Pinball and Social Games

[Editor’s note: Below, game veteran and industry thinker Tadhg Kelly shares his ruminations on the nature of social gaming mechanics, and similarities they have to that arcade classic, pinball.]

I once thought of social games as being very similar to slot machines, but I now think a better analogy is pinball. The art of great pinball is not the skill (which tends to put off more people than it attracts) but rather the rewards. While social games are clearly very different from pinball in many ways, the two share some surprising similarities.

Pinball

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