Pinball Machines Are Getting a Huge Upgrade to Convince Players to Come Back to Arcades

The Insider Connected service will allow truly devoted pinball players to keep tabs on what machines they’ve played, their high scores on each table, and even how much of their lives have been spent banging a metal ball around an interactive obstacle course.

Of course, convincing pinball fans to return to arcades is relatively easy. It’s growing the fandom of pinball and gaining new players that’s the bigger challenge, especially given many pinball arcades still require players to wear masks and responsibly physically distance themselves from others. To that end, the Insider Connected service will introduce unlockable achievements, badges, and challenges that test a player’s skills by requiring them to reach certain scores, play for a set amount of time, or trigger a specific series of events on a given table’s obstacles. And based on where a game is played—at home where a pinball machine’s glass can be removed to facilitate cheating, or in a public venue where that’s not possible—certain achievements will be verified and carry more weight than others.

The Insider Connected service will also introduce in-game reward currencies: Stern’s Gold Coins, which can be exchanged for merchandise, gameplay discounts, or in-game power-ups from the company directly, and Tokens that local operators can opt into and define the worth of, allowing players to exchange them for rewards like free plays or even free food from the arcade’s concessions. It’s a loyalty program that operators with a large collection of Stern pinball machines don’t have to set up and operate themselves, but can still leverage to help bring in new players and customers.

Given the challenges even large electronic makers are having with getting product to consumers, it may be a few months before the the Insider Connected service is available at your local pinball joint, but it’s another clever move by Stern that will help keep pinball machines relevant and popular, even as video game arcade cabinets continue to die off.