The conference begins in earnest.

This year, the Shareware Industry Conference has 30 sessions scheduled over the three main days of the conference. There is always a pair of simultaneous sessions in each of 5 one-hour time slots each day, along with a lunch break. One must decide between two sessions each time, and the choice is not always easy for me, since most of the topics are directly relevant to my business.

The difficult decisions started right away, with the first session being a choice between Press & PR and Blogs and RSS. Despite the unquestionable entertainment value of Phil Schnyder, of askSam Systems, in the former session, I chose to attend the latter, as there was more that I needed to learn about RSS. After the first two speakers, I thought I had made the wrong choice, as my main questions were still unanswered. Fortunately, Sharon Housley, publisher of FeedForAll, had the anchor position. Her clear presentation finally illuminated the light bulb in my head and made the session worthwhile.

One of the great aspects of SIC is the ability to network with peers in the industry, and this is often more valuable than the sessions. In the first break between sessions, I ran into several friends and acquaintances, so I missed most of the next session. I slipped in at the end of the Closing the Sale session, presented by Ben Weintraub, of Merit Software, and Chris Thornton, of Thornsoft Development.

No official lunch was scheduled during the break, so several of us walked to a local establishment, Darcy’s, to participate in the first unofficial gathering of the Association of Independent Software Industry Professionals (AISIP), which was recently created by Sue Pichotta to serve the needs of independent software developers in a way that cannot be easily accomplished by a non-profit organization.

The next session was a choice between Software Localization and Search Engine Strategies, and I selected what was behind door number three. I took my laptop down to the internet lounge and partook of the free wireless access provided by the conference organizers. It was the first opportunity to make sure that I could retrieve my email and obtain newsgroup access. I also determined that I could not easily conduct business as usual on a laptop keyboard, but being able to communicate with the office and home was nice.

The next session I attended was Effective Negotiations with Suda Pethe, of Centered Systems, and Jean-Guy Ducreux, of JunkWarden and a new venture. The session was interesting and contained discussions of specific numbers for certain deals. The only problem, which was not the fault of the speakers, was that “negotiations” could mean lots of different things, so they had to adapt for the varied audience.

The final time slot had a replacement session, Software Packaging, presented solely by Gary Elfring of CD Ship. This turned out to be the best session of the day, providing loads of practical advise on Inexpensive Packaging for Software, including various options and approximate pricing of necessary materials. There was enough detail to both select a desired result and to produce the package in-house.

Entertainment and food for the evening was provided by Digital River and their numerous subsidiaries. After their sumo wrestling escapades last year, which resulted in injury to a shareware developer, I expected something more sedate. Surprisingly, they had a mechanical bull for attendees to ride, and a contest with prizes for the highest judged “cowboys”. Loren Brewer of Shareware Solutions took the top prize, and fortunately their were no injuries this year. The only problem is that Digital River again forgot that this was a reception and turned the music up too loud to talk at some points.

As the reception was winding down, I participated in a shareware tradition, the “ice cream run“. At each conference and schmooze, Eric Isaacson of Eric Isaacson Software leads a contingent to a local ice cream parlor. I had the honor of riding along with Eric, Gary Elfring, and Jessica Dewell on what turned out to be a rather interesting journey, culminating in a half-sprint across the parking lot to get through the door before it was locked. Dave Trump and Thomas Warfield arrived in a second vehicle, while a third vehicle got lost en route and simply returned to the conference hotel.

Returning from the ice cream run, we ran into Michael “Doc” Callahan and Chris Thornton in the hotel lobby. After a short conversation, it was apparent that the only remaining activity was in the bar, and since beer does not reasonably chase ice cream, I retired to my room for the evening.

Common Ground update: Tonight I am missing The Black Crowes, who I understand put on a great show. Their opening act is Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels, who I had the pleasure of seeing at a fairly intimate club many years ago, though I would definitely have liked to see them again.

Whitewater rafting and a reception kick off the conference.

The most anticipated unofficial event connected with the Shareware Industry Conference was a whitewater rafting trip organized by Dave Trump of Qivx. We took the “Wild & Scenic Trip” from A-1 Wildwater in Fort Collins, rafting down the Cache La Poudre River for a few hours. There were many class III and two class IV rapids along the way, and it was great fun for my first time rafting.

The trip got particularly exciting when Sheila Manning, organizer of the Grand Rapids Shareware Schmooze, fell off of her raft while traversing the first class IV rapids, joining the “Poudre Swim Team” along with Patrick Bailey of 10×13 Software. Patrick came downstream with the raft, while Sheila ended up on shore just up river from the “room of doom”, requiring a river rescue. She emerged from the river with a big smile and a triumphant shout, and then impressed the river guides by getting back into her raft and continuing to paddle. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries, although Sheila did break a fingernail.

The shareware group was divided among 4 different rafts, and ours had the largest contingent, with Chris Thornton of Thornsoft Development, Sue Pichotta of Ace Icons and her daughter Sarah, Fred Clabuesch of SigmaTech Software, and me, Gregg Seelhoff of SophSoft and Digital Gamecraft. Other adventurous souls on the journey were Becky Lash of Epic Trends, Peter Gadzinski of Meeting Pal, Jan Goyvaerts of JGsoft and his wife Samira, Thomas Wetzel of Wisco, Oliver Grahl of Grahl Software Design, and Mathias Roth of iOpus. It appears that a good time was had by all.

After returning from Fort Collins, most of us attended the SIAF Reception, held in the Centennial Room, which was the whole of the 12th, and highest, floor in the hotel. The view was not bad, although the bright sunshine as the sun was setting made it somewhat difficult for a group to talk without one or more being blinded by the light. Fortunately, that sort of thing resolves itself as the evening wears on.

There was lots of networking and excellent conversation during the reception. Digital River representatives were all dressed in shirts with a red cross on the front and the phrase “We’re here for you, Harold”, in joking reference to Harold Holmes of Lincoln Beach Software, who was injured during their event last year. I was pleased to meet Brandon Staggs of Akamai Software in person and to reconnect with friends from previous years, such as Mike Stevenson of Shareware Junction, who was kind enough to buy me a needed soft drink, and Dexter Bell of The Utility Factory, who was handing out special SIC2005 copies of his FileBoss software.

Many of us sat around a large table at the end of the room talking until we realized that the bar had been shut down and the rest of the reception had disappeared. Having successfully closed the first official SIC event, I retired to my hotel room for a good sleep.

Common Ground update: Tonight I am missing Blue Öyster Cult, who I have not seen since the early 1980s, and blues legend Buddy Guy, who I have never had the pleasure of seeing. (I would not have bothered with Whitesnake.)

Colorado seems a nice place to spend the next week.

This year, Denver hosts the annual Shareware Industry Conference (SIC) for the first time. As the name implies, this conference is devoted to topics affecting the shareware industry, which is primarily comprised of independent developers and publishers. SIC is presented by the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation (SIAF), and in recent years, the conference has changed location around the United States every couple of years. For the two previous years, SIC has been in Rochester, New York, and although Denver is a longer journey, it will be a welcome change.

I arrived in Denver, via Amtrak on the California Zephyr, fairly early this morning. The total travel time was about 24 hours, but with a laptop computer and traveling companions Fred and Jan Clabuesch of SigmaTech Software, the trip was enjoyable. We compared notes on Amtrak’s upsell telemarketing, where they called passengers scheduled in coach class and offered discounted “sleepers” for the round trip. Apparently, the program was successful, as the only upgrade for the return trip, once we got to Denver, was full fare, more than the round trip cost previously available.

The taxicab ride to the conference hotel was not as enjoyable as the train trip. Apparently, we were traveling right in the middle of morning rush hour, and there was all sorts of construction. Perhaps working at home has spoiled me, but this was the worst traffic I can recall seeing in recent memory, and the cabbie assured us that this morning was not unusual. Of course, it would have been nice had he managed to have fewer close calls and near misses (“near hits”), but we did get to the hotel relatively unscathed.

The hotel had been fully booked the previous evening, so there were no rooms available for early check-in. After a brief rest in the lobby, we ran into SIAF Chairman Mike Callahan, also known as Dr. File Finder, and volunteered to stuff “goodie bags”. We learned that SIC 2005 was likely to be the largest ever, and the anticipation was starting to build. After a few hours of volunteer work, we were treated to a lovely lunch at a hotel restaurant, and the conversation was thoroughly enjoyable.

After lunch, there were finally rooms available, so I was able to check-in and take my bags up to my room. Having spent a night in a coach seat on a train, it was nice to be able to finally get a nap in a proper bed. Shortly after waking in the early evening, Thomas Warfield of Goodsol Development, publisher of our Pretty Good MahJongg and Action Solitaire products, called from the lobby. I joined him and other shareware industry professionals, including Jerry Stern and Terry Jepson, who are promoting their new SpySafety site, Jan Goyvaerts, who writes the Shareware Beach blog, and Ryan Smyth, who flew all the way from South Korea to attend his first SIC.

A little bit later, I had a very nice dinner with Thomas and his wife Anne, where we discussed some of the exciting new projects we will be developing in conjunction with Goodsol, and the conversation lasted slightly longer than the meal. We returned to the pre-conference schmoozing, enjoying great camaraderie until everybody retired to their rooms (rather early for those of us still on Eastern time).

Common Ground update: Tonight I am missing The Allman Brothers Band, and although I saw them there previously, I am told that every one of their live shows is different.

Time flies when you have too much to do.

June was a busy month, both personally and professionally (although sometimes it seems difficult to distinguish one from the other). My calendar is covered in all sorts of red marks noting events that occurred throughout the month.

On the professional side, the month started out with an IGDA meeting on Sunday, June 5th. Despite the calendar (meeting at MSU, out of session), the turnout was excellent. Patrick Shaw, formerly of Maxis (Electronic Arts), gave an excellent presentation on a game production technique based on “squads”, rather than the more traditional command hierarchy. Valeta Wensloff gave an introduction to Thief 2X, a fan-based update to the popular Thief 2 from the now-defunct Looking Glass Studios. The most amazing fact about this product is that Valeta and the others on the team managed to complete the free project over the course of years, with no compensation, while working remotely. This is the exception that proves the rule.

At the start of the meeting, I was introduced to Andy Nwoye and his colleague Jillian Caywood. Andy arranged for them to interview me for a documentary that they are creating, tentatively titled, “Beyond Games“. The film is about people who so enjoyed video games that they (we) turned it into a career. They interviewed me at my home office on Friday, June 17th, which was a very interesting experience. We discussed my career, several of our games, and issues affecting independent game developers. Afterwards, I played Midtown Madness 3 with my son for “B-roll” footage, in addition to some shots of my 1973 Williams Fun-Fest pinball machine that resides in my office. More information about the project is available in their production diary.

The following week I had a meeting with Ward Makielski from Ferris State University, Grand Rapids about their game development curriculum. As it turns out, we both worked on Legacy of the Ancients, albeit not together (different time, different SKUs), back in the late 80s. He went into education, while I continued to work in the game industry. FSU Grand Rapids is on the forefront of the movement for local colleges and universities to provide skills to students who want to pursue a career in games or related multimedia arts.

Back in the present, this week I travel to Denver, Colorado for the Shareware Industry Conference. Unfortunately, this means that I will be out of town for Lansing’s Common Ground Festival, which features a full week of popular bands on a couple of main stages, and we usually go to them all. This year, I have to miss them all. Tonight, I will be missing Journey (although I saw them at Common Ground previously).

The game and multimedia industry is alive and well in Michigan.

On Tuesday night, I attended a joint meeting of SEMAFX and the local IGDA chapter. SEMAFX is the local chapter of ACM/SIGGRAPH, and the acronym stands for (the cumbersome) Southeast Michigan Animation and Special Effects User Group. IGDA is the International Game Developers Association, and ours is the Michigan South chapter. We were hosted by Schoolcraft College, which offers Associate Degrees (and Post-Associate Certificates) in Computer Graphics Technology, as well as many other programs.

Despite being held for two hours on a weeknight, the turnout for this event was fairly impressive. I counted over 60 attendees before the lights went down. There was interesting content for the solid two hours, with minimal organizational pitch.

A professor from Schoolcraft College described their program briefly, and then he gave an interesting presentation showing how he wrote a simple catapult game in flash with only two explicit variables. The game is used by The Learning Channel in conjunction with their Roman Catapult feature, and apparently the actual name of the game is Play the Flippin’ Game.

A group of students from Lawrence Technological University in Southfield (Detroit area) showed off a game project, named “Larry Kart“, which they completed during a school year in which they also managed to graduate. They gave themselves the name Gym Class, an inside joke regarding the lack of such at Lawrence Tech, and the site also reads Rut Row Studios.

A Canadian animator showed an impressively rendered video for a game mod project as a prelude to displaying his own animations using characters, from existing 3D models, entering and exiting various vehicles at speed and at rest, as well as scaling a wall. It was impressive to know that these animations were not done with motion capture, and more so because the compact cockpit of one vehicle combined with the chest measurements of the female character left precious little maneuvering room.

Another Canadian from just across the river in Ontario gave a quick overview of flash game development, cramming lots of information into a reasonably short period of time. This skill must be a necessity when he teaches groups of 15-20 youngsters (ages 9-15) the basics of game development in only five days. This is done as a summer program given in association with the University of Windsor.

In addition to all of the schools mentioned above, there are also thriving programs being taught at Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Ferris State University, as well as opportunities at other educational institutions and community colleges around the state. The field of games and interactive media is really growing in this area and it bodes very well for the future.

After the official meeting, which was just the presentations, the real business started in what SEMAFX calls the “afterglow” party. Everybody involved retires to a restaurant/bar to schmooze and network. We had game designers, programmers, graphic artists, musicians, and other interested parties discussing all manner of topics, all in a spirit of cooperation between the groups.

The next meeting for the Michigan South chapter of the IGDA is scheduled for June 5th in East Lansing, and the next SEMAFX meeting is scheduled for June 14th in Berkley (Michigan). Both should prove to be informative and entertaining, and one does not need to be a member to attend.

Three products on which I have worked garnered SIA 2005 nominations.

Each year, the Shareware Industry Awards Foundation (SIAF) presents awards to “honor some of the best software available that uses the shareware model of marketing”. These are the most prestigious awards in the industry, as products are nominated and recognized for the award by other shareware professionals. A parallel set of awards, the SIAF People’s Choice Awards, are voted on by the general public (i.e., our users). All of these will be presented at the awards banquet during the Shareware Industry Conference (SIC 2005) this July in Denver.

Action Solitaire was one of four products nominated in the ‘Best Action/Arcade Game‘ category. I did all of the coding and much of the design for this product, which was first released in 2003. We released a significant update, Action Solitaire 1.1, back in April, to add 18 new games to the product (for a total of 52).

Pretty Good Solitaire was one of four products nominated in the ‘Best Non-Action Game‘ category. This is its third nomination in a row, and in previous incarnations, has won the award in 1999 and 2001. Since its last victory, I programmed the library that now does all of the card drawing and animation, including the ability to load custom card sets and backs and to resize cards. The latest version, Pretty Good Solitaire 10.2, contains 610 different types of solitaire and was released in February of this year.

SnagIt was one of three products nominated in the ‘Best Graphics Program or Utility‘ category. This nomination is a testament to the longevity of this product, developed and published by TechSmith, a local company. Although I claim little responsibility for its success, I did program version 2.1 when I worked for them briefly way back in 1992-93. The current version, SnagIt 7.2, is also a PC Magazine Editors’ Choice winner.

Click here to see the complete list of SIA nominees for 2005.

As they say, it is an honor just to be nominated. However, we would really like to win, too, so I would certainly appreciate your votes. (I still think that Pretty Good MahJongg would make an excellent People’s Choice selection.)

The Southeast Michigan chapter of the IGDA just released the following memo:

Local Game Developers Protest New Legislation

Game developers in Southeast Michigan are voicing their complaints over some new legislation making the rounds in the state senate. Bills sponsored by Senators Hansen Clarke and Alan Cropsey prepare the state to take a much firmer stance on the sale of video games to young people. A number of hearings regarding these bills will be held this month to discuss them further. The next one is scheduled for May 6 at the Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm, where representatives from local and national game developers are expected to testify against this pending legislation.

Specifically, the bills criminalize the sale of games rated ‘M’ for mature by the Entertainment Software Rating Board to anybody under the age of 17. Under one of the proposed amendments to the Michigan penal code, any individual who is found selling one of these games can be put in jail for up to a year and even fined up to $5,000. The idea behind these bills is that they are designed to protect our youth from “those who poison the minds of our young people,” Governor Jennifer Granholm said.

But Michigan’s local game development community contends that the proposed legislation is flawed on a number of levels.

“The bill indicts the game development industry on the whole,” said Cristopher Boyer, CEO of local video game publisher Variant Interactive, Co.

“When compared to other entertainment mediums which produce similar products, game developers are considered to be these villainous deviants with no moral compass,” Boyer said.

Currently, there is no law or legislation regulating the sale of movies, music or books containing questionable content.

The bills would also put unnecessary burdens on independent software developers, who would have to spend thousands of dollars more to have their game rated when they are only distributing their game on the Internet to credit card-bearing consumers.

“For independent developers, the cost of having your game reviewed could be more than what it costs to make the whole game,” said Gregg Seelhoff, Technical Director at Sophsoft, Inc. — a game development company in Michigan who makes solitaire games to sell on the Internet.

“It could put some people out of business,” Seelhoff said.

Local developers are also apprehensive of the bills when it comes to the growth of the industry, especially in Michigan. There is growing concern that such an attitude by the state’s legislators would create an inhospitable environment for game developers, making it harder to bring more members of the industry to the state. And as an industry that boasts domestic revenues of more than $7 billion per year and growing, local enthusiasts believe that it’s an industry Michigan can not afford to ignore.

“Rather than spending time trying to figure out how to censor games and put our young retail workers behind bars, I think it would be more appropriate for our State government to focus on generating new high-tech jobs by attracting the industry into the State,” said Brian Winn, a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University, and one of the coordinators of Southeastern Michigan chapter of the International Game Developers Association.

“I think its just another example of the politicians being out of touch with younger and college aged kids,” said Jay Semerad, another coordinator of the local chapter of the IGDA and founder of Red Leader Audio, a music composition studio based out of Ann Arbor, focusing on the game industry. He, like many others, believe that the state’s reluctance to better involve themselves with the game industry will cost them more than just economically.

“Why are they surprised when the kids want to get out of Michigan after graduation?” Semerad said.

# # #

Note that this is not an official press release, as our chapter cannot fully represent the whole organization nor the entirety of its position. However, this statement does not conflict with the IGDA position, and it properly represents the stand of the chapter leadership.

Goodsol Development released Pretty Good MahJongg 2.2 today.

This version of Pretty Good MahJongg adds 40 new tile matching layouts, bringing the total to 215 layouts (including a dozen large layouts that use more than one set of tiles) and 55 solitaire games. As the programmer, I did not have much to add for this version, but there were a few changes not mentioned on the ‘What’s New in Pretty Good MahJongg‘ page.

Basically, all of the programming changes were minor tweaks that make the game easier to use and more enjoyable to play. For example, in several of the solitaire games, we changed the quick move (hint) feature that is invoked by right-clicking on a tile. Now, these rotate through all available moves, rather than just selecting the first legal move discovered. We also disable the AutoPlay when the [Ctrl] key is depressed, since it is occasionally beneficial to suspend this feature temporarily. With so many tile matching layouts, we decided to sort the games on the ‘Favorites’ tab (in options) alphabetically, instead of using the natural order, to make games easier to add and remove.

The best feature, as far as I am concerned, was the elimination of the “sudden death” rule from the Great Wall game and its variants: Hard Wall, Easy Wall, Waterfall, Cumberland, and Wall Pairs. These games are based on the Same Game, and in the new version, if a player gets into a position where there is only a single tile of one type, instead of getting an immediate loss, the ‘stuck’ dialog appears (sans ‘Shuffle’ option), allowing one to back out and try to find a correct solution. Also by player request, we added an option to Pelmanism and its variants to disable a confirmation click after each guess, making the game play more quickly.

This version is a free update for all registered users of Pretty Good MahJongg (including 1.0), and there is, of course, a free 30-day trial version available for everybody else. The one characteristic that this version shares with all previous versions is that it remains the only game that I have developed which did not require me to take a break after shipping. I continue to enjoy playing this game (almost daily).

Goodsol Development released Action Solitaire 1.1 yesterday.

We are the developers of Action Solitaire, and more to the point, I am the sole programmer on the project. This new version is, ostensibly, just an update that adds 18 new games, for a total of 52 (a very nice number for card games). There are no changes to the artwork or major functionality within the game, and the only marketing change was actually the removal of an ineffective dialog. This is a free upgrade for all licensed users of Action Solitaire, so even the registration information did not have to change.

Internally, however, this was a major update which actually resulted in rewriting the 34 previous games to use more common code and less custom code for each game. This took a relatively long time to accomplish, compared to just starting to add games in the previously established way, and also added an element of risk, honestly. The payoff once finished, on the other hand, was the ability to add new games quickly. The resulting game code was also easier to understand and much smaller. The entire code base (excluding resources) was reduced by more than 20%, from 1.34M down to 1.05M, despite adding many new games.

The flip side of design and development is game balancing and testing, and in a game like Action Solitaire, this is a significant endeavor. Now that we can quickly add new games, we have to be able to balance them for greater enjoyment. Unlike a casual game such as Pretty Good Solitaire, where one plays each deal individually, Action Solitaire combines the results of multiple rounds, with both timing and scoring being factors in the final score. This means that games must be played to conclusion to determine the difficulty level and make balance adjustments.

For this version, we used a target of 15-20 rounds as an intended length of game for an accomplished player, so with a (roughly) average round time of 2-3 minutes, one could easily spend an hour on a single game. This is a decent playing time for a user, especially since the game design allows/encourages a break between rounds. However, when developing the product in a small team, it can prove rather inefficient. It only takes a few extra attempts at balancing the game before the testing time has exceeded development time, and this is before it ever leaves our studio en route to the beta testers. (The game actually includes code to support 78 games, but 26 variants are not displayed, at least partially for this reason.)

Now that this project has been redesigned internally, the individual game source code is more flexible for use in other ways, just as the interface code portion (not redesigned) is mostly shared with Pretty Good MahJongg. Speaking of Pretty Good MahJongg, one can expect another update of that successful product reasonably soon as well. We are definitely keeping busy.

On Saturday, I went to see Game On: The History, Culture and Future of Video Games.

Game On is a temporary exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and as the name indicates, it is all about video games. The exhibit consists of 16 “levels”, each of which explores a different area of the topic, starting with Level 1: Early Games, which covers the history of the invention of video games. Each level is “hands on“, with games that can be played and experienced, in addition to various placards that give more static information.

The approach of Game On is interesting, in that a ticket to this exhibit gets one in at a specific time, but then one can stay as long as desired. I went early to be sure to have enough time to see and read everything and to still be able to play games that were interesting. As it turns out, most of the patrons were there for the latter aspect only. Despite a courtesy request to limit time on any game to five minutes, it was probably worth it for access to such a variety of games (and systems) for less than the cost of renting a single game for a week.

As an experienced game developer, I found that there was very little to Game On that was actually new information for me. The most relevant area was Level 4: Making Of, which had some interesting behind the scenes information such as concept sketches and storyboards. There was a video showing the progression of golfer animations in Golden Tee, from hand drawn through video rotoscoping to fully rendered 3D and motion capture. Also, the original concept/design document for Tomb Raider showed that our own documents for new projects are of very similar scope and level of detail.

On the other hand, as a player who literally grew up with video games, this exhibit was an excellent nostalgia trip. I remember playing Pong when it was brand new, and I proved that I still had the skills, beating my son (age 16) by a score of 11-2 in a shortened game. However, I could not recall the earlier, and less successful, Computer Space; alas, the two cabinets were for display only, and were not turned on. Unfortunately, there were some gaps in the history, skipping directly from Pong (1972) to Space Invaders (1978), and then to Pac Man (1981). It seems that Breakout and the other early digital games were a significant omission.

In the end, I actually played very few of the games, but I was there for a couple of hours just reading and perusing. The only portion of the exhibit to which I had a direct connection was at the very end, where some different technology was shown. Neither of the VR headsets that I worked on were there (only the one from the Atari Jaguar), but there was an old Nintendo PowerGlove on display. I had written drivers for the PC PowerGlove, as well as some that worked with the PC conversion box for the original glove. How that project turned out (or not) is the subject of a future posting.

After leaving Game On, I visited some of the other exhibits around the museum. Of the newer exhibits that I had never seen before, ToyMaker 3000 was particularly noteworthy. Although I did not take enough time to fully explore this exhibit, it was actually very relevant to game development. The automated manufacturing area was interesting, but the other (less traveled) portion dealt with planning the entire development of a product (using toy balls as a model), from initial idea through market research, sales and marketing, accounting, and even quality assurance. The complete project flow chart on one wall was magnificent, and if it were available in poster form, I would have purchased a copy on the spot.

Ultimately, the journey to Game On and the Museum of Science and Industry was worthwhile. Chicago is only a 3.5 hour drive from here, and admission prices were very reasonable. On the other hand, if I were to have flown in from elsewhere just for the exhibit, I would probably have been somewhat disappointed. However, a trip downtown to the original Pizzeria Uno for real Chicago deep-dish pizza is a recommended treat (even though parking costs nearly as much as the food).