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Dr. Sander Bakkes - Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025 - Pinball News

Pinball News (Dutch Pinball Open Expo 2025)·video·22m 36s·analyzed·Nov 22, 2025
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

Psychology researcher explains why pinball failures drive engagement through responsibility and near-miss effects.

Summary

Dr. Sander Bakkes from Utrecht University presents research on the psychology of failure in games, particularly pinball. He discusses how games paradoxically make us seek out failure while normally avoiding it in real life, explores the 'near miss effect' that motivates continued play, and explains how good game design makes players feel responsible for their failures rather than blaming the machine. He shares empirical observations from his lab studying parent-child pinball play and discusses attribution theory's role in sustaining engagement.

Key Claims

  • People who failed at least once during gameplay liked games more than those who completed them without failing or didn't complete them at all

    high confidence · Citing Jesper Juhl's research from Denmark on a Snake/Pac-Man crossover game; empirical study results

  • Good game designers intentionally make players feel responsible for failures rather than blaming external factors (the machine)

    high confidence · Discussion of attribution theory and how it connects to continued engagement; multiple game design examples

  • Most modern games are designed to give approximately 2.5 minutes of gameplay before ball loss

    medium confidence · Bakkes states 'I think I saw a statistic somewhere' - not citing specific source

  • The 'near miss effect' creates both motivational and compulsive behavior in pinball players

    high confidence · Direct discussion of research findings on near-miss mechanics and player psychology

  • Older/classic pinball machines were slower moving than modern Stern machines

    medium confidence · Audience member observation during Q&A; not established as fact, Bakkes did not confirm

Notable Quotes

  • “We're not really coming for that, right? We want a bit more than winning. Maybe we want to challenge our expectations were not met.”

    Dr. Sander Bakkes @ ~4:30 — Core thesis: games derive value from challenge, not from easy victory

  • “If you blame some external force, like, hey, we blame the machine, like, stupid machine, yeah, we will probably walk away because it's a stupid machine. We will not spend money on that machine.”

    Dr. Sander Bakkes @ ~16:20 — Attribution theory application: how blame assignment determines continued engagement

  • “Many people say like yeah I kind of recognize myself into this... this is an interesting word. Do you recognize this a little bit? Yeah, great, thank you.”

    Dr. Sander Bakkes @ ~12:00 — Student recognition of near-miss effect motivational patterns

  • “Only through feeling responsible failure, which well we don't like in the real world right, we can feel responsible that kind of motivated to overcome that.”

    Dr. Sander Bakkes @ ~18:30 — Central hypothesis linking responsibility to motivation in game design

  • “Many men that play pinball together, from this kind of shared activity like doing things together they often feel connected enough to start talking about like hey I'm suffering with my knee or health or relationships.”

    Dr. Sander Bakkes @ ~10:50 — Mental health and social connection benefits of pinball play; citing Daniel Johnson's research

Entities

Dr. Sander BakkespersonJesper JuhlpersonDaniel JohnsonpersonBernard SuitspersonUtrecht UniversityorganizationJurassic ParkgameMandaloriangameSuper Meat BoygameHarry Pottergame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Academic research program using pinball machines as primary research tools demonstrates growing scholarly interest in pinball psychology and engagement mechanics

    high · Bakkes' full research lab at Utrecht University featuring Jurassic Park and Mandalorian machines, multi-site festival studies with 300+ data points tracking player behavior

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Player frustration and verbal outbursts during pinball play are understood by designers as expected and managed through fair difficulty design

    high · Multiple examples of screaming, yelling, and near-machine-kicking in discussion of normal player behavior; Bakkes frames this as psychological engagement mechanism

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Modern pinball designers deliberately structure games around 2.5 minutes of play duration and responsibility attribution to sustain engagement

    medium · Bakkes' discussion of intentional design patterns; audience member notes shift toward more accessible game design (Harry Potter example)

  • $

    market_signal: Pinball game design is trending toward broader demographic accessibility while maintaining engagement for hardcore players

    medium · Q&A discussion of Harry Potter as example of 'impressive experience' targeting broader demographics; acknowledgment of market diversity in difficulty preferences

  • ?

    technology_signal: Modern Stern machines may feature faster gameplay mechanics compared to classic/older pinball machines

    low · Audience observation that 'machines were also slower' for classic games; Bakkes did not confirm or validate this claim

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.068

0:00
This is really nice, thank you so much. Alright, I would like to start with a question for you guys. Is the sound okay also in the back? Yeah? Wonderful. Otherwise just yell. Okay.
0:16
Who plays actually video games, board games or pinball sometimes? Yeah, alright, wonderful. Okay, so imagine you had a long day, long drive, If you went to a pinball expo and you finally arrived, you're quite happy, right? And you think like, ah, which game will I play? And you see this game and you think like, ah, yeah, these people surely have done their market research well, right? Like I'm really in the mood for my little pony pinball, like my repressed desires for my little ponies. I can finally go for it. But then you think, nah, no, no, I'm not ready yet. I'm not ready to give in to my little pony desires. let's do something else, something that makes me feel powerful and strong. And you walk through a machine with some cool back glass artwork that might make you think of the id Software game Doom.
1:09
Thanks to my fear of copyright infringement with the help of ChatGPT, it's definitely not the Doom artwork, it's something else. But yeah, you're all quite excited, right? Let's do this, let's go for it. Cool music comes up.
1:26
All right, so you're quite excited. You're really in the mood for this game. And you want to go for it. And you're like, okay, let's do this. And then the next thing you see is this on the screen. Press start to win the game.
Batwaiter
event
Kennis Knettersevent
Valvecompany
1:49
A question for you. Like, why would you probably be quite annoyed to see this? Any thoughts on that? Who wants to share? One of my ex-fellow students. No challenge, exactly. Why else? I would be probably a bit grumpy. Ah, very good. Thanks so much. One more idea? That's enough already. Thanks so much for thinking along. We're not really coming for that, right? We want a bit more than winning. maybe we want a challenge our expectations were not met a cool build up but then this like that's not what we want all right and and and that idea it's something that the philosopher bernard suits he talks about he says you know like imagine a game like golf right like if you really wanted to win at golf like you would not put this hole like 200 meters far away and put sand wraps in the middle and trees and water and take this clumsy little ball and hit it with a very small stick you know like that's just making it hard for yourself if you wanted to win you wouldn't make yourself have a hard time like that but he calls this the that's all right he calls this the ludic attitude the playful attitude to give ourselves some kind of unnecessary obstacles as he calls it and we see that a lot in games and board games and maybe even pinball
3:20
and some people recognize that when they see like their partners or friends or kids play you often see quotes like this like her husband screaming like i hate it i hate it i hate it but yeah if he says that yeah you'll probably buy version number two and if not nah it's a bad game This is a researcher who quoted this. And there's actually quite some nice research around that shows that we tend to like games where we fail. This is a game by a professor in Denmark, Jesper Juhl, and he made a game. It's a bit weird, it's a crossover of Snake and there are some Pac-Man elements in there. It's a bit of an old game. He actually tells us it's not the best game ever, but he did some studies and he figured out that people that liked the game best were the ones that did complete it, but failed a few times. People that did not finish or they finished without any kind of obstacle, without failing at least once, they liked it less. and this kind of got him thinking like hey that's weird because if you talk to a psychologist they will tell you that okay look we humans we have a few basic needs like we like to feel autonomous like that the things that we do are our own choice that we're not forced by our partner by our boss by parents and things are our choice we like to feel connected to people psychologists will tell us, like feel useful or feel like not alone. Sorry, I'm moving the microphone too much. But we also like to feel competent. So the things that we do, we don't have to be like a superman, superhuman person, but we want to feel good enough in doing that. So there's something strange going on, because like imagine that in the real world, you would feel like, oh man, I'm a loser, you know, like I can't do anything, like I'm failing again and again. Like that not a nice feeling but that kind of what the spin ball machines and many other games do You know like you fail again and again after 10 seconds ball you know gone Like 10 seconds oh my goodness You know like imagine it wasn a free play it would really hurt you know Is this what I spent my money on?
5:48
But they kind of tell us that, you know, like that was not good enough. Loser, try again. That's annoying.
5:57
But yeah, this connects to something that this professor, if you like, I can also share the slides. He calls the paradox of failure, like in the real world, we like to avoid failing. We like to feel competent. However, we experience failure like always when playing games. And we seek out games, although we will normally experience something that we normally avoid in the real world. So these things are in conflict with each other, though they're all true. Hence the paradox.
6:30
So that's quite interesting. At Utrecht University we investigate this and other phenomena in my lab, which has a logo that I stole from Valve. Some of you might know it. The lab looks like this. We have a sofa and a penguin in the left corner. We have a Super Nintendo right next to it. And my students are really happy with that so they can visit and play games. And then the HR department can visit and take photos of my happy students. students like everyone's really happy. But next to this we have two pinball machines like Jurassic Park and Mandalorian and that's great right you know you have like a baby Yoda with the force can throw away the ball and we have a T-Rex that can eat the ball apparently eating balls is important to the pinball community. This is quite interesting.
7:23
Anyway, sorry, bad joke. So yeah, this lab is wonderful. And what we do is we invite, well, parents and kids to play there together, and we observe them and we see what happens. I also bring my pinball machines to class to do experiments with students, which is really fun.
7:44
These students figure out how to play split flipper because they wanted to eat a lolly at the same time. So this was like a natural development of pinball play. It was really quite cute.
7:55
But we also do like real research with this. And there's a professor in Australia, Daniel Johnson, that does this and he discovered that, well, it's not always easy to talk about feelings and things that are going on in your private life, health, mental health. But he discovered like many men that play pinball together, from this kind of shared activity like doing things together they often feel connected enough to start talking about like hey I'm suffering with my knee or health or relationships and they would start talking via playing together so that was really nice you might not be surprised if this professor is a white guy with a beard by now so that tends to happen cool guy of course so yeah we investigate a few things the conversations that happen while playing, how people handle stress, but also this failure aspect. And I want to talk a little bit more with you about that.
8:56
Am I talking too quickly? All right. So I let my students play. And I ask them, like, hey, you just lost this ball. That always happens. How did you feel? And then I get these quotes, like, yeah, I'm a bit sad. I wanted to play more. I'm disappointed, I thought I could do better, sad, I want to continue, sad, I want to keep playing, felt the urge to play again, this is an interesting word. Do you recognize this a little bit? Yeah, great, thank you.
9:30
So then I asked them, okay, did you actually think something like this? Like, I can do this, I almost did it, I'm not failing, I'm almost succeeding, I failed but I'm getting better. And there's like a big weight on this side. many people say like yeah I kind of recognize myself into this and these sentences they're mapped to an effect called the near miss effect which means that you feel that you're almost there you almost succeeded you almost had it you almost did it but did not but get motivated to kind of overcome this you see this in gambling as well that you get like one cherry in the slot machine two cherries and see the last cherry almost being there but not quite and this hurts you want to keep going so what this effect does is well it creates some kind of compulsive behavior you want to play again but you also feel frustrated and it connects to this feeling of having control over the situation and we are being tricked a little bit by pinball machines that well are not fully a game of chance, a game of skill, that is true, but we also kind of overestimate that, so we think like, yeah, it's like one ball and two flippers, two buttons, like how hard can it be, you know, anyone can press this button, it's like one step harder than Flappy Bird, where you have to press one button, but yet still hard, you know, this is not easy, so we're kind of tricked into feeling and control. Good players, they can get very unlucky even if they're good.
11:13
And good designers do this on purpose I think Because there a theory from psychology called attribution theory which is about like okay if something bad happens like who do we blame
11:26
And psychologists know that if we blame some external force, like, hey, we blame the machine, like, stupid machine, yeah, we will probably walk away because it's a stupid machine. We will not spend money on that machine. if we think that we will never improve it will always be like this stupid machine, there's no hope of improving then we probably also stop playing so what these designers really want is to kind of make us think this was in my control, this was my fault I'm responsible for what just happened this is from Super Meat Boy some of you may know the game So this professor in Denmark, Jesper Juhl, he did a follow-up study asking people like, okay, you just failed. Tell me how much you like the game, but also tell me like what just happened. And then people that said, you know, like, if I'm honest, like, yeah, this was my fault. You know, I made a mistake. They liked the game more than for other reasons. Like, yeah, I was unlucky or I'm just bad. and so feeling responsible is important to well not destroy a machine but also for keeping to keep playing in short so i think the hypothesis is this like only through feeling responsible failure which well we don't like in the real world right we can feel responsible that kind of motivated to overcome that like okay i don't feel great let's put a little bit of work in this and I'll feel better again.
13:05
And many video games, you see this a lot in reviews. People say, okay, this game is hard, but yeah, it was fair. Like everything I did felt like it was my fault and I loved it. And many good designs would like want something like this, like they want that you think like, yeah, this is, what's a difficult game?
13:29
Foo Fighters maybe, what? I don't know. for instance. But they want you to think, okay, this game is difficult, but what just happened is fair. It's in my control.
13:43
So, I think to summarize this, I'm going quite quick. Many games, they make us feel that we're failing a little bit. This happens. This makes us not happy. We feel a little bit incompetent. It's like, damn it, I'm not feeling clever. I'm not feeling skilled. That's annoying.
14:06
Even if we're not conscious of that, they hopefully are designed well enough to make us think like, okay, this is not the machine's fault. You know, I should put a little bit of work and effort into this and keep going. So we get motivated to play a bit more, to get rid of this annoying feeling. And if they're designed well, we feel a little bit hopeful, right? We think like, yeah, you know, if I work a bit harder, pay a bit more attention if I'm quicker just let the ball slide yeah I will probably win next time and that's good design if those ideas come together and many pinball games are designed very well by now so I would like to give you a thought experiment if you go back later and play pay attention to yourself and think am I actually having real fun Am I having positive experiences, positive emotions, like again and again and again? Or am I yelling? Am I screaming? Am I almost kicking this machine and feeling a bit like, damn it, and maybe wanting to play a little bit more to maybe feel good again?
15:21
And yeah, please tell me if something else is happening in your mind, because that may well happen and that's very interesting as well. but these are some basic ideas from psychology that might explain why you are screaming at this machine thank you for your attention, I was happy that you were here ask me questions if you like thank you any questions, thanks I definitely follow the latter category Yeah, all right. Yeah, absolutely.
16:02
It takes a very long time to get a good feeling about a game. And I'm also going to get very great quits.
16:11
And I'm really curious about the psychology about it. Oh, yeah, wow. I think it's a personal trait, being explosive or something. But I'd like to keep that control. Yeah, control is a big thing. and also why you get frustrated because there's some things that feel fair and part of the experience and some things that feel unfair and unjust and those often make you feel very annoyed like, ah, stupid. But then maybe you still think like, yeah, maybe it was up to me so you go back to the machine and try again. You see this in video games at least a lot. Like try to beat an end boss and try again and try again and try again I don know a lot about rage quitting so that very interesting Yeah thanks good question More thoughts more questions thanks Yeah, were the, maybe generalization, the people of the 70s and 60s who were playing pinball then, did they have a higher acceptance of their self-favor? Because I see that a A lot of the new machines, they keep re-boarding you with free balls, and you shoot for five seconds and it's gone. You don't get the same experience. So I was wondering if there's any, I don't know, theory about that. And I just missed the word that you said. People have said, do they have more... You don't have, like, five seconds failsafe. All right, like that. Or inside the range of immediately drains. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I saw a statistic somewhere that most games are designed to give you, like, two and a half minutes of fun. that might be lower for some games but i think that the designers want to try it like safe space where you put in money and and don't get so angry that you either smash up the machine or walk away they want to give you some value for money like okay at least i played a bit i had the chance to do this well and then maybe if you well don't feel when maybe try again but but you're right like some games are harder.
18:19
Yeah, I don't know what that was about. Actually, you might know more about pinball than me. Why do you think that might be? Why were older games perhaps harder, more punishing?
18:30
Any thoughts on that? I see some... I think machines were also slower. Mm-hmm. And I see a lot of classic games being moved, much more than the modern sterns. I don't know what's happening there.
18:57
Yeah, it might be. Because some people like these crazy hard games, right? And some people really need a very pleasant, positive experience. Maybe Harry Potter is leaning a bit more towards the very impressive experience. And maybe trying to find a bit of a middle ground that is not like the extreme, but connects to some more demographics. I'm just thinking out loud. But, yeah.
19:24
What's the difference between generations? Oh, I don't know. That would be nice. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's like video game players respond differently to these types of games. Oh, I wish I had more answers, guys. Let's have a few more questions and then we go to the next speaker. Thanks so much. I have a question. You have a couple of possibilities to lose the ball. You know, I think that in your opinion, what do you think is more like being considered an outsider? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Was there any difference? I'm happy you asked that question. We just took these machines you saw, Jurassic Park, Mandalorian, to two festivals. One, Batwaiter, it's like a science festival for young and real adults. And Kennis Knetters, which is a festival for kids, often accompanied by parents and grandparents.
20:27
And I would just be very impressed if kids are able to handle failure better than adults, right? Like they see their father and mother scream and they're like, come on, dad. but we were tracking this so we have more than 300 data points of like 300 games being played and we tracked like how did I lose the ball, was this indeed like straight down the middle, was this an out lane or was this like next to the flipper and I'm guessing that this straight down the middle like feels like yeah but look I can't even reach that, there's nothing I can do except if you're nudging very well but if it just rolls on the flipper and you're too slow that might feel more like yeah this was really my fault and the outlanes might also be a bit in between depending on your skill level so we have this data and we're still analyzing it and I'm really curious how the kids compare to adults thanks, let's do one more question and then you guys are free to go again or no question that's also ok, yeah thanks yeah you see more and more of those I think yeah yeah for sure that's a good point the video game industry as a whole is growing and growing and more and more people are playing games even people say that I don't play games like my mother but she would still play games she's doing puzzle stuff or whatever so I think the market is growing and hence maybe some games there's a bigger market for like Dark Souls types of games yeah great thank you guys for not leaving me alone in this room I'm very happy with that have a good day
22:34
you