PAX East 2024: A FableVision Studios Recap

This article was guest-written by Associate Producer Steph Hoechst

FableVision was back at PAX this March!

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!