Edit: This firing happened in Janurary. You'll notice I said nothing until I learned Mr Fix decided to misrepresent the truth on a public podcast. That's when I decided to respond publicly with the facts.

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!