Category: Uncategorized

Narrative Games

I’d like to start by saying I only played 5 games and there’s a reason for that but will be mentioned later. The first game was spent, I felt the pain of having life come at you with all its bad aspects. I even got some of my friends to play it, one of them was a second away from breaking his phone. To be honest, I wanted to break mine too. The only reason I didn’t was probably because I was in class. The game is unbelievably realistic. I know this sounds like I have no suggestions to improve it but the game really come at you hard. The more bleak it gets, you’d think it will be better but it never is. The tough decisions you have to make in this game really show who you are sinc people show their true self in the toughest of situations. If you played this game and still have no empathy for the less fortunate, you’re probably either a robot or dead inside.

The 2nd game was BBC Syrian refugees. Having dealt directly with some refugees, I know the “horrors” they go through. It was a great awareness “campaign” but honestly I didn’t feel that strongly about it as I did playing spent. The game I think should have more “tough” interactions to make people really invested in helping. The way it’s designed now in my opinion would just make people empathize for the duration of the game and that’s it. Till this point, 2 weeks after playing spent I still think about my decisions. That’s how BBC should be. It has to stick in people’s minds.

The 3rd game was bad news. This game tries to bring the evil out of you. Studying media taught me the effect of fake news. The true reason behind people reporting fake news, that I didn’t get until playing this game. When you have the option to benefit from something that wouldn’t affect you badly, you’d probably do it. Even though you know it’s wrong, but philosophically speaking, humans are selfish. That’s why theft exists. Going back to the game, it should’ve been more convincing to make you do the bad thing. Getting dragged to the wrong side of the law is appealing but if shown right. Otherwise, people would just avoid it because it is wrong. I know it doesn’t make much sense, but if bad is presented right, it’d be more attractive than right presented right. That’s why I think the game should’ve worked a bit more in presenting the bad right.

The 4th game was liyla. I really enjoyed playing that game even though it’s sad. It taught me about the terrible side of war as if I’ve witnessed a world war myself. I think it’s done as well as spent. growing up seeing all the horrible stuff in Palestine, Syria, and Libya really shaped my thinking about how bad war is. However, this game made me live through war myself.

Before getting to the 5th game, the reason I only played 5 not 6 is because no normal person can handle all this depressing dose of real problems faced by many in our time. That being said, I couldn’t go through with playing my last game because I know that most narrative games try to raise awareness for an issue which is most likely more depressing.

No wonder that my final game would be Depression Quest. I can’t begin to describe how real this game felt. Playing it made me live one of the worst years of my life. Even though there were parts of the game where some of the options were not selectable, I wanted to select the selectable option itself because in reality that’s how I’d behave in those situations. Honestly, that’s how I did behave in those situations. 99% of the game is real life situations that I went through myself. I can’t imagine that people who developed this game were not depressed at some point of their lives. The thing is about depression no matter how much you read about it, you don’t know anything about till you go through it, god forbid, yourself. My suggestions to enhance this game are useless because no matter how realistic it may seem, it can’t be felt. Depression especially, in my opinion, is something you sympathize with not empathize. You can just justify the acts of a depressed person by simply saying he’s/she’s depressed. No matter how much you say you can understand what a depressed person goes through without having prior experience yourself, you’re MISTAKEN.

Spent and depression quest are the most perfectly designed, in my opinion, and it is clear in my description of the two. Spent is number 2 because it can make you live the game, and have empathy for whoever goes through their daily lives like this. the first place award goes to, no surprise, depression quest. This is because, it showed situations from real life that all of us went through at least one of them. If you hadn’t gone through any of these situations, you’d think that they aren’t realistic, but I assure you my lucky friend they are REAL.

*Just a footnote, I don’t use any multimedia because I feel I can express myself well enough in writing.*

Exploring Digital Literacy

I first heard the term digital literacy in the intro to mass comm course. It was a small chapter on digital literacy as digital media plays a huge role in mass comm. I knew that by definition that this term means knowing the digital tools. I signed up for this course partly because it is a requirement in my core curriculum and partly because I found the title appealing. As a computer science student, anything that’s digital is intriguing to me. In the article titled “Knowing the Difference Between Digital Skills and Digital Literacies, and Teaching Both” I learned that literacy doesn’t mean what and how but rather why. All of the new generation is familiar with the new technologies but most of them are digital illiterate, myself included till very recently. Luckily for me, the ethics lectures I took in my major helped me to be digitally literate. I knew when to use something that’s available online without asking permission and when I’ve to ask for permission to use it. However, I didn’t know about the 8 different types of digital literacies till I read this article. To be honest, I ignore many of the copyrights I encounter except for when I’m doing something academic. Recently though, when I started working on my thesis and was thinking to go commercial, I thought that people might break my copyrights and use my product for free. That annoyed me so I decided to treat my fellow innovators the same way I want to be treated. It works the same way when I do research, I habe to cite everything I use and not to plagiarize, etc. I think the materials of this course should be mandatory to study because there shouldn’t be a university graduate who is not digitally literate.

I liked the broadcast titled “The Digital Literacy Universe” more than the other sources because it discussed stuff I’ve studied in 4 different courses; computer security, intro to mass comm, power and discourse, and lalt. The security part is concerned with how to choose safe usernames and passwords, unofficial websites claiming to be official, and misusing the social platforms to sprrad hate speech. The intro to mass comm course comes in the part of media literacy, fake news and evaluating the information we get by viewing their original source such as what we did in class with the fake video of trump talking about the holy mosque. The power and discourse part is how people who spread hate speech use euphemism to make the hate speech appealing to the youth especially that the body language, tone and facial expressions are hidden in the digital world. The main idea of this broadcast, in my opinion, is that the context is a very important thing maybe even as important as the news itself. Being digital literate can help people evaluate the context and take actions against the bad things that are widespread online.

For my source, I used a video titled “digital literacy-what is digital literacy” This video also emphasized the difference between being skilled and being literate. It also talked about how to evaluate the Information online. Furthermore, it talked about how to be secured while surfing the internet. It suggested the university platform to find valuable information. This can be applied in AUC by using the library website to search for sources both axademic and non-academic. This is basically what’s being taught in the lalt course. Nevertheless, there are many more videos addressing the topic of digital literacies on the same YouTube channel and I’ll list the link below.

In conclusion, This quote from Paul Glister summarizes this article and gives a brief definition to the term digital literacy.

Works cited

https://www.literacyworldwide.org/blog/literacy-daily/2016/02/03/knowing-the-difference-between-digital-skills-and-digital-literacies-and-teaching-both

https://www.tolerance.org/podcasts/the-mind-online/the-digital-literacy-universe

Digital literacy (definition)

Digital Profile

This exercise was beneficial for me as I learned that I’m quite comfortable using new technology and most existing tools. This is because as a computer science senior, I learned how to deal with many problems that come my way. Furthermore, I can help others with the technical difficulties they might face. The one aspect I can work on more is the innovation. I can think of innovative methods to solve my problems but as many people do, I always go to my “safe space” the tools I know best. They might not as efficient as others but I’m comfortable using them as I know they’d get the job done.

Alt. CV

Recipe for making a perfect M. Radwan

Required ingredients:

Loyalty 2 cups

Honesty 1 cup

Passion ½ cup

Smartness 1 cup

Bravery ½ cup

Vengeance ½ cup

Sense of humor 1 cup

Classical music addiction 1 cup

Directions:

Mix all of the above ingredients in a big bowl so

that they become one mixture.

Then put in the oven for 30 mins.

This would give you an older looking

human who’s controlled by his ingredients.

Driven by both loyalty and honesty, this kind of

human you would be lucky to have as your friend

and pray not to be your enemy. Simply you get

M. Radwan.