Asema Hassan is a highly successful game developer from COMSATS Islamabad who has now created a video game to target dementia and neuro-degenerative diseases.
Nowadays, video games have now been greatly used to impart knowledge to a large group of individuals through an innovative platform. With the sheer versatility of this platform, various news forms of content have been created to target audiences and help make the lives of individuals better. Quite recently, a Pakistan game developer had decided to use this platform to make her own video games to fight memory loss.
Asema Hassan developed video games to target dementia and neuro-degenerative diseases. She creates video games that can be used to improve education, promote personal growth, and build communities. A Master’s Degree recipient in Computer Science at COMSATS University in Islamabad, she had developed over 35 educational games by the time she moved to Germany for another Master’s degree in Digital Engineering and specializing in ArtificialIntelligence and Virtual Reality programming (which she does for a living for DZNE, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases).
Her parents heavily prioritized on education founded a school in their village in Azad Kashmir after they lost their jobs in Kuwait at the time of the Gulf-War (1990–1991) and had returned home. This is where her focus on education sprung up and was noted to have said: “Never give up, no matter how hard the situation gets, keep moving forward. Enjoy every step of your journey towards a goal. But remember once, you have reached a goal you will look for another one. It’s a natural human tendency to evolve and grow with time and circumstances”.
Other major contributions for Asema includes co-founding the International Game Developers’ Association (IGDA) Pakistan in 2018as a way tobuild a community network for game developers in Pakistan. She is also currently an Advisor and International Representative of IGDA Pakistan and offers mentorship and assistance to Pakistani game developers to create a viable career path in games. Moreover, she is also working with Pakistani Women in Computing (PWiC) to establish PWiC Europe — Berlin Chapter.Asema wants women to remove their fear of heading into game development and said that: “It is tough for women, but you have to stay focused on what you want. Keep learning and keep improving yourself. Find someone to support and push you”.
