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Thanks for the detailed explanation. It's probably pretty clear by now that I'm doing a lot of catch-up work with pinball, and I wasn't there during these moments to understand why people feel the way they do with certain things. It makes a lot of sense--I never even thought of these Premier tables being something of mockbusters, if you're familiar with that term, but now that you point it out, I have GOT to take a look at these tables when I see them.Would Tee'd Off, then, be a knockoff of Caddyshack?I'm guessing you mean Target as the big name brand and Dollar Store as a generic brand, though of course dollar store would be a discount chain.From what I can see, toys do NOT attract people. (I agree with you there.) I feel like when people talk about bash toys or whatnot bringing in beginners, they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. What really draws people to a pinball machine are the theme, the audiovisual package, and, once a beginner starts playing it, if he or she feels like he or she accomplished something.A design philosophy at Blizzard Entertainment is to make the player feel like a champion at the beginning of the game. This makes them want to come back for more, as they've had a taste of what it's like to feel like they're good at something. Blizzard doesn't need some weird gimmick at the center of any of its games divorced from everything else, the video game equivalent of a bash toy--it just needs an interesting theme to draw people in, good art direction, and the aforementioned game design structure. That can also be done in pinball, and enduringly popular pinball machines have all three of those.(And personally, if you're going to have a bash toy, make it integrated into everything. Just as anti-gravity racing is omnipresent in Mario Kart 8, the boxer in Champion Pub is indeed the focus and is a good use of a bash toy.)
Thanks for the detailed explanation. It's probably pretty clear by now that I'm doing a lot of catch-up work with pinball, and I wasn't there during these moments to understand why people feel the way they do with certain things. It makes a lot of sense--I never even thought of these Premier tables being something of mockbusters, if you're familiar with that term, but now that you point it out, I have GOT to take a look at these tables when I see them.
Would Tee'd Off, then, be a knockoff of Caddyshack?
I'm guessing you mean Target as the big name brand and Dollar Store as a generic brand, though of course dollar store would be a discount chain.
From what I can see, toys do NOT attract people. (I agree with you there.) I feel like when people talk about bash toys or whatnot bringing in beginners, they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. What really draws people to a pinball machine are the theme, the audiovisual package, and, once a beginner starts playing it, if he or she feels like he or she accomplished something.
A design philosophy at Blizzard Entertainment is to make the player feel like a champion at the beginning of the game. This makes them want to come back for more, as they've had a taste of what it's like to feel like they're good at something. Blizzard doesn't need some weird gimmick at the center of any of its games divorced from everything else, the video game equivalent of a bash toy--it just needs an interesting theme to draw people in, good art direction, and the aforementioned game design structure. That can also be done in pinball, and enduringly popular pinball machines have all three of those.
(And personally, if you're going to have a bash toy, make it integrated into everything. Just as anti-gravity racing is omnipresent in Mario Kart 8, the boxer in Champion Pub is indeed the focus and is a good use of a bash toy.)
