7/05/2005
Golf Video Game Good As Gold For Suburban Creator
July 4, 2005
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter
Chances are if you've been in a bar or bowling alley or some popular eateries, such as Fox & Hound or Buffalo Wild Wings, you've seen the Golden Tee video game.
What you probably don't know is that this golf-themed, interactive coin-operated game from Arlington Heights-based Incredible Technologies is the most popular coin-op game in history. That means it has produced more dollars than Pacman, Space Invaders and every other arcade game.
Since the game was introduced 16 years ago, it has generated more than $2 billion in game fees shared by amusement centers and route operators. And for every $1 that players spend on the game, they drop almost another $2 on food and beverages.
Incredible Technologies recently released Golden Tee Live, an advanced version using a wireless network to connect players from Chicago to Sydney in real-time tournaments that are expected to boost revenues even further.
"It started with quarters," said Larry Hodgson, 43, the game's inventor and vice president of product development. "Now, it's not uncommon for players to plunk down $5, $10 or $20."
Here are some incredible stats about Incredible Technologies' Golden Tee:
Revenue generated by Golden Tee games since 1989: More than $2 billion in game fees for amusement centers and route operators, who own the games. This makes Golden Tee the most popular game in coin-operated videogame history.
Number of active Golden Tee players: Ten million worldwide, primarily in the United States.
Revenues: Incredible Technologies last year posted $65 million in revenues. IT won't disclose profits.
Operator and amusement center income in 2004: Players spent about $400 million for Golden Tee and $750 million on food and beverages.
Most money won by a single player: $250,000 over eight years. The record holder is three-time Golden Tee national champion Steven Sobe, 32, who moved here from North Carolina to become Golden Tee's good-will ambassador.
Cash prizes: $250,000 a month awarded in Golden Tee Fore! tournaments. The awards are paid out in $1 to $10 amounts to the top 20 players in a tournament.
Howard Wolinsky
Pacman, now 25 years old, was played for pocket change -- 25 cents per game.
Hodgson, a self-taught computer programmer, fell into this success by accident.
More than 20 years ago, while working as a cook in an Italian restaurant in South Chicago Heights and attending junior college, Hodgson began designing games in his spare time for the Commodore 64 and Amiga systems. In 1985, his Crete-based startup, Dream Rider Software, designed a spy game that he said was the first graphical game played over a modem.
But he and his partners "lost our tails" on Dream Rider in 1985, and Hodgson went to work as a software designer for Incredible Technologies. The company was just being started in an Arlington Heights basement by Elaine and Richard Ditton, who were experienced designers and programmers within the video game industry.
In the early days, Incredible Technologies developed the operating systems and programming of Data East's first pinball games and a number of consumer games on the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga systems for various publishers.
Hodgson was involved in designing software and hardware for the immersive Battletech game, popular here in North Pier in the early 1990s.
A self-described "semi-decent golfer," shooting in the 80s and 90s, the software developer began thinking about a full-swing video game using a real golf club to play the game in the winter.
"We got it to work, but it didn't feel like real golf," said Hodgson, who worked on the project with co-worker Jim Zielinski, now senior game designer.
Then came an epiphany: Incredible Technologies realized it was a video game company, dropped the golf club idea, and switched to a trackball to connect to an on-screen golf club. The company also decided that rather than selling the game to another company, it would market the game itself.
The rest, as they say, is coin-op video gaming industry istory, as Golden Tee became the industry's biggest earner and Incredible Technologies became the largest company in the coin-operated video gaming business.
Hodgson said Golden Tee caught on because it "provides an illusion of real game play. It has all the physics of golf, without the frustration."
The company began holding Golden Tee tournaments by networking games over phone lines in the mid-1990s, but there was a two-day delay in compiling rankings.
Now with high-speed, wireless lines, Golden Tee Live players know where they stand in tournaments in real-time, and even can taunt each other. The game is among the first to enable players -- typically men 21 to 35 -- to pay for games with credit cards.
The Golden Tee game and its cult following grew as the years went on. Today, Incredible Technologies also makes Big Buck Hunter, a deer-hunting game, and Silver Strike Bowling, a bowling game, but it receives 75 percent of its revenue from Golden Tee.
The Museum of Science & Industry's Game On! exhibit displays all four generations of Golden Tee. Golden Tee also has been a PC, PlayStation and cell phone game, ranking No. 1 on Nextel and Sprint.
"Players are used to Xbox Liive with its massive multi-player tournaments," Hodgson said. "They are demanding a fuller entertainment experience. With our new Golden Tee Live, we are giving them this experience in their neighborhood bar."
Top player tees off in the South Loop
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter
Hard by the counter in Manhattan's -- an old cop bar that went upscale in the landmark Old Colony Building in the South Loop -- Chuck Speiser is holding court, playing Incredible Technologies' new Golden Tee Live golfing videogame.
This unassuming, middle-aged guy in a polo shirt, director of options operations for Charles Schwab & Co. at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, is one of the top Golden Tee players in the world.
That's saying a lot: 10 million people play the game, putting in $4 for an 18-hole round and $3 for a nine-hole game. They add an extra $1 into the kitty for tournament play.
Two or three times a week, Speiser, 46, who lives next door to Manhattan's, stops by to play a couple rounds, and compete over the network against players from around the country.
"Golden Tee combines so many elements that make any game or sport fun: competition, challenges and camaraderie," he said. "It roughly costs about the same as a Guinness -- and a Guinness doesn't last as long."
At the moment, he's taking on 50 other players from Missouri, Texas and Michigan on Kangaroo Trail, an imaginary golf course in the Australian outback. He takes a fly-by overhead view of the course, one of five available in the game, adjusts the track ball linked to an animated club, and sends the animated ball flying 300-plus yards over the tree line.
Peter Heinz, 24, of Lake View, a phone clerk at the exchange and also a high-level player, glanced at his elder and said: "He's Yoda to my Obe Wan. Chuck is the big leagues."
With the new Golden Tee version, players can not only choose their shots and clubs, but their gender, race and outfits.
Said Heinz, "I have a sombrero that I love."
Between shots, real-life (but not really live) expert golfers, including Laura Diaz, Gary Player and Chris DiMarco, report on the shot from the ground level, as though the players were in a nationally televised tournament.
The system knows the shot and conditions -- this day it's rainy out with a slight breeze in the desert outback -- and so the golf analysts make appropriate observations from ground level on what went right or wrong and what's next.
From the booth, CBS sports commentator Jim Nantz and golfer Peter Jacobsen, who hosts a show on the Golf Channel, offer praise, criticism, jokes and wisecracks.
Players also can push the help button for advice from three-time Golden Tee national championship winner Steven Sobe, who has won $250,000 in tournament play, and now works for Incredible Technologies in Arlington Heights.
Speiser has been playing Golden Tee since 1998. He said he makes back his money about 98 percent of the time. "It's a hobby for me," he said.
Tournament winners take home $10, which can be left on account or used to buy games. During the national tournament in Orlando, the top player wins $15,000 out of a $650,000 purse.
Speiser said money can be made in online competitions and live tournaments where more than 100 players show up and pick-up games in the bar.
"It's just like shooting pool," said Speiser, who has $500 on account with Golden Tee. "I make enough back that I have to show it on my taxes every year."
Speiser typically scores 22 under a par 72 in Golden Tee, which has the same rules as real golf. He plays in the low 80s in real-world golf.
A veteran of Pacman and Asteroid, he said Golden Tee demands more skill than any other videogame he's played.
"You have to keep your concentration to really play it right, and there are a lot of variables. Some guys like to talk trash. I've seen people get intimidated right out of their game. I never got trash talked while playing Space Invaders."
How does Speiser's wife, Dette, react to his Golden Tee mania?
"I'm not going to say she 'gets it' because she definitely doesn't," said Speiser.
"On the other hand, she knows where I am when I say I'm playing. That's more than a lot of wives can say."
Hard by the counter in Manhattan's -- an old cop bar that went upscale in the landmark Old Colony Building in the South Loop -- Chuck Speiser is holding court, playing Incredible Technologies' new Golden Tee Live golfing videogame.
This unassuming, middle-aged guy in a polo shirt, director of options operations for Charles Schwab & Co. at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, is one of the top Golden Tee players in the world.
That's saying a lot: 10 million people play the game, putting in $4 for an 18-hole round and $3 for a nine-hole game. They add an extra $1 into the kitty for tournament play.
Two or three times a week, Speiser, 46, who lives next door to Manhattan's, stops by to play a couple rounds, and compete over the network against players from around the country.
"Golden Tee combines so many elements that make any game or sport fun: competition, challenges and camaraderie," he said. "It roughly costs about the same as a Guinness -- and a Guinness doesn't last as long."
At the moment, he's taking on 50 other players from Missouri, Texas and Michigan on Kangaroo Trail, an imaginary golf course in the Australian outback. He takes a fly-by overhead view of the course, one of five available in the game, adjusts the track ball linked to an animated club, and sends the animated ball flying 300-plus yards over the tree line.
Peter Heinz, 24, of Lake View, a phone clerk at the exchange and also a high-level player, glanced at his elder and said: "He's Yoda to my Obe Wan. Chuck is the big leagues."
With the new Golden Tee version, players can not only choose their shots and clubs, but their gender, race and outfits.
Said Heinz, "I have a sombrero that I love."
Between shots, real-life (but not really live) expert golfers, including Laura Diaz, Gary Player and Chris DiMarco, report on the shot from the ground level, as though the players were in a nationally televised tournament.
The system knows the shot and conditions -- this day it's rainy out with a slight breeze in the desert outback -- and so the golf analysts make appropriate observations from ground level on what went right or wrong and what's next.
From the booth, CBS sports commentator Jim Nantz and golfer Peter Jacobsen, who hosts a show on the Golf Channel, offer praise, criticism, jokes and wisecracks.
Players also can push the help button for advice from three-time Golden Tee national championship winner Steven Sobe, who has won $250,000 in tournament play, and now works for Incredible Technologies in Arlington Heights.
Speiser has been playing Golden Tee since 1998. He said he makes back his money about 98 percent of the time. "It's a hobby for me," he said.
Tournament winners take home $10, which can be left on account or used to buy games. During the national tournament in Orlando, the top player wins $15,000 out of a $650,000 purse.
Speiser said money can be made in online competitions and live tournaments where more than 100 players show up and pick-up games in the bar.
"It's just like shooting pool," said Speiser, who has $500 on account with Golden Tee. "I make enough back that I have to show it on my taxes every year."
Speiser typically scores 22 under a par 72 in Golden Tee, which has the same rules as real golf. He plays in the low 80s in real-world golf.
A veteran of Pacman and Asteroid, he said Golden Tee demands more skill than any other videogame he's played.
"You have to keep your concentration to really play it right, and there are a lot of variables. Some guys like to talk trash. I've seen people get intimidated right out of their game. I never got trash talked while playing Space Invaders."
How does Speiser's wife, Dette, react to his Golden Tee mania?
"I'm not going to say she 'gets it' because she definitely doesn't," said Speiser.
"On the other hand, she knows where I am when I say I'm playing. That's more than a lot of wives can say."
