New Businesses, Dozens of Jobs in Game Institute's First Year

By Sudha Kamath, GMU

Less than a year after opening, the Virginia Serious Game Institute based at George Mason University’s Prince William Campus and led by Mason faculty, has created several new businesses with dozens of employees—including Mason students and alumni—and raised half a million dollars in corporate support by launching innovative technology to advance major industries.

The institute offers Virginia schools, businesses and universities hands-on training, certification, research and development assistance by merging game company incubation and rapid prototype development.

In 2014, the institute generated five businesses and more than 35 new jobs, and in the coming months, expects to spur four more businesses and 30 more jobs, according to James Casey, the institute’s senior projects director and Mason assistant professor in computer game design. The incubator opened in March 2014 at the Mason Enterprise Center to support early-entry entrepreneurship into the simulation, modeling and serious game design industry.

One of the businesses, Professions Quest, was started in 2014 by the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. Professions Quest’s flagship, multi-player online game, Mimycx, has entered the beta test phase. The game recently debuted at the world’s leading modeling, simulation and training conference.

Mimycx will allow health care professional schools across the country to offer students a novel and entertaining way to interact online, while fostering the development of communication skills and core competencies critical in the patient/population-centered health care field.

“The Virginia Serious Game Institute has been instrumental in our ‘excellerated’ performance as a new small business,” says Professions Quest project manager John Damici, who earned his bachelor’s degree in computer game design from Mason in 2014.

The Connecticut native says he always played video games as a child but never dreamed he could turn his hobby into a related career. While an undergraduate at Mason, Damici took a game design elective and was hooked.

“I’ve never had to search for a job, even after I graduated, which is quite the blessing,” he says.

Damici plans to earn a master’s degree in computer game design by taking courses in entrepreneurship and game studio management, and create more businesses to help others find their calling.

“This will give me the satisfaction of creating jobs and creating something that all of my employees love and feel passionate about.”

“Not only will this platform provide each user with a fun and engaging vehicle to master inter-professional collaborative practice, but it also has the potential to build new professional relationships and knowledge exchange to improve the health care industry in the future,” says Scott Martin, institute founding director and associate dean of research and technology inMason’s Computer Game Design Program.

Another institute start-up business, Little Arms Studios, also recently debuted its state-of-the-art, firefighting training, Interactive Virtual Incident Simulator, which is being used in the Fairfax County, Va. Fire Department’s training programs, and earned the fire chief’s commendation.

Little Arms Studios chief executive officer Kyle Bishop is also a Mason alumnus. He earned his bachelor’s degree in computer game design in 2013. He attributes his company’s success to the support it received from the game institute and also from and Prince William County’s investment in the Institute.

Bishop, of Reston, Va., also grew up playing video games but didn’t consider game design as a career option until his second year at Mason.

“I liked what I saw, tried it out and fell in love with it,” he says.

In October 2013, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors granted $32,000 from the County Economic Development Opportunity Fund to the George Mason University Foundation Inc. to help establish the institute, which is one of only four international affiliates of the Serious Games Institute, based in England. The other affiliates are in Mexico, South Africa and Singapore.

Write to Sudha Kamath at skamath@gmu.edu