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Games for Change

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FableVision Shines at Games for Change

Celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Games for Change (G4C) Festival in New York City brought together industry leaders, game developers, executives, and fans to share best practices from the best impact-making games and the creative minds behind them. 

As frequent festival presenters, attendees, and award nominees and winners, FableVisionaries are no strangers to G4C. FableVision has attended and been involved with the festival from its early years, as it perfectly aligns with the studio’s mission to move the world to a better place through positive media. We’ve proudly collaborated with G4C in the past and have been honored to showcase our work in its arena. In previous years, FableVision’s Caduceus: Staff of the Alchemist, created with Children’s Hospital Trust, was nominated for the Direct Impact award, while Quandary, created with Learning Games Network, won the 2013 Game of the Year award.

FableVision shone at two studio project briefs, featuring our games Nunaka and The Plastic Pipeline. Read on for a recap. If you have questions about these projects, please reach out! We’re happy to chat.

Nunaka!: Games for Indigenous Cultural Heritage Preservation
FableVision Presenter: Anne Richards, Producer, Game Designer, Co-Creative

Created with Chugachmiut, a non-profit that serves Native tribes in the Chugach region of Alaska, Nunaka is an early childhood mobile game that excites 3-5-year-olds about the Alaska Native Sugpiaq culture, teaches the Sugt'stun language, and targets key school readiness goals. The game recently won the Formal Learning (Elementary) award at the James Paul GEE! Learning Game Awards. 

Anne Richards, who produced the game, has deep expertise in developing children’s media for television, publishing, games, edtech, and more. Her experience and game design background contributed to creating a fun, engaging, and beautiful game. Anne’s presentation emphasized the importance of making communities like G4C more accessible to the Indigenous people who are inspiring conversations around representation in the edtech space – also how we can travel to meet knowledge holders where they are.

In the story-driven game, players take on the role of a Sugpiaq child living with their grandparents, Emaa and Apaa, in a fictionalized version of a community based on villages in the Chugach region. Players create an avatar and explore the village, completing activities and minigames, while collecting items and interacting with other residents, including human characters and animals from the region. 

To make the game as culturally accurate as possible, FableVision co-designed and co-developed Nunaka with Chugachmiut and the Sugpiaq people during virtual Elder meetings. Studio members also visited Alaska multiple times for meetings to get feedback in person from the Sugpiaq Elders and village Head Start students. 

Nunaka stands out from other cultural games by preserving an endangered language. “There were a lot of intricacies of working with Sugt’stun,” said Anne. “This language has been passed down via oral tradition rather than as a written language, and there is an extremely small number of master speakers remaining, many of whom have lost some of their knowledge of the language over time.”

To ensure that Nunaka captured Sugt’stun correctly, FableVision gathered groups of speakers to help each other with script translations and to collectively navigate dialectical differences, which could be significant even within a small geographic region. It was also important to investigate the cultural context behind translations to make sure details weren’t getting lost in the process. “One of our favorite examples: ‘Akutaq,’ which is translated as ‘Sugpiaq ice cream’ in English, is a dish of potatoes and seal oil. Very different from the ice cream we are used to,” said Anne.

Anne acknowledged the limitations of her ability to represent the Sugpiaq perspective on Nunaka’s creation process. “I’d like to challenge attendees and the larger G4C community to engage with ways in which these conversations can be more accessible to Indigenous people themselves,” she said. “It was not possible for our Alaska Native partners to travel a long distance for a brief conference presentation. I encourage the community to consider how to make our spaces more genuinely accessible to Indigenous and marginalized people.”

Play Nunaka today! The game can be downloaded on iOS and Google Play.

The Plastic Pipeline
FableVision Presenter: Jonah Gaynor, Producer

Considering that the world is producing double the amount of plastic waste as it did two years ago, the Wilson Center partnered with FableVision to create The Plastic Pipeline, an online game that educates and encourages policy change to combat leaks in the real-life “plastic pipeline.” 

FableVision producer Jonah Gaynor utilized his game design background to design Nurdle Alert!, a minigame that teaches players about nurdles and their impact on the environment. “Nurdles are the ‘lego bricks of the plastic world,’ the smallest unit of melted down plastic,” he said. “Staying consistent to the art and style of the game, the minigame centers around capturing these nurdles with a net before they damage the environment and creatures.” 

To engage young adults with the game, players act as influencers in Plasti City who have the power to create change by learning from characters in different locations who interact with the pipeline at every stage and represent different voices within the discussion of what to do about the plastics crisis. The game centers around policy decisions to show that the largest burden of responsibility for lessening plastic pollution falls on legislatures and policy makers, rather than individual consumer actions. 

Director of Wilson Center’s Serious Games Initiative Dr. Elizabeth M. H. Newbury and Director of Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum Dr. Jennifer Turner presented with Jonah to explain the game development process – policy research, iteration and design, and testing, and the next steps, which would involve more testing and further building out of the game. 

While Nurdle Alert! starts out fairly easy, the levels get exponentially challenging, mimicking the real difficulty of the clean-up process, and encouraging replayability. “The levels of the game demonstrate that the clean-up process doesn’t have a simple solution,” said Jonah. “While that is frustrating, players keep returning to the minigame hoping to improve their score. That also allows them to keep exploring the game, furthering its mission in educating players about the plastic pipeline.”

Check out the game and stay tuned for its further development.

In Summary – More Highlights & Takeaways

The G4C movement promotes using games for social change, and changemakers discussed how games can be more than great entertainment, but can also unite communities, improve players’ well-being, help players express themselves, foster creativity, provide education, and more. To spark change and make the most impact, speakers encouraged game developers to broaden the community by looking into emerging markets, making games available to a larger audience, and creating games with players’ interests in mind.

Among other topics, this year’s festival discussed how games can raise awareness about sustainability and social justice issues. Games like Endling: Extinction is Forever by Herobeat Studios (Game of the Year and Most Significant Impact) and Terra Nil by Free Lives (Most Impact) confronted environmental degradation and restoring nature. 

Meanwhile, Go Nisha Go: My Life My Choice by Howard Delafield International, LLP (Best Learning Game) and (val)iant: or, val’s guide to having a broken vag by Cactus Studio (Best Student Game) focused on sexual and reproductive health, empowering women to make informed decisions about their bodies. The festival’s winners from this year represented eight countries – check out the full list of winners and nominees. 

Grace Collins, a former FableVisionary and founder/CEO of Snowbright Studio, was recognized as the 2023 Vanguard recipient for their work in bringing the game industry to new places, such as the Smithsonian and U.S. Department of Education, as well as their advocacy for LGBTQ+ voices. We congratulate Grace on all of their amazing work! 

Thank you G4C for a great festival. Until next time!

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Cue the Conferences: FableVision’s 2023 Guide

Lunches with partners, new meet and greets, enlightening sessions, presentation opportunities, and exciting cities – what’s not to love about conferences? Check out where we’re headed to learn from industry professionals, share our insights, and most importantly, see you.

MuseumNext Digital Learning Summit

During the virtual conference, learn how museums can keep up with evolving technology to create engaging and immersive experiences for visitors. Keep an eye out for Kellian Adams Pletcher, our Director of G.L.A.M. (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums) Innovation.

When: Monday, June 19 – Tuesday, June 20, 2023
Where: Online

ISTELive 23

Visit our friends from FableVision Learning at their tables at the Keystones Technology Innovators in PA session on Wednesday, June 28 from 9–11 a.m. and STEM Playground — Tools for Physical Computing and Making from 12–2 p.m. in the ISTE Explore and Create Playground. Paul Reynolds, Andrea Calvin, and Mary Johnston will provide hands-on demonstrations of FabMaker Studio and Animation-ish. Learn more here.

When: Sunday, June 25 – Wednesday, June 28
Where: Philadelphia

Games for Change Festival

Celebrate Games for Change’s (G4C) 20th anniversary with a summer festival full of events analyzing the past, present, and future of gaming and XR.

FableVision’s VP of audiyo-yo Anne Richards will present a project brief on Nunaka!: Games for Indigenous Cultural Heritage Preservation on Wednesday, July 19 at 5 p.m.

Producer Jonah Gaynor will present a project brief on Wilson Center’s Plastic Pipeline right after Anne on Wednesday, July 19 at 5:20 p.m. Both presentations will be at the Microsoft Winter Garden.

President Gary Goldberger and Communications Strategist Nadya Karpova will also be attending. We hope to see you at both project briefs! The schedule and more details can be found here.

When: Tuesday, July 18 – Wednesday, July 19, 2023
Where: New York City

Podcast Movement

Podcast Movement

At the world’s largest podcast conference, passionate podcasters and industry professionals gather to learn from each other and improve the audio community. Anne Richards and Gary Goldberger will surely tune in — don’t forget to say hello.

When: Monday, August 21 – Thursday, August 24, 2023
Where: Denver

Ed Games Expo 2023

The  Ed Games Expo is a public showcase of game-changing #edtech innovations developed through programs at IES, the U.S. Department of Education (ED), and across government. We’ve got a few great things lined up for Wednesday, September 20 at Kennedy Center REACH:

  • Between 10 a.m.-2:30 p.m., catch FableVision Studios’ Paul Reynolds, Snow Dong, and Nadya Karpova, along with FableVision Learning’s Andrea Calvin and Mary Johnston in Skylight Pavilion at tables S-7 and S-8. We’ll be doing live demos of Civics! An American Musical and Nunaka.

  • At 1:30 p.m., Snow will lead a Master Class on Civics! at MoonShot Studio. If you’d like to attend, please register here.

  • Between 5:30-8:30 p.m., find us in PT-109 at tables P-3 and P4 for the Ed Games Expo for the Public.

Click here to view the Ed Games Expo agenda.

When: Tuesday, September 19 — Friday, September 22
Where: Washington, D.C.

Serious Play

Serious Play Conference

Time for some serious fun in Toronto, while learning about creating and using games and simulations for educational purposes and how to move those programs ahead. Make sure to attend Executive Producer Peter Stidwill’s session on Wednesday, October 11 from 2-2:45 p.m. on Five Tips for Researchers Who Want to Make Educational Games. See the full conference program here.

When: Wednesday, October 11 – Friday, October 13, 2023
Where: Toronto

Hands On

Hands On! Conference

Hosted by the Children’s Museum Creaviva in Bern, Switzerland, Europe’s largest conference on science education and children in museums will experiment with exhibitions, themes, and learning opportunities. And who’s keynoting? You guessed it — Kellian. More information coming soon — you don’t want to miss this one.

When: Wednesday, October 25 – Friday, October 27, 2023
Where: Bern, Switzerland

MCN

MCN Annual Conference

For MCN 2023, the Penn Museum in Philadelphia will gather over 600 cultural heritage professionals from museums, historic sites, and visitor attractions to advance digital transformations in museums. Kellian and Gary can’t wait to see you there.

When: Wednesday, November 8 – Friday, November 10, 2023
Where: Philadelphia

This year, Gary, Anne, VP of Moonladder Tone Thyne, and VP of Development Rachel Reade Marcus attended the Kidscreen Summit in Miami. At BostonFIG Online Expo, Kellian presented tips for researchers and developers working together when creating games. We were thrilled to catch up with you at those conferences, and we look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones in the upcoming months.

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FableVision’s Summer 2022 Roadmap

Roadmap

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? The beginning of conference season! From museum meetings to gamer gatherings, FableVision is attending a variety of conferences to share our work, meet new people, and learn from other professionals in the industry. 

American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo

FableVision is heading across town to the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo! This year’s conference focuses on four themes –  Museums in Society, Organizational Culture, Innovation, and Financial Wellness. Keep an eye out for FableVision’s Kellian Adams Pletcher, Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation.

When: Thursday, May 19 - Saturday, May 22
Where: Boston, MA

Join FableVision and Kellian the night before for a few drinks and bites to socialize, while enjoying the Boston skyline!

What: FableVision’s AAM Reception
Where: FableVision Studios, 353 Newbury St., Fl. 2
When: Wednesday, May 18, 5:30-7:30 p.m. 
RSVP: Required with proof of vaccination

Serious Play Conference

FableVision is joining some serious fun at this year’s Serious Play Conference to discuss case studies, explore game-based learning topics, and connect with other thought leaders in the educational game-play industry. From active workshops to tracking the evolution of serious gaming, this conference provides opportunities to learn, collaborate, and plan for a productive future for the game-based learning community. 

When: Monday, June 13 - Friday, June 17
Where: Orlando, FL

Games For Change

Catch Gary Goldberger, Kellian Adams Pletcher, and Anne Richards at this year’s Games For Change Festival (G4C). The annual conference festival allows educators, developers, and game changers to connect and discuss the impacts of video games and immersive media. 

Vice President of FableVision’s audio division, audiyo-yo, and creator of the award-winning preschool podcast Quentin & Alfie’s ABC Adventures, Anne is sharing her expertise on designing audio experiences that meet the needs of families and educators virtually on Friday, July 15 at 10 a.m. ET. 

When: Wednesday, July 13 - Saturday, July 16
Where: New York City

Kidscreen 

Gary Goldberger, Tone Thyne, and Anne Richards are in for a weekend of creativity, networking, and media dialogue at the annual Kidscreen Summit (KSS)! Kidscreen focuses on the kids entertainment industry and caters to decision makers and executives throughout the field. The July summit provides an opportunity to connect with other producers, creatives, distributors, and industry leaders, while also getting the chance to forge new connections. 

When: Monday, July 18 - Thursday, July 21
Where: Miami, FL

Connected Learning Summit 

The 2022 virtual Connected Learning Summit brings innovators together to harness the power of emerging technology for expanding access to participatory, playful, and creative learning. Join Sarah Ditkoff, Gary Goldberger, and other speakers on Friday, July 29 at 1:30 p.m. ET for a roundtable presentation on "The Lifecycle of Partnerships in Games for Learning." Register here to access the full event.

When: Wednesday, July 27 - Friday, July 29
Where: Virtual - Whova event platform

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