Reconstruction Vol. 14, No. 1
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Resurrecting the Silver Ball: Digital Facilitation at the 16th World Pinball Championships / Megan R. Brown
<1> In a nondescript warehouse in Scott Township, a small Pittsburgh suburb, the arcade lives on. Nestled within an industrial park, the off-white, squat, and windowless facade hardly calls attention to itself: No permanent signage marks the location, and little sound escapes into the gravel parking lot. However, upon entering a single set of small doors, vibrant sights and sounds immediately overwhelm the senses: flashing and flickering lights, animated dot-matrix displays, bells, chimes, clicks, clacks, and the occasional yelp or shout from a jubilant or frustrated competitor. This is the Professional and Amateur Pinball Association headquarters — popularly referred to as PAPA — and the organization is currently hosting the 16th World Pinball Championships. Pinball aficionados from around the world converge on Scott Township each year to showcase their skills, play over 400 machines new and old, swap stories and strategies, and, hopefully, return home with prize money and a trophy.
<2> Despite pinball’s current reputation as an arcade relic, slowly phased out since the 1980s in favor of videogames, PAPA and the World Pinball Championships highlight the games’ longevity and adaptability. Fan dedication proves a powerful ally in the fight to keep pinball relevant and thriving, bolstered by a surprising influx of rapidly-evolving technology, some funded by a massively successful Kickstarter campaign. PAPA’s welcoming and inclusionary mindset markedly enhances fan outreach.
<3> There is no standard or cut-off for entering the World Championships. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to participate. The tournament’s unofficial slogan, adopted from a common phrase seen on early multiplayer-enabled machines, is “It’s more fun to compete!” (Illustration 1). Hopefuls choose a division - A for the very best players, with B and C following - pay a “qualifying attempt” fee, and play five of the ten machines in the division’s bank. Scores are tallied, point values are assigned to scores, and players are ranked. This process repeats as many times as individually desired. On Sunday, the top 16 players from each division square off for final matches. These 48 competitors will take home prize money, ranging from $50 (those ranked 9th-16th in C Division) to $10,000 (first place in A Division). With 443 total participants registered, every qualification attempt makes a difference. When the dust settled at PAPA 16, Bowen Kerins edged out Keith Elwin for the title of World Pinball Champion. Elwin has held the title for four of the past five years; Kerins had won twice previously, in 1994 and 2005.
<4> This tournament and the PAPA facility generally showcase the intrinsic melding of alleged opposites that surround pinball: young and old, social and solitary, the fierce rivalries and inherent camaraderie that accompany a relatively niche hobby, and the embodiments of high and low tech. Small children, barely tall enough to peer into the playfield, flip alongside seasoned competitors in the Junior/Senior Division. Rivals are usually friends: Players get to know one another at tournaments over the years. Competitors waiting in line for machines gladly and enthusiastically swap strategies: how to get the best multiballs, secret “skill shots,” and so on. They will then proceed to scowl determinedly over one another's shoulder, wincing as their high scores are overtaken.
<5> However, the technological advances PAPA debuts this year are undoubtedly the centerpiece of the weekend’s string of odd juxtapositions. Despite pinball technology evolving quite slowly (tables have not changed noticeably since the mid-1990s), the methods by which PAPA records and broadcasts tournament results are remarkably adaptive. This tournament marks the first year of all-electronic scorekeeping. Gone are the paper tallying sheets of tournaments past; scorekeeping volunteers use wireless-enabled tablets to record and upload player scores nearly instantaneously. This method allows participants to view their rank quicker than ever, and many can be seen pulling up qualifying standings on their smartphones as they wait in line.
<6> Players desiring a break from the action can take a seat in the small set of bleachers erected near the A-division bank and watch the very finest competitors. Understanding the spectatorship urge of pinball fans, as well as the general discomfort a player experiences when crowded from behind (unspoken codes of conduct dictate that spectators linger at least a few feet behind players), PAPA brings modern technology into the equation. High-definition video cameras are harnessed above machines; the cameras feed to vertically-orientated high definition televisions, usually mounted above the machine or between the player and onlookers. PAPA has utilized this spectator-friendly setup for a number of years, but this particular championship debuts PAPA TV, a special streaming service which broadcasts the feeds all over the world. PAPA TV showcases an easy-on-the-eyes layout, a horizontal screen broken up into three simultaneous feeds: a top-down view of the playfield, a long shot of the player at the machine, and a shot of the dot-matrix display (Illustration 2). Additionally, live commentary, very much in the parlance of any sports broadcast, streams along the video content.
<7> PAPA TV is perhaps the ultimate manifestation of pinball’s fan dedication and continuing impact. On April 22, 2013, a Kickstarter campaign launched to fund the project. Money donated would go toward funding “HD cameras and tripods, a mixing and broadcasting station, switched HDMI feeds, and much more, plus protective cases for transporting all of the equipment safely to events outside of PAPA Headquarters” (http://www.kickstarter.com/). The initial funding goal, set at $20,000, was rapidly surpassed. Within a month, fans had nearly tripled the goal, donating $58,808 USD total. This enthusiastic fundraising demonstrates the ease by which pinball, once considered a dying game, has managed not just to stay afloat, but to thrive and attract new fans.
<8> Outside of PAPA's efforts, pinball continues to blend into the digital age, even going so far as to merge with a form once blamed for pinball's demise: videogames. In early 2012, Farsight Studios launched The Pinball Arcade, a highly detailed functional pinball emulator. The Pinball Arcade has been released for iOS, Android OS, Xbox Live, and The Playstation Network, among a handful of additional digital platforms. Although The Pinball Arcade is hardly the first pinball videogame, its continuously expanding library of faithful “real” table emulations sets it apart from previous, isolated titles. Most noticeably, the use of Kickstarter – in this instance to raise money for purchasing licensing rights from machines based off trademarked properties, such as The Twilight Zone and Star Trek: The Next Generation – aligns the The Pinball Arcade and PAPA in the same goal: calling on fan support to make pinball easier to access than ever before.
<9> Pinball machines, formerly an arcade staple, had spent the past decade or so slowly slipping out of the public consciousness. Once a dominant moneymaker in the arcade industry, the machines were slowly phased out by their videogame successors, despite a promising “renaissance” or “golden era” in the mid-1990s. However, since then, digital integration has proved a positive platform for pinball's popularity to expand. Pinball's ultimate fate is yet to be seen, but the outlook is much brighter than it seemed a decade ago. After most pinball manufacturers, including Bally-Midway, Gottlieb and Williams, shuttered by 1999, only Stern Pinball, Inc. carried on. For the first time in over a decade, Stern has competition: Jersey Jack Pinball entered the market in 2013 with a Wizard of Oz machine. This year brings new machines, new manufacturers, new digital content and an entirely new scope of gameplay archiving, recording and distribution with electronic scorekeeping and PAPA TV. These circumstances factor into an event far more spectacular than the mid-1990s pinball renaissance; we are experiencing a total pinball resurrection – one clearly on display at the 16th World Pinball Championships.
llustration 1: "It's more fun to compete." (Detail from Gottlieb's 1970 machine Snow Derby - photo by the author)
Illustration : Competitor plays The Addams Family (Bally, 1992) livestreamed over PAPA TV at the World Pinball Championships. Photo screencapped from PAPA TV livestream.
PAPA Headquarters during the 16th World Pinball Championships. Photo by the author.
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