“I wasn’t immediately into gaming because at first, I was trying to just understand my environment. But when I started, it connected me to things I’d never known about.”
First, Madehdou played individual games, but as he grew more comfortable, he competed with other people. In this way, video games became an immersive way to navigate a new culture and make friends.
Now he creates space for other young people to bridge their own cultural gaps through his video game production studio. With hopes to diversify the industry and create games representative of the increasingly diverse gamers who may play them, JumpButton Studios is sparking change in an industry that is still overwhelmingly white.
In the five years since JumpButton’s founding, Madehdou and his co-founders have worked to build multiplayer programs and animations to engage the K-12 demographic. Among their latest ventures are…
