Social Media had been playing various roles in the society today. It serves as bridge between long time friends, people with common goals and even breaks cultural barriers. One of today’s leading social sites is Facebook who had pioneered the features of games as part of its applications.
After the success of Farmville followed by many others such as Gagaville named after the popular singer Lady Gaga, here comes another social media being featured in Facebook which do not only provide gaming interaction but also eyed to act as catalyst in teaching positive values in pursuit of ending the long time extremist concept.
Created by an Arab, Suleiman Bakhit, this new game was launched just this week but it had already earned 50,000 followers.
Happy Oasis features an Arab Superhero that he had first created as a comic character before engaging in the online market, putting the character in virtual representation. Mr. Bakhit hopes that through this game, children will not be blinded by the extremists view.
Mr. Bakhit, based on the report published in bbc.com, had experienced attacked from four men after the 9/11 attack due to his nationality, being an Arab. He came from Jordan, before transferring to U.S as he studied in the University of Minnesota.
Following that incident, he used the said experienced as motivation to do good by means of educating the young.
Quoted from his statement in BBC: “I realised that you fight extremism by starting with the young. The message was simple – ‘We are not all terrorists.'”
He started his newfound strategies through visiting some local schools, give lectures in local schools, then out from that journey, another idea came in which was a product of a brilliant suggestion, to create the very first Arab superman and that was the start of the creation of the comic-book featuring range of Arab role-models like James Bond’s female version whose main tasks is to be the opposing power versus extremists groups.
300,000 copies were sold in Jordan alone for the mentioned comic book and now as it is converted virtually, Mr. Bakhit hopes to cater those 30 million registered Facebook users.
What a cool game!