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Christian Videogame Alternatives Explored
Thanks to the TNL forum regulars for pointing to a CBN article discussing the most suitable videogames for Christians (Google cache). The article discusses the "extreme violence, gratuitous sex, and satanic imagery found in many children's video games", and focuses instead on Christian-orientated games such as Ominous Horizons, where "the player takes on the role of a 15th-century Christian who fights demons, but without any blood or gore. The forces of evil - instead of dying - fall to their knees and pray." This N-Lightning-developed game has the player working as a medieval Paladin to return the Gutenberg Bible, which has been stolen by forces of evil, and the developer explains: "..you have a sword of the Spirit.. [that] shoots a burst of light which vaporizes any demonic opponents and the end result is that you know Christ is victorious."
...have a "god mode" cheat.
Isn't that enough advocacy for them?
That game they had at the Flanders' house, where you got to throw bibles at heathens to turn them into respectable suit wearing white men, was a CLASSIC!
Wait, christians auctally use computers AND want to play games on them? What next?
My email addy? should be easy enough.
There and plenty of games in the marketplace, that actually aren't violent and don't require massive killing or demons, or satanism or whatever.
I blew a significant portion of my flight (9 hours) back to the United States last week. playing simcity 3000, and frozen bubble, a classic console stle game that's more addictive than crack cocaine... http://www.frozen-bubble.org/
I would hold out both games as examples of what gaming is and should be all about, Entertaining diversions.
Last time I checked, Christians didn't have any problem reading a book full of violence and gore, so why should videogames be any different?
"This time, the entire forces of the netherworld have overrun Earth. To save her, you must descend into the stygian depths of Hell itself! Battle mightier, nastier, deadlier demons and monsters. Use more powerful weapons."
"Choose from eight powerful spiritual weapons. Each weapon has its own unique use. Maximize your firepower by learning each weaponâ(TM)s abilities...Encounter Satanâ(TM)s minions and banish them back to their evil realm. Evil lurks everywhere you turn....Descend deeper and deeper into the depths of the underworld. Your journey will take you into the very heart of evil, through 18 hand-crafted, highly detailed levels."
One of these is a blurb for Catechumen (one of N'Lightnings games). The other is part of the blurb for Doom II. Frankly there doesn't seem all that much different here, except for the marketing.
Well, at least its better to see people doing something creative, rather than campaigning to get games banned.
-Baz
Man, if I were a Christian, I'd feel really bad if I lost one of these games. Would God, among others, look down upon me if I lost?
Child: "Shoot, I lost..."
Mother: "That's too bad sweetheart, were you lacking in faith again?"
Child: "No mom! I didn't mean to lose..."
Mother: "Don't play the game unless you can win."
Child: "But..."
Mother: "When you fail in the game, you fail Jesus."
Not to mention, wouldn't some of these games be contradictory to the "Jesus, God, and faith can't loose" attitude that Christianity has?
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
Games such as "Catechumen," set in ancient Rome, feature spectacular 3-D graphics and allow the player to take part in a fierce battle between good and evil.
That just sounds like it comes straight out of a press release. Of course, when you're dealing with a genre that includes Bible Adventures, maybe you have to plug it all you can...
Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.
What the newsposter describes as 'christian', is actually 'radically conservative christian', but that seems another US-ism... (how should you describe it otherwise?) In Europe - I live in the Netherlands - blood and gore in videogames is much less an issue. Of course bishops don't really like it and Rome will always be conservative, but at least the churches I know don't push their own 'christian-only' separated media.
- Thou shall not act like a camper
- Thou shall not be a sniper
- Thou shall not kill members of your own group
- Thou shall not kill the hostages
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Games can entertain or they can attempt to teach you life lessons, but I can't see them being used for both without one or the other hurting. Let the kids play video games that are actually fun, and let parents teach values on their own time.
Will I be able to go about and conqour pagan civilizations with my metal weapons and trained horses??
Can I Personally slay the dark skins because they dont believe in my one god!?!??
Will I refute all other world religions because I HAVE THE ANSWER??
YES! I've been waiting for an opportunity like this!!
If you're interested in facts I'll tell you what they are and I'll give you sources - Chomsky on The Big Idea
...for `Christian' videogames. Or `Christian' movies.
I am speaking a Christian-- specifically, an evangelical, relatively conservative Christian.
A faith that cannot deal with death, violence, evil and malice is impratical-- our world is fallen. A faith that does not endeavour to accept sinners is arrogant. And a faith that is impractical and arrogant is not faith-- it is a crutch, a psychological dependence on superiority; it is not transforming, not understanding, not gentle, not strong, not uplifting-- it is not meaningful.
Is there evil in a videogame? Well, then, it is a reflection of our world. Surely there will be truth in the game as well! It is of paramount import that one knows how to recognise and dwell on good, and reject evil. Adults should know how to do this; children should be taught.
It's not about teaching people what to do, or how to act. It's about the meaning of their acts, and of the acts that they witness; though the topic of the day is religion, this is true of most things. In short: adults, behave responsibly; children, learn how to.
(You know, we could do away with a lot of legislation if people just behaved decently (or made the effort to).)
Score -1: flamebait
how about a game where you travel through europe and gather what you need to fight in the crusades. once there you can kill all arab looking men, women and children! it could be called "grand theft holy lands!"
oh how about one where you apply different methods of torture to various non-believers to extract confessions of blasphamy, demon worship and sin! it could be called "simquisition!"
or "simquisition ii" where you extract confessions of whitchcraft from women and children in the new world!
god, this whole field is wide open!
"preacher-craft" where you wander around giving hate-filled speeches in tent revivals, on radio and tv. you gather wealth and gain health points from the suicides and murders of gays, lesbians, blacks, immigrants and non-believers.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I don't know what it is, but it isn't Christian. Baptists are the only Christian group I can think of which seems to have this fixation, but even they don't have this insanity. I'm certain the people who think this game is a good idea do not read the bible, except for the "safe" sections. I bet they stick little post-it notes everywhere with the "happy" lines, neatly cropped from betwixt two "nasty" lines.
The message in the Bible is written within a world of disease, common prostitution, gorey punishments, and rationalized cruelty. Christ, within this world, sees everything, and learns from it. He makes a choice to counter the cruelty, and teaches others to help. He teaches that the evils pass if you don't reciprocate, or evils will become stronger with vengeful acts. A Christian who understands this message can take enlightened meaning and understanding from any situation, especially when things go wrong. A Christian wants to increase common well-being, decrease common suffering, and teach others to enjoy life and let transient suffering pass on and die.
Under no circumstances does this allow a Christian to insulate themselves with illusions and ignorance. Protecting yourself with magick illusions is a mighty sin.
For example, I had an interesting experience with GTA: Vice City. I was nearly through the book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" when I started playing it. The game was nearly painful because I had no options to do anything except the way the story required. From reading the book, every situation I entered I could think of ways to improve the situation, but the character always took the violent route. The characters in Vice City were fleshed out, and the world seemed real. So, when I was or wasn't playing the game, I was thinking of ways to improve my character's situation by improving the situations around him. Your character in VC is such a brilliant and driven fuckup, it's hard not to think of better ways to go about everything. And, if nothing else, you're slightly more mentally and emotionally prepared to encounter such backwards situations, even if they don't involve gunfire.
Whatever these "Christians" are, they want to pretend bad things don't happen. That marks them as distinctly un-Christ-like.
I'm as mimsy as the next borogove but your mome raths are completely outgrabe.
Twelve fingers or one, its how you play. ~Gattaca (Vincent)
I thought I had an appetite for destruction, but all I really wanted was a club sandwich. --Homer J.
It's not mostly about the amount of violence and sex in the game, it's about the message which the game tries to send. The situation is very much the same as with books- Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov depicts a world with plenty of violence and sex but sends a strong message of faith. As plenty of others have pointed out, the Bible is the same way. There are plenty of books with little or no violence or sex which nevertheless broadcast a message of nihilism, selfishness, and immorality.
:)
As far as I can tell, these games don't really send any message at all (unless it's that missionary work, even among demons, is ridiculously easy, just point and zap), much less one of true faith. If you're going to be playing a FPS which is designed not to send any message, you might as well enjoy it and have it be Serious Sam (with the 'hippie gore' option turned on if you prefer lower levels of blood, etc)
1. It's a First Person Shooter.
2. It has great demonic imagery to show on talk shows and sensationalist news reports.
3. It is very well known.
Doom is the game that gets the bad press. (Note: Both games are cool, I would've thought so even back when I was a practicing Catholic.) Really, if Jack Chick made a game, would it be that different than Doom. (Haw, haw!)
On the other hand, all Color Dreams has to do is find Jesus, slightly retool Menace Beach and they have a game they can sell in Christian bookstores Sunday Funday
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
A standard commentary on this is that the 'little children' is a definite KJV mistranslation, and that the people who came to him were probably adolescent boys who had been paid to bring water to sustain Jericho while the spring there was bitter (salty; the story is recounted in the four verses immediately previous to the passage you quoted, v 19-22; Jericho is below sea level near the Dead Sea and thus it wouldn't be too strange for salt water to end up in their water table). Having been deprived of their livelihood by Elisha when he healed the spring and thus eliminated the need for bringing fresh water into the city, they were outside the city jeering Elisha as he left, waiting until he came in range that they could stone him.
I think the commentary is Talmudic and old enough that it quite possibly in some form predated the compilation of 2 Kings. I could be wrong, my memory isn't fantastic.
I hit this article hoping to see a discussion of "different drummer" type games with different and more interesting playmechanics than "obtain bigger weapon, shoot monster/other player." (Seriously, I liked Doom and Duke3D a lot, but by Quake III I was wondering if there was ANYTHING else to play anymore....)
Instead I got to relive for a moment that dark period of the 80's when born again failed record execs came around to the Catholic schools passing the hat and suggesting we all burn our "satanic" records and buy some new ones that sounded superficially the same, but with awful songwriting and a message from Jesus. Records by bands like Stryper.
Yes, that's right, these videogames are the 21st century version of Stryper. Rock on, Christian soldiers....
Is a small company I founded. We're current working on these titles:
Zoraster: the return of Zarathrustra! Fight heathens, greeks, and Muslims in this action-packed adventure. 32 levels of puzzle solving fun. Don't let them call you the Jesus of Persia anymore!
Quest for National Autonomy: Suicide Bombing as last resort. Kabloom you go in this multi-cultural tale of political infighting and intrigue. Recruit men, women, and children to fight the holy fight. (virgin cut scene only available in Europe)
Children's Crusade: 11-14 year olds run off to the middle east to fight the good fight. Game impossible to win.
Culture War: bring Christ back to America. Micromanage conservative pundits and media outlets to push abstinace, cover-up pedophilia, push pro-corporate views, and support the war on drugs. There is also no way to win this game.
Greek Gods: getting it on! (adult title only) Turn into an ox and pick up chicks. Think Leisure Suit Larry, but with lightning bolts!
Lemmings IX: Janists strike back! Control a Janist who must shoo all lemmings trying to jump over a cliff into safety. Must not step on any bugs using holy broom. Fun for the whole family!
Caste Attack: Brahmins vs. Shudras. Play a Brahmin, a chosen superior man and punish the Shudras untouchables when they get uppity. Whips, chains, and bonus level where police don't bother investigating a shudra murder.
Man, Rockstar has nothing on us.