Simcoach Games

Simcoach Games (formerly Etcetera edutainment) is a serious game development company based in Western Pennsylvania. It was founded in 2005 as a spin out from Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center. The company's games are used primarily for training purposes and focus on driving behavior change through digital coaching and assessment. Simcoach's products are used by Fortune 500 companies across several industries including retail, healthcare, government, academia, and manufacturing with both clients and employees using the products.

Simcoach Games is headquartered in Pittsbugh, PA, in the Strip District neighborhood of the city.

Company History

After current CEO, Jessica Trybus, earned a Masters Degree in Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon, Donald Marinelli and Jessica started Etcetera edutainment. Their first employee was Eben Myers, the current VP of Design for the company. The company's first focus was on computer training simulations for the health care and manufacturing fields with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and Alcoa as their first clients.

From the success with Alcoa, Etcetera Edutainment began working on a custom game development engine called Crucible. Crucible played a major role in the company first fledged attempt on multi-player games. The first game developed was Alcoa Safe Dock. This game simulated the dozens of roles in a warehouse and allowed dozens of individuals to simulate those roles all in the same world, in an effort to simulate real warehouse conditions without any of the injury risk and at a significantly lower cost. Etcetera further used Crucible in developing Crowdplay, one of the first crowd play games that were popular in the Late 2000s, especially at movie theaters and other public venues.Since abandoning Crucible, the company utilizes the Unity game development engine for all of their projects.

In 2012, the company shifted focus once more with the development of their Simcoach framework. Simcoach is a coaching and assessment tool incorporated into games allowing the user to not only be trained in better means of performance, but also have a tangible means of assessing those same behaviors. This framework was first used in the Simcoach Cashier Safety game and the Simcoach Selector Safety game.

Etcetera Edutainment changed its name in 2014 to Simcoach Games with the intention to focus on developing games that are Simple, Interactive, and Measurable. Since 2014, Simcoach Games has worked with several companies, government agencies, and organizations to develop a plethora of games, mostly mobile. These games include Robot Factory developed in collaboration with Honeywell, Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania (CAWP) training games, Charles Darwin Synthetic Interview, and the JobPro series developed in partnership with the Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board (WIB). The majority of their games can be found on the App Store (iOS), Google Play, and the Amazon Appstore.

Projects from Simcoach Games

Simcoach Games has developed dozens of games over its 10 years of existence including over 10 mobile apps for the App Store (iOS), Google Play, and the Amazon Appstore, most of which are free.

Partners and Clients

Simcoach Games have worked in numerous industries and has an extensive list of clients and partners.

• Three Rivers Workforce Investment Board
• Constructors Association of Western Pennsylvania
• Honeywell
• UPMC Health Plan
• Allegheny Health Network
• Giant Eagle
• Wegmans
• Whole Foods Market
• Schnucks
• Pennsylvania Department Of Labor and Industry
• International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
• Alcoa
• U.S. Steel
• Indiana University of Pennsylvania
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration

Simcoach Skill Arcade

The Simcoach Skill Arcade is Simcoach's most recent project and it is aimed at bringing engaging, consistent and practical game-based learning to the workforce through the use of mobile devices. by using mobile devices for training, it is believed that employees will take a few minutes during slow periods at work or just before or after a break to freshen up on skills that are essential to their jobs.

Currently the Skill Arcade is in its early stages and is not readily available to the public except for strategic pilot partners who are testing the feasibility of the Arcade. Eventually the Simcoach Skill Arcade will be filled with numerous Skill Sets, or training categories, that employees will be able to play and learn multiple skills and allow them to become more well rounded workers.

Simcoach Games is developing the Skill Arcade because of a teaching trend that is taking over the nation, the use of badges in schools as a form of acknowledgement not only in the classroom but for extracurricular activities as well. Simcoach Games is focusing on the workforce side of this trend and already is using the idea of badging in many of its games.

Carnegie Mellon Connections

Etcetera Edutainment benefited greatly from its connections with Carnegie Mellon University. A majority of Etcetera Edutainemnt's employees have graduated from the Entertainment Technology Center. The Entertainment Technology Center a department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located at the Pittsburgh Technology Center.

The ETC offers a two-year Masters of Entertainment Technology (MET) degree, jointly conferred by Carnegie Mellon University's College of Fine Arts and School of Computer Science. Students enrolled in the ETC learn interdisciplinary skills in art and technology, and are prepared for environments where artists and technologists work hand-in-hand, such as theme parks, interactive museum exhibits, website design and development, and the creation of video games.

The Center was co-founded by Donald Marinelli, a Professor of Drama, and Randy Pausch, a Professor of Computer Science, in 1999.

External links

• www.simcoachgames.com Homepage for Simcoach Games