Ayse Zeynep (Zeina) Tasar

Imagine you are a twelve years old Turkish girl who wants to be an architect. Then, you take a career test, and it tells you that you are more suited for Computer Science. Ignoring the career test, you start designing houses in a game called the Sims. Suddenly, you notice you play the Sims not because you like interior design but because you like computers. You look back and remember your first game, "Basketball", on your parents' Atari 2600, followed by Mario 1995 and Pinball on MS-DOS. You remember the effort you spent to learn how to use the computer to play these games before learning how to read. Soon after, you get introduced to the Final Fantasy series which pulls your interest to Game Development.



After three or four years, you are a high school student. You take summer courses to see if Computer Science is for you and you instantly fall in love with programming. Now you know you can contribute to Game Development as a programmer. In the meanwhile, you also discover your interest in Japanese culture. You graduate from high school and start at the University of Michigan to study Computer Science and Japanese. Through your college years, you play games less and less. You question whether you still want to do Game Development. At some point you consider Software Development but still take courses towards Game Development. Finally, your indecisiveness ends when you take your senior design course on Computer Game Design. You realize that you enjoy entertaining people with your games, sometimes more than playing them. You decided; your career will be on computer games.



So for Masters, you are at Entertainment Technology Center exploring more on Game Design and beyond. You are writing this bio in second-person, to try something different. You say to the reader, "And now you know a little about me."

Educational History

BSE in Computer Science University of Michigan