Quoted from rosh:

People say to me all the time you guys should do theme X, most recently it was 'the three stooges'. Often my response is, "not going to happen", to which they will say 'Its a great theme, pinball people would love it, why not?", to which I'll say "I'm not a fan of the theme, and no way I am going to spend a year of my life with X" . Over a year with Houdini, not an issue, a great theme, a year with the Three stooges, not going to happen. Now I am lucky that I am in a position where I can say that. I'm sure at Stern sometimes you get stuck with a theme you may not like. I know for me it would be very hard to create a great ruleset and great code if I did not enjoy the theme. Great pinball comes from passion and if you are not passionate about what you are doing it will show in the results.
I was not a programmer before I started working at American Pinball. I was an executive that led teams of programmers, engineers and other technologists. I do have a degree in computer science and have done plenty of programming over the years, including some custom machines, but it is not what I did day to day for a living. But after working my ass off for 30 years, I came to the point where I decided it was time to 'marry my work to my play', and when the opportunity presented itself, I made the leap. The pay is far, far less than what I was making or could make elsewhere, and that is why I can choose to be picky about what I work on. Not making enough money to work on something I don't want to work on. But at the end of the day, I'm bringing a pinball machine to life, and not many people get to do that.
I doubt anyone works in pinball thinking they are going to make big money, you do it because it is pinball, while hoping to get fair and reasonable compensation for the work you do.
Now I need to get back to working on some code.