Here are the slides from my GDC 2012 talk:

Huge thanks to the Games for Change team for asking us along - you can check their write-up of the summit here. For those lucky enough to have access to the awesomeness that is the GDC Vault you can also see a video-cast here.

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We make fun games, with a purpose. They are often a direct response to a brief or commissioning opportunity, linked to learning or communication objectives and targeted to specific audiences. If you think that sounds boring, you are wrong! It’s awesome.

One of my all time design heroes Raph Koster tweeted this earlier in the year:

I love this quote. Its now my favourite way to describe what WE do - 'games that are about something'.

A fair proportion of our games are commissioned by broadcasters, educators and not-for-profit organisations, such as the BBC, Turner, Channel 4, Wellcome Trust, Tate and the Science Museum. The 'about' in these games is the history, the science, the learning message - essentially the communication objective of the project - and all our games, start with it.

This post captures some thoughts on our approach to creating games that fuse a project's objectives into the ...

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Here are my slides from Friday's World of Love. I spotted a bit of a debate over on RPS - for those in any doubt, I'm talking about *free* online games people!

Huge thanks to David (+ Nicholas) for asking me along and all the other speakers and listeners. I don't think I've hung out with such a friendly bunch for a long time!

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Last month the Preloaded development team got a lucky three days away from the office and were dispatched to Brighton to attend Flash On The Beach 2010. I’ve attended every year so far and I was very keen to see if the event would live up to the standard I’ve seen in previous years. In the build up to the event, it seemed that some of the conference regulars were dipping out this year, as they didn’t think it could offer them anything new. This enabled a lot of fresh blood to attend which was nice to see and as ever, the event was completely sold out!

(photo © All rights reserved by Marc Thiele)

Day 1 got off to a great start with the Adobe keynote session (we shall FINALLY get code hinting in Flash Builder) and for the first year so far, I remembered to take ...

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Now in its seventh year, the Children's Media Conference has just taken place in Sheffield, city of steel. I attended for the first time this year, with the expectation of meeting industry players, attending some engaging talks and get more of an overview of the state of the industry as it stands now.

The Children's Media Conference is aimed at everyone involved in media for children, but whereas the spotlight used to be broadcast focused, digital has become central to the majority of debate and discussion being heard, to various degrees of understanding and engagement.

The first day brought with it a number of workshops designed to encourage discussion and stimulate creative solutions. Monetising digital platforms was one area discussed as well as the almost ubiquitous conference inclusion, the crossover lab, facilitating creative ideas and culminating with pitches being made to commissioners on the last day. I went ...

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