Many members have asked for tee shirts, hats, and other merchandise to be made available. Well, that time has come!

     We proudly announce the opening of our online store, which will offer VPF merchandise and other great pinball-related gear.

     To celebrate our Grand Opening, until the end of the month, we are offering 15% off! Simply place your order and use the promotion code below when checking out. We strive to provide only the highest quality merchandise at the lowest prices. Be sure to check back often, as new items will be constantly added to our already great selection!

Visit the VPFStore

Promotion Code: fd8091b61e

     The entire VPF community had a great opportunity this month to chat with some of the industry's top Legends. A HUGE thanks goes out to George Gomez, Greg Freres, Steve Ritchie, Larry DeMar, and, of course, Randy Davis! Each chat, whether in text or video/audio was great, and we can't thank them enough for joining us!

     The fun continues this month with the contests we alluded to last month. Though the Newsletter Article Contest is complete (see below), we have various other contests either under way, or scheduled to take place. Check out the full list here.

     Sadly, we are still experiencing some technical issues getting our tournament frontend functioning as we'd like it to. We will continue to work until it attains the level of excellence you've come to expect in all of our features.

     This Visual Pinball 9 Report announces activity of the VP Dev Team over the course of the previous month. This in no way guarantees a new version or that the following will be implemented in the next version of VP9. Currently being worked on, or already submitted, include the following:

- We now have a developer mailing list set up - so whenever code changes on the server all the dev team members know what changed, who changed it, and when.

- Resolved compiler warnings for warning level 3 in vsnet2008.

- vsnet 2003/2005 now match svn for easier check-ins.

- Table object defaults groundwork started.

- More optimizations and warning level corrections.

- Deadzone Slider is done - you can use the slider or type in a value from 0-100 % for analog motion controllers.

- Added support for Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle USB gamepad for X-Y axis. Scroll wheel isn't working yet.

- All keys can now be remapped except escape[esc].

- Fixed the vertical tab showing up in the script editor so tables saved with current builds will retain all script formatting on reload.

- Changed HDRender and alternate render to be global settings and can be changed on the fly/at will - now located in video options.

- Went over the volume mixer controls again - now it will only show the volume bar if the user has changed the volume.

     Again, a big thanks to the VP Dev Team for the continued efforts! I think I can speak for everyone when I say we eagerly anticipate everything you do to make VP9 a better program for our beloved hobby!

VP Development Forum

by EalaDubhSidhe

     So, Stern's Avatar pinball hits the promotional avenues, and instantly the same old criticisms come flying thick and fast. Bleah, it's a license; bleah, it's already too late to cash in on the film; bleah, ugly photographics instead of illustrative art; bleah, it looks the same as all their other tat, wahhhh and whatnot. Predictable as ever, Doctor.

     Doesn't Stern get credit merely for trying or even existing anymore? Apparently not. And they are, at least, trying - the 3D backglass is a terriffic eyecatching idea, and judging from the presentation video they seem to have got a lot better lately at digitizing/reanimating video footage for a dot matrix display. But all this comes across to many as so much window dressing on a playfield that at first glance does look so pedestrian and so much like the grand majority of Stern's recent output, it's no wonder the diehards find it a total turn-off even before the machine hits the production line. (There's also the perceived slight against Steve Ritchie, but that's a debate for a whole different day.)

     Whatever. As fans, we have the right to embarrass ourselves and spew venom and bile in their direction for not giving us the desired toys to throw out of our collective pram, while they have the right to sit in their ivory tower and pay no attention whatsoever to it. As the industry repeatedly takes great pains to point out over and over again, it's not *us* upon whom pinball is going to survive by bending over backwards to cater for. Fans are fickle beasts anyway. Really though, why should Stern listen to the smug, self-righteous few who seriously believe that they intrinsically know better than the investors and manufacturers whose future security is constantly on the line?

     Well.... maybe it's because from our perspective they don't particularly seem to be listening to anyone. I don't mean that statement in a crass or rude way, that Stern have their fingers in their ears going 'la la la'. But the market-analysis notion of 'giving the people what we think they want' is holed below the waterline, becoming increasingly less bouyant day by day for some time now. Videogame companies for example don't just survive on hits - the majority of games are loss-makers, and those hits have to be capable of offsetting the cost of the non-seasonal releases put out solely to keep the company's name in the public eye. Now look at the position Stern's in - they *are* the industry, and any loss-maker they incur at this point is tantamount to a death-knell. But the long and the short of it is, over time fewer new fans are boarding the pinball express to replace the old ones for whom encroaching age, other activities and life priorities in general have steadily weaned them off it. Pinball can't keep crossing its fingers and hoping for the best while carrying on in the same vein any more. So why, aisde from the obvious caveats like its market size, is pinball so conservative and afraid to take risks? Is it merely indicative of an aging and stagnant industry, or is there more to it - and hopefully less gloom - than that? Who's to blame, if indeed the very notion of 'blame' were to apply like the catch-all, argumentative, lowest common denominator it is?

     There's a particular fundamental problem at work that Avatar and especially the games preceding it appear to demonstrate. Stern knows they have to draw new players in for their long-term success, but they can't seemt to decide on the best approach or the demographic to do so, so they play it totally safe, try to please everyone and have a much harder time of not falling between multiple stools. Gary Stern, at every talk he gives, defines pinball as a grown-up pastime in broadly adult terms - a machine is an investment, it's an American icon, it gives years of play, it's cheaper than a car, and so forth. But while the grand majority of Stern licenses may be family-friendly, they also smack of 'toys for boys', and their ad copy totally backs this up. Well, which is it? The latter approach seems frankly absurd to me; no adolescent has $4000 in spare cash to spend, and there aren't enough walking midlife crises with gamerooms to prop up that end of the market.

     This also leads to some baffling choices when it comes to licensing. Even if it was a good movie, why would you bother with a B-grade property like Iron Man, when you already have the two definitive up-to-date celluloid superheroes from two different stables, Batman and Spider-Man, under your belt? Why would you opt for themes that are guaranteed to push all the right grown-up buttons, like law enforcement and the foiling of international terrorism, then stifle that theme to a degree by wrapping it in a TV show which has now come to an end and ensures that nobody who hasn't followed it for years is going to play your game? Because a license by itself doesn't add any more meat to a playfield; lots of players appear to like Stern's Indiana Jones just for being an IJ game, but just as many totally hate it for not doing much with the property beyond namedropping the films, when compared with the earlier Williams machine. Family Guy looks at first glance like an exception to the 'kiddy fare' notion, but the game is driven mainly by episode and skit references and a juvenile sense of humour. Slap the Shrek theme - which you'd think would be even more juvenile - on it instead, and suddenly you have a much better game. Shrek as a game concept just has more structure and more substance to it.

     Look at successful videogame franchises. For that matter, look at the kind of properties that Stern is licensing from. Brand-names don't just come out of nowhere, or if they do they seldom last long enough to milk. There is always some pivotal creative and populist spark that drives a long-running brand, even if it comes about by accident, like Street Fighter II's combos. This is what I think pinball needs to do to reinvent itself - understand exactly what it is that made those properties involving and great in the first place, then apply the principle to a playfield. Immerse your players the same way, make them feel as though they're a pivotal part of, and personally involved in, the experience - because by definition, they are. In short, find its sense of maturity again, put some real meat back into the games, without simply playing catch-up and riding the coattails of the latest media trends.

     OK wiseguy, you ask, how about you stop being a massive know-it-all hypocrite, and tell us exactly how do you propose to do all that? Well, who really plays pinball these days? It's not your neighbourhood kids for a start, not unless a parent or an adult friend has been there to introduce them to the sport. Kids don't need to visit arcades to play games socially any more when XBox Live is right there without having to move a muscle. They certainly don't spontaneously go looking on a whim for pinball machines to play. Nor, for that matter, does anyone else. I think we're all agreed at this juncture that designing and pitching machines towards arcade operators is a dead end, and that what's going to have to happen is more machines need to appear in venues that are already populated. The cinema has been suggested before now, which at least ties in with the present licensing and would be a step in the right direction as far as mass-promotion goes, even if it's an expensive and not-guaranteed route which Stern may be justifiably hesitant to take, assuming they could afford the outlay. But really, it's adults who play pinball. More to the point, it's adults who *will* play pinball, if you can get them interested. You've basically got a captive audience in a bar-and-grill who isn't going to leave until they finish their drink(s) - people who, for the most part, are just like us, the diehard pinheads. So why isn't more pinball being aimed towards them, and what *they'd* like to do?

     It's not like there's any shortage of (non-objectionable) adult pursuits and media to choose from. Ask Dennis Nordman, he made an entire pinball design career out of it. Stern has made gestures towards this, but I'm not altogether certain they realise exactly the potential of what they're sitting on and why. Outdoor sports and hunting is such a natural yet underused idea for a pinball machine, that it shouldn't need the Big Buck Hunter license to make it properly viable. You're plugging the players themselves directly into the context of the game, instead of distancing them by placing a recognized character name in the same place, which is what so many licensed themes will automatically do. Juveniles can identify with a hero like Spider-Man - especially the early Lee/Ditko iteration - who can see the world with the same eyes that they do, not just represent the person they'd ideally like to be. But adult players don't really want that; those who play games want to set their 'inner child' free if you like by actually *being* that hero, or that cop or that firefighter or that sportsman, or that person doing their bit for their country that they could never do themselves. Why should Batman have all the 'fun'? We're back into 'power fantasy' territory again, but on a totally different and above all, personal level, which is why the grand majority of so-called 'mature' or 'adult' videogames that revel in violence and gore, or their own manufactured controversy, manifestly aren't. You may think that pinball doesn't need to go down that route, or that it's doubtful that it could in that fashion, even if we wanted it to. But in one regard it already has, time and time again. An enticing target is like an explosion in a movie; superficially exciting, but utterly meaningless and vapid unless we're driven to care about what's exploding and why. So it is with poorly-realised game themes, and yes, I'm pointing at YOU, Sega Pinball.

     You know, dwelling upon all this, what it all ironically means is that successful 'original' pinball games in this vein aren't likely to be any more original at all than the ones we've presently got. But that's not the point, really. Yes, Sharkey's Shootout and Striker Xtreme were duds, but Stern were still finding their feet again after everyone else gave up, and perhaps it wasn't a good idea to start off with such well-worn game ideas in direct competition to so many long-time classic machines from other manufacturers. Was World Poker Tour a flop because of the poker theme, the game itself, or the license on top? I think it's most telling that Steve Ritchie himself has admitted to personally being a bit disappointed with the end design. Well, they can't all be gems. We'll never know for sure if Capcom's efforts to take pinball in a more mature direction might have given the industry a boost at the time, had the company persevered, but given the cult status that Kingpin and Big Bang Bar have now, the signs are at least semi-encouraging.

     It's got to be at least worth *trying*, right?