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Meet A Guy Whose Job is Serious Fun: Jim Zielinski—Game Designer, Golden Tee Fore!
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Added: 05/02/2004
Type: Summary
Viewed: 754 time(s)
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Meet A Guy Whose Job is Serious Fun: Jim Zielinski—Game Designer, Golden Tee Fore!
While others spend 40 hours a week crunching numbers and writing reports, Zielinski gets paid to dream up fairways, greens, sand traps, and water hazards. Since joining IT in 1988, he has designed roughly 50 virtual golf courses.
Zielinski studied photography at Chicago’s Columbia College. But it was his credential of self-proclaimed “video game junky” that first landed him the job of IT game tester.
Zielinski was a devotee of “Birdie King,” a then-popular arcade golf game. As luck would have it, IT game designer Larry Hodgson was just beginning to formulate the Golden Tee concept. He began mining Zielinski for information and ideas, which eventually led to their collaboration. Now they work as creative partners, continuously inventing new gaming thrills.
Golden Tee’s virtual courses are very realistic, but entirely fictitious. They are variously set in mountains, deserts, or ocean-side. Some reflect an international flavor, ranging from Britain’s Stonehenge…to the Australian outback…to the hot springs of New Zealand.
Recently, while working on “Crawdad Swamp”—a Cajun course set in the Louisiana bayou—Zielinski and his team of artists searched in vain for realistic graphics of indigenous cypress and mangrove trees.
“We just couldn’t get them right. So we went down to Louisiana with a digital camera and took a swamp tour. Then, we incorporated the photos into the graphics.”
No detail is too small for Zielinski. One of his trademarks is to incorporate local wildlife into the action, as humorous stress-relievers. After all, Golden Tee can be highly competitive. (To date, IT has awarded more than $8,000,000 to winners of Internet-connected tournaments and live championships.)
“I try to put them in out-of-the-way places. That way, if a golfer gets into trouble, spotting an alligator or kiwi bird can help break the tension.”
What is his all-time favorite course?
“One called Mystic Hills. In 1999, we developed new software that allowed for elevation changes. Up until then, I had to work with basically flat terrain. Mystic Hills was first to utilize the new technology, so it was very exciting to create.”
On the other hand, Zielinski finds traditional Scottish links courses the toughest to design, because “there are no trees. That means the challenges have to arise from the terrain itself.”
For IT, introducing innovative new courses has been key to Golden Tee’s unprecedented longevity. While most arcade games enjoy a six-month lifespan, Golden Tee (based in Arlington Heights) is now in its seventh year. In less than a decade, IT catapulted from an ambitious $150,000 start-up to a successful $65 million company.
According to IT President Elaine Hodgson, “Offering new courses keeps players interested. That’s why we introduce a new upgrade every year. It also gives us a chance to implement new technology that keeps us ahead of the curve.”
Says Zielinski—who was featured in the August issue of Golf Digest—“When it comes to golf, I’m an average hacker. But what’s great about Golden Tee is that it allows people who are average golfers to be really good golfers. It’s like a fantasy come true.”
For kids whose fantasy is to become game designers someday, Zielinski offers some down-to-earth advice: “The easiest way to get into the video game business is to study computer science. And on the creative end, there is always a need for talented computer graphic artists.”
And so it’s back to work for Golden Tee’s Jim Zielinski. What’s he working on now? “Well, I really can’t say, except that it’s going to be new and fun.”
So, Jim, what else is new? |
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