 10:27 pm
carl
Excuse me for being a twit, but I have heard you on the radio describing older pinball machines as being “analog”. This is incorrect, the older machines are as digital as the newer ones, with the operation of the machine based on on-off binary and counting devices.
The older machines are electromechanical, with relays and stepper switches, where the newer machines are electronic, with programmed microprocessors and logic circuits replacing some of the electromechanical devices. The “muscles” of the machines are still electromechanical, mostly solenoids powering the bumpers and gates.
An analog machine would have to be controlled by variable voltage electronics, or other measure based devices. There are, or were, analog computers, but they are more similar to a synthesizer than a digital computer.
I am from Chicago, where all real pinball machines were built, on Belmont Avenue by Bally or Williams, but pinball machines were not legal in public until 1976, They had been banned during the late 40’s as gambling devices.
November 24, 2009 at 12:09 am
insertcoin.ch » Blog Archive » The Economics of Pinball -
[…] https://cheeptalk.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-economics-of-pinball/ […]
November 24, 2009 at 3:00 am
Sneaky pinball makers’ tricks | Newsblog
[…] The Economics of Pinball […]
November 24, 2009 at 10:19 am
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Jeffrey, thanks for joining us for the podcast. Here’s the link:
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November 24, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Secondary Sources: FOMC Defense, Creating Jobs, Pinball Economics - Real Time Economics - WSJ
[…] Economics of Pinball: The Cheap Talk blog, looks at the economics of pinball. “Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging. Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways. Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.” […]
November 24, 2009 at 1:56 pm
dan
Another peculiar aspect of pinball economics is the game’s Zimbabwe-esque point inflation. On machines made in the 1950s, getting 1,000 points was an accomplishment. Now you get 10 million just for launching the ball.
November 24, 2009 at 6:01 pm
econoblog.info » Secondary Sources: FOMC Defense, Creating Jobs, Pinball Economics
[…] Economics of Pinball: The Cheap Talk blog, looks at the economics of pinball. “Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging. Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways. Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.” […]
November 24, 2009 at 10:58 pm
Risky Investor » Secondary Sources: FOMC Defense, Creating Jobs, Pinball Economics
[…] Economics of Pinball: The Cheap Talk blog, looks at the economics of pinball. “Pinball attracted a different crowd than video games like Defender (my new pal designed Defender and Stargate too,) and this is the fundamental theorem of pinball economics. Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, stall, nudge, and aim on one machine you can do it on any machine. This is both a blessing and a curse for pinball developers. The blessing is that pinball players were a captive market. The curse was that to keep the pinball players interested the games had to get more and more intricate and challenging. Pinball developers struggled with this problem as pinball was slowly losing to video games. Video games competed by adding levels of play with increasing difficulty. Any new player could quickly get chops on a new game because the low levels were easy. This ensured that new players were drawn in easily, but still they were continually challenged because the higher levels got harder and harder. By contrast, the physical nature of pinball, its main attraction to hardcore players, meant that there was no way to have it both ways. Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced that entry-level players faced an impossible barrier. High-schoolers in 1986 were either dropouts or professionals in 1992 and without inflow of new players that year essentially marked the end of pinball. In 1992 The Addams Family was the last machine to sell big. By this time, pinball machines used a free-game system called replay boost. After any replay, the score required was increased by some increment. Apparently, only hardcore pinballers were left and this was the only way to prevent them playing indefinitely for free.” […]
November 25, 2009 at 1:11 am
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“I am GOR — GAR!” that was the milestone game for me. simply because it had the first 5 ball multiball that I can remember.
November 25, 2009 at 7:02 am
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November 25, 2009 at 11:20 am
Chris
I pretty much GAVE UP pinball around the time they went digital in the late 70’s. Once they started screwing around with the number of balls per play, that was it. Never mind the score for a free game.
Five balls per play, 2 plays for a quarter was the gold standard. First they went to 3 balls, then back to 5, but only one play per quarter, then 3 balls for a quarter, and it got more and more expensive just get the feel of the machine – how soft were the bumpers, where were the dead spots, etc.
I guess I also grew up and was no longer able to spend endless hours hanging around the all-night sub shop where my buddy worked wearing out the Captain Fantastic machine they had in the back.
When I finally get my Man Cave built, it will have an analog, single-level machine from the *true* Golden Age of pinball – the 1970’s, before video games intruded on the scene.
November 25, 2009 at 11:25 am
What happened to pinball? – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks
[…] Radio and I heard an interview with Jeff Ely, an economics professor at Northwestern University, who wrote about the economics of pinball for his blog Cheap […]
November 25, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Aunty Dan
Great article that really takes me back. I had no idea the team behind video greats like Defender did the Pinball machines I loved too. I lost most of 1989-1991 to Pinball machines in the Student’s Union of my university. I got so into it so bad I’d get blisters on the palms of my hands from the corners of the flipper box. I actually went as far as to purchase some gloves designed for football goal-keepers with plastic grip reinforcements in the palms and then cut the fingers off. I looked like a total retard wearing those things, but hey, I got high scores!
The first game I remember playing there was “Banzai Run” with that crazy vertical bonus section in the head board. (Never seen that table since, was it rare?) After that I remember games like like “Bride of Pinbot”, “Highspeed II”, “Funhouse”, “Addams Family”, “Whirlwind”and “Terminator II”. I remember very fondly finally beating the “Classic” Star Wars game and getting the Victory March music to play.
I also remember trecking down to the arcade in town that had one pinball machine I hadn’t played before. It was “F-14 Tomcat”. I remember it very distinctly as you had to play a single ball for a long time to setup some kind of crazy multiball with (IIRC) 5 balls. However when I finally did everything required to start the multiball and got all the cool siren lights going all the balls came flying out onto the playfield and the damn thing tilted itself!
That aside, for a poor student the Replay system made playing economically possible for me. I enjoyed regular arcade video games but just couldn’t afford to keep feeding them money to “win” a game.
Most of those tables seemed to automatically reset once a month (Or perhaps the operators did it when they serviced them?) to factory default scores and replays. I’d keep a close eye on them and if I got to a machine quick enough I could carefully build up credits, especially with games that awarded replays for both a standard high score, overall high score, most number of loops/ramp shots etc. On a few occasions I actually got so many built up and played for so long I’d get bored and sell the credits to other people waiting to play!
It seemed to me that there was another element to the replay score scaling, which was if you made the Replay too easily (E.G. You hit the replay score on your first ball and continued on to make a high score) it would increase the replay score to a much higher level. So I’d nurse the machine, carefully just beating the Replay score for the first few games and then deliberately losing, until it got up to the point where it was actually a challenge again and then play normally.
Like many others have commented, the high cost of both purchase and maintenance of Pinball machines are what have crippled their marketability to anything except niche markets. You can combine that with the fact that physical arcades are going the way of the DoDo in anything except social/casual environment aimed at young kids (E.G. Your local multiplex cinema) The only way forward is in video simulations, and in some senses this is the perfect environment for Pinball as you never have to worry about the table being dirty, badly maintained or having to wait for some pimply nerd wearing cut-off goalie gloves to finish hogging it!
November 26, 2009 at 8:09 am
The economics of pinball - Viewsflow
[…] High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever, and set it on the path to its own demise.Close Forward this […]
November 26, 2009 at 8:27 am
Zeek Interactive : Just a Fool for Pinball
[…] that in mind, this is an interesting article about the Economics of Pinball and the decline of the pinball machine. The author reveals some of the interesting tricks that […]
November 27, 2009 at 10:39 am
Which games will go the way of Pinball machines? « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog
[…] Cheaptalk blog has an interesting post on an economists view about why pinball peaked and died out. He blames it on the transferability of skill from one pinball machine to another, combined with […]
November 28, 2009 at 9:20 am
Saturday Morning « the news links
[…] The Economics of Pinball – Cheap Talk […]
November 29, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Jameson
And yet pinball is alive and well on consoles, especially now that downloading has dropped the prices to Pinball friendly levels. Excellent new tables like Pinball Pulse can appear on the DSi download store, and give you unlimited play for $5. Zen pinball does the same on PS3. It’s the new pinball Renaissance, my friends.
November 29, 2009 at 6:02 pm
Infovore » Links for November 29th
[…] The Economics of Pinball « Cheap Talk "In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever… 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." Good article on how the economics of pinball are wired into the machine. (tags: pinball economics games mechanics design balance replay ) […]
November 30, 2009 at 3:34 am
The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun
[…] is great. An article about the economics of pinball – especially how an innovation in one machine doomed the industy, fundamentally. Which is an […]
November 30, 2009 at 10:43 pm
Cruise Elroy » Transferable skill and genre
[…] professor Jeff Ely has a fasacinating post about the economics of pinball on the blog Cheap Talk. Here’s an excerpt: Pinball skill is transferrable. If you can pass, […]
December 1, 2009 at 3:30 am
Economics of Pinball « <3 Pixel
[…] Read Here: https://cheeptalk.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/the-economics-of-pinball/ […]
December 1, 2009 at 1:37 pm
mollycameron.com » Blog Archive » December first. Culture dump:
[…] I am a huge pinball fan though, not very good at it. […]
December 1, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Molly Cameron | December first. Culture dump:
[…] I am a huge pinball fan though, not very good at it. […]
December 2, 2009 at 11:34 am
Greywolf
I haven’t yet read the rest of the comments, but I felt the need to point out that the multi-ball multi-media thing really started with Firepower, and digital went mainstream with Atari in 1976 beginning with The Atarians.
Great games are always a matter of opinion; I have always found Firepower to be a lot more satisfying than Black Knight for several reasons, and my Holy Grail of solid state games for the reason of those differences. Black Knight is the game I keep around for other people to play since they seem to like it so much.
December 3, 2009 at 10:39 pm
The Economics of Pinball | The Daily Nugget
[…] blog post on the economics of pinball and how the Williams company made sure that you lost as many quarters as possible to their pinball […]
December 7, 2009 at 10:14 am
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December 16, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Henry Wood
Oh, Atari…those were the days.
December 17, 2009 at 12:48 pm
Daryl
OMG.. It’s old thing.. I never had an experience to play that in reality.. I’m just playing it at my computer. lol..
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January 6, 2010 at 12:13 pm
The Rise and Fall of Pinball « My Name Is Legion
[…] short history on the economics of pinball: In 1986, Williams High Speed changed the economics of pinball forever. Pinball developers began to […]
January 16, 2010 at 4:03 am
Pinball Machines Were Sneakier Than You Think [Retromodo] | Technology Magazine
[…] Machines Were Sneakier Than You Think [Retromodo] 22 Nov 2009 There’s a great read over at Cheap Talk about how digital pinball machines changed the industry, back when there still was an industry. […]
February 10, 2010 at 7:53 am
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Those pinball machines we’re way better then the current computer games. You had more control then just pressing a key. You could lift it up if you wanted to …. he he he
February 21, 2010 at 2:05 am
Pinball Machines Were Sneakier Than You Think [Retromodo]
[…] a great read over at Cheap Talk about how digital pinball machines changed the industry, back when there still was an industry. […]
February 21, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Fourts and Chaos Part 1: Street Fighter IV and Execution « Agoners
[…] now (other than Smash) yet I still worry that it’s essentially yet another game that spells a pinball-like dead end for fighting games. “Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so […]
February 21, 2010 at 7:32 pm
Fourts and Chaos Part 1: Street Fighter IV and Execution « Agoners
[…] now (other than Smash) yet I still worry that it’s essentially yet another game that spells a pinball-like dead end for fighting games. “Eventually, to keep the pinballers playing, the games became so advanced […]
February 21, 2010 at 7:55 pm
Fourts and Chaos Part 1: Street Fighter IV and Execution « Agoners
[…] now (other than Smash) yet I still worry that it’s essentially yet another game that spells a pinball-like dead end for fighting […]
March 25, 2010 at 9:13 am
Jeff Ely on The Lesser Nerds Podcast
[…] an economist and pinball wizard (it has to be said). The Nerds learn from the Cheap Talk blogger why the pinball machine was on death watch even before the video game industry’s Pac […]
October 15, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Josh
I miss the good ‘ol pinball days… way better than the new stuff on the computer!
October 15, 2010 at 1:21 pm
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December 8, 2011 at 11:48 am
Frank
Pull over, Buddy. I’ve had the machine for 20 years. It is a favorite of my 4 year-old grandson, who calls it “Machine Ball”.
My replay score on High Speed for 1 game is 1,400,000 and doesn’t seem to change. Is 1,400,000 the low end of the scale? My high score is 5,200,000. I get scores over 1.4 million frequently, but the threshold never changes. Then again the machine is at home and I never need to add quarters either.
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May 28, 2012 at 1:55 am
vestpocket@verizon.net
This is generally incorrect. Automated replay adjustment is much simpler than a statistical approach at making the replay score equal the 5% of highest scores of last N games.
Every N plays, if the replay award count divided by the no-replay award count is greater than the replay award percent goal (say, 0.10) — the game boosts by a SET VALUE of 100,000 points, and only after the game is rebooted.
At every Nth game, it adjusts -100,000 or 0 or +100,000. Eventually, after thousands of games, the replay award reaches the ideal value.
October 4, 2012 at 1:31 pm
Dominik Hussl
Man really interesting info on Pin Ball machines! I used to love to play when I was younger. I always sucked. So I am no pinball wizard!
I think once video games really came in to play I remember my first Atari, my love for pinball pretty much ended.
Funny thing is there is a pinball machine in one of the Chuckee Chesse places I take my kids too and I find myself playing that thing now enjoying its simplicity compared to all the video games! Its a star trek machine so beign a trekky it works for me!
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