Portfolio

• I started as a Computer and Communications Engineering student and studied it from 2016-2020 (feels like a long time ago now, wow). In my senior year, I created the Game Development and eSports Club where I taught my first Unity and Narrative Design sessions. Before teaching though, I invited a professional Unity developer to give a session at the club and created the first League of Legends tournament. Since then, the club has grown to new heights with the wonderful work of the presidents that have come afterwards.
• Here’s a fun little tidbit: my career in games started because of a fiction writing course given by Dr. Tariq Mehmood Ali of the English department. He decided to base that semester’s fiction around games, and being the obsessed little gremlin I am, I decided to help him create the course by joining him for a “pre class session” where we discussed the topics for the upcoming classes. I’ve grown a bit since then.
  After completing the course, I continued attending the sessions with the students that came afterwards to guide them into making their own games, and after graduating I was hired as a consultant across the entirety of the course to help aid the students with their final projects. Soon afterwards, I was hired as the instructor for this course.

• I am currently a part time instructor at the American University of Beirut, teaching a course called Developing Game Design Narratives. As a smart cookie, you know that this course teaches narrative design (but also a bit of game design). I usually briefly cover game design, then go in depth into narrative design, discussing environments, characters, speech, the power of the player, representation, and teach the students how to use Twine, a tool used to create branching narratives. The end goal from this course is to have students that can create an engaging story, and to do this, they submit a midterm and final project, with the midterm being focused on creating a Twine game but the final being in any preferred medium, be it digital or physical. In my 3 semesters of teaching this class, I’ve seen submissions on Twine, RPG maker, Unity, Unreal, Powerpoint, and a board game.
• I am also working with the Architecture department to create a Gaming Lab where students can come and experiment in the digital world of games. Previously, I worked with them on giving a Unity workshop and organized a roundtable with developers from around the world. 
• Currently, I am also freelancing for the Agriculture department and creating the Med4Waste game mentioned under my games section.

The gaming Academy is an initiative I founded to teach people how to make games. It started after the August 4th Beirut Port explosion happened; Khaddit Beirut approached me and we worked on a way to help people revive their creativity and motivation in a fun and entertaining way, and thus the Gaming Academy was born. Currently, we give sessions on design, development, art, music, storytelling, and business by bringing in professionals from AAA and local indie studios to give lessons and sessions on their professions.
The Gaming Academy has provided over 800 hours of watched content so far across almost 50 sessions and has currently had over 1,500 sign ups over the past 3 years of running with over 600 of them being in the 2023 cohort.
Unfortunately, due to some complications with the original Youtube account, we have lost the records of our initial sessions.
During my time at the Gaming Academy, I have given sessions on Unity development and narrative design that have accounted for over 75 hours of the mentioned 800 above.

https://khadditbeirut.com/gaming-academy-3/ 

Arabic Games is an NGO created to celebrate Arab game developers and game development in the region. I joined during the second year (2021 edition) and have helped its organization since then. Given my experience with the Gaming Academy, I looked for speakers, invited them to the event, and gave them directions towards the purpose of the event. I was also in charge of finding mentorship for the speed mentoring sessions and led a team of volunteers through the 2-day event to ensure that the discord activities moved smoothly while the sessions were being presented live. We had a dozen mentors matched with over 50 participants, some giving feedback on game design, development, or doing portfolio and CV reviews. My favorite part of this though was finding games made by Arab developers to add to the games showcase. We are currently working on the 2023 Edition which, ironically, may happen in February of 2024 (never too late, right?) to create a live event that’ll eclipse anything we’ve done before. If you’d like to help out in any way, please feel free to reach out!

https://arabic.games

My game development journey started through the LGD community, and my love for organization and community building led me from a stranger to a volunteer to the main organizer of the LGD events and community hangouts. I’ve organized multiple Game Jams with the team such as the Global Game Jam from 2021-2023, a games showcase from developers from all over Lebanon with the British Council, and are working on game nights and meetups from time to time.

https://lebgamedev.com/

The Animal Encounter is an educational center for wildlife conservation. My parents founded this NGO and I have been helping around ever since I could walk. The Animal Encounter’s main objective is to take care of wild animals that have been injured, hurt, or are sick, and then releasing them back into the wild when possible. I am currently the head of the volunteers, organizing events as appropriate, leading the team, distributing tasks, setting up funding campaigns, approving posts, and just being the link between everyone. What do the volunteers do exactly, though? Well, we organize events such as Halloween and Easter along with the biggest annual event, the Bat Night, where we teach people about the importance of bats in the environment through games and lectures.
Aside from events, we sometimes get school visits. I give them lectures appropriate to their age, teach them how to recycle, how to create items out of whatever’s available in nature, and how to get them inspired from what’s around them.

https://www.facebook.com/animalencounter.org/