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About
Likely Story is published by Studio Jayne in collaboration with Victim Services Durham Region, Victim Services of Toronto and the Ontario Network of Victim Service Providers. Players pick reactions to scenarios about relationships, consent and online safety and score points against each other; the design deliberately keeps the surface light, because the material underneath is how pimps and traffickers use romance to coerce teenage girls. The content is written to the Ontario Curriculum for grades 7-9 and PPM 166, and was developed with trafficking survivors, students, victim services staff and game designers.
The work began as a graduate-school project called Say No More, created by Michelle Kwon, Meghan Lazier and Robin Newman, which won a $20,000 Sappi Ideas That Matter grant in 2015 to pilot 500 copies of a card game. It went digital in 2020 under the name That's Sus and was later renamed Likely Story. Newman demoed it at TechTO's Build & Tell hackathon in June 2024, showing an AI chat companion — built during the event — that answers a player's follow-up questions after a scenario and points them at reporting steps and support services. She described the longer goal as a dashboard that shows schools what students are actually asking about.
Backers
Grant-funded rather than venture-backed: Public Safety Canada, Women and Gender Equality Canada, Telus, Sappi Ideas That Matter and an emergency community fund, alongside Ontario victim-services partners.
Quick answers
What is Likely Story?
A game teenagers play in class in anonymous groups, answering scenarios about love, sex and online safety with text or GIFs. It is written to the Ontario Curriculum for grades 7-9 and PPM 166, and built with trafficking survivors, students and victim-services staff.
Who is behind it?
Studio Jayne, with Victim Services Durham Region, Victim Services of Toronto and the Ontario Network of Victim Service Providers. Robin Newman is one of three named creators of the project it grew out of, alongside Michelle Kwon and Meghan Lazier.
Why is a game about relationships a trafficking programme?
Because the scenarios are drawn from how traffickers actually recruit. Victim Services Ontario describes the game as being, on the surface, about awkward romantic situations, while all of the content is based on how pimps and traffickers use romantic relationships to coerce girls into sex trafficking.
Was it always digital?
No. It started in 2015 as a card game called Say No More, funded by a $20,000 Sappi Ideas That Matter grant that paid for 500 copies. The digital version arrived in 2020 as That's Sus, and was later renamed Likely Story.