As a result of last year's the Game Developers Conference in San Jose, CA, and the recent Faculty Seminar at Microsoft, a ground-breaking initiative has been promulgated that will bring together the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Comparative Media Studies program, in the joint creation of an interactive game dealing with BioHazard Training and Education.

Additional partners in this endeavor will be Microsoft and the Federation of American Scientists. A coming together of all parties will occur either in Boston, Pittsburgh, or both cities, during the early part of September. Indications are that the game will be developed for Microsoft's XBox, though it need be said that a XBox SDK will not be available until the latter part of September at the earliest.

The ETC and MIT will work together on establishing a division of labor for this project, but all indications are that the ETC will focus on game design (i.e., programming, game play, user interface, et al), while MIT focuses on factual verification of content, extensive user testing, scoring and feedback, et al). The goal of this project is prototype development, thought here are no limits on how much functionality can be imbued in the game.

Direct faculty supervision will be provided by ETC's Jesse Schell, but MIT's Henry Jenkins and Kurt Squire, and Microsoft's Randy Hinrichs will be involved intimately as well.