Harder! Faster! … Shorter? Why Pro Pinball Might Look a Lot Like SGDQ
As currently constructed, pro pinball does not exist in this world. That’s a shame. Why not? Professional gaming does. Last year the Esports industry (barf at me unironically saying esports industry in an article) was valued at 1.72 billion dollars. I’m not exactly someone who totally gives a fuck about words like GDP or whatever, but hey – if it lets people play pinball as a viable career, then slap me silly and call me Adam Smith.
More money in the hobby would be cool, on a craven level. I wanna see a world where Jason Zahler is in the tabloids for crashing his Tesla truck into an Erewhon because he was in an argument with his supermodel girlfriend. Wouldn’t that be sick? BUT ALSO, it would be cool because a pro pinball class of player would mean that there are more casuals getting into pinball. We ALWAYS want to bring more people into this hobby, because once they realize how great it can be, it actually turns out that pinball is pretty therapeutic and awesome for the general populace.
In short, WE NEED MORE CASUALS IN PINBALL. Pro Pinball could help with that goal.
How do we get to a place where we have pro pinball? We already have amazing pinball players, history, and a giant governing body (the IFPA). So, what is it going to take to make Pro Pinball a thing? Well, it might look a lot like Summer Games Done Quick
What if we did it like SGDQ?
Enter Summer Games Done Quick, a semiannual video game speedrun charity marathon held in Minneapolis every summer. This event is INSANE. Thousands of people attend to watch their favorite speedrun streamers, hang out, and play games. Over the course of the week, hundreds of thousands of people will watch the stream and donate millions of dollar’s to the event’s chosen charity (typically Doctors Without Borders).
They’re also really entertaining. There’s a reason that these streams are so successful. They juggle high level gaming, fun vibes, and a surprisingly high level of stupid humor to create absolutely transcendent moments. For real, like when something insane happens at SGDQ, you don’t hear it from the crowd, you feel it, a roar. It’s amazing — like truly the closest thing I’ve felt to being at a pro sporting event. And that’s because it is. From top to bottom, SGDQ does a really professional job of presenting speedruns to the entire world.
They’re also a great model for what pro pinball might look like.
Done in 3 Hours
IFPA events rule and are fun to watch if you already know what the hell is going on. The problem is, if you don’t, it’s just three literal days of chaos with Rando pinball groupings, with no real way to know who is good, who is bad, and who is expected to win.YES, the commentators are amazing at these events. YES. Many of them are my friends and do the impossible task of explaining context of players, games, and tournament strategies. Jeff Teolis, Rachel Ristow, our bad boi Tommy Graff – I love listening to them and genuinely learn a lot. That said, it’d be cool if we had an event where they DIDN’T have to explain all that nonsense and we could just focus on cool pinball tricks.
Having a three hour or less presentation allows people to get in, watch pinball, and get out. At SGDQ, games are speedrun in hour long chunks. It’s crucial we keep these presentations to less than three hours if we want some level of retention from viewers.
Fewer Competitors, 24 Max
While I DO love watching Fox Cities streams, we have to be real about the fact that watching dozens and dozens of different players playing in rando groupings isn’t a great way to get casuals into pinball. At SDGQ, they only have a few players on the couch at any given moment.
Stern has toyed with fewer players on some of their streamed events (remember that wild The Ocho stream when Godzilla came out). I think for this to work correctly, we’d want two dozen players featured throughout the afternoon.
I remember watching the X-games as a kid. That and Tony Hawk were the only real ways for me to find out about skaters. In these events, you’d only have a couple dozen different skaters over the course of the event. I could remember names like Chad Muska and Rune Glifberg because I saw them perform at multiple events with relatively few other people. And also because those are ridiculous names to have.
Who We pick Matters
This is gonna be divisive, but I don’t know that pure IFPA rank should be the ONLY way we decide on these players. Like skateboarding, I feel like entertainment value matters. They don’t always have to be likable. Someone like Eric Stone is a good pick because he’s not just an amazing player, but also an extremely divisive member of the competitive pinball scene. People love or hate that crazy pinball-playin’ weatherman.
I’m also partial to, like, people under 30. It’d be cool to have Escher, Kassidy, and Dalton Ely all involved, not only because they rule at pinball, but because they represent the sea change we’re always talkin’ about. The youths are playing pinball, and they’re fuckin’ good. Let’s show the rest of the world.
Play Times need to be Short
If we’re going to have a competitive sport that people actually watch… well it can’t go on for forever. That both means for the overall length of the event AND the individual competitions as well. Part of the reason we went with the format we went with was because it allows for shorter games that are NOT point based.
While points are, yes, probably the BEST way to determine how actually good you are at pinball, the acquisition of them is sometimes counterintuitive to a fun to watch game. Ask anyone who has had to play in a group with someone who has found a gamebreaking strat (we’re looking at YOU, Eric Stone) how fun it is to watch that game – not very!
Instead, making the goal for these games something short and attainable does two things. It doesn’t make people bored AND it teaches them something about the game that they’re watching. More on this in a second.
Don’t be afraid of gimmicks
This year, the biggest star of SGDQ was Peanut Butter, a dog who hit a walk-off homerun in Ken Griffey Jr. baseball. That rules.
We need stuff like this. It’s called fun. Ambiance. Lights. A fog machine. Entrance music. I love the idea of having players pick their background music as they play. Skaters frequently do this. It’s another fun way to show personality. Plus a fog machine? I mean, why do I have to sell you on a fog machine. Fog machines fuckin’ rule.
Maybe something like Pin Golf is the answer
I hate explaining this stuff, so for a Pin golf definiton, let’s go to the The Richmond Pinball Collective
Pin golf is a different way to play pinball. Whereas when you typically play pinball, the goal is to get a higher score than the other players or your best score, in Pingolf, you'll play through a "course" (series of machines) where each "hole" (machine) will have its own "par" (objective) you're trying to reach in as few balls as possible. Sometimes the objective is a target score and sometimes the objective is something else, like completing a game mode. Each ball played on a hole in an attempt to reach the objective is a "stroke," and the goal is to have the lowest stroke count at the end of the course.
Our version of this could be some kind of pinball obstacle course with each player trying to get objectives as fast as possible, over things like scoring. Pin Golf could be the answer for a lot of the problems I have with how high level pinball is currently streamed. Instead of long, arduous games where people are rewarded for long ball times, we’d have action-packed short bursts of speed.
Pin golf teaches you the rules of the game. Often, having an objective based game is better as it allows for a simple explanation of what is happening on screen. It still can allow for different strategies (Say getting to Monster Zero in Godzilla), but will allow for some level of sameness. This makes it easier for casuals to follow.
Pin Golf keeps individual games shorter. Instead of inflating a score forever, players are motivated to get in, do the objective, and get out as short as possible.
Pin Golf would allow for more players to be featured. Even though we’re still shooting for a couple dozen people, having them play in pin golf quartets will make it easier to feature more players on camera while still keeping broadcast times shorter.
So what does all this mean? Nothing at all – for now. But I think it’s worth it for pinball to think about the ways in which other gaming industries have grown – Warhammer, video games, and board games all come to mind. What worked for those industries might not work for pinball, but I think it’s at least worth it to kick the tires on a couple of them. Let’s get Jason that Tesla Truck, OK?
Edit: So this has happened?
Reader and noted pin celeb, Steve Bowden sent THIS in to us. So I guess let’s keep doing this? Why doesn’t pinball happen at SGDQ anymore?
