Sam Butin is a storyteller working in the video game industry and extended reality (XR). His past work includes the historical video game 1979 Revolution: Black Friday (a British Academy Film Awards nominee, South by Southwest Gaming Award nominee, The Game Awards nominee, and Facebook Game of the Year winner), HERO (a Sundance Film Festival official selection and Tribeca Film Festival Storyscapes winner), and Fire Escape: An Interactive Narrative Series (an official selection at the New York, Tribeca, and Vancouver International Film Festivals). He has developed original stories for partners, including Google, Verizon, Eko, and the Brown Institute.
Butin is the founder and creative director of On The March, a gaming studio opening windows for players to peer into untold history.
He is currently working on Normandie: A Documentary Video Game about his ancestor’s immigration story as Jewish refugees aboard the final voyage of the SS Normandie in 1939. Normandie is created in partnership with Games For Change, the Claims Conference, and Reboot.
Selected Work
- Normandie: A Documentary Video Game: A narrative video game that recreates the final voyage of the SS Normandie in late August of 1939, from the perspective of the Dreifuss family, Swiss-Jews, as they flee the European continent.
- Technicolor: An immersive, interactive web story that embeds players into the surreal world of an Alzheimer’s patient living in an assisted care facility during the first wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
- Fire Escape: A neo-Hitchock murder mystery set in Brooklyn. When the clock strikes eight, a suspenseful thriller begins to unfold in real time. Watch closely from the fire escape as your suspicious neighbors embroil you in a simmering, interactive crime.