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Located in VA.

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 co

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