Ask Uncle Willy #14: July 29, 1997
Uncle Willy answers your questions about pinball machines. The questions should be of a general-interest nature, and will be answered via an article archived here.
Asking questions of a proprietary nature ("How many of game X were produced?" "What games do you have in the works for next spring?" "What game is designer Y working on?") will not get you very far, as Uncle Willy is constrained from answering them.
If you have questions about fixing, restoring, or purchasing an older game, Uncle Willy would like to refer you to Ask Uncle Willy #10.
Question: I'm interested in someday becoming involved in the design of
games. What college major should I choose? What sorts of
backgrounds do the people who work at Williams have?
Answer: The obvious answer here is that you should enroll in a college or
university that offers degrees in Game Design. Possibly consider
specializing in Pinbalogy or Arcadeology.
Uncle Willy is sure that you recognize the facetiousness of the
above answer. As mentioned in Ask Uncle Willy #5, there is no
"typical" background for a game designer. The best discussion of
this topic that Uncle Willy has seen is from the "Dear Ken"
column of the InterAction magazine by Sierra On-Line (Fall 1996).
Uncle Willy will take the liberty of paraphrasing and
embellishing Ken Williams' answer below.
Aside from being born with the ability to create games, there is
no clear-cut way to become a game designer. A game designer
should have the following qualities:
- Creativity: You should already know if you are a creative
person. You may express your creativity in various ways, such
as writing, painting, sculpting, story telling, or creating
games.
- "Game sense": This is the ability to dissect a game to
determine what makes it good or great. Recognizing and
evaluating individual elements of a game (not just pinball
games!) in terms of whether they are enjoyable or frustrating
is an important part of this. Quite often a game element just
"feels good." Recognizing this is part of "game sense."
- Innovation: Things that are new and novel have appeal. A
game designer must look for new things to add variety and
depth to a game. Even looking at old things in new ways is
important.
- An understanding of what is possible: Some sort of technical
background or exposure to technology is important. It sure
would be neat if it were possible to levitate pinballs, flip
them into the air, and detect their positions in 3-space. If
such a thing were even possible, it would be so prohibitively
expensive that it would never make it into a pinball game. A
game designer has to live within the physical realities of the
world.
An exercise you may want to try is to analyze why you like
your favorite game. (Uncle Willy urges you not to limit this
exercise to just pinball or video games. Think about board games
or card games or sports.) What elements "feel good" or
"rewarding?" What would you change? What would you add? Why do
you keep choosing that game to play again? Get specific, but
keep within the realm of possibility. Also remember that
everyone is a critic. It is much easier to analyze than create,
so don't get hung up on the criticism.
While, the above exercise will start to get you into game
designer mindset, it still won't get you a job as a game
designer. That task is much more daunting. Game companies are
besieged by would-be designers who are certain their games are
the next big hits. Game development can a million dollars or
more for design, manufacturing and marketing. Since most game
companies have their own design teams on staff, they are not
likely to take interest in ideas from outside designers - a game
from an unknown designer is much riskier to develop than one
produced by someone with a track record.
Uncle Willy has no words of advice or encouragement for you
would-be designers out there to get your ideas produced. (And
the good Uncle is certainly not interested in seeing your ideas
himself, so please don't send them to him.)
Uncle Willy's best advice to the would-be game designers out
there is to recognize the game-worthy skills within their
possession and to work on developing them. Are you an artist,
musician, programmer? Do you like to build things, solve logic
puzzles, or play games? All of these attributes come into play
in the game design process. Get a job at a game company using
your special skill, become familiar with the game design process
there, and then maybe someday you can pitch your own ideas.
(That's how most the game designers that Uncle Willy know became
designers.)
Question: In an old issue of "Video Games" magazine, I saw a reference to a
Williams game called Rat Race. Tell me more about it.
Answer: Everyone knows Williams is far and away the most innovative
company in the solar system (ahem), and Rat Race was just another
one of those attempts at doing something radically different.
Remember, this was the era of Joust pinball, Hyperball, and
Varkon! Rat Race was housed in a cabinet similar to that of
Joust pinball, but was not a head-to-head game like Joust.
Instead, one or two players took turns working the controls of
what could best be described as a giant Labyrinth game.
Using joysticks that made the play surface tilt in the X- and Y-
axes, the player tried to use gravity and momentum to maneuver
the steel ball into and through various play areas. In addition
to the physical elements of the maze sections, there were
software-controlled lights used to create different goals for the
sections as play progressed. As is evident from the flyer for the
game (thoughtfully provided by Uncle Willy at
http://www.wms.com/williams/ww/gallery) quite a bit of thought
went into the design.
Rat Race was designed by Barry Oursler, from an idea by Steve
Kordek. The artwork was by Pam Erickson. All the clues Uncle
Willy can find point to Dave Rzepka as the programmer, but he
can't be 100% sure about that one. The prototype run of Rat
Race consisted of 10 games, but it never entered production.
Apparently the joystick-controlled motor system for tilting the
playfield was extremely complicated and expensive, and didn't
provide the kind of precise control necessary to play the game
well. Uncle Willy has heard that some of those 10 prototype
games do still exist in private hands, but there isn't one
lurking around Williams anywhere. Which leads us to:
Question: Does Williams have one of every game they've ever made? I saw on
the Discovery Channel where Williams has this great pinball
museum.
Answer: Trust Uncle Willy, he would love nothing better after a hard
day's work than to wander over to the 23-acre environmentally-
controlled facility that would be required to house all those
games. He would manually plunge a few balls on woodrails like
Gusher and Jigsaw, send the ball flying around the relatively
open playfields of Dealer's Choice and Strato-Flite, challenge
the Black Knight again, make Rudy very upset on Funhouse, and
finally shoot a few 3-pointers on NBA Fastbreak. The next night
would be a whole new lineup, and he wouldn't have to play the
same game twice for months.
Alas, that is just fantasy. Williams has made a whole bunch of
games over the last 50-some-odd years, and there has never been
enough room to try to save one of each of them. That's why Uncle
Willy admires the efforts of all of the pin collectors out there,
each of them preserving this history a few games at a time. In
this way, people can continue to enjoy all those fine Williams
games, even if Uncle Willy can't personally play them after work.
From time to time, there have been small areas set aside at
Williams for pinball machines to be displayed. When the
Discovery Channel visited a couple of years ago, there was such a
room with a few of the most recent games, and a few older games
from Steve Kordek's personal collection. As other space needs
took priority, even that small assortment of games was eventually
disbanded.
Question: Why is 6.5 degree the preferred playfield angle? Did it used to
be 3 degrees?
Answer: Up to a certain point, a steeper playfield slope makes for more
exciting ball action. In the early days of pinball, however, the
mechanical devices on the playfield were not up to the task of
fighting that much gravity. A slope of about 3 degrees struck a
good balance. Once pins started including more powerful and
robust mechanical assemblies, the playfield slope could be
increased for better ball action, while still allowing the
flippers, bumpers, and so on to send the ball back up the
playfield.
The precise angle of 6.5 was determined after months of grueling
clinical trials and focus groups, with biofeedback and eye-
tracking equipment feeding the real-time human factors data into
banks of Cray supercomputers, while GPS and NIST data were
simultaneously factored in to remove any skewing due to time or
place. Or maybe that was just the empirically determined angle
of one machine once that "sure felt like it played well." Uncle
Willy is not sure which story to believe.
Question: What is DiamondPlate? Does it really make for a longer lasting
playfield?
Answer: Throughout the history of pinball, manufacturers have tried to
make playfields that could withstand the rigors of location play.
Anyone who has seen a frequently played older machine can attest
to the fact that a steel ball can do a lot of damage to painted
wood. Uncle Willy thinks that the playfields in newer Williams
games are far superior in terms of resisting paint wear, but will
not go into more specifics due to the competitive nature of the
pinball business. The best thing you can do for any pinball
playfield is to keep it clean, and to replace the ball(s) at the
slightest hint of pitting, rust, or other surface imperfections
on the ball. That's cheap insurance!
Question: I noticed a small plug in the playfield between the flippers on a
No Fear. Did there used to be a metal post there?
Answer: Early in the design of No Fear, a post was considered as a way to
alter ball times if they were too short. Therefore the playfield
was manufactured with the hole for the post already drilled, but
with the hole plugged. Uncle Willy believes the earliest sample
games even shipped with the post as part of the supplied spare
parts, in case the decision was made to install it after more
real-world play data was gathered. That decision was not made,
and No Fear went into production with a plug instead of a post.
Question: In the last Ask Uncle Willy (July 2, 1997), you weaseled out of
actually answering any questions about hidden things in games.
We want information!
Answer: Uncle Willy wonders if you read mystery books by starting with
the last chapter. Isn't part of the thrill in the hunt? But
maybe you don't know what you're hunting for, so Uncle Willy will
agree to write down a few things that he knows to look for in
games new and old. Discuss amongst yourselves.
-- Cows
-- The Red Button
-- Skull and crossbones
-- The artist and/or family members and/or friends
-- 3
-- "SM" (not "S&M"; get your mind out of the gutter!)
-- "Eat at Joe's"
-- Bob
-- Champagne glasses
Question: Is Eugene Jarvis still at Williams? I loved his game Defender,
and I also noticed his name on an F-14 Tomcat pin.
Answer: Uncle Willy has spotted "Dr. J" across the street at Midway Games
(formerly division of WMS Industries). If you've seen those
blockbuster driving games "Cruisin' USA" and "Cruisin' World"
then you've seen the latest efforts of Eugene Jarvis. I think
you'll agree he has been putting his skills to good use!
Question: In Roadshow, is there any relevance to the sign on Bob's Bunker
saying "Secret Video Mode: BRRRLLRRL?"
Answer: Yes.
Question: I have a pinball game that has a revision of software that is
older than the one available on the WMS Web site. The site does
not list any of the changes from my version to the newer version.
Could you tell me what changed?
Answer: Uncle Willy is sorry that he can not help you with this question.
If the revision information were available, it would have been
included on the Web site. Unfortunately, this information has
been lost for many of the older games.
Question: Uncle Willy is sorry that he is running out of time and space this
week to answer all of your questions. In the interest of
addressing as many of your questions as possible, here are some
quick answers. Uncle Willy hopes that you will recognize the
answer to your question below.
Answers: Left, seven, yes, no, .060" #303 cold-worked stainless steel, good
idea -- we're working on it right now.
All text and images © 1997 WMS Electronics Games, Inc.