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FableVision Studios at Serious Play Conference 2025

We have some SERIOUS-ly exciting news! FableVision Studios is proud to sponsor the Serious Play Conference this year! Explore how the power of play, games, and gamification is transforming education, training, and knowledge mobilization. Play your way to Rochester, New York, August 13-15!

Interested in attending a panel? Three FableVisionaries, Gary Goldberger, Peter Stidwill, and Kellian Adams Pletcher, are presenting on August 13 and 15! Check out more information below!

Playful by Design: Creating with Platforms in Mind

When: Wednesday, August 13, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Presenters:

  • Gary Goldberger, President and Co-founder, FableVision Studios 

  • Carly Ciarrocchi, Host/Writer, Kids TV and Podcasts

  • Jennifer Treuting, Writer/Director/Producer, Kids & Family Content

  • Marc Cantone, Vice President of Preschool Digital Content, Nickelodeon

This panel will discuss building joyful and authentic content for preschoolers. The panel will focus on what it takes to engage young kids through play, and what the preschool media experience looks like through different platforms. This session is ideal for anyone working in the intersection of media, play, and early childhood. 

Making Accessible Games: The FUNdamentals

When: Wednesday, August 13, 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.

Presenters:

Attend this session to learn about the FUNdamentals of making accessible games. Panelists will discuss the requirements that drive game accessibility, the general approaches to creating and delivering accessible games, and techniques for delivering fully compliant accessible play experiences. If you are new to making accessible games, this session is for you!

Museum Games: What's Being Built in Museums and Why Does it Matter?

When: Friday, August 15, 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m.

Presenters:

When you think of games and play, do museums come to mind? In this panel, panelists will explore the museum game space, how implementing games at museums offers an ideal space for playful informal learning, and why the games that are being created for museums matters for education, and the broader games and play community. 


If you are attending Serious Play, give us a shout! We would love to see you there! Not yet registered? Click here for steps on how to register, and to learn more about the conference!

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2024 Conference Catch Up

This summer, a few FableVisionaries are headed to conferences! We’ll be taking in the sun, attending amazing panels, meeting with partners, and hopefully seeing you! Read up on where we’re headed, and make sure to check out the conferences too! 

 
 

Games For Change

We’re headed to G4C! This year’s festival theme is The 2030 Marker: A Catalyst for Global Change, showcasing games and XR's capacity for innovation, creativity, and social impact leadership related to sustainability. Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation Kellian Adams Pletcher, President Gary Goldberger, and Vice President of audiyo-yo Anne Richards will be attending! The event’s schedule and details can be found here.

When: June 27-28

Where: New York City

Play Make Learn

The Play Make Learn conference aims to engage attendees in learning science ideas and experiences; communicate design, education, and research; demonstrate new and upcoming games and technology; and network to spark new innovative projects. Click here for more conference information.

When: July 19-18

Where: Madison, WI

Serious Play

Learn more about play as a tool in innovating education, training, and knowledge mobilization. Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation Kellian Adams Pletcher, President Gary Goldberger, and Executive Producer Peter Stidwill are attending! More event details can be found here!

When: August 12-14

Where: Toronto, ON

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FableVision & Partners Celebrate Nods from 2024 EdTech Award

EdTech Digest’s EdTech Awards recognize projects that transform the face of educational technology in innovative ways. Their competitive recognition program spotlights ‘cool tools’ that are enriching the lives of learners in the K-12, Higher Education, and Skills and Workforce sectors. FableVision is excited to share our collaborations that received praise!

Nunaka Strikes Gold!

 
 

We are thrilled to announce that Nunaka: My Village has been awarded gold for Best New Product or Service at this year’s EdTech Awards! Additionally, Nunaka is a finalist in the Social Studies Solution Category. Developed in partnership with Chugachmiut, an Alaskan Native Tribal consortium, the mobile app enables students aged 3-5 to explore Sugpiaq heritage, the Sugt’stun language, and key school readiness goals. Read more about the game here and here. 

Since the game’s release, Nunaka has been awarded the 2023 GEE! Learning Game Award in the Formal Learning Elementary category and a gold Serious Play Award in the Professional Digital Entries (Preschool Education) category. We’re immensely proud of our Nunaka team for their exceptional work on such an impactful game and deeply appreciate the recognition it has garnered.

FableVision’s Fantastic Finalists

A few other of FableVision’s projects are EdTech finalists! Congratulations to our partners!

 

Finalist: Professional Development Learning Solution

Start It Up! is a collaboration with Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Georgia Council on Economic Education. The online business simulator was made for high school students, college students, and small business owners to play through the process of creating and running a startup company. 

 

Finalist: New Product or Service

GASHA GO! World, is another collaboration with Georgia Public Broadcasting and the Georgia Department of Education! GASHA GO! World transports users to the universe inside arcade machines, with a variety of games, animated songs, and activities focused on developing computer science learning for K-2 students. 

 

Finalist: Higher Education Solution

The interactive Forest Quest was made in collaboration with Project Learning Tree Canada and serves as an online learning experience for 18-25-year-olds to learn the fundamentals of wildlife biology, forests’ impact on human life, biodiversity, and the needs and rights of Indigenous people. 

 

Finalist: STEM Solution

My S.T.E.M. Adventure is made in collaboration with the STEMIE center at UNC-Chapel Hill and Bridge Multimedia! The interactive’s adventure-packed activities are paired with a born-accessible design to enhance STEM engagement opportunities for 0-5-year-old children. Kids and caregivers play collaboratively, take photos of their IRL learning, and create a customizable storybook of their achievements! 

 
 

If you’re interested in learning more about our award winners, or any of our other projects, reach out to us at info@fablevision.com, we’d love to hear from you!

 

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PAX East 2024: A FableVision Studios Recap

FableVision was back at PAX this March!

“Unlocking the Positive Potential of Gaming for Kids and Teens” panelists present at PAX East 2024

As an Associate Producer at the studio, I got the chance to speak on a panel called “Unlocking the Positive Potential of Gaming for Kids and Teens,” organized and moderated by Sam Schwamm, a Research Manager at the Boston Children’s Digital Wellness Lab. The other panelists included:

  • David Bickham, PhD, the Research Director at the Boston Children’s Digital Wellness Lab

  • Jason Kahn, PhD, Chief Science Officer and Head of Product at Mightier, a studio that creates games for emotional health and regulation

  • Chris James, Audio Data Specialist at Modulate, a company that makes content-moderation software for online chats

Our panel’s goal was to educate parents, educators, caregivers, and game designers about the potential pitfalls of online spaces for young people, and (more importantly!) how gaming and interactive play can be an amazing tool for learning, problem-solving, perseverance, and self-expression.

Jason said something towards the beginning of the panel that I’m still thinking about: when you’re a kid, you can often feel pretty powerless – you have no control over your bedtime, or going to school, or what you’re having for dinner. Games, then, are an opportunity to flex those decision-making skills however you want within a world that’s built for you to explore. 

I’ve personally been inspired by how games, especially those with avatar creators, are also a place for experimentation with self-expression. Want to run around as a battle-scarred warrior with huge biceps and hot-pink lipstick? Sure! World’s your oyster.

From an educational perspective, games represent a scaffolded space for exploration and trial-and-error learning. Games have a unique ability to algorithmically adjust their difficulty levels based on how a player is managing a certain topic, tailoring a learning experience that meets a child where their skills are. A lot of the projects I work on at FableVision have this sort of leveling-responsive play that helps kids learn by letting them fail and come back to a topic once they feel they’ve gotten the hang of it.

Our design process at FableVision also includes consulting educators and kids a lot. The best people to tell you if your approach is resonating with kids…is kids. Getting students involved in testing throughout the development process helps us learn what’s working and what’s not, and on the panel, I encouraged people who are designing games for kids to test with them as much as they could!

When it comes to improving games and online spaces for young people, improving diversity in games is super important – both in character representations onscreen, but also in the people behind the screens who are responsible for creating safe online communities. Creating communities that support players – no matter their background – is key to getting people from diverse backgrounds involved in creating games, which in turn adds more perspectives and stories to the medium (and so the positive cycle continues).

I was really excited that I got to speak on this panel and share some of the work that FableVision does. Thank you so much for inviting me, Sam, and thank you so much PAX for having me!

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