Creator of Digital Worlds

Maru Nihoniho (Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāi Tahu) is the founding CEO of game development studio, Metia Interactive. She is the designer and developer of several games for companies like Nintendo, PlayStation, and Xbox.

Maru first fell in love with “spacies” at her local fish n chips shop. There was a takeaway shop around the corner from her home in Spreydon in Christchurch where she became fascinated with not only playing the arcade games but also how the machines worked. This curiosity stuck with her over the years and was one of the driving forces behind her move into the world of video gaming.

Metia has a strong focus on interactive storytelling and designing games with meaningful learning objectives. With a portfolio of original and third party developed projects, Metia delivers games across multiple platforms from commercial titles through to educational and health-based game initiatives.

Metia was behind the development of SPARX a self-help e-therapy tool that teaches young people the key skills needed to help combat depression and anxiety. It is available for free online through the Prime Minister’s Youth Mental Health Project.

Metia is an award-winning studio with their games receiving the United Nations World Summit Award for Cube in 2009, the United Nations World Summit Award for SPARX in 2011 and another international award for SPARX the UNESCO Netexplo award in 2013. 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. In 2017, Maru Nihoniho finished her master’s degree in Technological Futures with the Tech Futures Lab.
She’s in the top 50 women in Tech 2018 by Forbes.

So how did Maru turn her passion into her career? This is her journey from playing space invaders at the fish ‘n’ chip shop to becoming an award-winning game developer.

Maru Nihoniho – Indigenous 100.