Hey there, I'm Amadol Yuckberg. I'm Naila Lismati. Oh, God. I knew that was going to happen. I'm

all right. I'm joined by my cousins today.

Hey guys. For this episode of See Something Say Something, which is the podcast where we drink

jai, tell stories, and talk about being Muslim in America. We're going to talk about video games,

which is something that all three of us are

really, really interested in. And I know everyone isn't, but we'll make sure to explain ourselves

really clearly and why it matters to us and the cultural conversation. So my guests this

week are Bassem Asmani, who you know from before. He was on the gin episode, and he also does the

music of the show. He's a writer, journalist, does it all. And we're happy to have you back, Bossam. Thank you. And then we have, Balsam is also, by the way, my cousin. Very much. Friend of the show. Friend of the show. Full disclosure. Friend of the show. And we also got my other cousin. Salam al-a-a-a-a-a-l-l-l-l-lap. Nail Osamani. He works at a digital ad agency. And also, he's got a ton of experience doing tournament organizing for video games. So just mega nerd like me. Biggest nerd. Secretly, also, that too, but I don't talk about it on the show. We prefer nerd lord. Anyhow, so as you can tell, this whole episode is about video games. And the whole idea for this episode came from this essay that I've been working on for a while where I play Call of Duty Modern

Warfare for the first time.

If you don't know Call of Duty modern warfare, it was a huge hit 10 years ago in 2007.

It basically changed the entire gaming industry.

It was one of the most popular games ever.

And it's based around this geopolitical crisis where as a U.S. soldier and a European soldier, you go around the Middle East and Russia attacking terrorists who are vaguely Muslim.

And you go into places that look like Iraq. They look like Afghanistan. They look like real things that are happening and were happening in 2007 and haven't stopped.

And that freaked me out 10 years ago, so I never played it. And I wanted to phrase my fears now 10 years later and write an essay about it and do an episode. And if you want to read that piece, go to buzzfeed.com slash Amidala Yuckber or just search Amidala Yucber, Call of Duty on, like, Google or something, and you'll find it.

So I've invited Bassem and I on to the show to talk about video games broadly, but we're going to take a moment and play a little bit of Call of Duty Modern Warfare together, which is something we've never done before. Later in the episode, I'm going to talk to Rami Ismail, who's a game developer in the Netherlands, about, you know, to get an insider look

into first-person shooters

and these games where guns and warfare

figure so prominently.

Then we're going to talk about

how culture and religion influence

...