This really pisses me off.
You know when you are a kid, and you think that all adults and businessmen in suits have got to be really smart, & that one day, if you are really really lucky, you might get as smart as them. Then, if you have half a brain like I do, you become an adult, & somewhere in maybe your mid 20's or later (or sooner) you realise that many of the millionaires and billionaires driving companies into the ground are downright stupid.
What do I have to do to inherit the Stern factory? I don't have a degree in business or anything like that, but I'm not stupid, and these days just not being retarded when running a company is a great start! I have ideas that at the very least wouldn't net any worse results than what Stern is doing right now. & I actually care about pinball, & often times take moments to think about what would keep pinball alive & ticking. About what would make a pinball company flourish to the best of its ability.
& I know enough that I wouldn't rely on my own ideas, I think the key to running a good pinball company is surrounding yourself with other people who are good at what they do, and care, and then you listen to their ideas & opinions as well.
I swear, there is enough talent in the
VP community to run a pinball company better than Stern. Here, we have business savvy people, great artists, amazing designers, 3d modelers, the pinmame team, & hundreds of people who know what they like & don't like, and aren't afraid to let it be known.
So what irk's me the most is knowing that the passion & talent to keep pinball alive is out there, but it isn't being utilized in the real pinball world (Stern). Guys like Steve Richie, which I'm sure most people read the interview he did here, are out there looking for work, a freakin' pinball genious, yet Stern somehow thinks that they have better guys.....or do they just not want to pay up to get the real talent? IMHO, pay up, its worth it. How great would it be to startup a pinball company, & hiring guys like that to get the job done, & maybe have the younger bucks learn a thing or two.
That aside, just look at some of the best
VP &
FP originals out there, I think that shows that there is a passion and talent right here to keep pinball alive & ever evolving, while also remembering the basics that make pinball great. I also think of some of Eala's originals when I ponder about the creativity that real pins could use these days (& certain other authors as well, but for whatever reason he comes to mind 1st), the way he can blend the great things about older pins & merge that with some of the things that make more modern pins great, while at the same time not sacrificing any creativity & uniqueness.
I don't know whats gonna happen with Stern, but if they do go under, I can only hope that somebody that really gives a damn about pinball gets a shot at running a real pin company. & I hope its soon, cuz once so many years pass of crappy pins, or no pins, there will eventually be a "point of no return" to where pins as we know them might be dead forever. But right now, there is a big enough market out there to keep pinball afloat, & it might even thrive as pinball no longer has to compete with video games they way it used to. Everybody plays their video games at home now, & I don't see that changing. But real tangible pinball, if done right, should be becoming the main "on route" game once again.
Cuz new pins on route are the 1 game that you can be sure that 99.9% of that population does not have in their home. I own a handful of pins myself, but even I love to go out & play the latest Stern's even though I don't like 'em that much, just because its something different than what I have at home (& more expensive than I can afford).
I feel pinball trying to make a comeback right now, but I fear there is lack of fuel to make that comeback. But more & more I am seeing pinball in pop culture, on TV, in movies. & I think the reason for it is for the same reason I just mentioned. Cuz people will always love having fun with gravity. & having a big mechanical, tangible game is no longer f**ked out like it got in the early 80's, where people at that time got overloaded with pinball, as there were no video games.
Then video games were the "new" thing for years. But now video games are as common as watching a TV & are a double click away on your computer, not such a novelty anymore. They aren't going anywhere, but they have a new home, in the home, and I'm fine with that as it makes video games one thing, and pinball a completely different thing, where back in the early 80's it was all meshed in together. Yet despite this, pinball made a triumphant return in the 90's that lasted a handful of years.
So its been done before, in even harsher circumstances, and the events of the 90's are part of why I still have hope for the future. But that comeback only worked because the pins were awesome, well thought out, & made by really talented people who clearly put a lot of time in on many of those titles. Pins like Stern's 24, I'm sorry, are not gonna become the new TAF, gotta do a little better than that! Stern, in a decade, hasn't made any pins as good as a number of the better 90's pins.
Anyhow, so the market has changed a bit in how it works, but its still there.
As for this whole "pinballl lite" idea. It has been tried before, and it has severely failed before. Not only is it a bad idea, but the fact that they are simply stripping down an existing table that people actually like, that makes it even worse. It makes me think they are just lazy, or afraid to do this right, afraid to go all in on the idea. Yet the price tag is still higher than what I could pay for a like new TZ or many other like new Bally/WMS classics from the 90's that are better tables to begin with.
So who is gonna buy this crap?
If you are gonna try something like this, I'd suggest that for home use they make a completely new table, new theme, new layout than anything else that is out. That way people can't pick apart & complain about what you stripped from a perfectly good full version of the table, cuz that is the full version. Go ahead & cut costs, make a good playing table that just has a couple less gimmicks on it, get that price tag down to about $2500 or less, then I might actually want to buy one. But it needs to still feel like a full pinball table.
That is the way I'd do it, if I had to do it. But if it were up to me, I'd focus more on getting the price down on the regular pins, & increase sales by selling a few more units thanks to the cost cut. Do they understand that they still need to compete with many of the 90's Bally's out there that are still nearly good as new? Either that or don't cut costs at all, but focus on making better tables. You gotta go one way or the other to keep things afloat over there. Maybe even have to spend a little more money for a while to eventually make more money. CRAZY AS IT SOUNDS, it just might work! There is a lot they can do to bring pinball into this newest generation & new decade, & I'm amazed of the things they haven't even tried yet.
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