kottke.org

...is a weblog about the liberal arts 2.0 edited by Jason Kottke since March 1998 (archives). You can read about me and kottke.org here. If you've got questions, concerns, or interesting links, send them along.

2 kottke.org posts about pinball

 

Pinball economics

This fun little post talks about how the economics of pinball changed as it became more and then less popular.

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.

By Jason Kottke  •  Nov 17, 2009  •  economics   games   pinball

Photographs from Kevin Tiell of pinballs, up

Photographs from Kevin Tiell of pinballs, up close and personal. This one's my favorite. (via bb)

By Jason Kottke  •  Oct 11, 2006  •  games   photography   pinball

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