We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryan Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ryan, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

My whole life, I have been obsessed with pinball. It all started before I can remember when my mom bought my dad a pinball machine for his birthday, a 1975 Gottlieb Abra Ca Dabra. I played this game as a child, my dad teaching me how to trap the ball and aim. When I came back home after college, I found that my beloved pinball machine was now a mouse house! So, I lugged it out of their basement and it became my first pinball restoration project. Since then, I caught the bug and started collecting more pinball machines, learning as much as I could about each one as it entered my collection. As much as I loved playing pinball, I began to love the restoration process even more. However nothing matched the enjoyment I got from sharing my completed, finely-tuned games with my friends. THAT was the best part of pinball to me, where I got the most enjoyment – watching others enjoy the games.

The whole time I’m collecting pinball machines, I’m working in the entertainment industry. I directed feature films, produced educational shows for kids, and was actively running a talent agency. I was doing fairly well and thought it would be fun to get my pinball machines out into the world to share them with as many people as possible. So I opened up Pinball Land.

In the beginning, Pinball Land consisted of a row of 10 pinball machines, a crane machine, a pair of driving games and about 5 video arcade games. It had 4 distinct “rooms” players could explore. I wanted to make the atmosphere of the place as much fun as the games themselves.

When I first opened, making Pinball Land my primary business was the furthest thing from my mind. It was all about sharing my games with the world…and making space at home to collect some more. For a couple of months this was the case…then covid hit.

Friday the 13th, 2019, while I was renovating the back room of Pinball Land into a usable play area, my phone was blowing up with cancellation after cancellation. This was when I was running the talent agency – everyone was cancelling their bookings. I lost literally millions of dollars in a matter of hours. Nobody was going to rebook. The whole thing was sunk.

Suddenly, all I had were my pinball machines and my little arcade. But even then, everything was shut down. It was a completely nerve-wracking time. We had to go from being open to the public to taking appointments, which were few and far between. Some days we would bring in $7 total. Some days absolutely nothing. I refused to give up on it, though. As tempting as it was to sell off my collection – when prices for pinball machines were at an all-time high – I actually doubled-down and started buying up games from operators getting out of the business. I put it all on red.

I had such faith in the business because I knew there was nothing else like it in the area. There were established “barcade” style arcades, but they drew an adult audience and were not fit for kids. In fact, everything in the area seemed to be either exclusively adult-oriented or exclusively kid-oriented with very few activities suitable for kids to do with their parents. My business wasn’t aimed at either kids or adults, it was aimed at people. People love to have fun no matter how old they are, and arcade games, especially pinball, is a flavor of fun everyone can appreciate. And its even more fun when you play together..

I faced a lot of pressure early on to get in more video games and focus less on the pinball, but I resisted. I even had people recommending I get home game consoles like PlayStations and XBoxes. But I again, doubled-down on the pinball knowing that the ONLY way to experience true pinball was to go out into the world and find it. The hunting down games – that’s part of it, too. You can’t have that experience at home playing a video pinball simulation. The only way you can get the experience of playing pinball at home is if you’re a screwy person like me or my parents and you brought one of these heavy suckers home one day. Which I highly recommend you do, by the way! However, these days it’s incredibly expensive, with a new game costing about $7000.

Another unique approach I took to my arcade: no quarters required. You just pay admission and all of the games are free to play. With pinball costing $1 or now even sometimes $2 to play a single 3-ball game, you can go through a LOT of money trying to figure out a new game. It’s frustrating, and if you have some bad luck or just don’t have the knack, it will put you off pinball forever. You’ll never put more money in a pinball machine again. However in an environment where you can just push the start button again and give it another shot, its not only more fun, it’s less frustrating and you actually learn and appreciate the games.

Ryan, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I kinda answered some of this in the last response, but I’ll summarize here.

I got into the arcade industry as a collector-turned-operator. I come from a background in film production and entertainment and have always loved gaming, especially pinball, as a hobby.

My arcade is called Pinball Land. It’s an awesome venue for kids of all ages to enjoy the best games from yesterday and today. We offer classic video arcade games, hits from the 90s, and of course, lots of pinball machines! The best part is: no quarters required! You just pay admission and the games are all free to play.

The thing I am most proud of with Pinball Land is how it provides a place for kids and adults to play together. Pinball Land isn’t Chuck E Cheese (not that there’s anything wrong with Chuck E Cheese) and it isn’t a babysitter. It’s an environment for adults to enjoy their favorite games of all time and share those games with their kids. Or for kids to meet and play these classics together for the first time. Or for hardcore gamers and pinball enthusiasts to play a wide range of games in excellent condition and even compete in tournaments. Pinball Land is a family fun center that grows with your family. You will find new things to appreciate each time you come, whether in the games of on the walls. Ss you get better at these skill-based games and become more competitive, it becomes even more fun. And we’re all looking for something fun to do, right?

The biggest thrill I get out of running this business is the same as I got when I was collecting games: watching people having fun playing well-tuned pinball machines.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Yeah, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in my first response about surviving covid that would work for this. If you need more meat for those bones, let me know.

The big points

I refused to give up because I believe in the idea of a place where kids and adults can play together and enjoy the same thing. This area doesn’t have much of that. That plus the resilience of pinball itself. Pinball has survived through fad after fad and people still come back to knocking a metal ball around inside of a wooden box for fun.

I referenced pressure from others to change from being so pinball focused to branching out more into modern video games, but rejected it because I believed in the power of playing real pinball. There’s nothing like it and nothing can truly simulate it.

Let me know if you have some specific questions.

Have you ever had to pivot?

Same deal – my first response has a killer “pivot” story when I went from running a talent agency to taking my little hobby arcade full time into one of the most loved family venues in west Michigan.

I had to walk away from a 21 year long career in the entertainment industry and took Pinball Land full time. Covid killed the industry my talent agency was based on and all I had left was my little hobby arcade. I went all in during a time when other arcades were closing up shop and liquidating their assets. I purchased their old games and used the lockdown time to renovate my arcade, decorate it more, and when the storm passed emerged as a truly awesome venue.

Give that first response a read and let me know if you need some more information to flesh that out.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.pinball-land.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pinball.land.rockford

Image Credits
Ryan Thompson