Episode 59: Keith Elwin, new guy at Stern

Pinball Profile·podcast_episode·9m 41s·analyzed·Jul 22, 2017

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Keith Elwin joins Stern as game designer; discusses role, tournament plans, competitive concerns.

Summary

Keith Elwin, legendary competitive pinball player and seven-time world champion, discusses his new role as game designer at Stern Pinball. He declines to reveal specific upcoming projects due to NDA constraints, but confirms he's working on score balancing and rules design, collaborating with Dwight Sullivan on Star Wars, and maintaining his competitive semi-retirement while attending major tournaments like Pinberg.

Key Claims

Keith Elwin is now a game designer at Stern Pinball working on unrevealed projects with an unpredictable timeline
high confidence · Direct interview statement; confirmed employment transition from competitive play to designer role
Elwin worked extensively with Dwight Sullivan on Star Wars pinball score balancing and tournament mode suggestions
high confidence · Keith states: 'I work with Dwight a lot on, like I said, mostly score balancing' and identified scoring exploits and tournament mode problems
Archer (Elwin's homebrew game with brother) took approximately two years to develop but remained incomplete with bare-bones code and no artwork
high confidence · Keith confirms: 'for two years work and on and off, it is what it is' and 'never really finished Archer'
Elwin won first place on every EM machine in qualifying rounds at last year's Pinberg tournament
high confidence · Keith states: 'I took first place on every EM in qualifying, which was amazing, I think. Maybe not the last round, but pretty much all the other rounds.'
Stern designers (including Steve Ritchie) actively collaborate with Elwin on new titles and are welcoming to his input
high confidence · Keith confirms no friction from other designers: 'They're all very nice, welcoming' and notes 'Steve Ritchie's always coming over'

Notable Quotes

“I'm a game designer. I just sit in my chair and twirl around. I'll let my engineers do all the work. It's great. I love it.”
Keith Elwin @ ~11:20 — Humorous deflection about his new Stern role; contrasts with his hands-on Archer development approach
“I'm putting the finishing touches on Golden Girls right now, and then I can start my next project.”
Keith Elwin @ ~7:45 — Playful misdirection with fake game title, emphasizing NDA constraints prevent revealing real projects
“My games but we'll see it might cave in certain areas uh-oh zip flippers are coming back yeah gobble holes are making a return”
Keith Elwin @ ~20:30 — Cryptic hints about future game design philosophy emphasizing challenge/mastery; possibly joking about retro mechanics
“I took first place on every EM in qualifying, which was amazing, I think. Maybe not the last round, but pretty much all the other rounds.”
Keith Elwin @ ~25:15 — Confirms dominant tournament performance last year; indicates his competitive status remains elite despite semi-retirement
“I work with Dwight a lot on, like I said, mostly score balancing, things that I thought were ridiculous. Not really a whole lot of input in the game's rules, but scoring exploits.”
Keith Elwin @ ~15:30 — Clarifies his specific contributions to Star Wars pinball; reveals focus on exploit prevention and tournament viability

Entities

Keith ElwinpersonStern PinballcompanyDwight Sullivanperson Steve Ritchieperson ArchergameStar Wars (Stern pinball)gamePinbergevent

Signals

?
business_signal: Stern has established structured design process with separate roles (designers, engineers, software programmers); contrasts with Elwin's hands-on Archer experience
high · Elwin notes: 'I'll let my engineers do all the work' and describes collaboration with 'software guys' on score balancing; earlier confirmed Archer was largely solo/two-person project
?
community_signal: Stern maintains positive relationship with competitive pinball community and elite players; Elwin welcomed by design team and actively soliciting his tournament-focused feedback
high · Elwin confirms: 'They're all very nice, welcoming' and notes Steve Ritchie actively seeking his input on games
?
design_philosophy: Elwin indicates future Stern games will emphasize challenge and mastery; cryptic hints about possible retro mechanics integration ('zip flippers,' 'gobble holes')
medium · Elwin's response: 'My games but we'll see it might cave in certain areas uh-oh zip flippers are coming back yeah gobble holes are making a return' — appears partially joking but suggests design direction toward complexity
?
personnel_signal: Keith Elwin, legendary competitive player, hired by Stern Pinball as game designer; represents acquisition of elite talent to improve game quality and exploit detection
high · Elwin confirms employment: 'I'm a game designer' at Stern; host references 'you are now in Illinois working at Stern Pinball'
?
product_strategy: Stern has multiple unrevealed projects in development with uncertain timelines; Elwin unable to provide target release dates due to schedule volatility

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.029

0:00

Thank you for being a friend. It is time for another Pinball Profile. I'm your host, Jeff Teolis. You can find us on Facebook. We're also on Twitter at Pinball Profile. Email us who you'd like to hear, pinballprofile at gmail.com, and please subscribe on iTunes. He is Pinball's bully because he beats the hell out of every one of us. He is Keith Elwin, and he joins us right now. Hey, Keith, how are you? Good. How about yourself? I'm good. All right, you're not really a bully, but damn it, you're a very good player. And, you know, your life in pinball kind of reminds me of those thugs in Clockwork Orange. You know, you beat everyone up for years at pinball, destroy high scores and grand champions on machines. And now, like one of those clockwork goons who grew up and became a police officer protecting the laws they once broke, you are now making machines for us to make us pull out our hair until we master it. Well played, Keith. Well done.

0:52

The guys that I beat up, I now became tournament directors. Since we last talked, you are now in Illinois working at Stern Pinball, and I think you've been there long enough now that you've passed the probation period, so let's tell everybody all the Stern secrets and upcoming games. Go now. Well, I'm putting the finishing touches on Golden Girls right now, and then I can start my next project. Golden Girls. Oh, I hope I can hardly wait. That'll be great. It's going to be beautiful. Nice pink powder coat. You're going to love it.

1:19

Okay, so maybe not Golden Girls, but tell me this. Does Jack Danger at Deadflip offer to set up quote-unquote security at your home for you? No, he has not. All right. Can't get any information out of him either. I realize you're not allowed to tell anybody what you're working on. Fair enough. But maybe you can tell us exactly what you're doing at Stern. What's your title? I'm a game designer. I just sit in my chair and twirl around. I'll let my engineers do all the work. It's great. I love it. Your engineers do all the work, unlike when you did Archer, right? You've got someone else doing it for you. Oh, God, yes. I put in my views on that thing. No more. Okay, we don't know what you're working on, and that's fine. Fair enough, I respect that. Maybe, can you tell us a timeline, or at least a target date, of when we could see a Keith Elwin Stern product? No, I cannot, because it keeps jumping around, so... I don't even know at this point. You know, it kind of adds to the fun and mysterious aura. It's great, I love it. Well, I do know your Archer game that you made basically by yourself and your brother, that was two years, but now you have, like you say, engineers and an entire factory and a team behind you So it gotta be under two years wouldn it Well to be fair we never really finished Archer It pretty much no artwork bare bones code stuff inside a Congo cabinet So yeah, for two years work and on and off, it is what it is. All right, Keith, I'm not going to bug you because I do respect that you have to remain loyal to Stern. They do pay your paycheck after all. And who am I to spill secrets to for the two people listening to the show? But anyway, I do wonder when you got to Stern, did any of the other designers kind of give you the gears about blowing up any of their games? No, not really. They're all very nice, welcoming, and the software guys are constantly bugging me about score balancing and other issues. Steve Ritchie's always coming over. So, do you like Star Wars? Do you like it? Tell me the truth. Do you like it? You know, things like that. Well, Star Wars did just come out. I'm extremely excited. I absolutely love Steve Ritchie games. So, did they get you to test this while you were there? Did you get any feedback? Oh, yeah. I work with Dwight a lot on, like I said, mostly score balancing, things that I thought were ridiculous. Not really a whole lot of input in the game's rules, but scoring exploits. I pointed out a couple things. I gave him some tournament mode suggestions. So people aren't sitting there shooting the same shot over and over. So it should be, by the time it's done, it should be quite a good tournament game. Looks great already, and I'm excited to play it, as we just said. That is why so many of us are thrilled that you're working at Stern, because as the best player in the world, you're going to be able to tell these designers and the code makers and the programmers all of these possible exploits and we're going to see some great great games coming out of stern we already are but they're even going to be better now oh i hope so um i'm doing a rule set on my own game so i'm excited about that we'll see what i can do now i know your own collection is older games because you said before on pinball profile that you get bored of games where you can control them whereas on older games you can't control or master them so will your creation at stern be tough to master and control oh yeah he says that with an evil grin yeah you know the nice friendly feed every time i wouldn't expect that from my games but we'll see it might cave in certain areas uh-oh zip flippers are coming back yeah gobble holes are making a return okay maybe not well now that you're in the chicago area i have to ask you are you a giordano's pizza guy or a You know, I haven't had pizza since I've been here. What is wrong with you? I would have pizza every other meal and Garrett popcorn would be the other meal You know when I first moved out here I thought I be having Italian beef every day but I don So yeah you know That why you staying fit as a fiddle and a pinball champ and I just a chubby ginger from Canada All right, I got it.