Sesame Street Games
Sesame Street
For more than a decade, we’ve built dozens of engaging games for Sesame Street (along with parent company, Sesame Workshop), often adapting the illustration styles of classic characters to give children new ways to play with their Muppet friends.
Start Game
Following our work on The Electric Company on Prankster Planet, Sesame Workshop contacted us to create games for some of their popular Muppet characters. Early games gave kids the chance to make a mess with Oscar, shoot hoops with Big BIrd, and whip up a batch of smoothies with Abby. The games were fun, but they also let kids learn about shapes, colors, numbers and more.
Soon our games for Sesame Workshop progressed beyond pre-school curriculum to address the special needs of particular viewer segments.
Military Families
With the launch of Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families During Military Deployment, Sesame Workshop addressed the needs of the 700,000 pre-school kids with parents in the military. Big Bird’s Comfy, Cozy Nest helps kids establish a calm sense of space even if deployment forces them to move. Playing Breathe, Think, Do and Mood Monster, kids learn to recognize their emotions and calm down when they’re feeling overwhelmed. Visiting the Doctor lets children explore a medical office so they know what to expect.
Autism
Sesame Street introduced Julia as the show’s first Muppet character on the autism spectrum. In Playground Pals, kids join Julia as she comforts and encourages children on the playground who struggle with the slide, the swing and other familiar activities. Although Julia is not especially verbal, she loves to console other kids as they overcome fears.
Substance Abuse
We made the news when we teamed up with Sesame Workshop to address the needs of kids in the foster care system. Karli’s Coloring Quilt supports kids whose parents struggle with addiction, particularly as a result of the opioid epidemic. The paint-by-number activity features panels with inspiring phrases like “I didn’t cause it,” and “I can make healthy choices.”
Style
In collaboration with Sesame Workshop, we’ve adapted the Muppets’ illustration styles, from the crayon lines of Elmo’s World to a puppet style for earlier games and the vector-based “neighborhood” look of recent installments.
Results
We’ve mentioned only a fraction of the games we’ve created for Sesame Street. Not only has Sesame Workshop continued to ask for new games, but we have often updated the games to meet a variety of tech evolutions (like moving from Flash to HTML), as well as porting them to new languages. The games have proved evergreen, enriching the lives of new cohorts of young viewers.