Current Projects
Team All In is a group of high-risk high-reward graduate students working in collaboration with WMS Gaming, a Chicago based company working in the design, manufacture and distribution of electronic and digital gaming entertainment and gaming machines for the casino industry. The goal of the project is to create a prototype of a persistent gaming system that in- cooperates player proximity and social gaming elements that can be used in casinos. The challenge is to come up with an idea that is unique, fun, and embraces the new technologies capable with mobile and tablet devices, but also is familiar enough to appeal to the typical casino-goer. The All In team is laying all its cards on the table to create what we hope will be the building blocks for the next generation of casino games.
Amalgamedia, together with the band
Anti-Flag, is creating a
one of a kind transmedia
experience. Transmedia is the next
wave of entertainment. It combines
multiple mediums of current digital
technology to tell an overall
story, creating an engaging
experience unlike any other.
Amalgamedia will create a web based
interactive music video for Anti-
Flag using Facebook, HTML5 and
film. The experience will take you
on a journey to see how your
information posted on Facebook is
really used. You will then get
the chance to save your
information and the end of the
experience depends on how well you
perform. Can you rescue your
private
information from the
wrong hands?
During spring semester of 2013, our
team Beyond
Interactions is investigating how
games can be used for
social change. This semester we are
tasked with the
responsibility to deliver an
experience for our clients,
Games for Change based in New York,
to be presented at the
10th Games for Change festival held
in June. The team
needs to create an experience that
would potentially
involve more than a hundred people
and keep them engaged
with an emphasis on a social
change.
This project comes with its own set
of mammoth challenges,
one being keeping such a large
audience engaged in the
experience. We also need to
consider a large variety of
parameters like the venue for the
festival, the expected
demographic and a social change
that would involve a large
section of the audience while
designing this game. Various
team members also have the option
of actually running the
game live at the festival. We will
be working with Emily
Treat from Games for Change as our
primary contact from
client's end.
“Everyone can create music.”
Bravura is making this statement a
reality. We are a team of
programmers, artists, designers,
musicians, and music lovers looking
to share our passion for music with
the world. To do this, we are
working with our client and faculty
advisor, Jiyoung Lee, to create a
combined exploratory playground and
musical tool on the iPad for people
ages eight and up. Guests will be
working within and manipulating
musical structures in a unique
environment previously unseen in
the world of interactive musical
games and software.
Our goal is not only to make people
feel confident in their ability to
make music, but also to plant seeds
of interest for a lifelong musical
journey.
The Telemedicine and Advanced
Technology Research Center (TATRC)
is a future forward US Army medical
R&D center. TATRC, a world leader
in medical simulation, neuro-
prosthetics and telemedicine,
desires
to create exercise games that
people will actually use and want
to keep using.
This semester, CardioActive is the
team that will help achieve this
goal for TATRC, along with the
help of their faculty adviser, Mike
Christel, and Client
Representative, Thomas B. Talbot,
MD, MS.
CardioActive is spending the
semester both researching and
developing "exer-games" with the
goal of
creating a game that is unique,
fun, and rigorous.
Dark Clutches is a student pitch project developing the next evolution of tablet gaming. Our game combines aspects of classic 2D platformers and intuitive gesture controls to create highly cooperative multiplayer gameplay. A group of two or three players will band together to protect a dragon egg from ruin and reclamation.
Our goal is to bridge the gap between console and mobile games. We are doing this by blending local multiplayer and dedicated play sessions with the intuitive interfaces of touch devices. While our primary platform is the iPad, we are taking advantage of an increasingly interconnected world and providing cross platform play between an iPad and a home computer.
Our final deliverable will be a short playable demo to showcase our experimental gameplay.
dotdotdot is developing an
interactive experience designed to
encourage kids to
write stories.
Children and their families will be
able to create their own stories in
a fun,
playful environment while learning
to organize their thoughts and tell
their
stories in a linear fashion. By
allowing children to play within a
classical
story structure and create their
own personalized story, we hope to
create a
sense of accomplishment and an
appreciation for the written word.
The installation will be housed in
the San Antonio Children’s Museums
new
Imagination Studio (Opening 2015)
as well as several branches of the
San Antonio
Public Library.
Every space has a story to tell.
Our project is exploring this notion by prototyping and fabricating a series of interactive
art
installations. Although the structure of a space may remain unchanged, the experiences that
take place
in it are constantly in flux. Every space has a history of which we are too often completely
unaware,
and our project seeks to tell those stories, connect people across time, and help them realize
themselves as part of a larger social context.
The first half of the semester will consist of designing and prototyping several ambient and
tactile
interactive experiences. The second half of the semester will be spent expanding a selection
of the
prototypes, fabricating them into full-scale installations, and polishing them for final
installation in
the Entertainment Technology Center building.
Our team brings together architecture, electrical engineering, industrial design, and
psychology to
create physical experiences that explore new areas of entertainment technology.
GASx3 stands for Gas! Gas! Gas!
which is the way soldiers spread
out immediate awareness about
chemical hazards.
GASx3 is working with TATRC to
create
a real time strategy game that
simulates the field training course
for chemical medics. We want the
soldiers to gain indirect
experience and perform better in
the real battlefield to save many
lives.
Have you ever felt uncomfortable in
a culturally unfamiliar situation?
We are here to help you.
We are HEXAD, a project team for
Spring 2013 at Carnegie Mellon
University’s Entertainment
Technology Center (ETC). In
cooperation with Sarah J. Mahler
from Florida International
University, we are creating a
virtual experience in which people
enter feeling discomfort about a
situation they must face, and exit
feeling less discomfort or,
ideally, fully comfortable.
iAchieve is a team of passionate
and dedicated individuals based at
Carnegie Mellon University
Entertainment Technology Center’s
Silicon Valley campus. The team is
working with the Institute of Play
and Electronic Arts on an
assessment tool that will make
educational data beautiful,
engaging, and useful for middle
school students. We also plan to
partner with other organizations
and enhance our project through
these partnerships. With this tool,
we can help shorten feedback loops
and students can use it to assess
their progress and even share with
their families, friends, and peers.
iAchieve is determined to bring
about change in learning and
assessment by bridging the gap
between the functional and
aesthetic in the educational space.
Impact! is a project working
towards inspiring young minds to
pursue science and engineering as a
career. Initiated by DARPA, this is
a multi-year project working in
conjunction with many different
institutions and organizations,
such as the Sesame Workshop and
Carnegie Mellon’s Human Computer
Interaction Institute. The end-
product will be a series of multi-
platform games for Pre-K-3rd
graders that inspires interest and
teaches basic concepts in the field
of science.
This semester our team is working
on four existing projects
simultaneously: “Teeter Totter
Go!”, “Rumble Blocks”, “Beanstalk”
and “Sleepy Busy Party”. Our goal
is to improve them all to the final
release state. Specifically, one of
our main goals is to transform
“Teeter Totter Go!” into a game
worthy of being hosted on
PBSKids.org. We will be making our
game fit into The Electric
Company’s game, “Prankster Planet”,
and make it more exciting for kids
playing the game. Our goal is that
as they play, the children will be
able to learn the balance formula
based on Robert Siegler’s paper,
perform socio-emotional tasks and,
what is equally important, have a
lot of fun!
KiTES [Kids Taught & Entertained using SMALLab]
KiTES aims to reinvent ‘School education’ through immersive and interactive experiences designed for the cutting-edge SMALLab platform.
KiTES is made up of a team of like-minded and self-motivated ETC students who want to bring about a positive change in the society. Our goal is to design and develop ‘Transformational games’ that reinforces the curricular concepts in various subject areas. Our games would engage and educate students better than the traditional approaches of teaching.
Currently, we are designing the experiences for the cutting-edge SMALLab platform. SMALLab, (Situated Multimedia Arts Learning Lab) is an embodied learning environment with motion-capture technology that tracks students' 3D movements as they learn in immersive, interactive space.
In this dynamic and collaborative environment, students get to interact with the game as a group through touch, sight and sound. Thus the learning experience is made very much fun, effective and easy-to-grasp.
The Lazer Mouse team is working with MAKESHOP at Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh to introduce the laser cutter to kids and families. In MAKESHOP, children are given real materials and tools to make physical their creative ideas. A team of skilled makers, artists and educators encourage and help visitors turn their vision into tangible objects. This exploratory environment is filled with sewing machines, electronic circuit blocks, stop motion tools, woodworking tools, and more. It all starts with a simple question, “What do you want to make today?”
This semester, we will add a laser cutter to the MAKESHOP toolbox. We'll be focusing on designing and implementing an interface that allows kids to design for that laser cutter. Finally, we will be documenting our experimentation and end-product, so that the teaching artists at the museum can help kids create what is in their imaginations.
Morality Play is the joint transmedia venture being undertaken by both a team at the Entertainment Technology Center and students in Carnegie Mellon University’s Philosophy Department. Interweaving a plethora of media, such as digital video, social media websites, and games, the project will produce a engaging experience designed to show people the facts about economic inequality in America. “What caused it?”, “What is fair?”, and “What can be done?” are all questions that will be touched upon from as many viewpoints as possible.
neuraltone is working with Dr. Lori
Holt of the Center for Neural Basis
of Cognition, a joint venture of
the University of Pittsburgh and
Carnegie Mellon University. Dr.
Holt is conducting research about
how the brain categorizes complex
audio patterns and how that process
relates to perceiving linguistic
sound categories. They have found
that a simple video game, developed
in-house, can be used to train
players to better recognize
different sound categories far
more effectively than traditional
explicit feedback-based training.
This semester we
are creating a new game with which
to conduct this training research.
Our goals are to make a game that
is highly engaging and fun, while
retaining the effect of implicit
sound categorization learning that
occurred in the original game. It
will also be highly customizable,
allowing the researchers greater
control over such elements as
difficulty, timings, and art.
Additionally, our game will output
extensive, in-depth data about the
play session for each research
subject that plays it.
Osiris is working with the CMU
Hacking Team (PPP or Plaid
Parliament of Pwning) and their
faculty adviser,
Prof. David Brumley to design a
nation-wide high school competition
(picoCTF) to encourage computer
security and computer science
education.
The goal of this project is to help
design, implement, and run a
compelling and authentic computer
security game that will teach
beginners the basics and challenge
the experts as well.
In collaboration with EA's Office
of the Chief Creative Office, or
OCCO, the goal of Project Heidegger
is to develop a system that
identifies player types with the
purpose of making recommendations
to gamers accurately,
unobtrusively, and with a high
degree of personal specificity.
We're most interested in connecting
previously unlinked games,
franchises, and genres, and are
focusing on the co-op experience.
The games serving as the basis of
our research and experimentation
are Dead Space 3 and Army of Two:
The Devil's Cartel.
Our team will form a hypothesis
about what kinds of players are
attracted to co-op gameplay, work
with a level designer from Visceral
Games to build a custom Dead Space
level to test our hypothesis and
gather player metrics, conduct and
analyze comparative playtests of
our Dead Space level and a
complementary Army of Two level,
and construct a functioning Origin
module which will visualize for
users the data we've collected in
the form of unique recommendations.
We believe that transparency is the
element presently absent from
recommendation systems, and Project
Heidegger hopes to build a system
that will not only share telemetry
data with gamers and direct them
toward experiences tailored to
their play-styles, but also offer
to them why we're making particular
recommendations.
We hope to better inform players of
their individual play-tastes and to
advocate gaming as one collective
adventure rather than a series of
disparate and fragmented adventure-
slivers
Stardust is working with Give Kids
The World, a nonprofit theme park
in Central Florida, where children
with life-threatening illnesses and
their families enjoy an all paid
vacation.
The team is taking existing
characters from the park to create
a 3D animated short to be displayed
at the park.
Team Edesia is working in cooperation with
Eat&Travel to provide a new and enhanced
dining experience.
Eat&Travel is aiming to provide diners with
the opportunity to experience the world
though their senses. With the help of a
restaurant with an immersive environment
the diners will be able to visit unique places,
unlock tasting experiences and learn about
the culture.
Our team is working on developing a unified
solution that embraces the three different
aspects of traveling. The Visiting, the Tasting
the local cuisine and Learning about the
culture of that location.
Power House is a project group in ETC Portugal campus. Our goal is to create an interactive exhibit for Museum Casa da Luz to provide both entertainment and educational value to the visitors and convey interesting concepts about the electricity power system on Madeira island.
The Voyage is a collaborative project between Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center and the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History in Pittsburgh. It seeks to explore new ways for museum-goers to create connections between exhibits through mobile devices. The process of uncovering these connections will allow for an interactive journey to take place throughout the facility. The platform will share these discoveries amongst other guests, creating an experience that is dynamic and is able to present the museum in a new light each time one visits. By defying the notion of a museum as a static establishment and redefining it as a dynamic experience, it is our hope that we can infuse a new layer of interdisciplinary, experiential learning into the museums.
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Watchtower is a team working with
Team Alice and FBI Cyber Crimes
Unit to create a game for high
school students that educate them
about the dangers of the cyber
world such as sexual harassment,
fraud and cyber-bullying.
Our main goal is to create and fun
and engaging game that students
enjoy, that will also enrich them
about the issues they may face, as
well as proper responses. We are
also working closely with the Alice
team to create a curriculum set for
the classroom as well.
