From the Pinball Machine to the Metaverse

He's a pinball wizard

There has got to be a twist

A pinball wizard's

Got such a supple wrist 

From Pinball Wizard by The Who

Remember the video arcade? Those Vegas-like rooms filled with bells, whistles, bleeps, rings and all sorts of electronic sounds filled with teenagers looking to beat machines at their own games for a few quarters? You may be too young to recall that. Roomfuls of pinball machines and TV tennis screens with a round lever that could move the cursor in one dimension - up and down. How does that compare to your current Nintendo Switch Joy-con?

The pinball machine has been relegated to vintage stores, garage sales or the occasional antique shop. Bulky, bright, noisy and filled with chrome, they make for a beautiful piece of memorabilia for the nostalgic at heart. But gaming took on a very digital turn beginning in the early 70’s when Mangavox Odyssey turned our passive TV sets into interactive devices. Yes, those two dimensional cursors seemed pretty sci-fi back then. A long, long list of players, fads and trends would follow digital gaming. Atari created Pac Man fever, Nintendo brought out Mario, and eventually Bill Gates wanted in on the game with Xbox. That’s a broad brush stroke of about two decades of gaming. New, thinner, bigger screens; better graphics and sounds; and of course lots and lots of titles.

Then in the mid 90’s Sony launched its first Playstation, which essentially redefined the key tool - the controller. That small but powerful device with knobs, buttons and thumbsticks that put your ten digits to work in order to beat the game. While the tech in the machines has evolved and largely advanced, the game controller remains almost the same. Today’s popular PS4 and PS5 are physically just a small evolutionary step from the very first one. Moreover, the Xbox and Switch Pro are modeled around the PS. Each has their own gadgets, but the design and ergonomics are basically the same. 

Fast forward another two decades and that puts us in the next innovation, which is now fast changing the way we play the game. In the early 2010’s Oculus put a new device on the toolkit that would let us ditch our paper-thin 67-inch mega screens - the VR headset. You know the rest, Facebook purchased the company in 2014, amalgamated it into their Reality Labs VR/AR division and then rebranded itself into Meta to take the lead into developing the metaverse - the virtual space for experiencing, seeing, playing, learning and meeting and just about anything else Meta can think of.

But what’s leading the pack in the metaverse is gaming. Pandemic-driven spending and startups in the gaming industry are packing the metaverse with content. The medium is a perfect fit for the category, you could almost say VR was created for gaming. It may end up being more like VR happened because of gaming. But the reality is the games will be changed forever. The experience of feeling like we’re in a dungeon and a dragon in our face will inject a level of fear and urgency hard to duplicate on a flatscreen.

We’ve come a long way from the humble bells and whistles of the pinball machine. But one thing remains unchanged: the talent and ability remain on the speed and accuracy of our ten fingers. So whichever platform you’re using, make sure you keep a strong grip.