TPA Has 17 Tables Made Before 1985 And 58 Made After 1985

[karl]

Agree with original poster that they could give us a few more old tables than so far.

I think Farsight is doing an ok job in this regard, but I would love to have one more "old" table every year. 2-3 out of 10 feels like the right mix to me. (especially now that we have a fair amount of the most popular newer tables in the app)

PS! If you are sick of these threads, invitro, I would suggest staying out of them and post somewhere else, instead of getting irritated and continuing to use statistics and surveys to prove you point. Arguments can be fun(ask Monty Python) but if you are sick of these threads you should focus on getting well instead
No reason to get worked up about pinball fans wanting more tables from their favorite area

Note to self, stop drinking and posting

 

[Kolchak357]

It's not many folks. It's most folks. That is not an opinion, it is a fact, supported by every possible measure that exists. I honestly don't understand how this can possibly be remotely controversial.

I'm not claiming 1990's pinball is better, or that any individual opinion on the quality of a machine or era of pinball is right or wrong, or that every (or even most) 1990's machine is good, or that not many 1970's machines are as good as many 1990's machines. Here's what I am claiming:

1. The pinball machines from the 1990's are, on average, much more popular than those of any other decade. In particular, they are vastly more popular than machines of the 1970's, and this notion is clearly supported by numerous measures (and every measure I know of).

I agree, 90's pins are the most popular according to modern era, online only polls, with a small amount of participants - many of which own the pins and have a vested interest in their resale value. Somehow many of those 90's pins are much more popular now than when they were in the 1990's.

I'm just busting your chops with the above. All I'm trying to say is that I enjoy reading polls, participating in polls, discussing polls, and even using polls when learning about pins new to me. But I don't place a lot of stock in them. Modern pins are definitely more popular among the TPA crowd and with modern pin owner/collectors. Totally agree with you on that.

From a business standpoint, selling a modern video game version, he'll yeah, I would do exactly what FS does. Push the most modern pins as much as possible. FS knows who is buying their recreations and what sells. Most of the people playing TPA grew up with them, love them, and will buy them. A pin without ramps, multiball, DMD, licensed themes, and great sound, must feel to most TPA customers like pachinko feels to me. I don't think we disagree about anything other than the golden age of pinball (and does that really matter?). Heck with TPA fans, pins released in the last 20 years might be more popular than the 90's classics.

 

[WhiteChocolate]

hot probs! "if not for the skipper and the fearless crew, the minnow would be lost... and you are too."

if i generally didn't agree that i like the newer tabs (although now my precious stuck-with-iOS-6-era ipod won't get another update apparently), i do dig some on the older tabs, no doubt. fun to bounce around the ol' big shot and central park sometimes and remember some of the really old machines i remember still around when stilst a lil' tyke, barely tall enough to look over the playfield... but no doubt the "funner ones" are newer/post 85, at the very least. neat new rampage and toys... i sometimes wonder why there aren't more new tables with "underneath" playfields like black hole/haunted house, though it's understandable if they weren't all that easy to design/maintain. (seems like the big lewbowski design is the first in many years to try it out again!)

 

[invitro]

A pin without ramps, multiball, DMD, licensed themes, and great sound, must feel to most TPA customers like pachinko feels to me. I don't think we disagree about anything other than the golden age of pinball (and does that really matter?). Heck with TPA fans, pins released in the last 20 years might be more popular than the 90's classics.

Most customers don't care about licensed themes. For proof, yet again, see the smbhax list.

Forget I said anything about what the Golden Age is.

I assume you mean that someday pinball released in the last 16 years might be more popular than 1990's machines. Because they aren't now, and of course, 20 years ago was in the middle of the 1990's.

 

[Jeff Strong]

Agree with original poster that they could give us a few more old tables than so far.

I think Farsight is doing an ok job in this regard, but I would love to have one more "old" table every year. 2-3 out of 10 feels like the right mix to me. (especially now that we have a fair amount of the most popular newer tables in the app)

PS! If you are sick of these threads, invitro, I would suggest staying out of them and post somewhere else, instead of getting irritated and continuing to use statistics and surveys to prove you point. Arguments can be fun(ask Monty Python) but if you are sick of these threads you should focus on getting well instead
No reason to get worked up about pinball fans wanting more tables from their favorite area

Note to self, stop drinking and posting

Well said, Karl. If this is a drunk post, then bonus points

 

[Kolchak357]

Most customers don't care about licensed themes. For proof, yet again, see the smbhax list.

Forget I said anything about what the Golden Age is.

I assume you mean that someday pinball released in the last 16 years might be more popular than 1990's machines. Because they aren't now, and of course, 20 years ago was in the middle of the 1990's.

Yep, you got my drift. Change 20 years to 15 years.
You might be right about licenses, but Stern seems to think you need a license to sell a pin. Wish they didn't always lean on a license. Unlicensed themes give a great opportunity for the designer to really be creative.

 

[invitro]

I agree, 90's pins are the most popular according to modern era, online only polls, with a small amount of participants - many of which own the pins and have a vested interest in their resale value. Somehow many of those 90's pins are much more popular now than when they were in the 1990's.

I'm just busting your chops with the above. All I'm trying to say is that I enjoy reading polls, participating in polls, discussing polls, and even using polls when learning about pins new to me. But I don't place a lot of stock in them. Modern pins are definitely more popular among the TPA crowd and with modern pin owner/collectors. Totally agree with you on that.

1990's pins are the most popular according to anything. None of the sources I mentioned are limited to "modern era" (what is your definition of that, anyway?) stuff. Do you have non-online only polls that say something significantly different from the sources? If not, why does it matter?

The surveys/polls I mentioned do not have a small amount of participants. They have a large number of participants. I do not understand why you and others think thousands of people is a small amount of people for a survey. A survey size of 1000 is very common for a survey of all Americans that gives highly significant results. Don't just take my word for it though, see any Intro to Statistics textbook.

You have no idea if many of the respondents to these surveys/polls own the machines they're voting on or not. Indeed, I think it is absurd to think that more than a few own all the machines they're voting on. But even if they did, who cares? We're not talking about whether people's opinion is right or not, which is impossible anyway because it's an opinion. We're only talking about what that opinion is.

Similarly, it doesn't mean a hill of beans if you place stock in these polls or not. The results of the polls are facts, and facts don't need you to believe in them, they're still facts. Or are you saying that the highest-rated tables in IPDB, Pinside, smbhax, etc etc are all actually 1970's tables, and the poll makers have a conspiracy to suppress those results?

Finally, Farsight does not push the most "modern" tables as much as possible. If they did, there would be nothing but DMD's in TPA. That is not the case. And I think "Most of the people playing TPA grew up with them" is false, too. From what I've read here, most TPA players have never played the real machine of most tables in TPA.

 

[invitro]

You might be right about licenses

Let's be exact about what we're talking about. You said "A pin without ramps, multiball, DMD, licensed themes, and great sound, must feel to most TPA customers like pachinko feels to me." You weren't talking about new Stern machines; that's a different discussion. You're talking about what TPA players require in a table.

Now, in the smbhax list, six of the top ten tables are unlicensed. This would not happen if TPA customers thought those tables were like pachinko.

(It does appear to be the case that most TPA players need DMD, ramps, and multiball.)

 

[invitro]

No reason to get worked up about pinball fans wanting more tables from their favorite area

Once again, this is not what I'm getting worked up about, at all. If I'm getting worked up about anything, it's people saying things that are factually untrue.

 

[Kolchak357]

I was just throwing out things that seem to help make a pin popular. A pin doesn't need all of them. Addams is a very popular 90's pin. I think it is helped very much by the theme. But AFM is unlicensed and certainly doesn't lack because of that. Probably applies more today than in the 90's when it comes to a licensed theme. And of course we have licensed pins released before 1990. You can discount the word licensed if you don't think it applies.

 

[WhiteChocolate]

(mebbe some people -should- get a little drunk and relax if they hadn't yet? or chillax with some prescription, if available in their locality. hey i gotta defend the original thread and that's a hoosier homeboy... ;0 ham, you have a habit of starting some inflammatory threads 'round here!

 

[Naildriver74]

(mebbe some people -should- get a little drunk and relax if they hadn't yet? or chillax with some prescription, if available in their locality. hey i gotta defend the original thread and that's a hoosier homeboy... ;0 ham, you have a habit of starting some inflammatory threads 'round here!

It's good for some people to get into heated discussions and it's good to see that things haven't got out of hand like they have in the past.

 

[WhiteChocolate]

It's good for some people to get into heated discussions and it's good to see that things haven't got out of hand like they have in the past.

nothin' like a pie-fight! i guess i've always had a pretty easy-going attitude with farsight's choices; i'm just happy i get to play the tables they've gotten to us so far. and now that my upgrade paths are a bit limited, i guess i'm just happy with what i've got now! (i'm down to just desktop osX maybe as a path; that'd be a whole "third-platform" buy-up for me...) so many good tables i still haven't conquored to any tourney level yet. still practicing!

 

[invitro]

It's good for some people to get into heated discussions and it's good to see that things haven't got out of hand like they have in the past.

Well, I've said my piece, probably way too many pieces, I'll stop now. Sorry for being annoying... Time to get back to EBD and chase #2 or maybe even Tarek.

 

[soundwave106]

1. The pinball machines from the 1990's are, on average, much more popular than those of any other decade. In particular, they are vastly more popular than machines of the 1970's, and this notion is clearly supported by numerous measures (and every measure I know of).

Then or now? There are only 3 pinballs from the 1990-1993 that had more than 15K units made. There are seven pinballs from 1976-1980 that had more than 15K units made. Pinball was a more in demand thing back in the 1970s, if the sales say anything. Pinball had a great resurgence in the 1990s, but it was alongside other video games and a little more niche. Back in the 1970s, an arcade was pinball machines.

The way it works with arcade games as I see it overall, is that a lot of times the rankings will bias towards the stuff with better technology. You see that with video games too. You will also see a small group that are okay with the simpler technology, for whatever reason, but "best game ever" rankings tend to bias towards the newer games.

Today, the majority clearly likes the 1990s stuff better. However, there's definitely a small but still passionate minority that likes the older stuff too, mostly 1970 onward. I'd expect that just for the nostalgia factor alone. The 1990s pinball kids are now in their 40s. The 1970s pinball kids are in their 60s. Add in the tech factor and, well, it's no surprise.

I will say that I don't think the 1940s and 1950s pinball style (the "wood rail" era) translates well to a "pinball game" anyone these days wants, since it's so much more bagatelle like. Even the 1960s are sort of questionable as to whether anyone these days wants something from that era (we have one, Central Park, and that's probably enough). So we're really talking 1970-1985 vs 1985-2016. 3.5 times the amount of pins isn't too shabby given both the 1990s bias in today's consumers and the fact that the "modern era" realistically is twice as long as the "classic era".

I will say that my personal preference is for them to start releasing some classic System 11s and "classic" pins, instead of mining the bottom of the DMD era for marginal releases (as most of the top DMD pins, they have already done). EBD > Big Hurt for me, in other words.

 

[BStarfire]

Invitro,

You should, as you say, read a statistics book. A sample of a few thousand can represent the population of the US if conducted randomly under carefully controlled conditions. Voluntary surveys do not qualify (which the book will explain) whether you have 1000 or 10000.

The results of IPDB polls are facts, in that the fact is "The IPDB data says this..." but that's all you can say. You can't conclude anything about the general population of pinball fans or owners from that at all. All you can say is that these are the most popular tables on IPDB.

Everyone's consensus here is that Farsight's business move is likely optimal, even though a lot of us would like to see a few more older tables but understand why the bulk are modern tables.

I'm not an argumentative person and I don't post here much (but read all the time) but when the original poster states that the older tables are underrepresented (which is a fact, whether it's justified or not and it probably is) and doesn't assert much more than that - saying that they are underrepresented and he would like to see more, that's fine. But you strongly asserted what I consider a false premise and then challenged others to dispute it. I have to respond to that. And recommend you read some statistics books.

In any event, I think everyone's pretty much in agreement about Farsight optimizing their table selections, though some of us would prefer to see some more older tables. That's pretty simple and I think is the way this thread should have gone.

I think that's all I have to say about that.

 

[Naildriver74]

Well, I've said my piece, probably way too many pieces, I'll stop now. Sorry for being annoying... Time to get back to EBD and chase #2 or maybe even Tarek.

Not annoying at all. It's a slow Saturday night great discussion and preseason NFL I love it.

 

[HotHamBoy]

Well, I'll just say this:

I'm 31 and I just started playing pinball seriously two years ago. I love pins from all eras, I would just like to see some more 70's and early 80's pins. Where I live, pinball is scarce. I actually quite enjoy older games in addition to the more modern ones and I'd like to see more, that's all.

 

[David T. Melnick]

Well, I'll just say this:

I'm 31 and I just started playing pinball seriously two years ago. I love pins from all eras, I would just like to see some more 70's and early 80's pins. Where I live, pinball is scarce. I actually quite enjoy older games in addition to the more modern ones and I'd like to see more, that's all.

-----
Likewise...given, I grew up in the 70s & 80s. Thus, I want to have a balance of each decade. IMHO, we should get 70s to mid 80s more often. We have enough of 90s thru 2000s already.

 

[Worf]

The problem is, those pins don't sell. FarSight already got burned with Season 2, which resulted in Apple cracking down on their "season pass" sales (I'm presuming far too many people complained, forcing Apple to react).

And yes, the public matters, because digitizing the tables is expensive, TPA is expensive app-wise, so the only way to ensure the future success is to ensure the rest of the world is interested enough to pay for it. So business plan wise, they would rather do the later tables that people seem to want over the earlier ones that fans only want. (There's also a reason why if you have an arcade, they only carry the later tables - few people are willing to play the earlier tables. The invention of the flipper instantly destroyed pre-flipper games - to the point where there were flipper conversion kits sold in order to keep the older games still relevant. Solid-state did a similar thing to the EM games. Even the early solid states bring up complaints from people who feel it wasn't worth the money on TPA.)