Beyond the Stage
Project Beyond The Stage is creating experiences that take drama straight to the audience - either online, in their community, or interactively while they watch a performance! We use technology to enhance the transformational power of theater and reach new audiences.

This semester we are working in cooperation with Kristoffer Diaz and Lynn Nottage to bring their works to life on the web. These new experiences are designed by the playwrights to augment and inform stage productions of their plays.
Digital Dream Lab
Digital Dream Lab is working with the Makeshop at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, where children are provided with a hands- on workshop to learn about creation through small projects. Sewing machines, woodworking tools, electronic circuit blocks, various other materials, and amazing facilitators provide children with an exploratory environment that starts with the simple question, "What do you want to make today?"

Our focus this semester is to explore how a digital creation experience can function in the Makeshop. With a current gap and request to bring programming concepts into the process, we have proposed a tangible block interface to teach the basics through a storytelling framework. The physical blocks will represent characters, actions, modifiers, etc. in the digital space, and a projector will provide a window for children to explore and create!
Factomo
Factomo is a project team at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center charged with creating a new interactive game experience through which players can create and operate the manufacturing factory of the future for General Motors. We are working with our client representatives, Robert Tilolve and Ronald Lesperance from the GM Research and Development Center to create new ways to visualize the manufacturing process in a virtual environment, which is both fun and informative. Our project will work to create a competitive environment in which teams can compete in categories such as plant efficiency and productivity to design their vision of future automobile production. Simultaneously, it will feed the choices the players make during this process back to GM R&D for consideration during actual facility design and construction.
Glatitude
Generosity is infectious, and positive energy spreads faster than wildfire. Project Glatitude is a client-based initiative working with the Linden Foundation, a charitable organization based in Pennsylvania. The Linden Foundation has challenged us to create a gaming experience centered around the "Pay It Forward" concept that encourages people to get out of their comfort zone and through generosity of spirit, change other people's lives.

With this goal in mind, Glatitude is creating a game in which the playing space is your own community. Players will pass along acts of charity and kindness that branch out and with enough momentum, go viral. The game is supported by an online component that visualizes the generosity of the players within a digital network. The goal is to deliver to the Linden Foundation a polished game model that encourages players to be kinder to their fellow man and to help make the world a better place.
The Grid
The Grid is a client project sponsored by The Chicago Museum of Science and Industry (MSI). The Grid is one piece of the larger Future Energy exhibit scheduled to open in the Chicago MSI in October of 2013. The purpose of the exhibit is to raise awareness amongst young museum goers about the use of renewable energy. The Grid will be achieving this through an interactive touch screen experience that will become a permanent installation in the exhibit. The experience will focus on renewable energy sources across North America and how those sources are harnessed and distributed.
Jokers and Gestures
Jokers and Gestures is a client- based project at Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center working with WMS Gaming. WMS Gaming is a casino style gaming company based in Chicago. The goal of the project is to create a novel interactive and immersive experience for slot machine players at the casino. The team will create custom hardware and software to demonstrate and test this new slot machine experience.
mindful xp
mindful xp is about making games with meaning – not solely through narrative or aesthetic choices, but instead using mechanics, dynamics, interactions, and all the things that make games “games” to experiment with their expressiveness as a medium.
Pixel Pushers
Pixel Pushers is an educational game and modification project under the supervision of our client, MinecraftEdu. We are creating a toolset that allows teachers to create lessons in the popular indie game Minecraft, easily share those lessons with other educators, and allows them to effectively monitor and review their students' progress. Further, we aim to explore what academic subjects best lend themselves to the game’s format through a series of proof- of-concept lessons. Finally, we want the student experience to be as safe and constructive as possible, whether sessions are being held in real classrooms or virtual youth centers.

The goal of the Pixel Pushers project is to make game-based learning through the MinecraftEdu software more accessible to students and educators alike. With the target student age ranging from K-12, and a target teacher audience spanning continents and countless disciplines, we aim to create a flexible application that enables educators to use the fun game environment of Minecraft to effectually complement their lesson plan.
Project Xense
Project Xense is a museum exhibit that showcases both the challenges and the advances in implant and prosthetic technology. The project is part of a larger “CyberPeople” exhibit at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, located in Washington D.C. and features interactive experiences about retinal (vision) implants, cochlear (hearing) implants, and neuroprosthetics. Simulations utilizing EEG headsets, head-mounted displays, real-time video processing, and more will allow guests to gain first-hand experience of the mental and physical challenges of using implants and to learn more about both the current and future technologies involved. This union of medical science with media technology will hopefully educate and inspire the researchers as well as policy-makers of this generation and beyond.

Project Xense is funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) and produced by students at Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).
SEEC
The goal of this project is to develop an interactive experience for the Schrader Center to enrich guests’ visits and promote interest in the local wildlife. Visitors will be able to engage and learn from meaningful content in a fun way, with the focus especially on kids and their families. The experience will also promote awareness and involvement in nature, encouraging kids to continue their outdoor adventures beyond Oglebay’s Schrader Center.
Sci-Fri (Science Friction)
Initiated by DARPA, this multi-semester project is the first step towards inspiring young minds to pursue science and engineering as a career. This year we are focusing on creating several games for children ages 5-7 through which they learn science. We are collaborating with many institutions, such as the Sesame Workshop which will give us guidance on the age-appropriateness of our work, and Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer Interaction Institute which will help us measure how the games affect childrens' knowledge and skills.
Spring Entertainment
Spring Entertainment is an ETC project focused on creating interactive digital media experiences for the Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Pennsylvania, which hosts a wide variety of clients, including large numbers of vacationing families year-round, and an increasing number of snowboarders, drawn by their new and unique urban terrain park, The Streets. Our client would like to expand its digital presence, with an eye toward increasing its attraction to the 21st century digital native, and furthering its status as a popular destination where families and other groups can share fun, memorable experiences in any season.

We have been asked to create a way to extend the guests’ resort experience beyond the confines of the resort itself. To that end, we will provide Seven Springs with a mobile application that will both entertain users and allow Seven Springs to more effectively spread the word about the wide variety of activities it offers over the course of a year.
V.T. Online
A web-based interactive simulation of Pittsburgh's future crown jewel. Team VT has been tasked to create a virtual simulation of a proposed venue to be built atop the USX Tower in downtown Pittsburgh. This hopeful construction will involve a three story, sixty-five thousand square foot space that a restaurant, media gallery, performance center, glass lofts and an open-air rooftop promenade that will put visitors in the highest point between New York and Chicago.

Working in partnership with architecture students from Carnegie Mellon we will be creating a virtual destination of this structure that will give guests the freedom of movement and exploration as if they've been transported from their desktop computer to on top of Pittsburgh's tallest building. Simulation set to release on May 3rd.
Crescendo Encore
Crescendo Encore is continuing the work done by Crescendo. Last semester, Crescendo created a classical music game geared for families that encourages cooperation, brings people together and gives players the feeling of playing real instruments. We are working with SmileGate, a Korean game developer.

Smilegate has given us two major directives this semester. Whereas the game created by Crescendo was playable only for the PC, SmileGate’s first directive is to explore the possibilities of making the game playable on different consoles. SmileGate and Crescendo Encore have agreed to move forward with Xbox Live Indie Games as a platform. SmileGate’s second directive is to build upon the existing framework and enhance the game with better feedback, better hardware and a better UI, all the while leveraging our industry contacts to create a great experience. The goal of the project is thus to deliver to SmileGate a game built upon the game created by Crescendo that can be played on the Xbox360.
Megalodon-SV
The Electronic Arts Office of the Chief Creative Officer has tasked us with creating a game using WebGL that will redefine the expectations of browser-based gaming. WebGL is an exciting new software library that expands Javascript to generate interactive 3D graphics in web browsers without cumbersome plugins.

The game we’re making is a tower offense game, based on original EA IP. The game will feature fast paced multiplayer battles, different character classes with distinct weapons and abilities that can be upgraded, and a customizable battle kit of units that the player can summon to help them win the day.

One of the most exciting parts about this project is that we are working so closely with the OCCO. Our close proximity and relationship with the OCCO this semester will be a great help to us on the road to success. We are very excited to be working with them.
Fun Kinection
Microsoft Kinect Fun Labs is a part of Microsoft Studios that specializes in pushing the boundaries and limits of the Kinect sensor. The goal of the semester for the Fun Kinection ETC team is to create a polished and shippable gadget to add to the Fun Labs lineup.

The team will be working closely with client representatives from Microsoft to ensure the delivery of a high-quality and fully realized end product. The team will not stop short of an experience with the Kinect that will be groundbreaking and foster innovation throughout the industry.
Madhouse
Madhouse is an ETC semester project in cooperation with the University of Salford and based in MediaCityUK, Salford, UK. The first ETC project to be based in Manchester, Madhouse is working to merge interactivity and live performance using Salford’s high-tech media lounge, the Egg. Equipped with a dozen interactive devices and one of the highest definition video screens available, the Egg presents unique opportunities to create location-based interactive entertainment.

To accomplish this goal, Madhouse is adapting Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s 1969 monodrama 8 Songs for a Mad King, a tragic opera based on the infamous madness of King George III and his efforts to teach caged bullfinches to sing specific tunes. The Madhouse team plans to combine the piece with the latest multimedia technologies available to create an innovative performance experience.

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What is a Project?

Students in the ETC-Global take courses ranging from computer programming to designing virtual worlds to improvisational acting, but the emphasis is on project courses. Each project course brings together interdisciplinary student teams that must produce working artifacts; in the tradition of Carnegie Mellon, this emphasis is on making real things that work. A key aspect of the program is to ensure that students have an opportunity to work with a large, diverse set of collaborators with different skills and sensibilities. A typical project covers an entire semester and is built around four or five students, a faculty supervisor and possibly a client representative.