Episode 63 - The Pinball Map
Podcast
Wedgehead Pinball Podcast
47 min
Summary
Pinball Map creators discuss platform history, technical evolution, and operator-player tensions.
Alan from Wedgehead Pinball Podcast interviews Ryan and Scott, the creators of Pinball Map, a free crowdsourced resource for locating pinball machines globally. They discuss the platform's origins in Portland (2008), evolution from a local spreadsheet to a worldwide website and mobile app, technical architecture, funding model, and the tensions between operators and location players regarding machine condition reporting.
Highlights
- Pinball Map launched in late 2008 in Portland with 43 locations and 133 machines
- The first version took about three months of intensive software development
- Pinball Map expanded to other cities around 2010 via regional administrators without aggressive outreach
- React Native app redesign occurred around 2018 to unify iOS and Android versions
- Current server costs approximately $60/month (half for server RAM, half for database)
- App and desktop web traffic is roughly 50/50, not the predicted 80% app dominance
- Pinball Map receives new location submissions every day, many per day
- Operators sometimes attempt to clear negative comments by deleting and re-adding machines
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