@Austin_Dern any thoughts
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@Felthry Many ambiguous ones! Like, pinball doesn't feel athletic, but it's not like billiards is a test of muscles or endurance. And it does require reflexes and agility and speed in ways, like, chess doesn't. A lot of sports psychology carries over to competitive play directly. I feel like it should matter there's so many different tables, with different kinds of scoring rules. Most sports are on fields and played by rules that differ only slightly. 1/
@Felthry Even golf, where every hole and course is unique, has far more similarity between holes than (to name some games) FunHouse and Stranger Things do. But then we'd have to say 50s tables, which *are* golf-course-similar, are a sport and modern ones aren't and I don't think that's a defensible split.
So I would rule pinball in as a sport, but mostly as I can't give a reason to rule pinball out that doesn't also rule out things that certainly are sports. Call it a discontented yes. 2/2
@Austin_Dern oh so there's points in the pinball game and then metapoints in the pinball tournament?
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@Felthry Still has flaws, though; if you got 8,190 on Paul Bunyan, taking second, you get the same tournament points as if you got 1200 points and I stomped you flat. Doesn't seem to quite reflect that one match was essentially a tie. But no system is perfectly fair.
@Austin_Dern maybe it should be based on how you do in relation to the average score on that game
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@Felthry That would probably be more fair, but it would also require keeping of way more statistics than anyone does.
Which competitive pinball may need, really. The standards for judging events, and for league rules, are *very* ad hoc. Like, judges are often competing in events too. And game designers can compete in tournaments too, even after literally writing the rules of the game. That's still not something that happens in an organized sport.
@Austin_Dern i feel like judges competing is okay IF the rules of the competition make everything 100% objective and the judges are just there for scorekeeping (and frequently commentating), like how speedrunning events tend to go
game designers competing is a big no in speedrunning too though
i don't think there's a rule against it?? but people generally don't
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@Felthry Unfortunately there's no making judging 100% 'objective'; any set of rules has ambiguous conditions and judgement calls. Especially since almost no games are recorded, or even closely watched. Judgements have to be based on what people say they witnessed.
That has to change if real money's to get into competitive pinball. There's a move to get more money into pinball, and making judging professional is going to be a major crisis for that.
@Felthry Basically, yeah. Most competitive pinball is played to see who can beat who, and that's in-game points which can range from the thousands (in a 60s game) to billions (in a modern game). So we need some way to compare my 8,200 points on the 60s game Paul Bunyan, that beat everyone in my group, to your 496,000,000 on Rocket Raccoon which finished third. Giving tournament points that compare finishes in groups makes that less arbitrary.