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Anne Richards

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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

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 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! 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 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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November FableFriday: Anne Richards, Vice President, audiyo-yo

As a natural storyteller eager to connect with children in different media, Anne Richards, VP of FableVision’s audio division audiyo-yo, has done it all – television, publishing, games, edtech, and more. Once she found her calling in audio, she knew that she wanted to keep exploring this intimate format that lets listeners paint their own picture of the characters and story as they process what they hear.

“Even though audio is a classic form of storytelling going all the way back to radio plays, there’s so much work happening in this space right now,” says Anne. “There’s a lot of room for innovation and emerging voices to make an impact.”

And innovating is exactly what Anne is doing. This summer, audiyo-yo released its first project – the interactive, voice-activated Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape series (check out the October/November Kidscreen print issue) – where listeners co-create the story by answering “yes” or “no” to questions presented to them. This fall, audiyo-yo delights listeners with Pinna Original Roasting Vegetables, a short-form audio series full of silly vegetable puns, original beats (or should we say beets?), and nutritious, delicious characters. 

Anne is your comprehensive guide to podcast knowledge. Keep reading to learn more about the future of podcasts, audiyo-yo’s upcoming projects, and Anne’s advice for aspiring kids’ podcast creators. 

Anne and Kermit

What’s your “journey to FableVision” story?
I feel like I’ve been journeying to FableVision for a long time! I first met Gary Goldberger about 15 years ago through kids’ industry conferences. A few years later, I hired FableVision to create learning games for a non-profit I was working with and had a great experience with the team. Fast forward another few years and I started working for FableVision as a freelance game designer and producer. I’ve been in the orbit for a long time one way or another, so when Gary and I hatched the idea to bring an audio division to the studio, it felt like a really natural progression. I’ve always been a fan of FableVision’s work and the amazing and talented team, so officially being a FableVisionary at long last feels like a homecoming. 

Anne’s nephews meeting Bear

You’ve been a writer, producer, game designer, and more! How did you end up focusing on podcasts?
My work in audio came out of my experience in other kids’ media. I’ve worked in almost every form of children’s entertainment, starting in television on Bear in the Big Blue House way back in the day, then exploring game design, educational technology, publishing, you name it. I have always loved storytelling and wanted to work in different places where kids seek out narrative experiences.

In terms of how I found my way to audio, I was lucky enough to know Amy Kraft at Pinna through kids’ media circles. A few years ago, Amy came to me and asked me to create a podcast to teach kids the ABCs – in audio, which was an interesting challenge! That show turned into the podcast series Quentin and Alfie’s ABC Adventures, and eventually led to me becoming the Executive Producer at Pinna, where I oversaw different kinds of podcasts for a wide range of kids. So I’m really grateful to Amy and the team at Pinna for taking a chance on me and understanding that there’s a lot of creative overlap in other media formats and audio work. It’s always about the kid audience at the center and finding different ways for them to connect with stories and characters that are meaningful to them.

Annes Family

Family photo!

What do you love about podcasts and why do you think they’re a special form of media?
I think what makes audio special is how intimate it is. There’s nothing like hearing someone speaking in your headphones to feel like a story is being told just for you. Audio is a form of entertainment that asks the audience to meet it halfway – when you don’t know what characters look like or you can’t see an animated view of a setting, you become a co-creator of the narrative experience, using your imagination in a way that I think is really special. 

Why are children’s podcasts important right now?
I’ve worked in so many different roles over the course of my career because I’m excited about new formats and emerging media, and I think that’s where kids’ audio is right now. There’s a lot of room for new voices.

I also think that dealing with the pandemic, caregivers of young children were drawn to audio as something families could enjoy together, or that their kids could enjoy on their own without being glued to screens after long days of remote learning. That has contributed to audio becoming a medium with an interested, engaged audience that is still hungry for more great content. It’s served a really tangible role in the life of families these past few years and folks want more of it.

Anne’s dog Pip

What’s the future of children’s podcasting? Where is audio going next?
Right now, I’m interested in interactive audio and I think there is huge potential in voice recognition and truly responsive storytelling. This year, I created and produced three titles in the Pinna Original Yes No Audio Escape series through audiyo-yo. They’re audio escape rooms where the child actually speaks out loud to the podcast and gets different outcomes if they say “yes” or “no” to different questions. If you’re trying to escape a haunted house in five minutes, you have to choose whether to walk down that one hallway or stop and talk to a couple of ghosts who seem interested in you. It’s an innovative way to play with audio, and, given FableVision’s deep experience in interactive experiences, it feels like a perfect fit for audiyo-yo.

What are you excited to work on at audiyo-yo? How does audiyo-yo stand out from other audio production companies?
I’m excited to work on original projects we’re developing at FableVision, like Tone Thyne’s big sweeping musical series Cummerbund. And I’m equally excited to work with clients who are interested in making audio for kids but who might need expertise in how to bring characters and worlds to life in this medium. 

This role is also a huge opportunity for me to work with creators who may be new to audio, or to kids’ media in general, to broaden the range of voices we have in the space. For instance, we just made a show called Roasting Vegetables with Postell Pringle, who’s a theater and musical artist and all around huge talent, but who hasn’t made a kids’ podcast before (though his group, Q Brothers Collective, has made an awesome hip-hop album for kids, Buggin’ ). They also created the soundtrack for Long Way Home, a sweeping musical epic based on Homer's The Odyssey for the renowned United Voices Chicago – check them out! Pos and I created and wrote the show together and I’m excited about all of the things he brought to the project that I never would have come up with on my own, and vice versa.

In terms of what’s special about audiyo-yo – we bring a unique mix of production and creative expertise to the table. At FableVision, there’s an amazing braintrust of people who put kids at the center of their work. They’re innovators in terms of using different media to reach kids where they are and to help them grow. In the audio industry, what sets us apart is the breadth of experience we have with making stories for a kids’ audience across all different types of media. We combine that with a deep understanding of the nuts and bolts of what it takes to bring a podcast from concept to final broadcast-quality audio.

What advice would you give to people hoping to work in kids’ audio?
Immerse yourself in the medium and figure out what speaks to you. Do you love highly sound-designed stories or simpler audiobooks? Interesting new formats or classic ones? Short form appointment-type content or longer, serialized shows? Listen to as much as you can and follow your taste to seek out mentors and companies who are doing work you love. This is a welcoming field and it’s relatively easy to access experienced folks who are excited to bring in new talent, but people also want to know that you’ve done your homework and are interested in what they do specifically. The last thing I’d say is be curious about your audience – talk to kids about what’s interesting and exciting to them and allow that to inspire you. 

What’s an Anne fun fact that most people don’t know?
I think most people don’t know that I won a trophy in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade in the early 2000s. 

So… you love Brooklyn?
Man, do I love Brooklyn! I’ve lived in Brooklyn since the late 1990s. There’s just no place like it – the art and culture, the food, the brownstones, but mostly the opportunity to meet people from all over the world with totally different experiences, who all come together in this crazy, busy, loud, and magical place. I’m fortunate to also have family in more rural places as I do need to escape the bustle of the big city sometimes. I basically gravitate towards either the biggest, most raucous environment in the world or a farmhouse down some country road where there are no humans whatsoever.

More About Anne

Anne GLS

GLS Panel

Favorite podcast?
I have to take this opportunity to plug my sister Meg’s amazing parenting podcast, What Fresh Hell: Laughing in the Face of Motherhood. It's chock full of hilarious advice and every once in a while I get name-checked, so that’s exciting. For kids, there are so many shows that I love, but Grim, Grimmer, Grimmest, which I worked on at Pinna with Adam Gidwitz and Ilana Millner, is a sentimental favorite of mine and just a master class in storytelling.

Favorite game?
Gone Home is a video game I deeply love – it’s so nuanced and thoughtful about how it reveals its secrets. I’ve also been playing a cooperative card game called Hanabi recently with my family, which is really fun and super challenging!

Anne in Mexico

Favorite book?
I was an English major in college so it’s a long list! I go back to The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, The Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, and Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill over and over again. I recently read Kiese Laymon’s Long Division and was insanely delighted by it – it plays with form in interesting ways, but the character voices are so strong and endearing that it still feels immediate and emotional.

Favorite place to travel?
I’m interested in good food and art, and some history to dig into, which was checked off by the special and vibrant Oaxaca, Mexico that I visited with family. Mostly, there are many more places that I want to go to – ask me again in a few years!

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