In January 1971, Bushnell and Dabney founded Syzygy Engineering as an official company, now with a cash amount of US$350 each. They approached Ampex and a prior manager of Dabney's with their prototype, but found no interest. The major arcade game manufacturers were based out of Chicago at the time, limiting their ability to demonstrate their idea to an existing firm. During a dentist appointment in early 1971, Bushnell told the dentist about the game and that he was looking for a manufacturer; the dentist in turn referred him to another patient of his, Dave Ralstin, the sales manager for Nutting Associates in Mountain View, California. Nutting had been founded in 1966 on the basis of "Computer Quiz", an analog quiz arcade game, and by 1971 was looking for another hit game. After meeting with Bushnell, Nutting felt that his game was the potential success it needed to replace falling sales of "Computer Quiz" updates, as quiz games were growing less popular and it did not have an engineering team that could design successful new games. Nutting not only agreed to manufacture the game but also hired Bushnell as their chief engineer. Furthermore, Syzygy Engineering retained ownership of the game, even though Nutting agreed to give Syzygy space to build the prototype and to manufacture the game once complete. Syzygy would be paid five percent of each cabinet sold. Bushnell negotiated to work on "Cosmic Combat" outside of normal working hours until it went into production in order to keep it conceptually separate from his new job at Nutting, so as to prevent Nutting from later claiming ownership due to paying for time or materials spent building the game. Dabney remained at Ampex until the summer, when he resigned to join Bushnell at Nutting, as he was initially unwilling to leave the stable job he had worked at for ten years without more proof that the game could be a success.