Play Meter

(continued from page 41)
Games should become obsolete only by design
and conceptual improvements.
PLAY METER: You say the manufacturers' lack of
confidence is evident in the games they design and intro-
duce to the marketplace. What change in thinking would
you recommend for manufacturers with regard to , say,
pinball?
KIRK: That's easy. There's a major overriding theme
about the manufacturers' philosophy about pinball. That
is, they believe a pinball should become obsolete by
mechanical self-destruction.
PLAY METER: And what does that mean?
KIRK: The manufacturers don't seem to realize that a
game should become obsolete only by design and con-
ceptual improvements. In other words , they're telling
themselves that every game looks about the same as every
other game, that all we're really doing is just rearranging
the parts. And that's not true .
And since they believe that's all they're really doing,
rearranging the parts on the playfield , they feel that if
they don't make the game self-destructible there's no
reason for an operator to buy anymore new games . For
instance, if you remember, manufacturers used to hold
parts for five years. Now three years is the limit they hold
stuff on parts and supplies because they want that game
to self-destruct.
But what that does is it self-destructs their own
industry. They didn't realize what they had . If you look
back into the early 1970's, they started nickel and diming
the pinballs. And, by the 1980's, the pingames became
ultra-cheap. There was a point in the late 1960's and early
1970's when the games had high-quality stainless steel
moldings. But then it got cheap. The chrome went off,
and all these little frills and extras that made the game
quality work went off. Just take a look at the board wear.
For about a dollar a board, you could make that board
virtually indestructible, but how many operators have
boards that look shot? They're all disintegrating, and
I'm saying that's not unintentional. Of course, that's just
my opinion, and I realize I'm not going to win any friends
by saying that, but it's true. The manufacturers want the
games to self-destruct. And they do that mechanically.
The game takes a beating to the point where it literally
just falls apart. I don't think that's a valid way to do
business. The valid way to do business is to make the
game work, and work consistently for a long period of
time. The game's obsolescence, which allows manufac-
turers to sell more games, comes from conceptual
improvements in future games.
You see, they really don't understand the game at all.
They really believe that if you don't make the game
mechanically self-destruct, they're not going to be able to
sell anymore pinballs. Obviously, that's not true because
some of the best pinballs did nothing but help the
business. Good pinballs help the business because they
build an audience. If they last a little longer, that doesn't
work against the manufacturer but for him because it
gives the operator a better return on his investment and
makes the operator want to buy more games from you
because he knows your games are worth the investment.
The premise that obsolescence comes only from
making the games self-destruct is just not valid when you
look at other creative industries . The record industry, for
example. You'll go out and buy a new record because you
get tired of the record you got. It doesn't mean you don't
like it anymore. It simply means you got tired of the
repetition of playing it over and over again. You want
something new. You could say that all music is just notes
rearranged and played by different instruments. In that
way, it's just like a game. It may have the same compo-
nents , and they may just be rearranged, but people will
want to move on to something new.
From the manufacturing point of view , if you have
those conceptual improvements in your games - and
they're not just clones of previous games - then you can
obsolete your older games with the conceptual develop-
ment. But the factories don't do that. And do you know
why?
PLAY METER: Okay, I'll bite. Why?
KIRK: Because they really don't know what to do. They
see a pinball not as a game but as a toy. A toy has to break
apart before it's no good. Toys won't change from
generation to generation. That's why there's such a lack
of confidence in the future of the games business at the
manufacturing end and why there's no real conceptual
improvements in the games that are coming out. I don't
think the administrators at the manufacturing end truly
understand the game - especially the pinball. They've
lost touch with it. They perceive it as merely a toy. And so
they see themselves as being in the toy business. the
throwaway toy business. They don't realize that you
don'tjust rearrange parts on the playfield . A game has an
integrity of its own. It's not just a toy that you have build
•
in mechanical obsolescence.
Next time: In the final installment, Kirk 1alks about the
need for name recognition among game designers and
how operators can sabotage or help promote play on the
games by smart operating.
The manufacturers don ,t realize pinball is a game.
They perceive it as merely a toy.
66
PLAY METER, May 15, 1985