Ben Donatelli
Programmer at Big Distraction
Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Donatelli is a seasoned game-focused programmer with nine years of professional experience building and debugging high-profile titles and engine prototypes. Based in Madison, Wisconsin, he has shipped work at major studios including Raven Software, PUBG Corp, and ZeniMax Online, and currently contributes to indie and studio projects at Big Distraction. He specializes in gameplay systems, questing, and NPC behavior—skills underscored by open-source contributions to the popular Daggerfall Unity project where he fixed dialog, quest, and AI issues in C#. Ben values speed and ergonomics in code and design, favoring practical, playable solutions that improve developer and player workflows. He pairs hands-on engineering with technical design and documentation, having prototyped in Unreal and proprietary engines for unannounced projects. A history BA by training, he brings an unusual blend of narrative sensitivity and systems-first engineering to game development.
9 years of coding experience
15 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts History, Bachelor of Arts History at Principia College
Stackoverflow
845reputation
96kreached
0answers
2questions
Github Skills (12)
game-development10
quest10
csharp10
dotnet-core10
unity3d10
gameplay9
mechanics9
console8
command-line8
css6
google-chrome6
context-menu6
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
Interkarma/daggerfall-unity
Jul 2021 - Aug 2021
Open source recreation of Daggerfall in the Unity engine
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:1 review, 12 commits, 9 PRs in 21 days
Contributions summary:Ben primarily focused on fixing bugs and enhancing the gameplay experience of Daggerfall Unity. Their contributions involved correcting dialog display issues, preventing NPCs from reverting to their home locations, and refining quest behaviors. They also implemented console commands to override NPC behavior and improve NPC interactions, indicating a focus on core gameplay mechanics and debugging. The user demonstrated proficiency in C# and worked extensively within the game's scripting and questing systems.
unity3dunityunity-enginerecreation
mundifex/scoop-games
May 2022 - Jan 2026
Scoop bucket for open source/freeware games and game-related tools
Contributions:32 pushes, 24 branches in 3 years 8 months
gamesgame-relatedfreewarescoop-bucketscoop
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