'Go Go Santa' online game offers new holiday challenge

A new online holiday game, created by a marketing firm, may have you looking at price tags in a different way.

"Go Go Santa," available for free at verticalincorporated.com/gogosanta, was created by Chicago-based Vertical Inc. executives to entertain their clients when they sent out their holiday greetings.

But the firm, which serves W.W. Grainger in Lake Forest, Siemens Building Technologies in Buffalo Grove and others nationwide, began to consider offering the game to the public, said firm President Mike Keating.

"Looking at the normal Christmas cards to clients, we decided to do an online greeting and wanted to do something more fun and entertaining," Keating said.

"Go Go Santa" has Santa's rocket-powered sleigh flying above the streets of Chicago. Players can score points and compete with each other while collecting sales tags and avoiding high markups. You also need to avoid a few hazards, like flying doughnuts and reindeers in propeller planes.

The firm's creative director of digital media, Denis Skotnikov, said the online game took about three weeks to create with a team of programmers and others.

"We won't monetize it. It's just for fun, lighthearted fun to get into the holiday spirit," Skotnikov said.

Surfing: The Illinois Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission is offering "Build Your Own Lincoln Sites," with models of the Lincoln home and tomb, both in Springfield; Beecher Hall in Jacksonville; the Shastid Cabin in Pittsfield; and the Vandalia Statehouse. Each model can be printed on your own card stock and assembled and glued together for display. The free models are at lookingforlincoln.com or Illinois-History.gov.

• The information technology industry is getting more confident, according to Vernon Hills-based CDW IT Monitor's latest report. Almost half (48 percent) of corporate IT decision makers anticipate budget increases in the next six months, up 9 percent since October. In addition, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of both corporate and government IT decision makers expect to replace or install new software in the next six months, the highest reading on record for the IT Monitor.

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