Golden Tee Golf is turning 20 years old, and its creators at Incredible Technologies plan to celebrate in style this fall, not surprisingly by following their own lead and updating the game with all new courses and features aimed at keeping it meaningful and relevant with a new generation of video golfers.
Measuring the legacy of a cultural phenomenon like Golden Tee is tricky business only because its influence extends to so many realms. A year ago, when trade leaders went to Washington to lobby for industry concerns for the first time in a number of years, many Congressional staff members immediately identified the industry with Golden Tee Golf.
I.T. execs note that over a billion plays have been logged on Golden Tee machines, which equates to approximately $3 billion in revenue, and that has surely helped to pay a lot of industry salaries and their children's college tuition bills. Along the way, Golden Tee has blazed many new trails for the industry and set standards by which success has come to be judged for I.T. and others.
Those Golden Tee milestones include but are not limited to simply remaining popular for two decades and doing so without any violence or controversy; generating through its popularity both significant attention by the mainstream media, as well as thriving player communities and even a professional class of players; being one of the very first videogames to accept bills ($1-$20); trailblazing factory revenue sharing and online skill tournaments for prizes; implementing early and innovative use of a card reader and later other forms of cashless payment like credit cards, gift cards and player accounts; utilizing wireless modem technology; and driving a long history of sustained high earnings through regular annual game updates.
"I can't imagine this industry without Golden Tee," concluded the factory's marketing director Gary Colabuono, who has been tireless in his efforts to promote Golden Tee around the world.
Looking back at the germination of Golden Tee, I.T. president Elaine Hodgson says it emerged at the crossroads of luck and the firm's burgeoning skill in programming quick and casual games that performed well on the street. Hodgson and her then husband and current I.T. EVP Richard Ditton, both of whom hailed from the scientific community before jumping feet first into game development, founded I.T. in 1985.
Leading up to Golden Tee, the young development firm had captured players' imaginations with Capcom Bowling, a contract piece they created for the brand name arcade supplier. Meanwhile, company programmer Larry Hodgson was working on a golf simulator that ultimately morphed into a trackball-based videogame. Up to that point, the industry had seen several popular golf titles from Japanese videogame makers like Taito and Sega. The original Golden Tee was less graphically intense than those companies' games but captured something of the essence of competitive sports in a way not seen on the video screen before (see our sidebar "Aiming For Greatness" about the unique charms of Golden Tee).
"The work that Larry had done on the simulator gave us the foundation for a very realistic experience; it turned out to be a pretty good illusion," explained fellow Golden Tee co-creator Jim Zielinski. "Richard and Elaine saw the opportunity to turn the game into something we could sell."
That's exactly what they did: launch their company as a stand-alone game maker with the original Golden Tee Golf.
"We were up against awesome competition," remembered Elaine Hodgson. "We were nuts. Luckily the first game we did came together. Jim and Larry somehow captured the beauty of a golf swing in that trackball. It's so intuitive, you didn't know you were playing a game."
I.T. sales VP Don Pesceone, who joined the company at the advent of Golden Tee Fore and has long enjoyed playing videogames, explained the allure of the game this way: "Golden Tee instills the sense that I am powerful and can do things in the game that I can't do in reality."
The original Golden Tee was followed by Golden Tee 3D Golf, later endorsed by a well-known professional golfer and renamed Peter Jacobsen's Golden Tee 3D Golf. I.T. ultimately sold tens of thousands of these games, mostly kits.
According to Larry Hodgson, the game also revolutionized how players were willing to pay for their videogame fun, especially once the tournament system was introduced in the mid-1990s. The original game sold 10 strokes for a quarter plus the ability to win strokes; this new version of the game offered nine holes for $2, thanks to the use of a bill acceptor.
"All of a sudden, this was not just a quarter game anymore, and that fit the bar market which was used to spending their bills on the jukebox," said Hodgson. "Golden Tee was really designed to entice a foursome to play over their lunch hour at the local pub."
"At the time, there was all this controversy across the industry about going to 50 cent play," recalled Richard Ditton. "We just decided to skip that and go straight to $2."
Online tournament play was introduced in 1996, connecting Golden Tee 3D units via modems for regular cash prize tournaments at the national and regional level. The debut of Golden Tee Fore in 2000 brought that to a new level, and the game designed for online tournament play experienced success like few other videogames have in the history of the industry.
"That's when online tournaments really exploded," declared I.T. marketing VP Scott Morrison.
GT Fore innovations included leveraging the Internet to host tournaments, enhanced graphics, player cards, the ability to track individual player performance and, as a result of that, local and regional tournaments and promotions. The game also saw the advent of advertising including promotional deals with Anheuser Busch and Coca-Cola.
Looking back, I.T. execs said GT Fore was the right game for its time, hitting the sweet spot where technology and player desires met. The game became culturally relevant in a way that transcended the industry, finding its way into all the major news media and the consciousness of a worldwide player community.
In turn, this craze helped spur live tournaments, both factory and player sponsored, as well as an outpouring of operator run promotions and contests at the local and regional level. Once operators began working with each other on joint promotions, it was only a short step to the creation of route alliances like Club Lucky, Promo Nation and others, most of which were originally fostered through joint Golden Tee promotions with the aid and assistance of I.T.
The move from GT Fore to Golden Tee Live was controversial but necessary, according to Larry Hodgson, who said the game had passed the point of being accessible to a wide base of players. As the phenomenon evolved, a core group of elite players had come to dominate leaderboards and prize pools.
"It was clear we had to make some radical changes," he said. "We don't sit back. We've always been pure to the play mechanic, but we are willing to change how we wrap that experience."
The result was Golden Tee Live, which hosts ongoing tournaments and uses a built-in wireless modem. Each tournament groups 50 players who compete in real time for a $10 top prize. That means a lot more games have to be played to earn the kind of winnings top players were achieving with very few plays in the online Fore contests. It also opens up the chance for other players to take home prize money and a little glory. All of these developments were designed to maximize operator earnings, even if the results might seem less dramatic in the public sphere (i.e., no more big prize checks to hand out to players).
Live has also advanced a few of the features that came to the industry forefront with GT Fore while adding others. For instance, player cards have evolved into online player accounts. Tournament players collect their winnings in a player account, which they can also use to play more games. Live has also added credit card acceptance, which is accounting for an increasing percentage of sales over time.
The long and involved road that brought I.T. from Golden Tee 3D Golf all the way to Golden Tee Live has seen the game creator form an ever-closer bond with their operator customers. "We are tied with the operators as partners, and that means that their success and our success are bound up together," said Elaine Hodgson. "Our game is not just a machine you plug in the wall."
Her partner Richard Ditton also notes that the advent of tournament play also changed the nature of game development within I.T. "Before when we finished a game and itq began to sell, our main responsibility was servicing those machines," he said. "Once we turned on the online tournament system, we have had to keep the development process going every day."
So where does Golden Tee go from here? I.T. developers say they are continuing to strive to keep the experience relevant for an even wider range of players, from tournament players looking to achieve at the national competitive level to a casual location customer just looking to pass some time in a casual and fun way.
Based on their experience with Golden Tee over the last two decades and an ongoing study of the market, I.T. execs continue to have faith in amusement games, despite seemingly overwhelming competition for consumer mind-share. That competition includes consumer games (like Grand Theft Auto, which sold six million units out of the gate), the vast universe of networked communication channels (cell phones, text messaging, online social networks, etc.) and legalized and gray-area gaming.
"There is still room for amusement games in the marketplace," said Elaine Hodgson during the factory's operator summit meeting earlier this year in Chicago. "We have to maximize the strengths we bring to the marketplace."
Those strengths include the savvy development of games like Golden Tee, which offer intuitive and casual game play for new players and layers of depth embedded in the experience for more experienced gamers.
Golden Tee Live 2009, which is currently shipping, includes a number of exciting new features, five new golf courses and a new mode of tournament play, Closest to the Pin Live. Players will compete in ongoing, national, live competitions of 50 contestants much like the current Live golf tournaments. Competitors will pay $2 to take one shot on each of nine holes, $1 of which will make up the $50 prize pool for each tournament. The factory has set I.T. fees on the new tournament at 5%.
"The casual player has a lot better chance at beating one of the great players in a Closest to the Pin contest than they do in a format like stroke play," said project manager Brian Jandula. "These tournaments are going to fill up fast and move along pretty rapidly," added Golden Tee co-creator Larry Hodgson.
Noting that an increased focus on casual play actually helped increase online play 60% on Golden Tee Live 2008, Elaine Hodson said this fall's release of Golden Tee Live 2009 should do even more to cater to a player base with an increasingly shorter attention span.
The update includes new courses and a player selectable background soundtrack called Hit List, which will feature indie musicians as well as popular stars including Dave Matthews Band. GT Live 2009 will offer five new distinct courses and many other innovative features including a reprisal of mulligans, quick shot that speeds up play, a top monitor attract mode and even crisper graphics with more detail like moving clouds. Each of the five new courses (Black Hills, Bonnie Moor, Grand Savannah, Sunny Wood and Woodland Farm) will be equipped with multiple pin and tee positions.
In an exciting nod to the newest generation of players and their emerging tastes, Golden Tee Live 2009 will also allow players to upload holes in one and other great shots to YouTube so that all their friends can log onto the Internet and relive the experience.
"Golden Tee has seen one billion plays, generated approximately $3 billion and we are nowhere near done," concluded the guy who got it all started, Larry Hodgson, in a fitting tribute to the game that has defined Incredible Technologies and a considerable segment of the amusement game industry over the last two decades.
We really couldn't say it any better, except to add: Happy Birthday, Golden Tee!
As you enter the lobby of Incredible Technologies development offices in Arlington Heights, Ill., near Chicago, an original Golden Tee golf game in a vintage arcade cabinet stands ready, inviting would-be players to drop in a quarter and tee it up for a few holes of competitive golf with your best pal.
Not surprisingly, it was that very lure of head-to-head play, and the bragging rights that go along with winning, that alerted the games' co-creators that they were on to something big. As the game was coming together, those original game designers, Larry Hodgson and Jim Zielinski, found themselves spending more and more time engaging in friendly rivalry.
"It was fun, but the competition was serious too," recalled Zielinski.
"We used to joke that Golden Tee was the world's greatest videogame yet made," remembered Hodgson with a smile. "If you think about greatness, maybe you get a little closer. We certainly thought we were on to something."
The original Golden Tee Golf was developed by the two young designers with help from a graphic artist and sound specialist - four people total at a 30-person game development firm. Today, the two co-creators are joined by a relatively new project manager, Brian Jandula, as well as a team of at least half a dozen creative talents who regularly devote their time and energies to annual Golden Tee updates.
So what made Golden Tee, even in that earliest incarnation, so compelling? Not surprisingly, the opportunity for greatness the game offers players.
"We want the player to be on the hairy edge of disaster and then to be a hero at the end," explained Hodgson. "There's nothing more fun than that. In Golden Tee, if you can see the pin, you can make the shot. It's not an accident that so many of our live tournaments hinge on some kind of a glory shot. The games have been designed to allow the player to go for the shot, and the courses are built to make them possible."
This level of achievement, which is out of reach for all but the most accomplished of real golfers, is always available for the Golden Tee player who happens to roll that trackball just so.
In order to maintain the integrity of game play, that fine balance between disaster and heroism, Zielinski and Hodgson have never strayed from the purity of the game's rules as enforced by its internal physics. In short, there are no arbitrary rewards or penalties; the player is always the master of his own destiny.
Golden Tee is a prime example of the old adage about the co-existence of change and the familiar; the game has evolved while retaining its crucial intuitive play dynamic. (Just look at these brochures on the game through the years that clearly show such evolution.)
The main change, from year to year, is the introduction of new golf courses, all of which have been created from the mind of the world's foremost video golf course designer, Jim Zielinski. Video golf courses are, by their nature, more challenging than real golf courses because the game interface allows just about any player to hit the ball straight and fairly long.
"Videogames aren't paint by numbers," he explained. "It's a creative process like making movies. We've done some crazy stuff through the years, some of which we will not do again. We learn from every new course update."
One of the most noteworthy innovations in course design in recent years has been the use of high profile locales like New York's Central Park and the Washington, D.C. mall as a backdrop for golf.
Of course, the nature of competition on Golden Tee has also changed pretty significantly through the years, evolving from a fairly traditional stand-alone game to an online networked competition with monthly national prizes to today's Live format that offers rolling competitions featuring 50 players at a time. Last year, I.T. also re-introduced a non-connected Golden Tee Unplugged for gamers looking for that classic, casual game of video golf without the need to commit to a tournament.
"Golden Tee has had to evolve as players have evolved," said Zielinski. "We have to be mindful of our original player base, as well as the newest generation of game players whose tastes seem to be evolving faster."
Jandula, who represents a new generational perspective, says that rapidly changing player expectations are here to stay. "It happens with consoles and PC games," he explained.
The other balance that must be continually struck is the tension between highly skilled video golf competitors and more casual players. As the era of big dollar Golden Tee Fore tournaments has given way to the smaller prizes of Live and the reintroduction of an offline game, the difficulty of courses has been scaled back a bit. Yet advanced players now have the option to play different sets of tees, ensuring the game never gets routine or easy for them.
"Once you have established a franchise like Golden Tee, you want to push the difficulty level away from casual play or beginners," said Jandula. "To ensure the game's legacy, though, you have to catch both groups."
At crucial junctures, the Golden Tee team has also had to cross some big technology hurdles in the development process, particularly on the transition from Golden Tee 3D Golf to Golden Tee Fore and then later to Golden Tee Live.
In each case, I.T. has navigated the transition by upping the ante and bringing more value to operators and players, all the while maintaining that delicate play dynamic that keeps players on high alert, always ready for that one shot that will be heard round their bar, if not the video golf world.
Any discussion of Golden Tee's two decades of success would be incomplete without a look at the community that both sprung up around the game and in turn helped grow its popularity by creating a powerful gravitational pull on locations and their amusement operators.
"Golden Tee players have a social need to bond together," says I.T. marketing manager Dan Schrementi, succinctly summarizing a nationwide phenomenon.
Early on, much of this community formation was occurring organically and under the radar screen. I.T. marketing VP Scott Morrison said the industry channels of the day left little room for communication with the player. "We were supposed to deal strictly with distributors," he furthered. "The operator was their customer. Once we started our tournament system, we had to really focus on operators."
Only as top players in the tournament structure emerged did the potential for connecting with the end user become clear. In 1997, I.T. held the live finals of a national online Golden Tee tournament at the ASI in Las Vegas. "We were just shocked to be in Las Vegas playing videogames," recalled Steve Sobe, a former three-time national champion who has since joined the I.T. marketing staff.
"The tournament system really resonated with players and they started calling us; we had to beef up our staff," added Morrison. "We did such a good job promoting our tournament that a lot of people still call us ITS, which was short for our original International Tournament System."
As noted in our main story, the transition to Golden Tee Fore saw the community of players grow exponentially and even resulted in the emergence of full-time Golden Tee professionals who made their living off tournament earnings. Local leagues, promotions and player stats plus the introduction of player cards helped forge a sense of identity among players. "When they pulled out that player card at the bar, they were cool," said Gary Colabuono, I.T. marketing director, who was brought on board during this period to help spread the Golden Tee gospel.
Achievement at the local level now had somewhere to go as the game's emerging popularity saw more national and regional tournaments, as well as an international team competition, all sponsored by I.T., plus a significant number of homegrown, player- and operator-organized tournament events, all with generous cash prizes.
Ironically, Golden Tee Fore's very success spelled its obsolescence. As top players took over the tournament system, the factory realized that it must change the competitive format of the game in order to retain its appeal to a broad base of players. The answer: Golden Tee Live with ongoing tournaments offering much smaller prize pools.
"It was a struggle, making the changeover," conceded Morrison. "Resistance flowed up the sales chain from top players to locations to operators to us."
Fortunately, I.T. has weathered that storm and developed a two-pronged approach with Golden Tee Live and Golden Tee Unplugged, each serving its respective base of tournament and casual players. Live has even more of the local and regional promotion capability first introduced in GT Fore, including factory run prize tournaments as well as FACTS and Ad Wiz. The factory has also added to the original player card with promotional tools like gift cards and ambassador cards, allowing would-be players to sample the tournament experience.
"These things develop because technology allows it, and there is demand for it from players," said Colabuono. "All of these innovations came from talking to operators and players."
This year, I.T.'s Golden Tee Live tournament schedule has also focused its energies on one large event, the Golden Tee World Championship, which took place Sept. 12-13 in Las Vegas. It was the biggest live Golden Tee tournament ever held. The event included both a massive singles tournament and the traditional team competition between U.S. and international players.
To make it to the finals, players simply had to play 50 games from July 1-August 15. Nearly 3,000 players qualified and over 600 registered to attend the tournament. "Allowing anyone who played 50 games to attend and compete for the world title makes this tournament special," said Colabuono. "It's regular guys rubbing shoulders with the pros. There's no other event like this."
After Friday night's team competition, singles players got down to business on Saturday with the top eight from the field joining the 24 team players for the ultimate 32-man, single-elimination finals. That means that any player in any location could theoretically become the Golden Tee world champion, which also includes a top prize of $20,000. All 400 players will get some prize money.
Events like last month's tournament have garnered significant attention in the mainstream media. In fact, the Vegas event was scheduled to be broadcast by ESPN on one of their online and cable outlets. Through the years, Golden Tee has been featured in most of the major newspapers and magazines often held up as the image of the young adult at play.
I.T. marketing execs say the game's demographic appeal has traditionally been 21-35 males, although as the game ages it's beginning to skew older to, say, 25-45. Many of the changes that have been introduced with GT Live 2009 are designed to keep the game relevant for younger players, including the introduction of Closest to the Pin, selectable soundtracks and YouTube holes in one.
What started out as a player groundswell and then grew into a world of its own with high profile stars of the game and international competition is now a complex series of relationships, all of which are maintained delicately by the savvy marketing staff at I.T. They have figured out a way to serve both communities, casual and hardcore players, in a way that keeps them coming back for more.
"With Fore, you could focus on the tournament player and you got the casual player coming along for the ride," concluded Schrementi. "Today the system is multilayered by necessity. Nobody expects this from an arcade game, but this is what we have to do to keep Golden Tee meaningful and relevant."
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