We Got Game

It’s a rough day for Eben Myers on the loading dock. Charged with unloading a number of pallets under a tight deadline, he makes some critical errors at the controls of his forklift. First, he neglects to don his protective headgear—a major safety breach that could result in fines if an inspector caught him. Then, because he is in such a hurry to complete his task, he drives his fully loaded forklift at an unsafe speed, resulting in spilling his load of machine parts and injuring a nearby worker. Oops.

“I guess I should keep my day job,” he muses, taking his hands off the keyboard of his computer. That day job, director of virtual training development for downtown-based Etcetera Edutainment, builds such video game simulations to provide safety training for clients in manufacturing, mining, the utilities and health care, where accidents can mean hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages or even death. Etcetera is rolling out that forklift simulation—known in the industry as serious gaming—for Alcoa this fall.

And speaking of serious gaming, creating video games is poised to be an innovative growth industry for the Pittsburgh region. The pieces are all there: Carnegie Mellon University’s pioneering Entertainment Technology Center, the Art Institute of Pittsburgh’s game and art design curriculum, efforts by the Pittsburgh Film Office to link area game companies to California’s major players and finally a growing roster of local firms that draw, design and program a wide range of games for entertainment and for training.

The Tipping Point

“I think that we’ve achieved some critical mass,” says Jesse Schell, founder of Schell Games, a company that has contracts with industry heavyweights Disney and Nintendo. His company, like Etcetera, has recently made the move to new digs. For Schell, it’s a tripling of space in the South Side; for Etcetera, it’s prime downtown real estate. “We have close to 50 people working in Pittsburgh in video games at about 10 companies,” Schell says. “We’re an industry now.”

That local industry can trace its origins to CMU’s Entertainment Technology Center in 1998 in what co-founder Don Marinelli calls a classic “duh” moment. Marinelli, a professor of drama and arts management and co-founder Randy Pausch, a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design, got together in the same room to see how their respective areas might work together. After all, the university had built national reputations for its work in both disciplines.

“I call it a ‘duh’ moment because the arts and computers should work together,” Marinelli says. “It’s a classic sense of right-brain left-brain coming together. How could we link the work of the oldest college of fine arts and one of, if not the world’s best computer schools? And the answer was interactive digital media…video games.”

In 1998, the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), located in the technology park along Second Avenue, formally launched with eight students. Since then, more than 120 students have gone through the program, which, following the initial meeting between Marinelli and Pausch, takes a multidisciplinary approach to teaching.

“It’s exciting when you get theater people, artists and computer science students together,” says Jessica Trybus, chief executive officer of Etcetera, who has been with ETC as a student, an instructor and as head of a spin-off company. “Not only are the students being paired with the best and brightest to create these projects, but they’re also learning how to work together in a business setting.” She says the graduates are in high demand, with companies like Electronic Arts and Disney taking ETC students sight unseen.

That sense of collaboration moves across town to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where the game and art design program works with ETC. Some instructors at the Art Institute have been trained at ETC. Tony Corasanti, vice president and director of career services, says AIP followed the lead at CMU by adding a program that mixes animation with touches of computer programming. “There is a growing interest in games and animation for hand-held platforms—cell phones, iPods—so there are numerous opportunities.”

Ready for our Close Up

Corasanti also notes that the gaming industry is linked with Hollywood, with movie producers of such action flicks as Mission Impossible and The Lord of the Rings and their many sequels churning out video games to complement their theatrical releases.

That trend caught the attention of Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer, who has been working behind the scenes to connect Pittsburgh to Hollywood. “Every major studio now boasts an interactive division,” Keezer explains. “Working with the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, CMU, AIP and the Governor’s Action Team, we have coordinated and hosted one game company to date and have several more that are interested in opening offices in the region.”

The pipeline for exporting talent is in place. But the big question is how to keep the gaming industry healthy and headquartered in Pittsburgh. ETC’s Marinelli says those efforts, in many cases, center on economics. “You have these incredibly talented students who take jobs for the major game developers, starting at $70,000 and think, ‘wow, I’m making a lot of money’ until they discover that they’re going to need to have three roommates because the cost of living is so high and their diet is going to consist of a lot of ramen noodles. You can go that path or you can stay here and make a little less but have a great quality of life in a major city with great amenities.”

He also points to Pittsburgh’s niche. “We may never rival Silicon Valley for the entertainment side of gaming, but companies like Etcetera have a defensible place.”

CMU has an ownership stake in Etcetera, and Trybus’ company now employs 15 full-time, plus a half dozen outside contractors. The company, founded nearly two years ago, has created digital training simulations for Columbia Gas, UPMC and now Alcoa while developing its own proprietary gaming engine. That investment in technology will allow Etcetera to trim the development times of their games and get the simulations into clients’ hands more rapidly.

Hands-on Training

But why use video games as a training tool? “Well, because it works,” smiles Trybus. “Research shows that hands-on training brings the best results, but until now creating such training experiences was both cost-prohibitive and unsafe.” She cites the example of the training exercise held last year at PNC Park, where more than $1 million was spent to train first responders how to react in the case of a terrorist attack. Actors pretended to suffer the effects of exposure to toxic chemicals, but how much did the trainees actually get out of the exercise? “And no one would suggest actually releasing the chemicals.”

Video gaming reinforces existing training programs and fosters sound decision-making under pressure, she says, adding that every keystroke, mouse click and high score is recordable, making personal safety reviews more effective and meaningful.

Trybus notes a second key factor in using serious gaming as a training tool: demographics. “More than 60 percent of adults age 18-35 actively play interactive video games,” she says. “Books, manuals and Powerpoints just don’t resonate with this crowd. If you’re recruiting from this age group, it makes sense.”

It was that age group whose behavior Alcoa was attempting to influence. The company had two serious injuries at its loading docks that were caused mainly by employee negligence toward proper safety methods when workloads increased under tight time demands. Company safety officials worked with Etcetera designers to create a plan for instilling good habits.

The team created a simulated loading dock—complete with break room and soft-drink machine. Training instructors can create the parameters for the training modules, changing variables like the number of coworkers (all of whom can also be playing the networked game) to obstacles on the dock and then replay the simulation with the trainees to reinforce changes that need to be made.

The process took nearly a year to complete, though Trybus says the development of Etcetera’s gaming engine will cut future development time. Such simulations can range in cost from $50,000 to $500,000, depending on the complexity of the design and what the company wants to accomplish. Still, that can be a bargain compared to the costs of litigating an accident or even in the worst case, the death of a worker.

Mining for More

The Alcoa rollout is a big step for Etcetera. Trybus says other projects are in the pipelines, including an entry into the mining industry, where accidents like the Sago disaster have been in the news and where an estimated 60 percent of the workforce will be turning over.

“We’re just touching the surface of what this technology can do,” she says, switching hats to the instructor side of ETC. “There are more companies in Pittsburgh doing video gaming than we could have imagined when ETC was getting started. Now, we could all be competing for the same homegrown talent, and I think that’s a good thing.”

For Schell of Schell Games, there will be a key factor for knowing Pittsburgh has arrived as a center for video game production. “We need someone to have a major hit, a Grand Theft Auto kind of thing,” he says. “Rightly or wrongly, that’s what people take seriously. We have the talent here in Pittsburgh to do it. Maybe all we need is a little luck.” And as video game junkies know, a little luck can go a long way.