Paul O'Connor

Paul O'Connor's 20 years in the video game industry began when he created Grimtooth's Traps, the classic pen-and-paper RPG series that is still in circulation today.

Before joining Sammy Studios, Paul served as a producer and senior game designer at Electronic Arts Canada in Vancouver, BC. There, he led game and conceptual design on original properties for EA, such as a character-driven platform game for PlayStation®2, as well as performed design work on an upcoming title from the company's renowned Need For Speed series.

Prior to EA, Paul worked as senior game designer at Oddworld Inhabitants just as that company began conceiving its now renowned franchise. He worked directly with founder Lorne Lanning to develop the Oddworld property, overseeing the design team and helping create characters, venues, story elements and level layout for the series inaugural title Abe's Oddysee. Paul continued his design work on the series' first sequel Abe's Exoddus, and served as a consultant in the development of the Xbox launch title, Munch's Oddysee.

Prior to Oddworld, Paul was a game designer at Alexandria Inc., where he was instrumental in the development of titles for Sega Genesis, SNES and 3DO such as Demolition Man, Sylvester & Tweety Cagey Capers and Izzy's Quest For The Olympic Rings. He was also involved in developing original ideas for "Project X", an asset creation program for Sega of America.

Paul's first years in the industry suited him well to the esoteric design aspects of Sega's project. He spent his years before Alexandria as a freelance game designer, succeeding in creating two published titles; Dragon Wars from Interplay and Alternate Reality: The Dungeon from Datasoft.

Before that he worked at Smith Engineering on a team led by Atari founder and industry legend Nolan Bushnell, creating games for the Atari 2600 toy robot peripheral "Androman". Paul began his video game career at Flying Buffalo, Inc., where he designed the now classic RPG Grimtooth's Traps.

Paul has published hundreds of comic book strips for Malibu Comics Entertainment. He is also a frequent speaker and published writer covering game design and development.

[Source: Sammy Studios Management]