# Episode 306: The Dwight Sullivan process

**Source:** Pinball Profile  
**Type:** podcast_episode  
**Published:** 2021-05-11  
**Duration:** 34m 0s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.pinballprofile.com/episode-306-the-dwight-sullivan-process/

---

## Analysis

Dwight Sullivan, lead programmer at Stern Pinball, discusses his design philosophy, development process, and approach to game code completion. He explains how modern pinball game development balances theme integration, playfield mechanics, and multiple player audiences (collectors, arcade operators, tournament competitors). Sullivan defines 1.0 code as feature-complete with all planned content reasonably polished, distinguishing this from the actual version number used internally.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Stern operates at half capacity with clear dividers between workstations, achieving full-line production output with 50% fewer staff members than pre-COVID — _Dwight discussing Stern's return-to-office protocols during pandemic recovery period_
- [HIGH] 1.0 code means all planned features for release are in the game, reasonably fun, reasonably polished, and scoring is balanced; if a game never received another update, 1.0 would be acceptable — _Dwight's explicit definition of 1.0 vs version numbering system; clarification that 1.0 is feature-completeness, not internal version numbers_
- [HIGH] Recent Stern releases (Turtles, Avengers, Zeppelin, Stranger Things, Monsters) have been near full code at release, representing a company directive to prioritize code completeness — _Jeff's observation complemented by Dwight confirming it's an absolute directive; exception noted as Batman due to Adam West health crisis and 30th anniversary rush_
- [HIGH] Release dates change frequently during early planning (6-9 months out) but stabilize closer to ship date; manufacturing must align 1-3 weeks before release date to have machines ready — _Dwight describing planning timeline and date flexibility; manufacturing coordination requirements_
- [HIGH] Game development includes multiple code handoffs to production line; Dwight's team continues development after handoff, delivering subsequent updates with significant improvements between releases — _Dwight explaining code version progression (0.8 → 0.81, 0.82, 0.83) after initial production handoff_
- [HIGH] Dwight works 10-15 hours per day during development phases, particularly when ramping up new games after completing previous titles — _Self-reported work hours; initial misspeaking ('10 hours a week') corrected to '10-15 hours a day'_
- [HIGH] Theme collaboration between programmer, designer, and mechanical engineer begins long before playfield design is complete — _Dwight's account of Turtles pre-production: designer John and Elliot meeting with Dwight weeks before playfield drawings began_
- [HIGH] High Speed fundamentally changed pinball by integrating story into physical gameplay, making it a foundational game for modern design philosophy — _Dwight discussing evolution of pinball design; attributing story-integration concept to Larry DeMar's influence_

### Notable Quotes

> "I make things disappear, so sure. Nobody ever calls me that, so I don't mind it at all."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~02:30
> _Responds to question about being called 'magician' or 'sorcerer'—establishes his design philosophy of creating effects that feel magical to players_

> "What I've ever always been is a game developer. I'm good at creating, taking parts of ideas and pushing them together and turning them into something whole."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~14:00
> _Defines his role as integrating design, engineering, and creative direction rather than being a traditional 'designer' or 'programmer' alone_

> "1.0 is if it never, ever got another code update, it would be okay."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~23:45
> _Clear definition of what constitutes production-ready code; establishes baseline quality threshold_

> "We move mountains to try to make that happen. And sometimes we don't. Some games were less successful than others, and some games were pretty close."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~28:00
> _Acknowledges that not all releases achieve full code completion despite efforts; some games ship with less complete features_

> "The dates change all the time, but they're always set in stone."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~32:30
> _Illustrates the paradox of release date planning in game development—frequent early changes, locked-in final dates_

> "I've decided to make myself happy most of the time. So I like games like Game of Thrones and Star Wars where there's this very, very light RPG kind of element to it."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~65:00
> _Reveals design philosophy: prioritize personal creative vision with light RPG progression, then optimize for competitive/collector audiences post-release_

> "So when I put a game in a box, 1.0, like Turtles or Game of Thrones or Star Wars, it's made me happy, and I think that I've tried to make as many other people happy as possible."
> — **Dwight Sullivan**, ~68:00
> _Describes balancing personal creative satisfaction with audience appeal; emphasizes community feedback loop for post-release optimization_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Dwight Sullivan | person | Lead programmer/game developer at Stern Pinball; designs rule sets and code architecture for modern Stern games including Turtles, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, Monsters; works closely with designers and mechanical engineers |
| Jeff Teolis | person | Host of Pinball Profile podcast (300+ episodes); interviewer conducting this conversation with Dwight Sullivan |
| Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer; operates factory in Illinois; returned to partial capacity production during pandemic recovery; prioritizes near-complete code at release |
| Brian Eddy | person | Game designer at Stern Pinball; mentioned as example of designer role distinct from programmer role |
| John Borg | person | Designer at Stern; collaborated with Dwight on Turtles; leads playfield design and layout decisions |
| Keith Elwin | person | Legendary pinball designer; example of high-end competitive player now involved in modern game development; Dwight references difficulty of satisfying his skill level |
| Steve Ritchie | person | Legendary pinball designer mentioned as peer to Dwight; works at Stern; example of multi-decade design career |
| Larry DeMar | person | Legendary designer credited with foundational influence on modern pinball through games like High Speed, Black Knight, and Funhouse; established story-driven gameplay paradigm |
| George Gomez | person | Leadership at Stern; approves game proposals; manages game assignment process; supervises design team structure |
| Elliot | person | Mechanical engineer at Stern; collaborates with designer and programmer on layout and toy mechanics from pre-design stage |
| Lyman Sheets | person | Master-level competitive pinball player and code designer; example of high-skill player contributing to modern Stern development |
| Tim Sexton | person | Recently hired at Stern; coder and rules designer known for elite competitive pinball skills; represents new generation of player-programmers |
| Raymond Davidson | person | Recently hired at Stern; coder and rules designer; competitive pinball player representing new generation at Stern |
| Zach Sharp | person | Stern Pinball employee; elite competitive player contributing to modern game development; member of Sharp family at Stern |
| Josh Sharp | person | Organizes 'selfie league' where Dwight and others photograph scores at arcade; related to Zach Sharp |
| Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | game | Stern pinball machine programmed by Dwight; example of light RPG character-selection gameplay; released with near-complete 1.0 code |
| Game of Thrones | game | Stern pinball programmed by Dwight; features house selection and light RPG progression; released with substantial code depth |
| Star Wars | game | Stern pinball programmed by Dwight; light RPG structure; example of personal design philosophy prioritizing character/progression elements |
| Monsters Unleashed | game | Stern pinball referenced as recent release with near-full code completion |
| Batman 66 | game | Stern pinball; released with bare-bones code due to Adam West health crisis and 30th anniversary production timeline; known exception to modern completion standards |
| Nickelodeon | company | IP licensor that approached Stern to develop Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pinball |
| High Speed | game | Legendary Williams pinball machine; designed by Larry DeMar; foundational for story-driven pinball design philosophy that Dwight credits with transforming the medium |
| Black Knight | game | Williams pinball machine by Larry DeMar; story-driven design; influential to modern pinball design progression |
| Pinball Profile | organization | Long-running pinball interview podcast hosted by Jeff Teolis; over 300 episodes covering industry figures and design philosophy |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Game development process and code completion philosophy, Stern Pinball's pandemic response and manufacturing adjustments, Balancing multiple player audiences (collectors, operators, tournament competitors), Theme integration and playfield design collaboration
- **Secondary:** Release date planning and production timeline coordination, Evolution of pinball design philosophy and influential designers, Remote work sustainability in game development post-COVID, Role definition in modern game development (developer vs designer vs programmer)

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.75) — Dwight speaks positively about his work, the company's direction, and modern game development practices. He expresses pride in Stern's code completion standards and appreciation for new competitive players joining the team. The conversation is collegial and reflective. Minor tension appears when discussing work-life balance (10-15 hour days) but framed as passion rather than complaint.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** Stern faces ongoing challenge balancing rapid feature completion with timeline deadlines; some recent games shipped with less-than-ideal code completeness despite efforts (confidence: high) — Dwight: 'We move mountains to try to make that happen. And sometimes we don't. Some games were less successful than others'
- **[community_signal]** Stern prioritizes rapid post-release feedback loop and community-driven code updates; Dwight actively incorporates player feedback within days of 1.0 release (confidence: high) — Dwight: 'instant feedback you get from the community...I try to make everybody else happy at that point' with bug fixes and scoring adjustments
- **[design_philosophy]** Modern Stern game development begins with multi-disciplinary team (programmer, designer, mechanical engineer) meeting weeks before playfield art is produced (confidence: high) — Dwight describing Turtles: 'John and I start having meetings about, well, what's Turtles all about?' with Elliot (mechanical engineer) before playfield design begins
- **[design_philosophy]** Dwight deliberately incorporates light RPG progression (character selection, house choice) as foundational design element across recent titles (Turtles, Game of Thrones, Star Wars) (confidence: high) — Dwight: 'I've decided to make myself happy most of the time. So I like games like Game of Thrones and Star Wars where there's this very, very light RPG kind of element'
- **[manufacturing_signal]** Stern achieved full production line output with 50% of pre-pandemic workforce through operational optimization and clear workstation dividers (confidence: high) — Dwight: 'half that are working now were doing just as good or better than the full was doing before' with manufacturing at full capacity despite reduced headcount
- **[personnel_signal]** Stern has recently hired elite competitive pinball players (Tim Sexton, Raymond Davidson, Zach Sharp) into programming/design roles, representing shift toward player-informed development (confidence: high) — Dwight and Jeff discussing new hires bringing tournament-level skills into modern game development, improving service to competitive player market
- **[product_concern]** Stern has established company-wide directive to release games at near-complete code status; represents quality standard shift from earlier eras (confidence: high) — Jeff notes recent games all near full code; Dwight confirms: 'Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we strive, you know, we move mountains to try to make that happen'
- **[technology_signal]** Post-COVID adoption of hybrid work model (Zoom, scheduled in-person collaboration) expected to persist permanently in game development, not reverting to pre-pandemic full-office model (confidence: medium) — Dwight: 'we're never going to go back to the way things were. We've learned so much from working at home' and expecting continued Zoom use for meetings even after full return

---

## Transcript

 I don't know where I'm going, but I sure know where I've been. I get on the promises and songs of yesterday, and I've made up my mind. It's time now for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teels. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com, all your subscriptions, past episodes, and more. You can find us on Facebook. We're also on Twitter and Instagram. at pinballprofile, and you can email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. So, as we're still at home here during the pandemic, watching a lot of TV, a lot of streaming, watched WandaVision, and was kind of fascinated by all that magic, and it got me thinking of our good friend who also loves magic and has created a little bit of magic in his own way in pinball machines, Dwight Sullivan, the magician, the sorcerer, he joins us right now. Do you like to be referred to as a magician, sorcerer, wizard, anything like that? I make things disappear, so sure. Nobody ever calls me that, so I don't mind it at all. You can call me sorcerer, you can call me wizard, I'm fine with that. It's because I know how much you like magic. I do, I do, I love magic. Did you watch WandaVision? Of course I did, because I'm an MCU fan, but that's, like, yeah, yeah. Did you watch it? Loved it. It was great. So the first three episodes, you know, you're like, what the hell is this? And then it starts getting really interesting, and then you can't stop watching it. And, you know, like, I find myself trying to stay up until 2 in the morning, which is when they would, because it's midnight Pacific time, is when they would air the new episode. And so Thursday night, I'm falling asleep at 1.30 in the morning trying to stay up and watch WandaVision. Yeah, there was that kind of click, like you said, in the fourth episode, and you went, oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be. And it was really a well-written story and fascinating and well-paid off, too. Yeah, it's well-paid off. It's extremely well done. It's highly produced. But the first three episodes, you're thinking, well, this is just going to be, you know, like an eight-episode, like, teaser for Doctor Strange or something, right? You know, you think that they're just doing this, you know, it's just a teaser for some upcoming movie. But it wasn't. It turned out that, I mean, not to give it a spoiler, but it turns out to be its own story all on its own. Yeah, it's pretty fascinating, pretty fun, and hey. It's the origin story of Scarlet Witch. Which was needed, and even a little bit about Vision as well. But again, something that certainly passed time during this pandemic. I mean, I don't know how often you've been to work. I know I have not set foot in my office, any of the radio stations, in 13 months. Wow. I also haven't set foot in a barber shop, but that's another story. Oh, I went to the barber just a few days ago. Like, well, a couple of weeks now. But it was my first barber in 13 months, yeah. So who was cutting your hair? Me. No, you were not. I was, well, I was just, you know, I just take, I just, you know, like, kneel in my underwear or in my shorts. I just kneel in the bathtub and I shave it all off. I've been shaving it all off with a razor. Just, you know, and it just falls around me. And then, like, five, six months later, do the same thing again. Like, tight to the wood, shaving it off? Like, clip number one? The second time, yes. The third, the first time, it was like I had a clipper on, you know, like. And it's not, like, like, it's not shaving down smooth. So it's, yeah, like a number one. Wow. The only time I've ever taken that number one clip or gone right to the wood was, I think, for initiation for football. They shaved my head. Worst shaved head ever, by the way. I have, which you can't see because I have hair on my head, but I actually have on the top of my head just above my forehead, and I'm not making this up. I have a scar in the shape of an L. I have an L above my forehead. I thought you were going to say lightning bolt. Harry Potter. That'd be kind of cool. We're not going to get into that. Oh, Pinside just went nuts. Dwight mentioned Harry Potter. Way to go, Dwight. Way to go. Especially Jeff Patterson. He just woke up wherever he was. It's funny. He's calling me right now. We're recording this. I haven't even released this. What the heck? So you've been back to the office. Is it full steam ahead at Stern? I guess there's still – I don't know what it's like. I'm asking not about Stern. I'm asking about Illinois. I don't know what it's like as far as something like a factory as far as how many people can be there and all that kind of good stuff. I'm not positive on the rules. I think we can have half the people. I think that's the rule is like at some point, like so everything shut down, like Stern shut down for three months, right? So 2020 for like three months, Stern was shut down. And then at some point the governor said, okay, everybody can go to 25% capacity or 50% capacity or some number. And you have to follow all these rules. And Stern has done that. They've jumped through all the hoops. We now have like, you know, like these clear dividers between everybody's workstation everywhere across the whole factory. and we're working at about half capacity of people, full capacity of the line moving. But it's kind of neat that we let people go for three months and then we hired back half of them and the half that are working now were doing just as good or better than the full was doing before. Yeah, I guess that's the case for most people. I know probably in the United States, definitely in Canada, all parts of the world, I guess we're slowly getting back to at least you're in the United States in that sense that vaccines are rolling out. I don't even know if I can name one American friend that hasn't already received at least one vaccine or is scheduled within the next two, three weeks. We're sort of so in Illinois, we are we're a manufacturer and manufacturers got put ahead of ahead of other people. Each state got to choose their own packing order, you know, and got to decide what would be best for the state for the order of shots. So we were in one B like so there was lots of people went ahead of us. But then we were near the top of the line. Can I make a guess, though? Sure. I would imagine, and I hope your employers aren't hearing this right now. I know they are. But wasn't it kind of fun to work from home? Didn't you get more stuff done? I mean, it's nice to see people. Don't get me wrong. Oh, no. My bosses can hear this. We talk about this all the time. It was great to work from home for a while. But now a game goes through several different phases as it's developed. and there are phases when you need to collaborate. So finishing off Turtles and doing all the extra work that I did for Turtles and then ramping up a new game was lots of fun. I just sort of roll out of bed. I come downstairs. I work 10 to more hours a week per day. You just said 10 hours a week. That's all everyone's hearing now. The guy works 10 hours a week? You better be part-time. No, I work 10 to 15 hours a day. Oh, it just went up. It does. It did. Yeah. So all I do is sit in this chair, but I don't want to make it sound like I work a lot. I mean, I do work a lot, but sometimes... Sorry, you didn't. So sometimes I take breaks. Anyway, so we've learned quite a bit during COVID, though. Like, we use Zoom every single day. And I think that even after we go back to work a little bit, like at some point, we're going to... I think that we're never going to go back to the way things were. We've learned so much from working at home and using Zoom and using other tools that even after we can go back to work, we're going to continue to sometimes work from home, depending on what phase of the project we're in. And even if we are at work, we're going to continue using Zoom for meetings and stuff. I think you're right. That is the new norm. And in fact, it's not just in manufacturing, but it's probably in a lot of different fields, too. I know my son who's going into college in the fall. We talked to actually the vice president of the college and asked, is this going to be online? Is it going to be in class? And it's kind of an 80-20 split, 80 in class, 20 online. And he said, pandemic or not, that's probably the new norm for the next 5, 10 years anyway. And there are realities. You can save costs. You don't have to have the professor live. You don't have to have the space to have all the kids in the class. And there's just so many different reasons that if you can do it online, you do. But I know when you were talking about Turtles with Martin Robbins and I on Final Round, you had mentioned that one of the great things about working in the factory, especially as you, someone who's programming a game, is that when you get to near the final stages or even other stages, you all kind of get together and get different feedback from people physically playing the machine. So whether they're working on the game or not, but that's very valuable to have that kind of input. Right. So now, like we're still working at home, so now we have to make scheduled meetings where okay next week at you know Tuesday at 1 o you know we all going to meet at work and stand around the game and play the game But before, they could be more impromptu. The collaboration was much easier. So there are phases of the game where you absolutely have to, the phases of making a game where you absolutely have to be at work or it would help to be at work. So when you're getting that feedback from other people that are playing the machines, when you're near full code. Are there drastic changes at that point, or is it pretty much set in stone and it's just tweaking? It's in between. So we don't really have time for drastic changes, meaning we're not going to add a seventh multiball. We're not going to make major changes to the skeleton of the game. But hopefully we've designed the game to have a really good bone structure, and it can take tweaks and changes and massages all over the place. And that's kind of what I do for a living. I make solid bone structures of games, and then I get it to a point where we can collaborate and we can pull other people in and say, this is sort of what's going on here. This is the idea of what we're trying to get across and the fun that we're trying to have, but help us make it better. So it's tweaking and massaging, but not major changes. Does it say masseuse on your business card? It should. It should. That's what a game developer does. So 100 years ago when I worked at Williams in the 90s, well, in the very beginning I was excited because I was working in a software engineering department, so therefore I was a software engineer. And of course I wasn't, but it was fun thinking that I was. And then later when I sort of got my feet wet designing games, I became a pinball designer. And of course I never was. But I now look back and I realize that what I've ever always been is a game developer. And that's exactly what you're talking about. I'm good at creating, taking parts of ideas and pushing them together and turning them into something whole and keeping everybody on the same vision and pulling in ideas and throwing out bad ones and massaging as I need to. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. That's very interesting how you explain the process. Yeah. So I'm different than a game designer. Like, so Brian Eddy or, you know, John Borg or, you know, Steve Ritchie or, you know, all those guys that, you know, I work with right now. I'm trying to think. I think I'm missing a game designer. Oh, Keith. Damn it. Keith Elwin. Like, I love Keith Elwin, and I hate him because he makes great shit. So the game designers at work, I understand what they do, and it's very different from what I do. And it's taken me decades to figure it out. Yeah, and you're always learning, too, because look at how much pinball machines have changed since you first started doing it With the capabilities, what you can put in there, with the visual assets, all that kind of good stuff. You talked about the deadlines. You know, when we bring everyone in there, it's the skeleton's done. We're not going to be doing any drastic changes. Right. When you have a deadline like you did for Turtles, and it was released when it was, and you knew that in advance, Right. how far along in code do you have to be? And I don't mean what the number is on the code release. I've seen games released where they don't have the wizard mode, but you know what's coming. or there are other things that are going to be tweaked. Scoring balances always happen after the fact, and that's fine. No one frets over things like that. But how close does it have to be for you to be done before it can be released and you're satisfied? So it sounds like you're asking me, how do I define 1.0? So there's two things that happen, right? The game goes in a box at some point, and how much has to be done for me to be comfortable of it going in a box? Let me ask you this. When it gets released, you have a to-do list. You have a to-do list from day one. You have a to-do list from day one. Are you at 80% when that game is released? Is there a number you want to reach? And again, I'm not talking about the code number. I'm talking about, okay, I still have to put this in. Let's just say for Turtles, let's just say co-op mode wasn't in, but you knew that was coming. Right. You could release it without that and still put that in later. I could put it in a box, sure. I wouldn't call it 1.0. No, again, the number means nothing. It's just... Well, okay, no, no, no. Okay, I know you say the number means nothing, but it means everything to me. Like, you're saying 80%, and I say that's 0.8. My numbers and my percentages are the same thing. Okay. So 1.0 means your feats are complete, means you've got everything in the game that you planned on getting in the game for 1.0, and it's all reasonably fun, and it's all reasonably polished, and it's all reasonably scoring good. And that's sort of the massaging that you're going to do later. is you're going to tweak the scores, you're going to add more lamp effects, and so on. So that's 1.0. 1.0 is if it never, ever got another code update, it would be okay. Gotcha. All right. Fair enough. And if it's not 1.0, you can't say that. But when I went into Turtles and we were planning it out, it had things that were going to be post-1.0 planned, and so that was good, too. So there's a line someplace before you're done that you're calling 1.0, and then after that we're going to do the challenge mode for the topper and stuff like that. So to you, 80% means 0.8 code. I get that. I guess what I want to say is... It doesn't mean like that. So that's not true for everyone. I know that. I try to stick to that because of my OCD. Okay, fair enough. I do know that it's not the same for everyone else, but I guess what I am saying and am complimenting Stern on is that in the last couple of years, a lot of these games that have been released have been near full code. You know, the only real exception that stands out, and we know why because of the timeline, was when Batman was released. Remember, it was the rush to get it out at Expo. It was Adam West's health. There were a lot of different factors in that. Yeah, it was the 30th anniversary game. Exactly. It was bare bones, but it was still a game. It still had scoring. It still worked. You could have a multiball, but you knew a lot more was going to come. Forget that game. I'm talking about whether it's Turtles, whether it's Avengers, whether it's Zeppelin, whether it's Stranger Things, Monsters, any kind of games in the last few years, they've all been pretty near full code. So has that been a directive from Stern to make sure that... Absolutely, yeah. I mean, we strive, you know, we move mountains to try to make that happen. And sometimes we don't. Some games were less successful than others, and some games were pretty close. Like when Turtles went in a box, it was like 1.0. Is the release date set in stone, and therefore you as the developer and the designer and everything else have to be in place by that such date, or is that a little bit flexible? So that's a good question. We're developing the game across months, right? So early on and in the middle and all throughout, we're constantly being asked, how's it going? Are you on track? Is it going to get done on time? Where will you be when we plan on going on a box on this date or that date? and if everything's going fine, well, I try to give them my gut feeling and now that I've been doing this for decades, I give a pretty accurate account of where I think we'll be on a particular day and then often they'll come to me and they'll go, hey, we're going to give you more time. I'm like, you're not giving me more time. You're just changing what it looks like when it goes in a box. The amount of time it's going to take me to get to 1.0 and finish the game hasn't changed. It's just if you push the game back, if you push the production back because of this factor or that factor, it happens all the time, then you're just going to change. Instead of being 0.85, we'll be at 0.88 or 0.9 when it goes in a box. So that date is set in stone. It's not. Well, it's set in stone until it's not. So the dates change all the time, but they're always set in stone. I guess what I'm trying to ask is one of my favorite things that any pinball company does, and Stern does an excellent job of this, is when a game is released, there are a bunch of machines already made, ready to ship out that week. So if that date is a hard date when they're doing the release, therefore the manufacturing has to back up at least a week, maybe two, maybe three, so that some of these machines can be made in advance of the release date. So these kind of ducks have to all align. Yeah, they're pretty good at aligning those ducks. But we start planning that out six, seven months before that, right? So when I was talking about how it always changes, I was talking about seven, eight, nine months out. You know they start they tell us the dates and they set in stone but then they you know like a week later they change and two weeks later they change But at some point they stop changing and that just the date Well, we know from some of the intellectual properties that Stern isn't the only one that dictates that date, too. I think Iron Maiden postponed a date that they originally were going to do for something they wanted to do. And that would be the case for anybody. I think, in fact, I know this to be true. Avengers was postponed a day or two. sadly due to the death of Chadwick Boseman. Yeah, that's sad. And you're talking about like at the last second. So let's say, you know, like June 15th, you know, is my current date. When we get to June 10th, you know, I know that within a couple of weeks we're going to start putting games in our box. It might not be the June 15th for lots of different reasons, but it's going to be really, really close. And to me, June, you know, five days or ten days is still, you know, is only a few seconds later. It's just, it might as well be the next day. And, of course, any code updates have to wait until those ones that are already in the box have already been shipped because you don't want to be shipping some at .8 code and some at .85 or things like that. No, we do that all the time, especially if we find a bug or something. Oh, really? Yeah, well, I mean, if my team and I are still moving ahead full steam, you know, like the train is moving down the track, And when I handed over the code, it was probably the night before, you know, the night before the games went in a box, I handed over code. But then the next day, we're moving on. Like, if I handed over 0.8, well, then, you know, internally, I'm now at 0.81 and 0.82 and 0.83 and so on over the next few days or so on. And then whenever we think that the game is significant, the code is significantly better, we hand it back over to the line again. We do another update, and we'll just keep doing it until we get to 1.0 and beyond. I'm fascinated by the process, and I would love to see how it all works for you when a play field falls in your lap, and you look at what the theme is, because that's obviously very important, and you probably have to research the theme if it's not something you're familiar with. Or even if you do know a little bit about it, you want to make sure you've got every aspect of it, like you did with Turtles, like you did with Monsters, and Game of Thrones. You have to know the actual product before you can do any kind of code. but let's just forget all what the theme is. When you see the play field. Well, the play field doesn't come for weeks until after the game has started. Right. So you've. Oh, so you know the theme before you see the play field is what you're saying. A long time before. Makes sense. I mean, there's lots of collaboration between me and the designer and the mechanical engineer long before the first play field is drawn. The only reason I ask that is because I know some designers have one, two, three, four playfields already designed. It's just a matter of applying that to the theme. But their lead programmers have been, you know, have been part of that from before they even started drawing the first one. So John and Elliot and I, at the beginning of Turtles, you know, we're like, okay. So Nickelodeon came to work and said, you know, say, hey, we want you guys to do Turtles. And then afterwards, I went to John. I said, John, we should do Turtles. And so John and I raised our hands, and George said, okay, you know, I'll propose it to management. And he did. and then it all came to be that we're doing Turtles. So then John, Elliot, and I start having meetings about, well, what's Turtles all about? What would be a good toy, and where would it go, and what should we do, and how would it look, and should we have a spinning pizza, and so on. And then John started making drawings, and Elliot and I, just like he kicks us, kicks me when I make a stupid multiball, Elliot and I would go, no, no, that's a stupid layout. Change the layout. It's very, very collaborative. He's in charge of the layout. It's his design. But he takes in input from the rest of his team right from the beginning. And every person on the team does exactly the same thing. Like when I'm making all my rules, the team is in my office telling me how stupid my stuff is, and I throw it out and make something else. So this process, again, just absolutely fascinates me. So I can't give you a theme because it may have already been done or it may be done in the future, and we don't want to talk about the future, but you've got to play field. I'm just thinking of what it was like maybe in the old Gottlieb days or when we first went to solid state. and the theme really didn't matter. Oh, it's space. Oh, it's cards. It's something that really wasn't a major license, but you still had to program these machines. So you'd see something like, okay, there are four top lanes. All right, I can do something with that, maybe a skill shot. ABCD. There you go. I've got two ramps. I've got two orbits. Okay, maybe I can do some combo things there. Yeah, million plus. Remember million plus? What? Million plus. That's an old rule from, that was really fun back in the day. When you see a ramp, you think million plus. Never mind. Go on. Okay, so there's two ramps, two orbits, but you've also got, oh, look, there's a scoop on one side, and on the other side there's a spinner. Okay, what can we do with that? There's sets of stand-ups or drop targets. You've got a lot to work with. I know when you look at the play field, you might look at it plain, no artwork on it, and go, okay, there are really only five shots on this flipper or maybe three on this flipper. And let's just say it's an Italian bottom, two flippers only, no third flipper. there's only so many different ways you can kind of create things I guess that's where the theme really is important because now you can integrate something that people are going to relate to if they're big fans of that theme yeah that's all true but a lot of today happens with the toy first the first thing you think of is well what kind of toys do you want in the game what are they going to do and how much space are they going to take up and where will they go and which flipper will interact with them or which flippers and you try to make all that work and then you look at what all that blank space you have left over on the playfield, and you go, well, now what shots make sense with this leftover space? Okay, all right. The toy. Good to know. I'm not designing a playfield myself, but I'm curious. I look at some of the older games. I like certainly the new modern games, but I also really love the older games, and some of the games that are just simple layouts and have no themes have really incredible rules, and it might just be like that one shot for all the points. Space shuttle, I'll give you a perfect example. To me, you can play a lot of different ways. You can spell shuttle. You can go for multiball. You can lock your balls. You probably hate a guy like me because I ignore all of that and all I do is I try to hit those three drop targets and hit the spinner over and over and over again and I still love it. Well, as long as you're loving it. No, but I mean there's... And we're talking about different eras, right? Like, so, I mean, modern pinball is now very different than what modern pinball was in the 90s, and you're talking about the 80s. So, like, for me, high speed changed it all, right? High speed made, pulled the story into it so that you were, you know, the physical things you did on the game, you know, evolved, you know, your story and progressed you through the game. And I don't know if the games before that did that as well. Did they? That's a great example. As we're speaking, tough time thinking of another example as influential as high speed. You're right. The game that got me into pinball, you know, really was a theme integration. No, it was all about the shots. It was about the magnet. It was Black Knight. Oh, Black Knight's a great game to pull you into. Another Larry DeMar game. I think Larry DeMar is one of, you know, extremely influential in modern pinball today, right? I mean, he sort of set the groundwork and the foundations for the place we went in the 90s. And then where we went in the 90s is what we've been doing in the 0s and 10s, you know, in the 20s now. Like, so, yeah, Black Knight and High Speed and Funhaus, right? All cornerstone games. All story-driven games, right? All, like, simple goals with fun things to do. Right? That's all Larry DeMar. That's a good analogy. It's one I never really kind of put two and two together. Yeah, that's a very good point. So in the last few years, we've seen a lot of young guns there, Dwight. We've seen Tim Sexton come into the fold. Raymond Davidson is now hired there. So these are guys that do code, that do rules, but they also really know how to play pinball. True. It's very exciting. So we've always had lineman sheets. We've always had good pinball players around. But now we have Keith. We have Raymond. We have Zach Sharp. We have Tim Sexton. So now pinball has taken a new turn. And that higher-end pinball player market is being serviced much better than it ever has been before. I always thought that I was capable of you know of of you know making those guys happy and I'm not I wasn even close to what like Tim and Keith can do and of course Lyman is a master how often do you play I mean are you in any local leagues there Do you do any tournaments No Well not since COVID especially but before that, I only ever played socially. So I never was in any tournaments. And so I love to play. I play every day, but I played at work. And then I played when we would go out and check out new games on tests and so forth. And then Josh Sharpe would pull me into this selfie league where you would go to 255 and play games and then take pictures of your scores. Yeah. So that was kind of fun. And then every once a week or once every two weeks, we'd get together and have playoffs or so. So you don't necessarily have to play in tournaments or in leagues or anything like that, but when you're coding, when you're developing a game, you're really trying to please different audiences. Definitely the collectors, the home collectors, the arcade owners, and they will come back, fingers crossed. Right. But also the tournament players, too. It's probably difficult to find a happy medium that everyone will enjoy. It is. So I've decided to make myself happy most of the time. So I like games like Game of Thrones and Star Wars where there's this very, very light RPG kind of element to it, like Turtles, where you choose a character in the beginning and it takes you through a different path. Star Wars is like that. Game of Thrones has, you can buy different elements and choose your house in the beginning. So I've decided to make games with that sort of foundation. And then I do my best at appealing to the Keiths and the Raymonds when I release 1.0. But then another cool thing we have about modern pinball is the instant feedback you get from the community. So when I put a game in a box, 1.0, like Turtles or Game of Thrones or Star Wars, it's made me happy, and I think that I've tried to make as many other people happy as possible. But then when I get feedback, which happens really fast, and I know I'm going to be doing some bug fixes and scoring fixes anyway, then I try to make everybody else happy at that point. So that's a great part of modern game development, is you shoot from the hips and you make everybody happy that you've seen play the game, but that's still a small fraction of all the people that got to play it and then when it goes out in the world and people start unboxing it and playing it and they start giving their own feedback, you go, oh shit, I didn't think about that or look at that, that scoring is really out of whack, let me fix that and you're right, like all that those jackpots should be worth more and so on and I try to align, I try to fix it all when I can. So you don't play in leagues, you don't go to tournaments but that's the nice thing about Twitch, you can see these games of yours out in the wild in tournaments and i wonder if you watch that other social media sure of course yeah anytime my game is is anywhere i try to pay attention like i read the forums you know when they're talking about my games and i read anytime anyone says hey there's this guy is you know streaming your game or whatever i try to tune it in or later somebody sends me a snippet of it something they saw and you know and it all goes into my what i call my stuff list and my stuff list is all the things i've been at work do on that game at some point in the future and then i fix it. I try to make everybody happy at that point because I now know what they want. You know, I think I know what people like me want, people at my skill level, and the people that want sort of strange, weird rules that I'd like to make. I know what they want, and I try to hit that bullseye right in the middle, and then I try to hit the other bullseyes somewhere close to the middle, and then when I get the feedback, I move my darts so that they are in the middle, if I can. When I hear people talk about the games of yours that they love, and I'll give an example of my favorite game of yours, it's Game of Thrones, because I like the different options. I don't own the game. I wish I did, because I would try all the different options, because especially that latest code update that happened a year or so ago. There's so many different ways to attack that. And that's one thing that's consistent about all of your games. There are different paths. No one can say your games are linear. That's the bullseye I try to hit. And then I try to come close on the other bullseyes. It makes for good variety. It makes for a lot of fun for the home collectors that can have that kind of different options to play the game. So again, and we've talked about this before, the hardest thing with that is finding some sort of balance between all the different options so that one is not too strong and one is not too weak. The same could be said about modes. You don't want people timing out your modes because it's just not worth the risk there. So no, that's very different. So you don't want people timing out your modes. You have to give them an incentive to play it to the end, whether it's points or artifacts or medals or something. You give them a reason to play your modes to the end. But picking a different house, I'm fine with player A always picking the same house and him believing that house Lannister is the best house for him because I didn't make all the houses balanced for player A. I made them balanced so that there was a different house for different types of players. It depends what shots you're comfortable with. Well, and what your objectives are, right? Like if I want to go for multiball, you know, I probably wouldn't pick Lannister. I would pick one of the other houses. So like House Baratheon is the house I would pick because it helps you get to that, you know, the wall multiball, right? And some players like myself have trouble getting there if you don't give that step up from Baratheon. So many different varieties. What might help you with Hand of the King? What might help you with shot multipliers? All kinds of things, combos. It's the fun thing that is Game of Thrones, but it is the challenge to make sure that there's interesting variety to make people certainly want to explore and try different paths. Star Wars has four different characters that offer different things, too. So I've seen everybody play everything except Luke. I haven't even played Luke yet. What does Luke do? I have no idea. Oh, Luke helps you with Jedi Path, the Jedi Master Path. Okay. Yeah, I like Luke quite a bit. Oh, do you? Yeah. You do great work. You're a lot of fun. I enjoy talking with you. I look forward to seeing you, and hopefully for Expo, our borders will be opened up, and we'll all have our vaccines, and we'll all be there safe and sound. That's probably the next time I get to see you. But I certainly enjoy your work, and thanks for being such a good sport. with what we've been doing on final round two and your little sponsor of the week, the Dwight Sullivan Wristwatch. Appreciate that. So Dwight, it's always a pleasure to talk to you and I can hardly wait to see what you're doing next. Me too. I can't wait to see what I'm doing next too. And thanks for all those kind words, Jeff. I love talking to you. I think you're pretty great as well. I love all of the champions of pinball and you're one of the top. And thanks for keep doing what you're doing. Out of 50, I would say I'm somewhere in there. So yeah, for sure. But thank you very much. We'll have to discuss the next Disney series. I haven't watched The Falcon. Oh, I watched Falcon. You really? I haven't watched Falcon and Winter Soldier yet, but we'll chat once that's done. But I'm sure it'll be great. Only six episodes, so it'll be easy to catch up. All right, all right. So at the very least, Pinball Expo is when we'll talk about it. Sounds good. Thanks, Dwight. See you, man. This has been your Pinball Profile. You can find everything on pinballprofile.com. Check us out on Facebook. We're also on Instagram and Twitter at pinballprofile. Email us pinballprofile at gmail.com. I'm Jeff Teolas. Is daylight savings time confusing you? Do you spring forward? Do you fall back? Is it this state or country? Who knows for sure? Never adjust your clock again. It's the new Dwight Sullivan wristwatch. This elegant timepiece comes with 70 LED lights that never turn off. You can also set alarms and reminders to help you get through your day. And how does that work? Let's ask the creator himself. Hi, I'm Dwight Sullivan. You'll love this timepiece. It's really easy to program. First, you'll choose your time zone, but keep in mind, some offer better bonuses for late-night activity or early risers. But we'll come back to that later. Once you've chosen your preferred time, lock it in by hitting the center button eight times. Do it fast or you'll miss the lock mode. Now for alarms. You'll want to decide whether you want to get up right away or use the snooze button. You can earn more snooze buttons by reaching target goals that you earn by just... Okay, okay, okay. I think we get the picture. Get the Dwight Sullivan watch today, just like I did. Nice. Hey, Jeff, what time is it? Why, it's almost midnight. Oh, sh...

_(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_

---

*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: c28ce668-f014-4ad6-b715-e25d4b6f000e*