Daniel Benmergui | |
|---|---|
 Benmergui at the 2018 Gamelab Congreso Videojuegos | |
| Nationality | Argentine |
| Occupation | Game developer |
Daniel Benmergui is an independent game designer from Buenos Aires, Argentina known for the creation of art games such as Today I Die , I Wish I Were the Moon , and Storyteller . [1] [2]
 |
| This section of a biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification .(July 2021) |
Benmergui grew up at his childhood home in a rural area inland in Argentina. Benmergui spent much of his childhood exploring outdoors, and hanging out with much older children from his neighborhood.
Before becoming an independent game developer, Benmergui was a development director at the French mobile game studio Gameloft, managing more than 120 game developers. When asked by Timothy Courtney about his time spent at Gameloft, Benmergui stated "My job was to define and enforce policies on how things are supposed to be done, as well as help with complicated technical problems. I became wiser on how to deal with people, something I am quickly unlearning now!"; Benmergui eventually left his job at a AAA game studio to focus on independent games. Benmergui went on to focus his full-time efforts on I Wish I Were the Moon, calling this time "an emotional revolution".
Between 2008–2009, Benmergui created six games, which most notably included I Wish I Were the Moon, Today I Die, and Storyteller. This was a turning point in Benmergui's career. When asked if he had cycles of creative passion, Benmergui replied "Exactly that: cycles. Sometimes I am productive designing, others programming, others just thinking, and yet others in which I'm not very productive at anything. It is frustrating how at the mercy of our emotional states we are sometimes." [3]
Benmergui is one of the co-heads of the game presentation session Experimental Gameplay Workshop, held yearly at the GDC.
Today I Die was chosen as a finalist for the Nuovo Award at the 2010 Independent Games Festival. [4] His multiple-game package Moon Stories was awarded the Jury Award at Indiecade 2009 [5] and was featured at the Sense of Wonder Night 2008 in Tokyo. [6] Storyteller won the IGF Nuovo award in 2012. [7]
The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, and innovation in video game development by CMP Media, later known as UBM Technology Group, IGF is now owned by Informa after UBM's acquisition.
An indie game, short for independent video game, is a video game typically created by individuals or smaller development teams without the financial and technical support of a large game publisher, in contrast to most "AAA" (triple-A) games. Because of their independence and freedom to develop, indie games often focus on innovation, experimental gameplay, and taking risks not usually afforded in AAA games. Indie games tend to be sold through digital distribution channels rather than at retail due to a lack of publisher support. The term is synonymous with that of independent music or independent film in those respective mediums.
Aether is a video game designed by Edmund McMillen and Tyler Glaiel and published by Armor Games, released on September 3, 2008. Players control a lonely boy and an octopus-like monster that the boy encounters, solving puzzles on different planets to restore them from monochrome to color. The pair travel through space by swinging on clouds and asteroids with the monster's elongated tongue, searching other planets for life to which the boy can relate. It is also a part of The Basement Collection.
Blueberry Garden is a puzzle-platform game. It was developed by Erik Svedäng and released on June 10, 2009 for Microsoft Windows, and on January 24, 2014 for Mac OS X and Linux via Steam. It has a piano soundtrack written by Daduk. It is the winner of Seumas McNally Grand Prize for "Best Independent Game" at the 2009 Independent Games Festival. The game's soundtrack partially inspired that of Minecraft, composed by C418.
Jonatan Söderström, also known as Cactus, is a Swedish video game developer noted for his unusual and innovative games. He is best known as the co-designer and programmer of Hotline Miami (2012) and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (2015), but had prior to those games developed over 40 small freeware games, many of which were reviewed and lauded even in the mainstream video game press. His game Clean Asia! was nominated for both Excellence In Visual Arts and Excellence in Audio at the Independent Games Festival in 2008. In 2010, he won the IGF's Nuovo Award, which honours unconventional game development, for his puzzler Tuning.
Retro/Grade is a video game developed by 24 Caret Games. The game is about ace pilot Rick Rocket, who must repeat his last space battle in reverse in order to protect the space time continuum. The game play is rhythm-based and timed to original music by Skyler McGlothlin. In January 2009, it was nominated for two Independent Games Festival awards: Excellence in Audio and Excellence in Design. In October 2010, it won the Audience Choice Award at IndieCade.
IndieCade is an international juried festival of independent games. Game types include video games, live-action games, and tabletop games. Independent game developers are selected to demo, screen, and promote their work at the annual IndieCade festival and showcase events. IndieCade also includes a conference track featuring classes, panels, workshops, and keynotes. Since 2020, the annual festival has taken place online under the name IndieCade Anywhere & Everywhere.
Farbs is the pseudonym of Jarrad Woods, an indie gamer who gained media attention when he quit his job at gaming firm 2K Australia using a video game. When asked in an interview where the idea had come from to quit via video game, Woods stated "At the time there were a lot of articles touting indie games as a form of expression, and I hate writing so I wanted to express my goodbye to the team in some other way. I had planned to leave for a few months, but the message was more spontaneous".
Today I Die is a short 2008 Flash game created by Argentinian game designer Daniel Benmergui. The game has been classified as an art game and requires the player to pull apart and reconstruct a poem by clicking on a number of words contained within it, changing its narrative meaning piece by piece. Kevin Veale has referred to it as an example of "interactive cinema."
I Wish I Were the Moon is a short Flash game by Argentinian game developer Daniel Benmergui. It has been described as "a short love story told in the form of a puzzle game." The game was, as part of a collection of Benmergui's games, a finalist at the Sense of Wonder Night at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show. The game brought its maker, Benmergui, to international attention.
Proteus is a 2013 exploration and walking simulator video game designed and created by Ed Key and David Kanaga for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita. In the game, the player traverses a procedurally generated environment without prescribed goals. The world's flora and fauna emit unique musical signatures, combinations of which cause dynamic shifts in audio based on the player's surroundings.
Terry Cavanagh is an Irish video game designer based in London, England. After studying mathematics at Trinity College in Dublin, Cavanagh worked briefly as a market risk analyst before focusing on game development full-time. Many of his titles share a primitive, minimalist aesthetic. He has created over two dozen games, most notably VVVVVV, Super Hexagon, and Dicey Dungeons. He is credited as a programmer for Alphaland, a platform game by Jonas Kyratzes.
Simogo is a Swedish independent video game developer based in Malmö. The company was founded in 2010 and is best known for creating games for mobile devices, including Year Walk and Device 6. Its name comes from the name of its founders Simon (SIM), and Gordon (GO); the 'O' from the Swedish word "och" meaning "and".
Adam Saltsman, also known as Adam Atomic, is an American indie video game designer best known for creating the endless runner Canabalt. He is a founder of Semi Secret Software and Finji video game studios.
Hundreds is a puzzle video game where players touch circles to make them grow without overlapping. In the game's 100 levels, the player interacts with different types of circles to bring a counter to the number 100. The game was developed and published by Semi Secret Software in collaboration with Greg Wohlwend and was released for iOS on January 7, 2013, and on Android later that year.
Girls' video games are a genre of video games developed for young girls, mainly in the 1990s. The attempts in this period by several developers to specifically target girls, which they considered underserved by a video games industry mainly attempting to cater to boys' tastes, are also referred to as the "girls' games movement."
Renga is a shoot 'em up video game developed and published by British studio wallFour. Designed for movie theaters for up to one hundred players, players are given laser pointers and are tasked with cooperatively building and defending a space ship. It was showcased at 2012's Indiecade, where it won the Developers Choice Award.
GIRP is a 2011 rock-climbing simulator Flash game by Australian game developer Bennett Foddy. It is a sequel to his 2008 game QWOP. GIRP was nominated for the Nuovo award for innovative games at the 2012 Independent Games Festival, but lost out to Daniel Benmergui's Storyteller.
Storyteller is a puzzle video game designed by Daniel Benmergui and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game was released on March 23, 2023 for Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch, and was released on September 26, 2023 for iOS and Android via Netflix.
The Nuovo Award or Innovation Award is an award given at the Independent Games Festival (IGF), an annual event that takes place during the Game Developers Conference, one of the largest gatherings of the indie video game industry. The award is given to honor "abstract, shortform, and unconventional game development which advances the medium and the way we think about games". The award was designed as a way for art games to compete with traditional indie games, and the winner was originally selected from a group of finalists and given a prize of US$2,500. The prize money was increased to US$5,000 in 2011 due to the increased quality of the entries.
 | This biographical article relating to a video game specialist is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |