Well, here's an interesting way to start off the day. This morning, the legendary Pinball Designer, creator of beloved pinball machines such as Williams 1993 game White Water, the Elvira series of pins, Stern Pinball's 2006 game Pirates of the Caribbean and many more, made some interesting comments about his current employment situation and what American Pinball's David Fix had to say about it.
Basically Dennis said that David Fix lied when he implied that Nordman was interested in taking a step back from pinball in an interview with the Pinball News Podcast earlier this year. Other interesting takeaways from this post include the fact that Nordman has one flipping whitewood at Chicago Gaming Company and another one at American Pinball. The one at AP is most likely the long-rumored White Water 2, which Dennis claims was ahead of Barry O's Barbeque Challenge in the company's design queue, but was pushed off.
The last interesting tidbit is that Dennis has a new game in the works with two other industry professionals that he hopes to get a manufacturer to produce. Earlier this month Dennis shared a picture of a plastic ramp that he was making, presumably for this game (see below).
Here's the full quote:
"I recently became aware of what David Fix said about me in his interview with PINBALL NEWS from May 2024. This is verbatim. If you want to hear it yourself, it starts at about 2:19:38.
“You know, Dennis is not a young guy. He kinda came to us and he was like, ya’ know, I could be doin’ better by, you know, bein’ home a little bit more and, you know, being this, that and the other thing and we kicked it around a couple times and then we said, hey this is what we wanna do. We wanna lay you off, we wanna put you on contract basis. We wanna build your game, it’s not the hot priority now, it’s not shelved, it’s, it’s either other little things that can be done. Let’s talk about this and have a contract made up and we’ll contract base this. And you’re, it’s well open you can come and, you know, do what we need to do. And let’s do this. But, you know, I gotta, we gotta kinda lay you off from the day to day.”
None of this is true. I have no contract with American Pinball. AP was not honoring my original contract, so I told Fix I was going to work from home more days per week.
I wanted to see my next game go into production. It is an unlicensed theme, but it’s a theme that everyone is familiar with, and it has an amazing playfield. It was way ahead of BBQ in development but Mr. Fix decided to put BBQ in front of it.
They offered me a contract that was completely unacceptable. They said if I did not accept that contract, I would be terminated. I asked why and they said they didn’t have enough money to pay me. I asked, “Do you mean if I don’t sign this contract I’m terminated?” I was told “Yes.” I walked out.
That’s where it stands today. I have nothing to do with American Pinball. Mr. Fix told other people at AP that he would bring me back to finish my game #2 in June or July. Of course that didn’t happen.
I have 6 or 7 games at various companies that will probably never be produced. There are three at deeproot, one flipping whitewood, one full size foamcore (Nordmanite!) and one drawing. One at Chicago Gaming, a flipping whitewood. And three more at American Pinball, one flipping whitewood, and two more drawings.
Discouraging but I haven’t given up! Currently, I’m working on a new game of my own design, with two other industry professionals, and the goal is selling it to a manufacturer for production. I’m not ready to quit yet!"
Below is a link to the podcast episode that Dennis referenced in his post:
Pinball Magazine & Pinball News PINcast May 2024 recap
I have meet Mr. Fix once and he lied over and over again. It was a simple tech problem with a game. He could have been truthful, but he decided to flat out like multiple times. How AP is still alive is beyond me.
Was that a direct quote from American Pinball? That was the most rambling mess I've ever forced myself to read. Perhaps parting ways is for the best!