Maru Nihoniho


Maru Nihoniho is the founder and managing director of Metia Interactive, she's also the designer and developer of several games, included the game Sparx. Born in New Zealand in 1972, she's not a newcomer in currently booming tech scene.

Education

In 2017, Maru Nihoniho finished her master's degree in Technological Futures with the Tech Futures Lab.

Career

Maru Nihoniho played games since the age of 11.
After one year of multimedia course, in 2003, she found the Metia Interactive company, which produces games to help depressed young people and represents Māori culture all around the world. Her company released the PlayStation Portable game, Cube in 2007.
After Cube, she was approached by the University of Auckland to develop a self-help game for depression of Māori people and people of other ethnic groups in New Zealand. This game, Sparx, is based on cognitive behaviorial therapy and it's released in 2013.
In 2017, during her last year at Tech Futures Lab, she develops, as key project, Takaro, a game about education and focus for young people.
She develops several games about Māori culture such as Guardian Maia, the last one, her goal was to introduce this culture to outsiders.

Awards

She was named Innovator of the year in the 2017 MCV Pacific Women in Games Awards, presented by Xbox.
She won the New Zealand Order of Merit 2016 for her work in gaming and mental health, and was 2018's Māori Entrepreneur of the Year 2018.
She's in the top 50 women in Tech 2018 by Forbes.