Curious Media Inc

Now for something seasonally appropriate! We just wrapped this Pokéween animation/motion project for Pokémon! Mad props to Peter Wicks for the chilling voice over work! Happy Pokéween everyone! https://lnkd.in/gjZsgTMk

We are thrilled to introduce the 2024 edition of curiousmedia.com! As this year marks 20 years of keepin’ it curious at Curious Media, we thought it was high time to refresh our website. So we did. The last update was in 2016 and still looks pretty good but the industry and our services have evolved quite a bit and we needed a website that could better reflect the broad spectrum of our services and showcase our unique curious nature and our passion to make JOY. We hope you enjoy looking around and finding some fun easter eggs. If you see something you love or recognize, give us a shout!

Cuious Media company pumpkin carving contest and annual fall party!

Yesterday we had our annual fall party and pumpkin carving contest. Check out these awesome pumpkins! Which one would you vote for?

I just wanted to tell a funny story about a fun little feature in one of our mobile games, Doofus Drop: You can download it here if you wanna check it out: iOS: https://lnkd.in/gWnVQyBx Android: https://lnkd.in/guYkp8nQ

At Curious Media, we believe that teaching new concepts to kids should always start with playtesting. Thankfully, PBS Kids shares this vision and excels at facilitating these tests. 🙌 For our latest game release, Stu's Delivery Service, which teaches Design Process to 3-7 year-olds, we worked closely with kids in the target demographic to test and refine a variety of mechanics. 🎨🔧 By observing their understanding and enjoyment, we iterated until the game was both engaging and educational. It's really not that different from any product development and in this case we got to use the curriculum (Design Process) to make the game! Build, test and iterate is the name of the game! Our approach is to hook them with a fun mechanic and sneak in the learning along the way. Who says education has to be limited to the classroom? 🎉 That’s where we come in with our edutaining games—learning wrapped in fun! Show your kids and tell us what they think! https://lnkd.in/gW-fQjxj #Edutainment #GameDesign #PlayToLearn #CuriousMedia #PBSKids #Playtesting #DesignProcess

Spring 2018 – we started talks with an audio streaming startup called Pinna about becoming their development partner as they began ramping up operations. We had previous history with the CEO and ultimately she hired us based on a few phone calls and an informal estimate. One of the perks of working with people who trust you – you can skip the red tape and get straight to work! After assessing their iOS app, we decided to rebuild from the ground up with a unified code base for iOS, Android, and Web. We chose to build it with React Native for its awesome multi-platform support, and that codebase is still going strong after almost 6 years. Of course, there were bumps along the way and a few weekend fire drills, but overall, it’s held up very well! In addition to the multi-platform frontend application, we also had to figure out the best way to manage subscriptions across 4 different platforms (iOS, Google Play, Amazon & Web). Each mobile app platform requires that you utilize their payment services… understandable as this is where they skim a commission off sales! Huge shoutout to the marketing and product team who also moonlit as customer support! On the backend, we used Laravel to handle massive amounts of audio files, metadata, users, and subscription statuses. We definitely got a crash course in taxonomies and hierarchical data tagging – thanks to Rena D. Grossman! We launched the MVP in about 4-5 months and spent over 5 years working alongside Pinna as they produced award-winning podcasts and evolved the product. Despite the 2500 miles between us, it always felt like we were one team. In summer 2023, Pinna was acquired by Realm, and after a few months of transition, they took over the tech stack – a wonderful end to an incredible journey. We were so blessed to collaborate for 5 years with such a talented and passionate team on a product with an amazing mission. Hilary Glazer, Maggie McGuire, Sandra Engstrom, Brie Spears, Amy Kraft, Irving Tang, CMA and all the amazing show producers who we didn't work so closely with, but made the app worth using! #throwbackthursday

Sometimes things come together just right and you end up with something that is magical. That was definitely the case with The Bonesaw Trials– a game we developed for Disney about 12+ years ago. The physics, the sound, the animation... It is without a doubt one of our favorites to this day! #throwbackthursday #kickbuttowski

Sick beats!

Sometimes we get to be a part of something much bigger than the animations, websites and games that we develop. While 📺 can rot your 🧠 (allegedly)– games and media can also be a pretty powerful educational tool. Don’t believe us? Well we can prove it! Over the years we’ve gotten a front row seat with various grant funded research projects that we’ve been a part of on the game/app development side. One really standout project from about 5 years ago was The Cat in the Hat Builds That!, an app that features 5 games focused on various engineering concepts including material science, measurements, physics, momentum and friction. The app was built in support of The Cat In The Hat Knows a Lot About That! series, funded by a Ready To Learn grant and made in partnership with Penguin Random House and Portfolio Entertainment. Ready to Learn is an amazing government program that has helped fund so many awesome series on PBS Kids. Usually we get some high level analytics back to know that kids are in fact playing our games and presumably, having fun, but it’s less common for us to get detailed data and studies to show the efficacy of the content we create. With The Cat In The Hat Builds That! we learned this program (including our app!) received very high efficacy ratings (much higher than they normally see with these types of research programs). A 🔥 quote from the research summary: "Previous research suggests that transferring knowledge from videos and digital games can be challenging, especially for young children. That children in this study were able to apply what they experienced virtually in the games and videos to the real world is meaningful and indicates that virtual screen experiences, when developmentally appropriate, aligned to national standards, and focused on active learning, can support real-world learning." Just a few of the amazing people that we worked closely with on this aspirational project: Lynn Kestin Sessler Traci Lawson Alison Folino, CFA, Ed.M. Shannon B. Take a look at the included gallery to see some screenshots from the game as well as some interesting slides from the research paper. #throwbackthursday #catinthehat #readytolearn