A Kid In A Refugee Camp Thought Video Games Fell From Heaven. Now He Makes Them
Lual Mayen grew up in a camp in Uganda. Now he's the award-winning CEO of a game development company in Washington, D.C., that has just released 'Salaam' — a game about refugees and peace.
Lual Mayen, a video game developer based in Washington, D.C., remembers the first time he saw a computer. He was just a kid at the time. It was 2007, and his family was registering for benefits at a refugee camp in Uganda, where they'd settled after fleeing civil war in South Sudan.
He didn't tell anyone at first, but in that moment he knew in his heart that he wanted to learn to code, he says. More than a decade later, Mayen is garnering international recognition from Facebook and the global gaming community for an innovative video game that brings players into the life of
