
Tim Skelly Passes Away - philshem
https://twitter.com/SeamusBlackley/status/1234661993740525581
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tartoran
Rip Tim Skelly

"Tim Skelly Before becoming a researcher with Microsoft Advanced Technology
Research group, Tim Skelly spent fifteen years in the video game business.
After graduating from Northwestern University in 1973, he filled the time
preceding the invention of the personal computer by producing and directing
for film and television. Skelly's career shifted directions when in 1977 he
opened what was probably the world's first computer gaming center. Using the
experience he had gained programming and designing games for personal
computers, he went on to create a series of more than a dozen successful
arcade video games for Cinematronics, Sega, and Mylstar Electronics. These
included Armor Attack, Star Castle, Reactor, and the very first cooperative
two-player video game, Rip-Off.

Later, after the crash of the video arcade market in 1983, Skelly branched off
into screenwriting and the design of interactive laser disc programs. He
returned to the game business in 1985, when he cofounded Incredible
Technologies (IT), a company that designed, developed, built, and sold a broad
range of interactive software. Besides IT's high output of computer- and
cartridge-based games, projects included interfaces for medical equipment,
animatronic devices for a Japanese location-based entertainment center, and
all software and hardware for the original BattleTech (now Virtual Worlds)
Centers. Clients included Williams Electronics/Bally Midway and CAPCOM. During
this time, Skelly conducted a personal study of the appeal of video games.
This later became the basis for his successful series of "Seductive
Interfaces" tutorials given at several ACM SIGCHI conferences -- tutorials
designed to enable UI designers to apply the engaging aspects of video games
to nonentertainment products.

Recognized for his extensive video game experience, Skelly was recruited by
the Sega Technical Institute, where he advised on game design and served as
Art Director for Sonic the Hedgehog 2. A short time after the completion of
Sonic 2, he was asked to join the newly formed Research Division at Microsoft
Corporation. He is currently exploring future computer-human and computer-
mediated human-human interfaces and strategies." [0]

[0]:[http://www.wtec.org/loyola/hci/aa_bios.htm](http://www.wtec.org/loyola/hci/aa_bios.htm)

