Speaking at SIEGE

I haven't been active is quite a while. I suffered a major back injury and had to have surgery. I have been out of work for 2 months but I am going back next week. Good thing, I am going stir crazy.

I will be speaking at the Southern Interactive Entertainment& Game Expo (SIEGE) in early October. I racked my brain trying to think of a good topic and I think I finally came up with something. I wanted to find something unique. My game design position is a bit odd but I feel it allows me to see things other game developers/designers don't get to experience: volume.

Since I became a game designer at Cartoon Network I have worked on over 100 Flash/Shockwave games. I have worked with numerous people/companies on games and I see the same handful of mistakes repeated.

I have helped work out solutions for these issues so now when they come up its an easy fix.

This is not a slight against the companies that make games for CN. These are really smart, talented game developers. Our internal team has made some of these same mistakes but now that i have seen them so many times I recognize them easily and have checks in place so I don't make them from the beginning.

My talk will be these handful of mistakes. What are the mistakes? Why are they made? What are the solutions? I will present examples (not from actual games to conceal the identity of the innocent) of the mistakes and outline the solutions we use.

This talk will be applicable to anyone making Flash games or 2D games.