Interesting! No shade to customer service, but that does sound like maybe they took Blackwell off creative projects after something went awry? Gave him some director job at the edge of the company to keep him within the company and satisfied. You do wonder what he knows...
Viewing post in I found two Uzumaki console games circa 2000
Also interesting that Joe Blackwell worked on a tournament system that seems to have been included in the Stern Playboy game (which is mentioned by gozooze99 in the original post)
This press release mentions the Sega connection as well: https://www.pinballnews.com/news/tops.html