Daniel Benmergui

Last month I took a trip to Los Angeles to attend Indiecade, an independent game developer/artist festival that grows bigger each year. I Wish I Were the Moon, Today I Die and Storyteller were picked as finalists (packed as “Moon Stories”), together with lots of very good games like Osmos, Closure and Tuning.

It was a four day event, comprised of several lectures, presentations and social events. A quite varied (albeit small) audience attended, but the greatest takeaway from the event was the opportunity to meet up with other indies and industry celebrities in an intimate environment. GDC has grown far to large to be able to offer this, so I was very happy to discover that the trip to Indiecade exceeded all my expectations on this front.

So I am grateful towards the organizers for making all possible efforts to get me there, and even host me for one of the nights. I definitely recommend attending this event if you are looking for a reason why being indie is so much better than the mainstream industry.

Some highlights:

VIP Opening Party

The first night a party was thrown that featured food, drinks, and all finalists presenting their games in 3:12 minutes each:

Indiecade 2009 Awards

Moon Stories received the “Jury Award”! In this picture: John Sharp, Brenda Braithwaite, me and Jonathan Blow.

Brenda Braithwaite, Eddy (Osmos), Tyler (Closure), and Andy (Osmos).

Closing Party
Last night of the event Robin Hunicke boldly invited the whole bunch of us to a closing party at her place, which was one of the best thing that happened during this trip. Robin is the ultimate social hub of the industry:

All in all, I very happy to have attended this event and made me feel even more confident about the future of the indie universe.