Hi, I’m Ara Sagharian.
I’m a Year 12 IB Diploma student at Upper Canada College in Toronto. I make stats-driven sports and strategy games, design graphics, and work on genocide education and human rights.
Making games
I’ve spent years inside sports sims: ZenGM leagues, MLB The Show, fantasy hockey and basketball. The games I kept wanting were the ones that took the details seriously, where a player’s mood or a pitcher’s spin rate actually changes what happens. So I started making them.
I design the systems, and the code is written with AI, using Claude. My job is the part a player feels: the rules, the odds, what a screen shows and what it hides, and whether it’s fun. Then I test everything by simulation, from 400,000 simulated nations to tens of thousands of soccer matches, and by real players, who catch what simulation can’t. When someone on Reddit went $35M over budget in Major Soccer GM and won the Cup without getting fired, that became a fix the same week.
Advocacy and research
On December 9, 2025, the UN’s International Day of the Victims of Genocide, I partnered with the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, a division of the Zoryan Institute, to bring its genocide education program to my school. The event drew coverage from international publications as a model for student-led advocacy.
Since then, I’ve petitioned Ontario’s Ministry of Education to make the Armenian Genocide a mandatory part of the provincial curriculum, and spent six months on independent research into why genocide is one of the hardest crimes to prove, advised by Dr. Andrew Matschiner of Chapman University. I volunteer as a social media designer for the Zoryan Institute, and I completed Georgetown University’s Law Academy in 2026.
Design
I taught myself design, one layer at a time. Over several years I’ve made hundreds of custom concept cards for NBA 2K, and I volunteer as a graphic design specialist with Design Framework Studio.
School and sport
I’m the goalkeeper on my school’s varsity soccer team, which is probably why my favourite thing I’ve built is a penalty shootout. I lead the Armenian Culture Club, mentor younger students in Orr’s House, and I’m part of the Italian Culture Club and the CAD Creation Club. In the summer I’m a counselor at UCC Summer Camps. I play basketball too, and in 2026 I won MVP, scoring champion and rebounding awards in an Elite Camps league.
Read my writing on research, advocacy and design at arasagharian.com