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Classic Games (Games)

Inside the Race To (finally) Bring Pinball Into the Internet Age (fastcompany.com) 57

Posted by EditorDavid from the high-scores-in-the-cloud dept.
harrymcc writes: Jay Adelson, the cofounder of Digg, has a new, deeply personal startup: Scorbit. It aims to connect existing pinball machines to the internet, giving them networked leaderboards, compatibility with smartphone apps, and other newfangled features. But Scorbit faces a major competitor in Stern, the pinball giant whose new Spike platform is attempting to introduce similar functionality. Over at Fast Company, Jared Newman reports on the dueling systems and the general pinball resurgence now underway.
The COO of a pinball parts supplier tells Fast Company that "People are just saturated with the internet. They don't want to look at screens anymore for entertainment, but they want to be entertained, so they want something physical. Pinball ticks all the boxes there."
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Inside the Race To (finally) Bring Pinball Into the Internet Age More

Inside the Race To (finally) Bring Pinball Into the Internet Age

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  • Old news (Score:3)

    by Grand Facade ( 35180 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @05:44PM (#58847484)

    Dart games have been doing this for years.

  • People are just saturated with the internet

    aims to connect existing pinball machines to the internet

    Um.... so do they not see this disconnect?

    • Those two statements are not about (or from) the same people.

      The first statement - about being "saturated with the internet" - was made by a pinball machine parts supplier who, as far as I can tell, has no association whatsoever with this new startup.

      The second statement, on the other hand, is about a couple guys who are trying to find a way to get rich by launching Yet Another Start-Up.

    • People are just saturated with the internet

      aims to connect existing pinball machines to the internet

      Um.... so do they not see this disconnect?

      They see the disconnect. That's why they are looking to make the connection!

  • I really like the idea of networked high scores for games.

    But in reality how can you verify the scores being submitted, that the machines were not tampered with? It seems like any such system would lead to inevitable failures, as you see for the high scores on pretty much any networked games that have maxxed-out, or even impossibly high scores...

    You want a cool idea - have a screen you can attach to any machine showing a 3D model of the machine with trails representing my game as the ball moves, and some

    • golden tee works but that is easy to make fair and they force ops to pay fees + yearly updates.

  • Yeah, no (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @06:30PM (#58847634)
    So instead of making sure your flippers flip, your bumpers bump, and your plunger plunges, you're gonna spend money telling me some random douchbag on the internet is better at this game than I am.

    I must be out of the mainstream if this is a thing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I got a hell of a lot better at Super Mario when I started watching other people play it on YouTube. Same thing happened with lots of other games too, before YouTube when you could only see other people's high scores on Sega's online system which gave you a target to beat. It showed you what was possible, telling you that there was more to discover.

      I suppose it's different now that you can just whip out your phone and google it, but still...

  • sold to collectors now? At least the new stuff. I mean, it's neat and all, but it's not like walking into an arcade and posting your high scores for all the world to see.

    • I live in a moderately sized college town. And we have an e-mail letter which goes out once a month giving updates on where all the machines are. Bowling alley, bars, laundromats, etc.. They're all rented from the same place so they just give us the information when it needs to be updated.

      This is the way it is in a lot of cities. Distributors of vending machines, jukeboxes, etc. also do video games and pinball. The way it generally works: The machine is put in and the vendor gets the first $50 (made up figu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      I know of several arcades here in Brisbane (Australia) that have at least one pinball machine. (or at least they had them last time I went in there). These aren't retro arcades, just regular arcades (the kind full of coin pushers and ticket machines and claws and rigged machines giving out expensive prizes and such).

      The machines I see generally are the newer Stern machines though, I cant remember the last time I saw a pinball machine that wasn't the newer Stern stuff (probably because the newer stuff is sti

  • Sorry, want nothing to do with that guy.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by Scutter ( 18425 )

    I've been playing pinball for decades and I can confidently say that I've never given a second thought to any pinball leaderboard. This is solving a problem that doesn't exist that no one asked you to solve. The pinball industry has been in steady decline and linked leaderboards isn't going to save it.

    • Agreed. My main goal is to get to the super-everything-is-done-give-me-a-light-show mode. Or, as in Jurassic Park's case, make the machine look like it broke and shut completely down. (*AAARGH! *laugh*)

      I think what they're trying to do is give you an app that will show you where all the machines are in your area.

      This is something we do locally, but that's do to the help of the only distributor in town. In larger cities, there may be many businesses renting out machines. With the app, all the information wou

  • game to game setup varies a lot makes an leader board fun but now really the same as an golden tee leader board.

  • operators don't want to pay $5-10/mo game for stuff like this. Hell some don't even fix games that much.

  • Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sgage ( 109086 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @07:27PM (#58847798)

    Why bring pinball 'into the Internet Age'?

    Leave it alone. Leave things alone that are what they are without feeling some urge to ruin it by bringing it into some sort of Internet Age.

    Pinball is a totally analog, kinetic, physical thing. It is not compatible with digital anything.

    Leave it alone, please.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DewDude ( 537374 )

      It is not compatible with digital anything.

      *ahem*

      Technically pinball machines have always been "digital". Before we had CPU controlled solid-state logic...which by the way revolutionized the industry because it allowed more complex rules; everything was electro-mechanical relay logic. These were still digital...everything was done using a series of "on" or "offs".

      Please stop misusing the term "digital"; as a slashdotter you should be away that "digital" doesn't just mean "smartphones and internets and stuff millenials use".

    • The only reason I personally can see for Internet access is to handle credit card micro-transactions, and to schedule maintenance based on use. The mechanical parts of pinball machines wear out fairly predictably, and notifying the owner or a support company that a machine needs tune-ups or replacements based on use could save pinball owners frustration.

  • OK, Iâ€(TM)ll bite, since I play in a couple regional pinball tourneys and attend a couple of national conferences (where they debut new machines, etc.). The national leaderboard thing might be a flop, but in regional competitions I could see this as a thing, since we often do seeding of the live events based on honor system, self-reported scores. If you could replace that last bit maybe youâ€(TM)d have something, but I would think they should concentrate on some good
  • You don't need internet connectivity on a pinball machine. Likewise...the idea of leaderboards are pointless as every single machine is different...not to mention the condition a machine is in changes. I take take a machine someone has played for years...properly clean and wax the playing surface...and that machine doesn't play like they're used to. Leaderboards are fine when the playing fields are the same....otherwise they're just bragging rights.

    If you look...every few years in the pinball industry ther
  • Gotta be their next move when it gets no traction.

  • We don't need Internet connected pinball machines! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Saturday June 29, 2019 @10:18PM (#58848280) Journal
    For fuck's sake just build decent pinball machines and promote them so people will leave their houses to go play them again! I used to repair pins and other arcade games and my belief is that people just don't want to be bothered to physically go somewhere to play a game for a little while when they can stay at home and play games there. Sadly that doesn't work with something mechatronic like a pinball machine, and 'video' versions of pinball machines aren't anywhere near the same experience -- but people give them up because you have to go somewhere to play them. Then when it also costs you a dollar or more just to play a 3-ball game, and the operator has jacked up the back legs of the machine to make the balls drain down the middle faster, and they've set it for the hardest level of play the machine can be set for, all so they can make as much money as possible? Why bother leaving home to go to some crowded public place so you can spend $5 or more playing some game that rips you off and you're done in maybe 15 minutes?

    Make better games. Don't skeeze them out so they're impossible to play. Don't overcharge to play them. Don't bother connecting them to the gods-be-damned Internet, it's not necessary and it won't bring people back to playing them.

    All that being said, a new pinball machine costs up to $10000. It may wear out before it pays for itself, and pinball machines are the Ferraris of the coin-op game world: high performance, but high maintenance. You have to keep them clean, constantly, or the play degrades. Solenoids, flipper assemblies, game-specific features, they wear out, don't work correctly, and have to be maintained or replaced, or the game doesn't play correctly, players complain, want their money back, or get burnt out on it and just don't come back. An operator might break even by the time the game isn't popular anymore. This is why they price-gouge and do all the other things they do to make the game more profitable to operate, and it's one of the reasons why people don't bother seeking them out anymore. Sadly, pinball machines might just be a dead idea that belongs in a museum.

    • "Make better games. Don't skeeze them out so they're impossible to play."

      And stop making so many machines from licensed properties!

      Are there no original ideas anymore!?!?!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jonwil ( 467024 )

        The problem is that no-one (except maybe a few hardcore pinball geeks and collectors) would buy a machine that doesn't have a license of some sort attached to it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Viol8 ( 599362 )

      "some game that rips you off and you're done in maybe 15 minutes?"

      15 mins? 15 seconds in my case usually. "Hey, I'll get that ball this time! - bump flip bump flip flip FLIP FLIP!! ... clunk. Oh."

      • 15 minutes to go through the $20 in quarters you got from the change machine thinking that would last you all evening.

    • The focus is going to have to be on making them cheaper. They're a hard sell even if they didn't cost so much up front because they have high maintenance costs, so making the parts cheaper is the only way to make them more popular. I realize they've been trying to make better actuators for decades, so it's not like this is something that hasn't occurred to the manufacturers of parts and machines, but it's still the current state of affairs. Internet connectivity is not even slightly important compared to th

      • You've never worked on pinball machines, I see. The playfield electro/mechanical parts are already as cheap as they can be, nothing can be cheaper than solenoid coils, stamped sheetmetal, and bayonet lamp sockets. The playfield parts on the topside aren't much more expensive and can't really be much cheaper either because they're just mass-produced molded plastic and rubber rings. Game-specific parts can't be much cheaper either because things like silkscreened plastic are custom, as are ramps and whatnot.
  • A company should setup real pinball machines in a real physical location, allowing players could control these machines remotely an app / game, while viewing real responses to their electronic input.

    The company would be able to push the 'pay per play' model into electronic gaming, and journalists would breathlessly promote the 'artistic' venture.

    I think a lot of people would try it, just for the novelty. I would.

    • A company should setup real pinball machines in a real physical location, allowing players could control these machines remotely an app / game, while viewing real responses to their electronic input.

      In a FPS, 50ms latency is no big deal for most players. In pinball, 5ms is everything [pinside.com], and you can literally feel the difference.

      • That's a really good point, buddy, and thanks for linking to that forum thread. It was an interesting read and the author's approach was impeccable.
    • If you're not bumping, you're aren't playing.

  • My Pinball 'machine' is just a board with actual pins in it and no flippers to influence the ball.

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