Maru Nihoniho, founder of game design and development company Metia Interactive. Photo / Jason Oxenham.
Maru Nihoniho, founder of game design and development company Metia Interactive. Photo / Jason Oxenham.
THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW Global games developer Maru Nihoniho's wahine toa Guardian Māia is the hero Aotearoa has been waiting for
"Girls don't play games." That's what people say, but it's not the world I see. Half the kids I wagged school with in the 1980s were girls and wewere smashing it. I'm not much of a competitive person but right from the start I wanted to keep going until my initials were at the top of the leaderboard. A few games of Spacies and the fish and chips would be cold by the time I got home.
When I was about 11 or 12, I remember being super-curious and having a look around the side of the machine. I don't know what I expected to see, I was just so intrigued by the graphics, those little pixels moving across the screen and the things you could do with them. How did they make all that happen inside this big box?
Back then, those career choices weren't presented. Even now, there are still very few women in the games industry. I quickly lost interest in school and dropped out part way through Form 6. For the next 14 years, I worked in hospitality and retail, but the whole time I just knew there was something more for me. I just didn't know what.
Guardian Māia's facial structure is based on a 3D scan of Nihoniho's daughter Hine, who works for her mother's company. Image / Supplied
I always used to dream of playing a game with a Māori character in a Māori environment and how cool that would be. My aunties and nannies and Mum were pretty strong and fierce, that's what inspired Guardian Māia. She's a mana wahine to give our girls a down-to-earth, real-life character to play as, rather than a "somebody save me" story of a princess in distress who's been stuck in a tower. It's like, no, she can save everyone herself.
Māia is Guardian of the Forest in a dystopian future where people who survived the "grey death" either became mutants or ran away to live in the hills as Māori did pre-colonisation.
There are creatures like forest trolls and patupaiarehe, who were brought back to life in a bid to save Aotearoa, but it all went wrong. Every year, a monster comes to the pā to take a woman as his wife. One year, he takes Māia's best friend. She goes on a journey to rescue her — only to find out the monster is her dad.
Māia, the Guardian of the Forest, wields a powerful patu in a brutalist dystopian setting softened by Māori patterns and symbols. Image / Supplied
When I first came up with the idea, almost 20 years ago, all I had was a couple of pages with some graphics. I was a bit naive, turning up at these big international conventions and thinking someone would give me a couple of million dollars to develop it. I was literally pitching fresh air. They loved the concept, but no one wanted to back me because I'd never made a game before.
So I put Guardian Māia in the background, cut the story-driven element and ended up making Cube [a 3D puzzle game that was released worldwide on PlayStation Portable]. That did the trick. The experience we've built since then, designing games and coming to understand the market more, has been invaluable. Three or four years ago, we started working on Guardian Māia again; now the prototype just needs a little more polish and then we'll be looking for investors.
O-Rākau 300 is an augmented reality app that takes users inside trench works of the pā and the zig-zag formations of the British and Colonial sap system, and re-enacts the battle. Image / Supplied
I grew up in Christchurch, a little Māori girl in a 99 per cent white school where people couldn't even say my name properly — "We'll just call you Mary." Working with iwi storytellers and te ao Māori is a way to connect to my culture. So I'm making games for kids like me.
My life could have easily gone the wrong way when I was wagging school, kicking the machine to get free credits and hacking phones so I could make free calls. Who knows what that could have led to if I'd stayed on that path?
It was only after making Sparkz for Auckland University in 2013 that I saw the real importance of educating through gaming too. [A fantasy, role-playing computer game, Sparkz uses cognitive behavioural therapy to help adolescents suffering from depression or anxiety. A new version has just been released on mobile.]
Māori Pā Wars: "Summon brave back-up warriors and recruit the Gods as guardians to help you in battle as you face legendary monsters and beasts." Image / Supplied
If we want to reach young people, especially in Aotearoa, then we need to tell stories that are relevant and authentic to them. A lot of young Māori and Pacific kids fail at school because it's not right for them, not because they're dumb and can't learn. There are millions of us around the world who'd rather engage with education in a more interactive, immersive way, and games like these could help stop them falling through the cracks.
— as told to Joanna Wane
Maru Nihoniho (Te Whānau ā Apanui, Ngāti Porou, Ngāi Tahu) founded her games development company, Metia Interactive, in 2003. In 2018, the mother of three was named Māori Entrepreneur of the Year and made Forbes' "Top 50 women in tech" list. A second episode of Guardian Māia as an interactive fiction app goes live for Matariki, alongside a free online game, Guardian Māia Waehere, which incorporates basic coding concepts theguardiangame.com.
On June 17, Nihoniho joins eight other wāhine Māori creatives and thought leaders at Auckland's Civic Theatre for M9, the first in a new event series (see m9aotearoa.co.nz). The theme is "Matariki Rau Mahara – the Power of Reflection".
