Delivered At:

BCN Game Fest 2025

Games for Growth – How to Leave Your Players Better off than you Found Them.

Games are already a force for change, but it’s essential that we intentionally direct that change positively. This talk outlines the strategies and possibilities of creating games that actually benefit your players and their communities.

Major Takeaways:

• The psychological triggers that make game experiences stick in real life.
• A practical framework for embedding prosocial elements into any game genre, without sacrificing fun.
• Critical design pitfalls that can harm players (even in “harmless” genres) and how to avoid them.
• How successful “impact games” scaled individual growth into community-wide change.

Delivered At:

Barcelona Game Creators – May 2025

Educational Gamification – Teaching Positive Messages to Children

We are all influenced by what we consume but children are especially vulnerable to messaging. How do we design games that encourage children to learn, without resorting to dark patterns?

Major Takeaways:

• Children learn how to understand and tell stories from a very young age. This is a key pathway to retaining information.
• Reward curiosity, not just achievement. Novelty, discovery and surprise are just as (If not more) rewarding to children as currencies.
• Blending Digital and Physical mediums keeps kids engaged, whilst respecting healthy screen-time limits.
• Providing pathways for positive brand influence & messaging allows smaller children’s brands to keep up with the bigger titles.

Delivered At:

Barcelona Game Creators – Feb 2025

Game Design Patterns – Critiquing Your Own Creative Strategy

This talk explores the origins of creative ideas, how to identify when design patterns you use aren’t working, and how to improve your creative techniques.

Major Takeaways:

• Understanding where your ideas come from and how they can be influenced.
• How to break down & define a “Design Pattern”.
• How to consciously grow your own design skills and toolkit.