Date: Sep 28, 2012 Author: Brian Gaar Source: American-Statesman (
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By Brian Gaar, American-Statesman Staff
In an unassuming North Austin office park off U.S. 183, employees of software maker Intific Inc. are working on training programs to help government officials operate remotely piloted drones.
The company's work falls under the category of "serious games" — that is, games that are used for other purposes than entertainment, such as training or education. Intific's work has also helped troops in the Middle East learn to spot improvised explosive devices and fly jets.
These days, Intific, which is headquartered in Pennsylvania but does the bulk of its development in Austin, is also expanding into other fields.
"We started as this kind of ragtag group from the game industry, trying to build new technologies that helped the military in simulation and serious games, and we turned into something bigger," said Jeremy Mappus, the company's chief technology officer. "I think that's really exciting for us."
Intific opened its Austin studio in 2007, when it was known as Total Immersion Software. A conflict with a similarly named European company prompted a name change to Intific last year.The new name uses parts of the words "intelligent," "interactive" and "scientific" which company officials say describe their culture.
In its early days, Intific's major contract was with the U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. That contract was to build a simulation platform -- similar to a game development engine -- that the government could use for multiple projects.
"It's basically what founded this company," Mappus said.
The Austin outpost opened with about a dozen employees, but then quickly grew. It's now at about 85 employees, many of whom, including Mappus, hail from the gaming industry. Intific has "very concrete" growth plans for the future, he said without discussing specific targets.
Pointing to the cyclical nature of video game development, Mappus said that Intific was able to acquire a lot of talent that had been laid off from other companies.
Inside its offices, Intific looks much like a gaming studio, with developers and artists huddled over computers, working on simulated environments and aircraft models. Dry-erase boards are ubiquitous, showing the progress of various teams. There are only a few signs that the work is a bit more secretive — doors are locked, requiring ID badges and a sign reminds employees not to let "piggy-back" visitors in.
The work is also a lot more stable than video games, Mappus said, remarking that some employees just celebrated five-year anniversaries with the company.
"When we created this studio, part of the founding characteristic was we wanted to provide a culture and a place that was a lot more stable, but had a lot of the same creative and innovative attributes of the game industry… that's kind of where we came from," Mappus said.
Company officials didn't give specific revenue figures, but most of Intific's business is still military based, with projects like the drone training program. This month, Intific received a $1.7 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to update that training program.
"You look broader at the defense budget and when you've got desktop training as a solution, it's a less-expensive option than these full simulator trainers that people have," Mappus said. "And I think that's part of our allure, is we can develop things pretty rapidly, for fairly low cost, compared to a lot of the big boys."
Intific also recently was awarded "an $8 million modification" to its contract with DARPA for work on the agency's intelligence-gathering Insight Program. Mappus declined to comment on the specifics surrounding that project.
Ben Sawyer, co-founder of the game industry consulting firm Digitalmill in Portland, Maine, has tracked the serious games industry for years.
It's a sector that's been growing, Sawyer said, estimating that it's between now between $100 million and 200 million in the U.S., Japan and Europe combined. Serious games span a number of fields, including military, education and healthcare.
"I see more grants and more interest by grant-making agencies to look at games as being viable solutions for what they're doing," Sawyer said. "That's absolutely growing."
But serious gaming company have a ways to go, he said, saying "we have not seen the same level of growth outside of these grant-making realms.
"It's still very much, by my estimation, a sort of work-for-hire atmosphere out there," Sawyer said. "That will only go so far, in my opinion."
Military work aside, Intific is starting to branch out into commercial products, based on technologies that it's developed in its government work.
"One of the core foundations of our business is this concept of taking technologies that we generate and build for the government that provides them with great value and seeing what kinds of commercial opportunities can come out of that," Mappus said. "And there's a lot."
He pointed to neuroscience and education as fields in which the company is starting to expand in. For instance, one of its products is a simulation that helps researchers investigate human cognition. Some commercial offerings in the neuroscience space will follow early next year, Mappus said, without revealing details.
Intific was invited this year to the Google I/O developers conference to show off its NeuroStorm game, which involves a player flying a spaceship, firing a laser at brain neurons. The catch is that the laser's power depends on the player's mental focus.
"We're about what's next," Mappus said. "We're always looking for the next technological breakthrough. Internally, we're always looking at what's the next problem we can solve."
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