You've been logged out of GDC Vault since the maximum users allowed for this account has been reached. To access Members Only content on GDC Vault, please log out of GDC Vault from the computer which last accessed this account.

Click here to find out about GDC Vault Membership options for more users.

close

Session Name:

Classic Game Postmortem: Pinball Construction Set

Overview:

Before LittleBigPlanet and Trials Evolution allowed users a way to create and share levels online, players could trade personalized content via floppy disk. In 1983, Electronic Arts published Pinball Construction Set with an abstract cover to match an equally experimental game that was one of the first to engender user generated content. The game's editor allowed players to construct their own virtual pinball tables, and players could save these tables to disk and trade them with friends. The editor's clean and simple interface even served as inspiration to designs behind SimCity six years later. Construction Set eventually grew into a series, with music, adventure, and racing themes for sequels. Bill Budge, the father of the seminal Pinball entry, will lay out the blueprints for how he constructed his own game and one of the earliest examples of an in-game editor.

Did you know free users get access to 30% of content from the last 2 years?


Get your team full access to the most up to date GDC content

  • GDC 2013
  • Bill Budge
  • Google
  • free content
  • Design
  • Design