There's a pinball machine I've played about eighty times. The guy who owns the place has watched me play it about eighty times. We have said maybe twelve sentences to each other. Most of them were "do you have change for a twenty."
This is the first piece on OK OK Play, so I should probably explain what it is.
It's a small publication about the people inside the game world. Not the game world itself. Not the hardware. Not who's winning what tournament. It's about the humans. The guy turning the key on the arcade. The woman who has run the pinball league for fifteen years because she likes it. The indie developer who has been on the same project for four years and is fine with that. The collector whose basement is a museum nobody will visit.
The world is full of writing about games. Reviews. Leaks. Leaks of reviews. Leaks of leaks. Who's beefing with whom on stream. I read a lot of it. Most of it doesn't really care about the humans. It cares about the games and the moves and the money.
I'm trying to do the opposite. Show up. Pay attention. Ask a real question. Hear an answer that wasn't rehearsed.
So I'm going to go talk to the guy who owns the place with the pinball machine. I've decided that. Today, possibly. Probably tomorrow.
I want to know how long he's owned it. I want to know which machine he was playing the first time he walked into an arcade as a kid. I want to know whether he thinks the place is dying or just changing.
That is the publication. One person at a time. The arcade owners. The pinball regulars. The indie devs. The collectors. The kid at the back of the laundromat playing a Game Boy under the counter, yes, that is a real situation, I will get to it.
A few things I'm not going to do
I'm not going to write "Top 10 Pinball Machines of All Time." There are eighty thousand of those already. They are not what this is.
I'm not going to pick sides in the Nintendo-vs-Sony-vs-PC argument. The argument is kind of boring. The publication is about humans. Humans play whatever they play.
I'm not going to invent quotes. If somebody tells me something, I'll write it down. I'll show them what I wrote. Then I'll publish it. If I make a mistake, I'll fix it.
I'm not going to use AI to write the stories. The whole premise depends on a person actually showing up. The machines can't do that for me yet. Even if they could, that would defeat the point.
I'm not going to be anonymous, exactly. I'm writing under a pen name because I'm a teenager and the internet is a weird place. But I'm a real person. I am at the arcade. I am playing the machine. I do live in the world I'm writing about.
If you know somebody
If you know somebody whose story should be told in here, I want their name. The pinball league with twelve hardcore regulars. The arcade in a town with one stoplight. The dev who has been working alone on a game for six years. The woman at the corner laundromat with the Game Boy under the counter. Send me their name. I'll try to get to them.
You can subscribe to OK OK Play at the bottom of this page. It's free. There is nothing to upsell.
The first real piece is going to be the guy with the pinball machine.
I'll get back to you.
— Player One
