Empower your teams to communicate effectively, deliver engaging presentations and finish their projects on time.
In games development, you need to be able to speak confidently. Meetings, presentations, pitches, conferences and PR events all require this basic skill.
If you’re an introvert, you’ll know that this doesn’t come easily. I know this because I am one (I worked as a level designer at Criterion, Sony Cambridge and Argonaut).
I deliver transformative and effective training to create successful and confident communicators, at companies including Creative Assembly, Rare and Sumo. The Develop conference use me to coach their speakers each year.
My training isn’t your boring, run-of-the-mill, death by PowerPoint; it’s direct, fun and meaningful. People actually request to attend and are often surprised by how the time flies by. I instantly connect with games developers, making the training highly effective.
Becoming A Confident Communicator
I will push your team gently out of their comfort zone and dramatically upgrade their speaking confidence.
After the training they will be in control of their audience, whether that’s a group of 200 people or a 1-1 with their manager.
If you want to help your team get ahead by learning the lessons I did from being an introverted gamer to a confident speaker, get in touch.
Contact me at [email protected] or on 07799 628536.
My training is delivered for groups of six people, in-person or online.
“I think communication is the single most important skill in a team. Most people I meet in the workplace don’t know how to praise, reprimand, encourage, listen, sell, or apologise.
If you can’t do those things well it doesn’t really matter how good you are at your craft as you are so limited in your interactions with others.Jamie Walker, Rocksteady Co-Founder
Being good at what you do is important but to be great at what you do you need to be a great communicator.”
A few of my favourite clients:
The Team
Jon Torrens – Writer
Creating concise, compelling material can be a real challenge, but one I help teams to tackle with ease, by teaching them my method of writing the first draft of any talk in just twenty minutes.
I love good slides, but only if they actually serve the speaker. If the slides become the focus, it can unnecessarily consume a speaker’s preparation time. I’ll show your team how to quickly create a slidedeck, too.
Jon Torrens – Coach
I’m an introvert. I connect with game developers because I was one of them: someone for whom sharing their thoughts and ideas confidently doesn’t come naturally.
I open up; I use my nerd credentials to connect with your team, then I show them the shortcuts I learnt as stand-up comic. It’s a powerful combination: fast, effective and actually rather good fun.
Jon Torrens – Performer
I can be a show-off, too.
I use directness, spontaneity and humour to make every aspect of each training useful, from on-the-spot observations to analyzing any challenges we encounter. Everything’s a lesson.
Lectures don’t work. Interactive, experiential learning is how I do it. Much better.
Testimonials
‘I was so impressed by Jon’s approach and techniques when I was part of a group session he gave, that I decided I should invest in myself (a very modest sum) and have a couple of 1-2-1 sessions with him, to try and improve my presentations skills, and I’m so glad I did.
You’ve probably read articles and watched videos. All well and good, but Jon’s talent is to observe and advise you based on your specific shortcomings – even the issues you never noticed were affecting you – and then coach a better performance out of you. Fun and informal sessions, but they really helped with my confidence and my technique. Can’t recommend him enough, and incredible value considering the relative size of the contracts I often pitch for.’
Andrew Crawshaw – Creative Director/Founder. Thunkd Games Ltd
‘Jon is a world-class coach, presenter and teacher. We’ve used him many times on our work helping games studios improve their pitch and investor engagement. Most recently he joined our Games London Accelerator to spend time giving feedback, tips and encouragement to a cohort of new games studios. His advice and knowledge is universal for all participants and industries – but his games knowledge and experience was naturally of great use to us too. I heartily recommend him!’
Michael French – Head of Games London
Really recommend Jon. He helped us last year for an internal conference with a lot of first time speakers.Jon helped prepare the speakers with practical and easy to implement advice. Not easy to do, and they really benefited from his experience in the way he was able to quickly narrow down what would make the biggest difference for the presenter to work on. His friendly and credible delivery made him really popular with the delegates. He also did an internal talk for us about pitching and presenting,which launched our internal series of learning videos and sharing knowledge. We look forward to working with Jon again at Sumo Group
Ben Hughes – Global Learning & Development Manager, Sumo Group
‘During preparation for the workshop, Jon was insightful, enthusiastic and professional and we knew we’d got the right person to help prepare our people. The attendees of the workshop itself had nothing but praise for Jon’s work and the increase in their confidence was evident.’
Chris Smith – Head of Product Delivery at Redgate Software
‘Jon has delivered a number of sessions to members of staff at Creative Assembly and the feedback has been fantastic. He has a very relaxed style, which makes the most nervous of presenters feel more comfortable and ready to give it a go. What is also great for us is that Jon has some background in games dev, so he gets CA. Having initially engaged with Jon to deliver a couple of sessions he is now our go-to trainer for presentation skills. I would highly recommend him!’
Isabelle Labonte – Learning and Development Partner, Creative Assembly
‘I had heard of Jon Torrens a few years before I finally bit the bullet and decided to see what Public Speaking was all about for myself.
When I submitted my application to do a talk at Develop Brighton 2023, I wasn’t sure I was going to be accepted. I simply trusted the process. It was a wonderful surprise to find out that I was accepted! With such an exciting task ahead of me, I knew I had to get ready.
Thankfully, Develop provided mentoring for first-time speakers. Jon Torrens provided mentoring to me, and other programmer speakers in the run-up to Develop.
I drank all of his knowledge and came out stronger on the other end. Jon is charismatic, funny, calm, patient and gave us essential tips to engage in public speaking. The lessons I learned in that short session are lessons I will carry on with me forever. Simple acts have tremendous power.
My Develop Brighton 2023 talk on Sustainable Coding was a huge success. On the back of it I was invited to do a talk at UNWRAP 2023 in Kortrijk, Belgium. I was within the same country as the fabled Baldur’s Gate 3 developers, Larian Studios. In fact, I witnessed where Larian was reborn. The very same University that invited me to do a talk.
As a young teenager, games were all I had to pass the time. I can trace the line clearly from the moment I started playing Baldur’s Gate, to the moment I witnessed a modern studio reimagine the IP and achieve phenomenal, tremendous, and certainly well deserved, success.
In the process, I have inspired, I have spoken directly to programming students, and I can only say the talk at UNWRAP went even better than the talk at Develop. A more refined, more confident version of the same talk, yet, different in many ways.
When I look back and think, who unlocked in me the potential, it was Jon. If you are keen on public speaking or know anyone who might be, I strongly recommend Jon Torrens.’
Geraldo Nascimento – Lead Programmer at Lively
