Open-End Storytelling in Pinball Machines [chapter]

David Krummenacher
2021 Narrative Mechanics  
Pinball machines have long been part of everyday culture. Today, they have almost completely disappeared from public spaces and can mostly be found in closed hobby rooms or in digital form on the players' private devices. A similar situation applies to their description in a scientific context. They let many players live through their story while playing, but so far nobody has described how these stories are structured and how they are received. This article is based on a master's thesis
more » ... nacher 2018) in the subject area of Game Design at Zurich University of the Arts. It examined pinball machines with regard to their narrative elements and structures, utilizing content analysis as a method. The results were mostly limited to storytelling in physical pinball machines and dealt only marginally with virtual pinball machines. Virtual pinball machines that are subject to the restrictions of a physical pinball machine were of course not excluded, but not explicitly investigated. The purpose of the thesis was to open up the field and to give designers of physical and virtual pinball machines a framework in which they can think about storytelling for pinball machines. The following article provides a summary of the findings of this thesis.
doi:10.14361/9783839453452-009 fatcat:2y555dpqwradplwooh66pfdb44