TRANSCRIPT

Monica Jimenez: As games go, pinball moves pretty fast. 

Michael Sandler: I'm going to hit the start button twice for a two player game and you start us off. So let it rip.

Jimenez: Michael Sandler has no problem keeping up.

Sandler: Okay, that's good news. Yes, see what I did, I stole it from you. It looks like I won.

Jimenez: Sandler is at Pop’s Pinball Parlor in Somerville, Mass. A player in local leagues, he also collects and repairs machines. He’s part of the latest pinball renaissance, on a mission to share the joys of an enduring game that engages not just his hands and his brain, but his soul.

Sandler: I feel like it's more fun than everything else. You get these euphoric highs when you hit the shot, and gosh, you have everything lined up for multi-ball, and then it goes right down the middle. You have the lows of that defeat. So it brings in a whole range of emotions.

This ain't no iPad. It's not a digital world. It's a very real and tactile experience. Players do all sorts of dancing around. There's some people who stay very still in there just moving their hands. And there are other people, they have what I call a large radius of destruction. Don't get within kicking distance of them because you might take a foot to a body part. 

Jimenez: A psychology teacher at Arlington High School in Massachusetts, Sandler recently gave a Tufts Tedx talk on the psychology of pinball that went viral among fans. And yes, he finds teaching and pinball have something in common. 

Sandler: When teaching, you have to be in the in the past, in the present, and in the future, all simultaneously. I feel like 90% of the time I'll have a plan and then just veer off in a direction, just trying to sense where we need to go at that time. It's what I love, the improvisation of it.

Try to get some control over the ball—not just hacking away at the thing anytime you have a chance. What normally happens is you're just sort of flailing away. I just want to stay alive, I just want to stay alive. But if you can slow the ball down an exercise some control, it's kind of a metaphor for life, I guess. 

Jimenez: Sandler, class of '96, split his undergrad years at Tufts between anthropology, Italian, a dining hall job, a late night radio slot, and of course pinball. He put the game on hold as he explored different careers, got his MA in education at Tufts, and started a family. He rediscovered pinball in the summer of 2016, on a family trip to Sturbridge, Mass.

Sandler: Lo and behold, there's this convention called Pintastic, and it was like a big party. Music and tons and tons of pinball machines. Spent maybe 20 bucks for a day pass,but my kids were just draped all over me, and I really wanted to play. … So when I came back home, lanes and games on at the end of Route 2, they were still around, and they had pinball machines in there… And I would just go there to be in the moment to just de-stress and knock a silver ball around on a table.

Jimenez: Over the decades, pinball has made many comebacks.

Sandler: Its big heyday was in the 1970s… And then video games kind of tanked the market… In the 90s, some of the best games were produced, things were going strong. And then there was another dip. In the early 2000s, it was nearly dead. 

But now, 15, 20 years later, things are picking back up. There are a number of boutique manufacturers that are making games. And there seem to be more people who know how to fix them as well. There are places in most cities where you can go to a bar and play pinball.

Jimenez: That’s definitely the case for Dan Gonzales, who lives near Pop’s.

Dan Gonzalez: I think I'm really into video games, but I find that I'll spend a lot of time just in front of a computer for hundreds of hours. But here I can actually go to a place and it's a little bit more kinetic. Some of my friends who I work with are really into it… I watched and I just played and I kind of got the bug and I was like, I want go play. There aren't really virtual physics, it's actual physics… It just feels a lot more real.

Jimenez: Sandler says that physicality, which most video games don’t offer, is a defining draw of pinball.

Sandler: You hit one side of the pinball machine. And in quick succession, you'll slap the other flipper. There’s a saying if you’re not tilting, you’re not trying. So this idea of nudging the machine or pushing up against it to try to influence how the ball is moving. 

There's something called a bang back, where after the ball has drained, you forcefully shove the machine forward to pop the ball out between the flippers. You can work up a sweat playing the game. And it's not just from the nerves.

Jimenez: Pinball is a great way to take a break. But Gonzalez has also found that breaks make the pinball better.

Gonzalez: If you play a lot in a row… you don't really let your muscles relax and learn the game. If you just mindlessly keep going at a machine without any intention, then you kind of just will drive yourself crazy. But when you're playing with a team or multiple players, you take breaks and reset and whatnot. So you actually get better when you take more breaks.

Jimenez: Apparently, your best playing happens when you’re doing less, not more.

Sandler: You have to be in the zone. You have to be in that sweet spot where thing’s aren’t too frantic in your head. Not too excited and not too laid back.

Jimenez: And pinball has a way of putting you in that zone.

Sandler: There's not really time to be thinking about other things… The lights and the music and the action… It forces you to be in the moment. You can't be thinking about the distant stresses. You can't be thinking about the past regrets. It's about, you know right now, I've got to stay alive. There, of course, is the element of luck and everybody will eventually drain. But watching skilled players on these machines, you realize just how much of it is skill and how little of it is luck. 

Jimenez: Pinball is really good at keeping us in the game—and that’s by design.

Holly Taylor: Pinball gives immediate feedback that then motivates, okay, well now maybe I can try this or try that. Oh, I’m getting closer. And you can see incremental improvement, and that's motivating.

Jimenez: That’s Holly Taylor, a cognitive psychologist who teaches the course Cognition: Games People Play at Tufts.

Taylor: A lot of what goes into a replayability of a game is related to the cognitive processes that are involved with the game. What makes you want to try again?

Jimenez: The physical processes of pinball are also a big part of why we hit replay.

Taylor: So this fits in with what we call embodied cognition. There's differences in when you're actually pushing buttons as opposed to just very tiny movements with a joystick. I think what pinball gives us is more fidelity with those inputs than you might get with the video games… I think it just gives you a sort of a stronger signal about what's going on. 

Jimenez: And pinball can translate to the world beyond the table.

Taylor: There's all sorts of great stuff on kids playing games in terms of learning, turn-taking, learning how to deal with frustration if you don't win, learning some of the social norms, learning that other people might play different than you, in a very safe space where the consequences of losing aren't particularly high.

Jimenez: There are benefits on the other end of the lifespan, too.

Taylor: As I tell my 92-year-old father, there are three things that lead to successful cognitive aging. One of those is social interactions. The other one is cognitive activity. And the third one is physical activity… Games, including pinball, can promote those three things. And so I think thinking of them just as an idle pastime doesn't give them the credit that they deserve.

Sandler: I do think that people are craving opportunities to commune… People are wanting some places and spaces to get together with folks who are maybe not exactly like them. Anybody can play pinball. It's kind of the beauty of it.

Jimenez: And that’s what will keep pinball coming back.

Sandler: And I'll say replay on the game. So want to play this one again?

Jimenez: For Tufts Now, I’m Monica Jimenez.