Women in Pinball: Flipping the Male-Dominated Script
December 6, 2020 3:27 PM Subscribe
TL;DR Despite common reports of sexism in pinball and the lack of female representation among the top 100 players, women are taking the space they deserve.
When I'm asked to provide an introduction, one of my favorite ice breakers is, "I'm technically the best Elyse in pinball."
This achievement isn't terribly noteworthy for a couple of reasons:
1) My name (especially when spelled with a 'y') is rather uncommon
2) Pinball is a heavily male-dominated activity
On the International Pinball Flipper Association (IFPA) website, not a single woman is ranked among the top 100 players (the top female player is ranked 103rd, and the next highest is ranked 251st).
Adam Ruben's article in the Washington Post does an excellent job of summarizing the pervasive sexism found not only on machine backglasses and playfields, but in far too many personal stories from female players who were undervalued, intimidated, and harassed. sexism in pinball
Others have discussed sexism in pinball (https://www.thelily.com/these-women-are-pinball-wizards-and-theyre-encouraging-more-to-play/)
Despite this insidious and often unwelcoming environment, there are successes worth celebrating. For example, Nicole Reik launched the Pinball Outreach Project (POP) in 2012, and while the headquarters closed in Portland in 2017, the organization still loans pinball machines to facilities who fit their mission to 'improve the lives of children by sharing the history and excitement of the game of pinball.' POP Located in Oakland, California, Belles and Chimes was created in 2013 as a female-inclusive space for women's pinball leagues (which are found in multiple cities across the globe). Additionally, Hava Berman not only worked as Chief Operating Officer of a custom arcade and pinball machine gallery but also rocked a roller derby career.
COVID-19 has impacted nearly every industry in some form or fashion, and with understandable lockdown restrictions, pinball is no exception. I am hopeful that the industry will continue to thrive once the pandemic finally recedes. Among the many changes that may exist afterward, I'm looking forward to witnessing continued strides toward equality in pinball.
When I'm asked to provide an introduction, one of my favorite ice breakers is, "I'm technically the best Elyse in pinball."
This achievement isn't terribly noteworthy for a couple of reasons:
1) My name (especially when spelled with a 'y') is rather uncommon
2) Pinball is a heavily male-dominated activity
On the International Pinball Flipper Association (IFPA) website, not a single woman is ranked among the top 100 players (the top female player is ranked 103rd, and the next highest is ranked 251st).
Adam Ruben's article in the Washington Post does an excellent job of summarizing the pervasive sexism found not only on machine backglasses and playfields, but in far too many personal stories from female players who were undervalued, intimidated, and harassed. sexism in pinball
Others have discussed sexism in pinball (https://www.thelily.com/these-women-are-pinball-wizards-and-theyre-encouraging-more-to-play/)
Despite this insidious and often unwelcoming environment, there are successes worth celebrating. For example, Nicole Reik launched the Pinball Outreach Project (POP) in 2012, and while the headquarters closed in Portland in 2017, the organization still loans pinball machines to facilities who fit their mission to 'improve the lives of children by sharing the history and excitement of the game of pinball.' POP Located in Oakland, California, Belles and Chimes was created in 2013 as a female-inclusive space for women's pinball leagues (which are found in multiple cities across the globe). Additionally, Hava Berman not only worked as Chief Operating Officer of a custom arcade and pinball machine gallery but also rocked a roller derby career.
COVID-19 has impacted nearly every industry in some form or fashion, and with understandable lockdown restrictions, pinball is no exception. I am hopeful that the industry will continue to thrive once the pandemic finally recedes. Among the many changes that may exist afterward, I'm looking forward to witnessing continued strides toward equality in pinball.
Yeah, it’s basically another niche passion that boring white dudes took over once it became popular again. I was in a small pinball league that anyone could join and anyone could compete in the weekly tournaments. We didn’t have a name and we weren’t interested in being a “club.” A few years ago some dudes came along and convinced the owner of the barcade to go pro, made some crappy branding and jackets and started peddling their merch to patrons. Suddenly people couldn’t compete in the tournaments without paying 45 bucks for club fees so they could be established as a legit PaPa league. It became an elitist boys club instantly, as expected.
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:17 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
posted by Young Kullervo at 6:17 PM on December 6, 2020 [10 favorites]
This doesn't surprise me. I have a couple of pinball machines, this Star Trek one is my favorite. Even though it is new-ish there's still an unnecessary giant boobed alien that seemed a bit dated when I got it and now has definitely aged uncomfortably. It is funny how in just a few years what seemed like a dirty uncle sort of thing turned into another piece of pervasive sexism.
I'm not at all surprised that it's a male dominated hobby though. Like I said, I own mine and know even with casual use they require quite a bit of maintenance. Even updating the game code requires fiddling with a switch and dumping a bin file from a USB stick. It has a very old-time, male dominated hobby feel to it. Even reading message boards which are kinda necessary to fix things and get better at the game people casually refer to "the wife" as if it is 1975. It is an expensive hobby and I think a lot of people into it are frankly just old.
posted by geoff. at 6:45 PM on December 6, 2020
I'm not at all surprised that it's a male dominated hobby though. Like I said, I own mine and know even with casual use they require quite a bit of maintenance. Even updating the game code requires fiddling with a switch and dumping a bin file from a USB stick. It has a very old-time, male dominated hobby feel to it. Even reading message boards which are kinda necessary to fix things and get better at the game people casually refer to "the wife" as if it is 1975. It is an expensive hobby and I think a lot of people into it are frankly just old.
posted by geoff. at 6:45 PM on December 6, 2020
It became an elitist boys club instantly, as expected.
What I noticed at our city's well-known pinball/bar is that my type (gay, tech) is not welcome. I'll go every now and again, anyway, just to play the games. I frankly don't care if I annoy them. They already had to move once. If they want their business to survive in this city, they'll have to just to learn to cope.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:41 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
What I noticed at our city's well-known pinball/bar is that my type (gay, tech) is not welcome. I'll go every now and again, anyway, just to play the games. I frankly don't care if I annoy them. They already had to move once. If they want their business to survive in this city, they'll have to just to learn to cope.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:41 PM on December 6, 2020 [1 favorite]
I can't think of a single male-dominated anything that isn't absolutely rife with sexual harassment of virtually any woman who wants to participate in it. SIGH.
That said, pinball is cool, but I just had myself a video pinball game and saved myself the trouble.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:46 PM on December 6, 2020
That said, pinball is cool, but I just had myself a video pinball game and saved myself the trouble.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:46 PM on December 6, 2020
Flipping, hehe.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:14 PM on December 6, 2020
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:14 PM on December 6, 2020
Video pinball is nice, but I have observed multiple times that it is no substitute for the real thing. A major reason for that has to do with video refresh rates and display lag limiting how well you can react to the game. That said, it is terrible bullshit that pinball is still a boy's club. Then I see something like THIS and it feels like it might actually be getting worse.
posted by JHarris at 12:36 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by JHarris at 12:36 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Maybe I've just got slow reaction times, but with a display with low input latency along with some contactors to give the flippers some feel, an accelerometer, and a few boxes of hardware from real pinball machines I didn't have any issues with my cab even though the display was only 60hz. It probably would have felt worse if the simulation was locked to the display frame rate. I certainly didn't lose track of the ball any more often than I did on a real machine.
Zen Pinball streamed from my PC to a TV with a display that has 100ms of latency takes some getting used to, though it isn't bad once you get a feel for it. The real treat about digital recreations is that stuff doesn't randomly not work because it got dirty.
posted by wierdo at 2:43 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Zen Pinball streamed from my PC to a TV with a display that has 100ms of latency takes some getting used to, though it isn't bad once you get a feel for it. The real treat about digital recreations is that stuff doesn't randomly not work because it got dirty.
posted by wierdo at 2:43 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
I got a little obsessed with pinball after watching this movie as a kid, but yeah, it was hard to find places to play that weren't a little sketchy.
posted by JanetLand at 6:06 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by JanetLand at 6:06 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Video pinball has never satisfied me. I think it's the tactile and haptic experience - you can feel the heaviness of the ball, moving or sticking as it goes.
Luckily, my da, the one who raised me listening to prog, bought and refurb'd a machine a few years ago; in usual times I get playtime whenever. I think because a lot of the pinball players in the last 20 years had to double as mechanics, it attracted the hobby-shop population, which skews white male middle class.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2020
Luckily, my da, the one who raised me listening to prog, bought and refurb'd a machine a few years ago; in usual times I get playtime whenever. I think because a lot of the pinball players in the last 20 years had to double as mechanics, it attracted the hobby-shop population, which skews white male middle class.
posted by cobaltnine at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2020
We have a pinball league here in NYC — I play in the C league, which is pretty chill, but I've heard stories about A-league. We also have an NYC chapter of Belles & Chimes here, which is great.
In the Before Times, there were tons of pinball bars here and I hope they all pull through okay.
posted by Ampersand692 at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
In the Before Times, there were tons of pinball bars here and I hope they all pull through okay.
posted by Ampersand692 at 6:07 AM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
I play -- very casually -- in a women's league that isn't affiliated with Belles and Chimes. It's a very welcoming group in a lot of ways -- but I've started to wonder about the ways in which it is not diverse. It's a very white crew -- there's one person who comes and is half-German / half-Taiwanese, but I can't think of any other racialized people who play in the league. I also wonder if pinball is inherently exclusionary of many people with physical disabilities, both because of the nature of tables and the fact that it is played in basements most of the time.
posted by jacquilynne at 6:19 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 6:19 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
They sucked his brains out! -
I’m pretty sure I know exactly what pinball bar you are referring to, and actually tended bar there a about decade ago. While it definitely has a vibe of being unwelcoming on the surface, the actual pinball community there is extremely welcoming, and made up up of all sorts of types that include gay and tech. You do have to scratch below the surface to get there though.
More directly on topic, though the article is paywalled and I haven’t been able to read it, some of that community are the people behind the monthly Babes in Pinland tournament. I’ve never been involved with them as it started up around the time I left Seattle, and I am male, but some of my very favorite people in that town have been. So if anyone is looking for a welcoming pinball scene for women in Seattle I would highly recommend checking it out. Once pinball tournaments are a safe thing to have again.
posted by Jawn at 6:50 AM on December 7, 2020
I’m pretty sure I know exactly what pinball bar you are referring to, and actually tended bar there a about decade ago. While it definitely has a vibe of being unwelcoming on the surface, the actual pinball community there is extremely welcoming, and made up up of all sorts of types that include gay and tech. You do have to scratch below the surface to get there though.
More directly on topic, though the article is paywalled and I haven’t been able to read it, some of that community are the people behind the monthly Babes in Pinland tournament. I’ve never been involved with them as it started up around the time I left Seattle, and I am male, but some of my very favorite people in that town have been. So if anyone is looking for a welcoming pinball scene for women in Seattle I would highly recommend checking it out. Once pinball tournaments are a safe thing to have again.
posted by Jawn at 6:50 AM on December 7, 2020
And I should add that the casual pinball scene at that bar can be pretty shitty. It was really the people who were really into pinball that were more welcoming and inclusive. And as more pinball venues have opened up in Seattle over the years those folks may have gravitated towards other places.
posted by Jawn at 6:54 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by Jawn at 6:54 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
Any community that requires a newcomer to "scratch below the surface" to find a welcome is fucked up, though.
Any group that claims to celebrate inclusion rather than tribalism needs to make newcomers as obviously welcome as possible, by going out of their way to foster an environment that is free from judgement, suspicion and criticism. This is extremely difficult work and doesn't happen without intentional planning, people whose role it is to make it happen, and a membership that is rigorously trained to assist new people in finding those greeters.
So if you can't go to your group's management and find a concrete, functioning plan for making new people welcome, it's not a welcoming group. And maybe you need to step up and make some changes.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:05 AM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Any group that claims to celebrate inclusion rather than tribalism needs to make newcomers as obviously welcome as possible, by going out of their way to foster an environment that is free from judgement, suspicion and criticism. This is extremely difficult work and doesn't happen without intentional planning, people whose role it is to make it happen, and a membership that is rigorously trained to assist new people in finding those greeters.
So if you can't go to your group's management and find a concrete, functioning plan for making new people welcome, it's not a welcoming group. And maybe you need to step up and make some changes.
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:05 AM on December 7, 2020 [4 favorites]
Interesting article. My experience is slightly different. Back in my university days in Sweden, I ran a Student Pinball Competition. We had 1/3 female participants. (Also our pinballs were not illustrated with cleavage images.)
posted by Rabarberofficer at 9:41 AM on December 7, 2020
posted by Rabarberofficer at 9:41 AM on December 7, 2020
There is, in pinball, a distinct difference between the organizations and the venues -- venues may be more or less welcoming than organizations and vice versa. Unfortunately, the high cost of the machines (in money, time and space) means that most organizations are fairly reliant on venues -- bars, mostly, but also arcades and a few private homes -- for a place to play, but don't necessarily have control over whether the owners are asshats or not.
posted by jacquilynne at 10:34 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by jacquilynne at 10:34 AM on December 7, 2020 [1 favorite]
On video pinball (which is a bit of a derail), I figure I should elaborate--
Refresh rates have to do with the array of possible shots that can be made. In physical pinball, you'll notice that on different machines, some shots will be easier to make than others, for a variety of reasons. This is part of the game, helps make each individual machine a different challenge, and, as well as the machines are well-maintained and all shots are generally makeable, isn't a huge problem.
In video pinball recreations, some shots are often abnormally difficult to make unless the table maker takes special effort to ensure they aren't so, a process that (probably) takes a lot of test play to deterine. I consider this to (probably) be due to the refresh rate. Physical pinball is a continuum of states, but video pinball is essentially a sequence of closely-packed states locked to the game's frame rate. Also, when a ball drops out of a habitrail into an inlane, or if the player does a ball trap with a flipper, it has a specific velocity, so the states of the ball coming out of it are likely to be the same, or very similar, each time. This can result in some shots being outright impossible, if a place the player must flip to make the shot doesn't match one of the discrete spots the ball is at, unless the player makes shots on the fly, which vary the ball's state, but is not a tactic favored by expert players.
Then there is the question of sheer reaction speed. I have lost plenty of balls in video pinball that would be barely savable on a physical machine because I simply cannot react fast enough to save them. Part of it may be flipper speed (they always seem slower in video pinball), but that could just be an illusion caused by the display lag.
Back to the actual subject of the thread--I've been watching a lot of PAPA videos lately, and they feel subtly less watchable now that I know the reason everyone (everyone) in the videos is male is because the hobby has been exclusionary of women. (I don't wish to speak of PAPA specifically since I have no information, but I hope it's because of local clubs and not the organization itself.)
posted by JHarris at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2020
Refresh rates have to do with the array of possible shots that can be made. In physical pinball, you'll notice that on different machines, some shots will be easier to make than others, for a variety of reasons. This is part of the game, helps make each individual machine a different challenge, and, as well as the machines are well-maintained and all shots are generally makeable, isn't a huge problem.
In video pinball recreations, some shots are often abnormally difficult to make unless the table maker takes special effort to ensure they aren't so, a process that (probably) takes a lot of test play to deterine. I consider this to (probably) be due to the refresh rate. Physical pinball is a continuum of states, but video pinball is essentially a sequence of closely-packed states locked to the game's frame rate. Also, when a ball drops out of a habitrail into an inlane, or if the player does a ball trap with a flipper, it has a specific velocity, so the states of the ball coming out of it are likely to be the same, or very similar, each time. This can result in some shots being outright impossible, if a place the player must flip to make the shot doesn't match one of the discrete spots the ball is at, unless the player makes shots on the fly, which vary the ball's state, but is not a tactic favored by expert players.
Then there is the question of sheer reaction speed. I have lost plenty of balls in video pinball that would be barely savable on a physical machine because I simply cannot react fast enough to save them. Part of it may be flipper speed (they always seem slower in video pinball), but that could just be an illusion caused by the display lag.
Back to the actual subject of the thread--I've been watching a lot of PAPA videos lately, and they feel subtly less watchable now that I know the reason everyone (everyone) in the videos is male is because the hobby has been exclusionary of women. (I don't wish to speak of PAPA specifically since I have no information, but I hope it's because of local clubs and not the organization itself.)
posted by JHarris at 1:22 PM on December 7, 2020
We went to an indie arcade here in NYC last year to hang out with an old friend. There they had a pinball machine that just broke down on the reg, but also involved crazy lights and sometimes smoke machine and handpainted everything and it was beautiful if usually broken. So if anyone needs a pinball machine painter, I would be very good at it and offer my professional sign-painting and scenic art skills pro bono. I'll kick in symbol-inventing, for clarity of scoring purposes.
posted by lauranesson at 8:12 PM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by lauranesson at 8:12 PM on December 7, 2020 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Two comments removed. Remember to take active care to avoid making a conversation about yourself or diverting the topic (intentionally or accidentally) particularly where systemic power is involved.
posted by loup (staff) at 10:43 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by loup (staff) at 10:43 AM on December 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
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