Three museums, 10 prototypes, 12 months: that’s the hefty goal for Project AMI, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Project AMI (Art + Museums Interacting), the brainchild of Kellian Adams Pletcher, FableVision’s Director of G.L.A.M. Innovation (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums), is taking the possibilities of interactive installations to the next level in Switzerland. With the sponsorship of the Max Kohler Foundation, Project AMI partners and collaborates with several Swiss museums to elevate art education by creating prototypes for innovative and interactive experiences. Switzerland serves as an exciting new arena for educational innovation due to its diverse cultural influences, tight-knit community, and burgeoning museum infrastructure supporting imperfect play and interaction.

Project AMI has many goals but, most importantly, aims to help museums foster an idea from conception to completion that results in an engaging prototype. Each museum has 30 days to develop an idea and execute a prototype that helps it achieve its goals of play, community, and creativity, while utilizing available supplies.

Kellian brainstorming with the team at Fondation Beyeler

“We wanted to expand the vocabulary of what a museum can do with games and programming in Switzerland and maybe get visitors (and staff!) to become more comfortable with the idea of casual, imperfect play in museums,” says Kellian. “It’s a way to give Swiss museum educators a little more freedom to be playful and fun.”

The project’s first year will focus on three Swiss museums – Museum Rietberg, Creaviva Children’s Museum, and Fondation Beyeler – with a special feature on the U.S. museum, SFMOMA. Totaling 10 prototypes, each Swiss museum has three opportunities to go through the prototype process and exhibit an interactive experience. The first round of prototypes is complete with the second round already underway, and we are eager to share what each museum has created.

Museum Rietberg

Museum Rietberg is a non-western art and anthropology museum located in Zurich. Its first project, Ragamala Lab, had participants react to art by documenting their feelings through creative responses on postcards. Traditionally, Ragamala combines Indian music, poetry, and painting and is the focal point for Rietberg’s interactive experience. Participants would listen and look at the Ragamala and then use their encounter to inspire their own artistic response of words, poetry, or drawing.

Their second prototype was inspired by a popular German TV show in which children have to describe objects and adults try to understand them. Museum Rietberg's interaction designer went one step further and proposed to develop both a physical and digital game where players see the content on a screen but can react with physical objects. The final prototype combined RFIDs (allowing contactless data exchange) and Phidget controllers with videos and a game rating mechanism. A truly playable prototype emerged, with players reaching out for descriptions of Ragamala paintings, competing, carefully listening, and discussing. Additionally, players played once in their native language and again in a foreign language to practice their language skills.

Creaviva Children’s Museum

A part of the Paul Klee Center, the Creaviva Children’s Museum is a contemporary art museum in Bern. The goal for its first prototype was to make something accessible to all people, even outside the museum. The museum used Instagram to source volunteers’ photos of colors, shapes, and textures found in everyday life and then compiled those images to make an NFT. To share the NFT, pillows with QR codes were placed in the parks surrounding the museum so that the larger community could appreciate the collaborative art piece.

Fondation Beyeler

Fondation Beyeler in Basel took this opportunity to target the untapped demographic of young teenagers through Project 13. With the premise that something special about 13-year-olds helps keep the Fondation Beyeler Museum alive, Project 13’s first prototype used art challenge cards secretly tucked away in labeled envelopes to ignite ingenuity through simple prompts. Participants had limited supplies and specific directions, such as “Draw what’s in the window, but only use three colors,” to spark their unique creativity. The responses to the challenge cards varied drastically, demonstrating the infinite possibilities of a well-cultivated imagination.

Planning on testing in the near future, Project 13’s second prototype is a scavenger hunt-based mystery game. Players must decode symbols hidden around the museum grounds to reveal clues to their next location and clue. Through this prototype, Foundation Beyeler’s goals are to teach kids how information can be shared through images instead of words and have families engage in the outdoor museum grounds and its art pieces.

SFMOMA

As a special feature, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) had the opportunity to participate in Project AMI. SFMOMA took the challenge head-on and created an interaction that included digital and theatrical elements for an alien adventure scavenger hunt. Its goal was to create a safe and inspiring place for visitors to socialize, and it drew in more than 600 participants.

While Project AMI has already accomplished a lot, the next round of prototype testing begins soon and more museums are planning to join the project in the near future. The featured museums will have the opportunity to learn from and improve on their past prototypes by repeating the brainstorming and creation process to make another immersive exhibit for their patrons. FableVision looks forward to creating more immersive experiences and collaborating with museums looking to promote play through prototype building in the future. Check out our portfolio of other museum interactives, contact Kellian with questions, and be sure to stay tuned for more Project AMI and G.L.A.M. Innovation updates!

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With his upbeat demeanor, signature smile, and twinkle in his eye when given the opportunity to build a new game, Junior Developer Owen Hey makes one thought come to mind – "O-wen will we learn more about him?" The answer is simple: right now.

FableVision scored a goal when the freelancer joined the company as a full-time staff member in July. His passion for games combined with his love of art, creativity, and overall aesthetics in programming help Owen build unique interactives that further FableVision’s mission in developing meaningful, educational projects.

“In college, studying both game design and computer science reaffirmed the feeling that I like the creative avenue of programming,” said Owen. “I understood the cybersecurity and low-level computing classes, but they didn't hold a candle to the cool games I was making.”

Owen brings not only his game development knowledge and desire to grow his coding skills, but also his positivity and ability to put everyone in a good mood, which brightens the studio. Read more to learn about Owen’s methods for finding the best feasible solution on a project, his original game Polygunners, his love of wizards, and the activity that brings him the most joy per minute.

What’s your “journey to FableVision” story?
I knew I was interested in educational kids’ games after I worked with Eco Resilience Games in college to create a VR experience that helps kids learn about different eras of Earth. For example, they could look at Lake George in New York now, in the 1800s, in the Cretaceous period, and so on. With this organization, we play tested various games with kids at the science museum and it warmed my heart seeing them enjoying the games we worked so hard to make. I knew that I liked the children’s gaming industry, so FableVision appealed to me even more once I discovered it.

After I graduated from Rensselaer (RPI) in December 2021, I went to GDC – the Game Developers Conference – with my resume, business cards, and a great smile on my face. I left with no job, but I met a connection who works as a programmer in educational media. We set up a call and he listed several companies in that industry on the east coast, telling me which ones he respects, which to avoid, and other information. He had great things to say about FableVision, and within two days of speaking to him, I applied for a freelance Unity developer position, spoke to Technical Director Jordan Bach, and was assigned to a FableVision project.

What do you like about computer science?
Growing up, I really admired and looked up to my older brother, who’s five years older than me. He did computer science, so following in his footsteps was a no-brainer. Very quickly I learned to love it, and not just because of my brother. My high school offered an awesome Unity development course that sparked my interest in this field and really shaped my future. That class and my RPI courses made me realize that game development and creativity specifically were both aspects of computer science that I enjoyed and wanted to pursue. And it all started because of my brother.

What types of projects do you like to work on?
I definitely like games and interactives. I grew up playing lots of games, so it was always one of my goals to create them. It’s fun to work on projects that you have a lot of experience in, which for me is Unity, but I want to expand my palate to other frameworks, libraries, and game engines.

I prefer working on smaller games because it’s always a new experience; you can learn from something you worked on in the past but also try something new. There’s quicker iteration with a cleaner process. On a bigger project, while the end-product may be more impressive, you get stuck with the code you wrote a while ago. I enjoy splitting the work into mini projects, like mini games within the larger game, so that each game is a breath of fresh air and I can create things from scratch.

How did your previous experience prepare you for your role at FableVision?
In RPI’s game design program, our projects were structured in small groups of four-to-five people, with a person from each field – designer, writer, programmer. From a programming standpoint, I worked on half a dozen projects with a similar group size and structure as FableVision. The biggest thing that was missing were the producers. At FableVision, they make the whole process so much easier and great, I love them! On my own time in college, one of my main hobbies was going into a game engine I was learning at the time and playing around. I worked on a lot of small projects to dive deep into a certain visual effect or style.

My previous internships were closer to traditional software development, which helped reiterate that I want to be a game developer as opposed to a software engineer, but I also had an IT support position that taught me communication skills. The job was 20% knowing how to fix the problem and 80% being able to explain the solution to those who needed help. Growing my people skills was really beneficial, especially for a company like FableVision that values interpersonal relationships, and where I have to communicate with different members of a project.

Owen and his decade-long best friend Caleb.

Speaking of communicating with different folks, how do you work with producers, artists, and designers to create the best possible games and interactives?
Not everything can be built exactly the way people might want it, so there is some back and forth between the teams where we work to find the best feasible solution. To help with this, I’m good at giving these roles different options for what they can do. I prototype or mock up multiple variations and send them to the designers, artists, and producers to see what sticks.

What advice do you have for aspiring game developers?
Something that I’ve found to be invaluable is separating what is good from what is easy – you don’t want to create something only because you know how to build it. Instead, focus on the design and what is right for the experience, even if it’s challenging. You will create a better game and learn new techniques, which will help you build new games in the future. You don’t want to get stuck and do the same thing over and over again. It’s also valuable to be very clear with what is doable, especially in the time and budget parameters that you’re given.

Tell us more about Polygunners!
In college, I worked on many small, narrative, puzzle-based games, but I wanted to create something closer to the type of games I personally enjoy playing. I also hoped to expand my skill set and develop a project by myself. For about six months, I worked on Polygunners, a cooperative action game where players fight evil shapes. I was really, really passionate about it and it eventually turned into my capstone project.

I did the game design, art, programming, and sound creation, which was a lot of fun, sitting in my bedroom, recording “pew, pew, pew!” I paid a friend to create the music and trailer. It’s called Polygunners because everything in the game is composed of basic geometric shapes, including the evil, scary Polyqueen. I published it on Steam, and while it’s not the most popular game, over 40,000 people have played it! It’s definitely the project that I’m most proud of making.

It seems like soccer is a huge part of your life.
Soccer is really important to me. Growing up, I played it like every kid plays a sport, but in middle and high school, I became very serious about it, traveling every weekend to play in tournaments. At one point, I was on the “Maine team” as part of the Olympic Development Program. I took a step back in my junior year of high school after a severe back injury, but I continued to play intramural in college. To this day, I watch a lot of professional soccer and play in intramural leagues throughout Boston. It’s my favorite thing to do – definitely my highest fun had per minute.

You also love drawing?
Even though I’m a developer, I’ve always liked the visual parts of game development, like graphics programming and procedural animation – it’s all about making stuff look pretty. I like doing artsy, creative things in code, which extends to drawing, because I see that as the most pure form of creativity. You can make something look cool in code or you can just draw it. I’m not very good at it yet, but I’m getting there, and I’m having lots of fun, especially drawing wizards and clouds.

More About Owen

Favorite game: Starcraft II.

Favorite wizard: Septimus Sylvaria – he’s my D&D character, a 12-year-old boy who thinks he’s the best, greatest wizard that ever lived. My red wizard hat is his hat, that unfortunately for him got burnt, so now it’s black.

Favorite movie: Game Night.

Favorite sports player: Marco Asensio. And my favorite soccer team is Tottenham Hotspur.

Favorite snack: Oreos!

Favorite place you’ve traveled: Perú – Machu Picchu, Lima, Cusco.

An Owen fun fact that most people don’t know: As an 8-year-old kid, I lived in Edinburgh, Scotland in a flat and I went to school in a castle!