Design lessons from pinball

I went to a very cool underground pinball hall in Zurich tonight for a friend’s going away party. While there I noticed a number of interesting design choices that make for a good pinball experience.

* Give people lots of points: nearly every action in pinball gets you thousands of points. Simply shoot the ball onto the table and you win 400,000 points. They’re all relative, of course, and to the game that isn’t very much. But it makes you feel great as a player.
* Free play is different: my friend paid for the tables to be free all night, which took the pressure off and let people play freely. It also reduced the tension in the game, which is part of the fun for some people. It’s important to decide what’s free and what’s expensive in your experience.
* Keep people in the flow: flow is important in all experiences, but in pinball gradually increasing complexity keeps you engaged with a mechanically static table.
* Frustration is an opportunity for grace: the best example of this is when a ball goes directly in the trap after the launch; most machines will pop it back on the table right away. What would have been a frustrating and disappointing mistake is turned into a pleasant surprise. Look for ways to turn the worst aspects of your experience into surprise gifts.