Pinball Design & Programming

Over the course of the semester me and two other students designed and built a pinball machine for our Pinball Design and Programing class. We met with industry professionals, toured the largest pinball factory in the nation, and attended the National Pinball Expo in Chicago to gain a better understanding of pinball machines and how to build them. From that experience I began to see three core pillars to a successful pinball machine. First is theme. The theme of the machine is what draws people in to play and gives a sense of purpose to the mechanisms. Even a simple mechanism like a spin target is more interesting when contextualized within the theme and for most machines the rules naturally branch from their theme. Second are the mechanisms. The mechanisms are what the player interacts with. New mechanisms or common mechanisms used in a unique way are on their own interesting even without the context of theme. Last is layout. The layout of the machine is key in creating a machine people want to come back. Repeatable shots and gameplay loops create a rhythm to the gameplay, keeping people engaged in longer sessions of play. However, unlike a video game where everything is software, pinball machines require a lot of hardware. Every pinball machine is a balancing act of providing something new and exciting for consumers but remaining feasible for factory production. The need to meet this balance requires constant collaboration between mechanical engineers, programmers, and artist to build an appealing machine durable enough to last.

During the process of building our own machine we came across a great deal of challenges, first and foremost simply the order of which to place parts. As an integrated system, many parts couldn’t be installed until after others so careful planning was required.  Since each one of us specialized in a different part of the process, it was important we communicated effectively to draft the plan. Of course, plans are plans and inevitably we encountered problems we hadn’t accounted for. Patience was essential, but so was understanding where we could compromise versus where it was important, we preserved our original vision. At the end of the semester, we successfully completed the first version of our machine with plenty of ideas on how to improve it.