Playing With Pinball

Good ol' Space Cadet Pinball. How's that for a throwback?

Once upon a time, I learned the joys of a wonderful little game called "Space Cadet Pinball". I bashed the flippers, I sent the ball rocketing, I even learned how to shoot the ball up that left ramp over and over again. Then times changed, that little pinball game on my computer was no longer compatible with my version of Microsoft Windows. I had to tuck it away in the corners of my memory, but I always thought about it now and again. Then last year, I picked up a free pinball game. I quickly got enough enjoyment out of it to buy a selection of tables, and I've been playing them a lot. And I've had some interesting thoughts about how, exactly, these games build the experiences they do--including, surprisingly, storytelling.

Pinball That Tells Stories

The narrative element of pinball seems more obvious in recent years: rather than just being flashing lights and noises, most pinball machines these days (and going back at least a few decades) are rooted in a strong theme. You've got licensed machines for everything from Stranger Things to Demolition Man, and you also have games which aren't licensed but still ooze a specific atmosphere or even story. The themes are pretty obvious even from a distance: they're visible on the eye-catching backboards of each pinball machine, and then when you get closer, the machines themselves are filled with art that supports the theme.

But can pinball tell a story? How can pinball tell a story? Games can end in a matter of minutes, and games are defined by chaos as the ball ricochets from target to target. Early games didn't build very much in this arena, but as the genre developed, the narratives of these games became more and more important. Today, there's all sorts of structures that come together to build a narrative in a pinball game, and instead of telling a linear plot, they work to build a specific feeling within the flow of the game. 

Pinball stories come from the use of several different techniques that help to build a sense of the world of the machine. These techniques reinforce the story that the designer wants to tell, doling it out in bits and pieces that mesh with the actual game that players experience--because when you're playing a game, it's the act of play that's still the most important.

The Rule of Repetition

The first technique that pinball games leverage is repetition. Many "elements" of a table are ones that you need to launch pinballs at, over and over and over. You can eventually "complete" some elements on a table, and this escalates the story and advances a miniature plot of some kind, within the mechanics of the table and the story itself. For example, in the Medieval Madness table, the "Catapult" ramp requires you to repeatedly shoot a hard-to-reach area on the left side of the board. Hit it three times, and you get an animation of launching a catapult (and a minigame where you have to choose an object to launch in the catapult)! The repetition reinforces the basic "plot" of the element, while also investing you more in it.

Repetition can also get more involved, with more complex cycles. In Medieval Madness, there's also a central castle feature, which represents different castles in the kingdom that you're attacking. Attacking each castle is a three-step process:

1. Launch balls into the castle moat a certain number of times, which opens the drawbridge
2. Launch balls across the drawbridge and into the castle gate to damage it, which eventually destroys the gate
3. Launch the ball across the drawbridge and into the castle, which destroys it!

Once the castle is destroyed, it resets, and you get to do the whole process all over again, starting with the moat! However, the amount of times that you have to launch into the moat (and the amount of times you have to damage the gate) increases, making it harder--and the next destroyed castle is worth more points! Furthermore, each castle you destroy features a different enemy knight who taunts you from within the castle, with unique dialogue. So while you repeat the same cycle, there's variations on it that add novelty and a sense of progression in your own story.

Building Up

In the castle example from the previous section, you saw a bit of this principle: pinball games build a sense of progression with features that have some sort of buildup. The most common example of this is "ball lock" mechanics, which are common setups for multiballs: you have to lock one, then two, then three pinballs in holding spaces, then they all get unleashed in a chaotic mode of play where all of them get dropped into the table! 

Here, the narrative techniques work to create a sort of momentum in the game, and pinball tables will sometimes play off of that. For example, in Theater of Magic, the most common form of ball lock comes with animations that show the pinball getting wrapped up by wires as it's collected--and there's unique animation for both the first and second locks. Then, once the second ball is locked, a magnetic spot appears in the middle of the playfield that attracts nearby pinballs. Once a ball sticks to it, the game begins (with a flood of flashing lights and noises) the full multiball!

There's a few things going on here: first, the game builds anticipation by setting up something big, and then it builds a sense of rhythm. One, two, and three unleashes the payout! Attack From Mars has features that work similarly: you shoot them three times, and the third time unlocks a "hurry-up": a short timer where you have to make a shot to the center of the pinball table. Each time, the hurry-up is a capstone for the mini-narrative of that feature: for example, after a series of shots where the aliens are taking captives, you have to shoot the flying saucer to rescue the abductees! The capstone makes it feel like a simple storyline, even though it wasn't very complicated. You did the same thing three times, and the narrative you got was fairly straightforward, but that sense of progression makes it feel like a complete narrative once you land the final shot.

Slices of Story

The most explicit part of narrative technique, especially in modern pinball tables, is the way that different parts of the table communicate a specific slice of the table's story or theme. Often, this comes in the form of a "mission" system, where players can activate a mode of play that represents a "plot" within the world of the game. This is used frequently in tables based on fictional universes (like Star Wars or Stranger Things), but missions show up in many other places. Monster Bash, loosely based on the classic Universal Monsters movies, is an example of an older table that plays with mission-based story, as your gameplay sees you working through different modes for each monster. Activate the Wolfman, and you start a mode where you have to loop shots around the table in "Full Moon Madness". Wake up Dracula, and he pops out of his coffin and drifts across the table, as you try to hit him with a pinball!

A mission provides a chance for the table to slice away a specific linear storyline from the table's overall narrative, giving it a specific shape. For a brief bit of time, the pinball table shifts to put this one specific storyline front and center, making gameplay more linear. Missions are often more gimmicky than normal play, because they make themselves the center of attention while they're active.

Another way that pinball tables can dip explicitly into the themes and narrative of their world is by attaching specific parts of the fiction to different table elements. Many tables do this by having a "collection" feature: you have to hit specific targets to collect members of a set, like how the Lord of the Rings table sees you collecting members of the Fellowship of the Ring, or collecting elven/dwarven/human rings by doing specific things. While missions provide a more linear focus on the story, collection elements are more open-ended: you can collect some pieces of a set, go off and do other things, and then come back to it later--often working on more than one set at a time. When the collection completes, you get a bonus and a reminder of what the whole set represents in the story that you're playing through.

Putting the Story Together

In just one post, we've covered many techniques that pinball tables use to build a sense of story. What makes this different from more traditional storytelling? It has to do with the way that different storytelling techniques are mixed together. Some portions of a table can have a more traditional narrative, while other narrative pieces exist in a very abstract way: they remind you of specific things from the story that you're following, or build up texture with things that don't make literal sense. What ties everything into one unit is the game itself, the player mixing their experience of these techniques at their own pace.

Pinball tables unfold story in a way that tests the limits of how story can be conveyed in a game. They're a unique addition to the pool of interactive storytelling, and have only continued to develop over time. I'm going to do some more specific table breakdowns in the future, to give you a better idea of how exactly this process works in a more concrete form. Stick around!