Susan what we are looking at is a videogame you have produced. With the title salaam. What is the premise of this game . Lual the purpose of the game is in my journey and in the gaming industry, i realized that video games are a powerful tool to bring communities together and also to create empathy and to help people understand the war crisis. When i created this, theres a lot of people that do not understand who refugees are and what actually it takes them to become refugees. So this is a game that help people understand the journey to being a refugee. So you take them to a peaceful environment. And also in the game, we do not identify which one is a peaceful environment. Its not a country. But its a place where you can have a place of peace, a place of refuge. A place where you can have peace of mind. The most important thing that in the game you take a character from the war country, from a place like theres a lot of hardship on their way, their journey, because a lot of people dont understand what the journey is. So you have to give them water. You have to give them medicine all the hardship for you to win the game. Susan so who do you hope will play your game . Lual the video Game Industry is defined by people allowed to play games, people that actually take decision to be able to say, hey, i want to play this game because of this. When i started creating salam its to create awareness. Awareness to all the people in the world. It doesnt have a limitation as long as you understand what it means to be a refugee. High School Students can play the game, anybody can play the game as long as you understand and love the game. Susan how do people access it . Lual its coming in the summer in 2020. It is going to be on instinct game. There will be a platform where you can play the game instantly. You can use a computer. You can use your phone. You play instantly. So im really so excited. Its a platform that has almost 700 million players right now. So were excited to publish the game. Susan we have some stats that we have about the video Game Industry. And there are big numbers. First of all, it is estimated that 2. 5 billion gamers around the world, in the u. S. , 164 million. Thats about a population of 330 the global videogame revenue, in 2018, 139 billion and 72 are using their mobile phone in order to access it. Thats a huge market that youre tapping into. How do you make your way in an industry that is that large . Lual that was my biggest reaction when i was making video games and taking a different path of like making games for peace and conflict resolution making game for such an impact. When i started this journey, wanted to create something thats going take me to where i am today but my main focus was i wanted to create Something Different in the game. Because this is an industry that grow every day. We have young people that play the game. The most important part of the industry it is not like the movie industry when people play games you make a decision. Its empathy. Its not like sitting on your couch and watch a movie. When you play a game, you make a decision. One example i always tell people is that when you play a game with your friend and your friend kill your character, you dont tell your friend why did you kill your character . It becomes part of you. This industry really brings people together. We can use the same industry to tell people about the crisis in the world because games are amazing. People can make decisions. It is part of empathy. I feel like for me to find myself in the industry like this, when i wanted to go in 2018 was because the industry created something new which was actually the last people that are using the part of game to bring about positive change in our communities because this is something that is needed. This is something a lot of people talk every day like, hey, games are not good. Games promote violence. But we can use this medium as a tool of change. Its not just change in terms of playing the game but a different kind of game. When you look at my game salaam it is the first game that is about the reality on the ground. And what i mean by that is that when a player buy food in the game for your character to survive and when you buy water in the game for your character to drink and survive and run over like this, the Long Distance for them to go to this to go to their final destination, youre buying someone in the refugee food and medicine and water. So its not just like playing the game. Its more than that. Susan its helping people . Lual yeah. Susan you rightly mentioned how critical people are that dont play games, theyre a negative power. It seems to be action and violence that attracts gamers to a game. How you do hope to attract the attention for people to play the game when you dont have so much violence . When you dont have anger in it . What will bring people to your game . Lual first of all, the story of the game. When youre designing the game you need to have what is your mission . What is your mission and what is your target audience . Were defined by people who like to play the game. Its like a roleplaying game where you know the story and what is your purpose in playing the game . So the stories are really important in every game. Because its the best way of storytelling. When someone like when a kid plays the game, they will really understand is hey, what i learn today is play a game of refugees to see some of the difficulties that refugees go through and what can i be able to play, what control i be able to play as a player, to be part of that, to be able to get them from a war country to a peaceful environment . And one of the things that people dont understand is that even in critical wars, everywhere we make decisions on the refugees because we dont really understand who they are. Some people will say were you a refugee . I was a refugee. What they dont understand is the journey i went through to become a journey to become a refugee. Its the story of making people aware that of the story that refugee got through. Someone can play today and in the next 10 years theyre going to be in power and when theyre making decisions the game might help them to really understand what the journey of a refugee is. It is more about giving information and the story of the game. Susan when i thought about the game its not only the refugee experience but how to solve problems without conflict. How do you approach conflict resolution in the game . Lual we have a design part on the fly where things popup in the game. For example how you do resolve this conflict. The question will be asking you like which country do you think is going through conflict. And then you can choose. What role can you be able to do as a person to be able to resolve that conflict . It brings somebody into an understanding of what role can they play . Because people think about conflict as like maybe south sudan or yemen are going through conflicts. But what can we do as an individual to be able to understand conflict resolution . And thats why some universities are how we can utilize the games to be able to bring people on the table and play the games. Susan are you a real pioneer in this area of games for good, or is there a Thriving Community of people thinking about that . Lual there is a Gaming Community in the game. Sometimes we call them serious game. Its a big community. And we really want to make sure the community is like getting there. We are game for good like action game, theres like role playing games. We are not really huge in the industry. Were kind of like coming up because the other part is most of the game the other question people ask me game for good and you make money. You want to seek funding. And thats why i as a company i had to come up with the company which is like a Business Company to make sure that making game for good and youre also able to sustain the company to make more games. So its like the business part of it is actually its not making us to thrive a lot as the game for good community. Susan you had quite a path from running your company to your beginning. I want to spend some time and have you tell your story. Where were you born . Lual i was born in a place called ashua. Its between south sudan and uganda. Its on the side of south sudan, actually, thats were i was born. My parents had to flee country because of the war. Susan they fled south sudan . Lual more than 250 miles to northern uganda. They didnt know what they were going. They were just going through the bush to flee toward a mile walking every day. My father had to take a different road and my mother had to take a different road with my sibling because during that time when a woman is fleeing at the same time with her husband and to find them on the way they will kill all of them or the husband. So my father had to take a different road. My mother had to take care of my of the children and thats how i lost two of my sisters. Susan two of them died enroute. And your mother was pregnant with you . Lual and my mother was pregnant with me. There was a lot of people that were all fleeing at the same time. There were massacres. It was not easy. And for them there were just closing in the bush going through ambush, going through there was contaminated water, like going through the grass, you know, going through the rebar. It was not easy for them and there was no food. I remember like my mom told me even the day she was giving birth, like she didnt even know. She didnt even eat no food in the evening, she gave birth to me. And like it was not easy. It was like the worst moment of her life. Nobody was taking care of her and the child was born. Like, it was outside, like in the bush and so on. And what really gave her a lot was she was not like the only woman theres a lot of women. And she told me like, even some women threw out their children because they dont want them to suffer. When i was born she said i was so strong. She was like, im not going to do anything to him. Im not going to throw him. Im going to keep him because it because may be it was a gift to me. It was not easy being a refugee people think its something where you just wake up in the morning and leave what you love. Its a hell of a journey. Its a journey of death and life. Its a journey of like youre traumatized. You dont know what youre doing. You dont know where youre going. You dont know what to eat. You dont know like you just count your days until you reach that place ashua was born and moved to the refugee camp and that is where they got some humanitarian assistance. Susan and where was the refugee camp they were in . Lual it was called mungali in northern uganda. My father meet up there. And the u. N. Helped them give them some tents. And start a family there. And then they start like, you know, living there. And it became part of their life. Susan how large was that refugee camp . Lual it was really big. It was a big community. I would say its like i really dont know exactly how many people but its a big community. Its really big. Susan what are your early earliest memories of the refugee camp . Lual my earliest memories, to me i would say maybe when i was 7 because when i was born and on the way i was so weak i couldnt really remember anything. I was even at the age of five i didnt know i was living. There was no food as a child. There was no it was so hard. Some of the memories i remember was struggling to get food, struggling to like to find something to play with as children. And and like food was the biggest issue. I remember like i would wake up in the morning around 8 00 a. M. Go to the bush so that we can go and get some fruits to eat. And you like there was a river near and there was some fish, so you can get fish in the water. So youre struggling to find something to survive. And it was really dangerous. You can go to the bush and theres a lot of wild animals there. You go to the river, theres like crocodile and they were like really dangerous things. As children we couldnt care because we didnt wanted to like find something to eat because thats how we can survive. When you come back home you only have one meal in the day and its not enough. You wake up in the morning and you go back out and i remember the worst memory i ever had was when i went and my friend to the bush to find some mango fruits. And i climbed the mango tree. And my friend climbed as well. And when i got my mango tree, my and when i got my mango tree, i came down and my friend was still up. He fall from a mango tree. And he hit his head on this and died on the spot. And that is like the worst memory i can remember as a child because just we wanted food to eat and that food ended up killing my friend. And i came back home and i told people and what happened the next day, i went back on the same mango tree get fruit because i dont have another option. If anybody see yesterday it was like the worst day i still went back. So our refugee camp its more than what people think. Its its its not fun. Its not nobody deserves to be there. But for people that have left their country, they deserve to be there because when i was in the refugee camp, it was my great moment when you looked at me in the refugee camp, i was happy because thats all i can be contented with. Thats the only life that i knew. Theres not any other life more than i know. Susan was there schooling for children . Lual there was school where they teach you like and teachers are not well trained. Some of them speak dinka. And some of them speak english. And even for us we would have no inspiration to go to school because what are you going to do when you go to school in theres and theres no way theyre going teach you because its not a well its not a good school actually. Susan so tell me the story of how a computer came into your life . Lual yeah. I remember when i was actually in the refugee camp, i was so creative more than anything. Thats the thing that help me a lot. And i will do anything that anything creative. And people in the refugee camp would like it. I remember i would i would use batteries use batteries from a torch and i would connect the whole at least 10 houses with a flight lights. And people loved it. I was so creative a lot. Susan where do you think that creativity came from . Lual maybe from my mother. My mother was also like so creative. But again when you are living in a lot of situation, it caused you do be so creative. Sometimes it happens. Susan so the story of the computer came about how . Lual the story of the computer was there was a refugee registration. People wanted verification. And during that time, they send people maybe from kampala or from United Nation and they were giving out computers. We were in the line and i saw someone was using the laptop. I told my mother, what is that . And they were like, thats a laptop . And i was like, how did you even know it . She has never been to school. And she was like thats a computer. In my heart i was like i want to use that one day. Like i just that moment i saw it, i felt like i really wanted to use it. And i kept it to myself. One day i came to my mother and i said i need buy a computer. Susan how old were you . Lual that was 2010. So maybe 17. Yeah, thats like 2010. And i told her like i need a computer. And she was like, what are you going to do with a computeer . Theres no money. Theres no power for you to charge it. Theres no one to train you with a computer. First of all, why are you asking for a computer . I just asked what i love. And because shes a mother, she she was like, its fine. She kept quiet. She did not disappoint me. She did not say this is not happening. She just kept quiet. And she went to work so hard for like three years looking for 300 to buy for me a computer. She didnt tell me, hey, lual im going to work to buy you a computer. Susan she surprised you. Lual she surprised me. Yeah, the day she brought to she brought the money and said, lual this is money to buy a computer is the day that changed my life. Because i thought how did you get the money . And and again, if i dont use it and then theres no power theres nobody going train me so what am i going to do with it . And to me i asked myself if i dont utilize it and then one day my two brothers are going ask my mother for Something Special in my life and even lual asked me a computer and he never used it. Its like what im going to do is going to affect my brothers. So it was a moment that was a moment for me to see what can i do with this. Susan so how do you overcome the problems of not having power . Lual if my mother can walk 250 miles to serve us, how about me if she can work three years looking for 300. How about me . I can still do it. From there, i found out that theres a place where i can charge my laptop. It is like three hours away from it is like a center there, an internet cafe. Its like the u. N. Center and they have internet cafe and its called best comment so i walked three hours one way and three hours coming back to charge my laptop. I was excited because i found a solution to be able to charge my laptop. So i would walk there every day. Sometime i would find out theres no power. But its fine. I would come back home. Charge my laptop. And then i started getting tutorials so i can be able to learn how to use basic computer programs. Yeah. Susan youre native language is dinka. But the computer is mostly english. How did you teach yourself english in order to learn to use the computer . Lual i had to learn get tutorials online. Learn some english. It was the biggest struggle. So i had to really focus a lot and utilizing knowing english, knowing math, and also using online tutorials so i can be able to read and also practice them. Susan and when was the first time that you encountered on that computer a video game . Lual that was 2016 actually. So i went to an internet cafe, the same internet cafe. And then my friend installed a video game called grand theft auto. Susan grand theft auto. A very violent game. Lual yeah. So i came back home. And i followed the icon on my laptop. Im like what is this . This is something new. I never had it. And then i clicked on it, and then it opened. And i was like, wow, what is this . And then i went to see how to play the game. I got a tutorial on how to play the game. Then i start training myself how to play the game. I never thought even video games are made from people. I just thought they fell from heaven because i didnt know anything about the industry. So when i played the game thats when i got the inspiration to actually make video games. Susan so you played the game and then you said, i can do this. Lual i played the game. To play grand theft auto, i was like wow as someone who has been through war as someone who has been from south sudan because my country is a country that has over 73 of the population is under the age of 30. These are all young people. They were raised up in war. So the mindset even in a refugee camp is to think about war. So when i was playing grand theft auto, i thought how about this team from south sudan starts playing video games . Not because it is too violent but in my country its the same thing, killing people and you feel like this is how things are done. And im like how about creating