Daniel Benmergui

This page has information on the background of Daniel Benmergui.

I’m doing this since I’ve been asked a few times for this information, and I discovered myself writing the same thing over and over again, forgetting something relevant each occasion. Instead of including every little thing I’ve done so far, I decided to make a list of what I consider important, in no particular order:

I am an independent developer

Right now I’m learning to create expressive, experimental games; most of them can be found at my blog, Ludomancy, but here are some highlights:

I Wish I Were the Moon (Gamasutra’s pick as “Best indie of 2008″)
Storyteller (selected for the Sense of Wonder Night in the Tokyo Game Show 2008)
Hunter RPG (selected for the Experimental Gameplay Workshop at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco)

I chose Flash as my current development platform for commercial reasons, but I used to work on different platforms (J2ME, Java, C++).

I was Studio Programmer Lead at Gameloft

Gameloft is a sister company to Ubisoft that leads the world mobile gaming market. I started the Buenos Aires studio when the company opened it, from being in a team of 3 to be the lead of 120 programmers.

I learned a lot about how large companies operate, but eventually quit to pursue my independent life. I was very highly regarded by the company, and left on happy terms.

I am a board member of ADVA (Argentinian Game Developers Association)

I organized CODEAR, an international contest for game developers for 5+ years, and I am a regular speaker on game development events. I co-founded the association.

Academic

I studied Computer Science in the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA). I was a teacher there for a year, and collaborated with a large, multidisciplinary research project.