Thanks, I was going to comment here about that. From your link:
>As the years passed, pinball machines continued to pop up around the country in various forms as the furor against them lessened and the laws and bans became more lax. Yet it was not until 1976 that the New York pinball ban was actually lifted.
They made a drama comedy faux-documentary about it a few years ago titled _Pinball: The Man Who Saved The Game_. It's cute, regardless of your investment into pinball as a whole.
> "The ban was lifted when Roger Sharpe went in and did a Babe Ruth number where he called his shot, and then he launched his ball. This was after several attempts to prove to them that he could actually beat the machine,” Schiess explains. “But they weren’t buying it until he made that shot. As soon as he made it, they took a vote and the ban was lifted. It was a big deal.”
Yeah, that was weird, I never knew that. My dad was a fan of pinball, we had a jukebox and two different pinball machines in our house in the late 70s/early 80s. Even had a full size Pac Man arcade game for a few months, on loan from a guy he knew who repaired various coin-operated machines.
I don’t know if many on orange site knew about New Games Journalism - a pre-gamergate attempt to talk about video games in personal and political terms, applying gonzo journalism to reviewing games. Mostly a push to take games seriously as a cultural force. This article feels like a strong precursor to it
I do, through the UK website rock-paper-shotgun. As you say, it was an attempt to bring the same style of writing and a personal, emotional touch to games as people are used to with film and books.
It turned out that that kind of adulthood was not what gamers wanted.
Add to that Ralph Bakshi's film Heavy Traffic (1973) — a pinball table is something of a metaphor in the film for the fortunes and misfortunes of life. (That was a couple years before the John McPhee's article — must have been the Zeitgeist.)
"The Pinball Philosophy," viewed fifty years later, can contrast how human drives for control, meaning, and authentic experience are lived.
While 1970s pinball offered a microcosm of manageable chaos and tangible, if fleeting, mastery, the digital/algorithmic novelties of 2025 present a fundamentally different terrain.
Unlike the fixed mechanics of pinball, our digital systems are opaque and often deterministic individual human assemblages.
Our agency lies not merely in "playing" better, but in shaping configs, rules, and resisting or using algorithmic determinism.
Furthermore, meaning differs. Pinball’s appeal was physical presence, immediate feedback, and connection to countercultural "underground" novelty.
In 2025, "novelty" is fleeting, algorithmically manufactured. The "underground" is less physical space, less human connection, more dispersed digital curation.
"Authenticity" shifts: from Lukas's "seediness" to a 2025 quest for unfiltered content, and deeper still, for once-again embodied, real offline connections allowing true authenticity.
Thus, while the desire for control and meaning endures, the digital transformation has altered our agency, the meaning of meaning, and even authenticity and novelty. Then as now, it demands critical engagement beyond mere "machine play."
----
Here follow 2 AI generated perspectives:
1- Deeper Layers in "The Pinball Philosophy"
2- Analogies: "The Pinball Philosophy" in 1975 and 2025
----
Deeper Layers in "The Pinball Philosophy":
-- Illusion of Control Post-Watergate: Control is central. Lukas seeks pinball's solace, finding a "sense of controlling things" absent in life, especially post-Watergate. Watergate starkly revealed public powerlessness against institutions, exposing hidden agendas and disillusionment.
-- Pinball: A Controllable Microcosm: Unlike chaotic Watergate-era politics and life, pinball offers a contained, rule-bound system where skill seems to matter. Mastering the machine, "beating" it, provides psychological comfort in an age of anxiety.
-- Real or Illusory Control?: The story subtly hints that even pinball's control is limited. "Sick flipper," "death channel," random bounces—chance and malfunction intervene. Life, too, foils even the best plans. Lukas may crave the feeling of control more than actual certainty.
-- Masculinity, Competition, Journalistic Ego: The story subtly explores masculinity and professional ego in journalism.
-- Pinball as Masculine Pursuit: 1970s pinball had a "boys' club" feel—arcades, bars, "cool." Language like "wrist game," "guts pinball," "reinforcing" has a masculine, aggressive edge, amplified by Lukas and Buckley's rivalry.
-- Subtly Encoded Journalistic Rivalry: The pinball match is a metaphor for professional rivalry. Lukas and Buckley, Times journalists, engage in playful but serious competition for prestige, recognition, and top status. Lukas sees himself as "number 1," even while respecting Buckley, revealing ego dynamics in journalism.
-- Ironic "Secret Joys": Lukas's "secret joys of the city" comment on Buckley may be ironic. Is pinball truly a "secret joy," or a self-conscious display of "cool" masculinity? Does Lukas's intellectualism coexist with traditionally masculine recreation and competition?
-- Yearning for "Low Life," Ironic Authenticity: Lukas's attraction to pinball's "seediness" and "disrepute" is key.
-- Escaping "Puritan" Upbringing: Putney, Vermont, is presented as "straitlaced," "high-minded," detached from the "maelstrom." Pinball offers escape, a taste of "real," unsanitized life—a common literary theme of breaking free from social constraints.
-- "Seedy" Authenticity Questioned: Is Lukas's "seediness" embrace contrived? Pinball in his mansion, "low life" adventures of movies and flea circuses—hardly extreme. Is he genuinely connecting with "low life," or just playing a role from privilege? The story implies, but doesn't condemn.
-- "Guilty Pleasure" for Intellectuals?: Pinball may be a socially acceptable "guilty pleasure" for intellectuals like Lukas and Buckley. It's a less cerebral escape within a framework of skill and strategy, appealing to intellect, yet with enough edge to feel like a break from "high-mindedness."
-- The "Sick Flipper" Subtext: The broken flipper is more than plot.
-- Creative Block and Dependence: "No pinball, no paragraphs" suggests dependence on the machine for creativity. The "sick flipper" symbolizes creative disruption, raising questions about inspiration and reliance on external stimuli.
-- Vulnerable "Collaborator": Calling pinball a "collaborator" anthropomorphizes and weakens it. Machines break, like unreliable human partners, revealing fragility in Lukas's process and control.
-- 1975 Cultural Context: Pinball's Shifting Status:
-- Pre-Legalization Pinball: Pinball's 1975 NYC illegality is crucial, highlighting its lingering illicit perception despite changing attitudes (legalization in 1976 footnote). Lukas's private ownership and Coin Row visit exist in this liminal space.
-- Pinball as Symbol of Change: The story captures a cultural shift in pinball perception. LaGuardia saw it as corrupting youth; it was gaining acceptance, even among intellectuals. Profiling Lukas and framing pinball philosophically aids this re-evaluation.
-- Deeper Reading: "The Pinball Philosophy" subtly explores:
-- Psychological needs of a serious intellectual in turbulent times.
-- Complexities of masculinity, competition, professional identity.
-- Ironic nature of privileged authenticity-seeking.
-- Shifting 1970s culture and evolving views of games and leisure.
The twilight zone between control and chaos. I think pinball machines
and analogue modular synthesisers share a lot in common. Including
constant maintenance and skills with a soldering iron.
https://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2015/05/29/pinball...