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Christian Game Developers Conference Plans Gathering
Thanks to GamerFeed for its story noting the Christian Game Developers Conference has announced its third annual gathering, to be held in Portland, Oregon on July 30th-31st. The official CGDC site has more information on the expo, which "officially expands to include card, board and paper game developers alongside interactive electronic entertainment." There's also word from conference organizer Tim Emmerich of GraceWorks Interactive: "We... plan to examine the variety of games currently on the market and successes in other media such as 'The Passion of The Christ' and the 'Left Behind' series, which proved that Bible-based products can do well in the market if they are well made."
Why Christians games?
Quite simply the more games mature the more "adult" they become.
They same has happened with books, movies, and music.
Christian music is not what it is today because it has Christian lyrics, it was started as a clean alternative to the music of the day.
If mainstream music stayed "clean", Christian music would never have become so popular it may never have even been a seperate category.
The same will happen will books, movies, and computer games over time.
Computer games have slowly "matured" where it is not uncommon to have swearing, adult topics, etc, etc.
Christians don't desire to have "Christians" games(or any other type of media) so much as games that don't go against their moral beliefs.
Sorry for the disjointed post.
WRONG. It proves that good story based products , good music, and good film will do well regardless of whether they're Bible based or not. Good art / good media is NOT PREACHY.
"Christian Rock"
"Christian Books"
"Christian Film"
and now "Christian Games". These usually turn out awful because
A:They're more concerned with evangelizing the audience than with telling a good story or being entertaining. And
B:The people making them are Christians first and producers of art/media/content second. It usually comes out like it was produced in a church basement by people with left over bake-sale cookies and a very inflated sense of relevance.
Sure they'll tell you that "OF COURSE we're Christians first above all else." But we all have rolls to play in life. You don't see any Christian Football Players. No, you see Football players who happen to be Christian.
If you want to build "Christian Games" then first concentrate on the game, the message comes second (or forget it). If you build Christian morality into something like for instance the Sims (community, teamwork, tolerance, sharing, caring generosity, etc.) then you'll have a great Christian game that's for everyone and teaches Christian values to the masses. So much better than a preachy Christian game for Christians that re-cements their already well indoctrinated beliefs.
Feel free to replace "games" with "music", "books", etc. above.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Isn't that a bit like judging L. Ron Hubbard's material by units sold? Sure, Dianetics may be a best seller but how does it rank when you subtract sales (often multiple copies) to Scientologists? If it's still a mega-bestseller, then the book has been fairly judged. But if the book sells very few copies outside of the choir it's preaching to, what does that say about the quality?
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Actually there is a large problem in the Christian market to produce crap, slap a Christian label on it and try to sell it because its Christian.
Too many places try to blur the lines between business and religion and use the sentiments of the buyer to out way the quality of the product. It is something I get frustrated with in all forms of Christian media.
What the real kicker is is when something starts getting popular and is being produced so that it can compete in the secular market, it is often looked at as selling out... and may get shunned until it gets picked up by the secular market as the next best thing, then, it gets pulled back in and its shown as a great example of Christians producing popular stuff.
I have never seen a group so backwards and in a bubble as Christian entertainment.
-Tim
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
How can you prove that there is no God? The Tooth Fairy can be proved to not exist, ask any parent and they will tell you that it is them, not the tooth fairy who places money under a pillow. I disproved Santa Clause as a child when I caught my parents in the act of placing preasants under the tree. However, I have not yet seen one good proof that there is no God. In fact, observation of the world and universe around me lead me to believe that there must be some higher being who brought all this into existence. If not, it's an awefully big coincidence, and leads to the conclusion that all of life is a big accident, and my existance is purely meaningless. This is a very depressing thought. Thus, I chose to believe that there is a God, not for a rational reason that can be proved, but because I chose to. BTW, faith is by definition believing something which cannot be proved. Since God operates outside of our existance, and therefore cannot be proved or disproved, belief in his existance or non-existance must be an act of faith. Pure logic cannot dictate the existance or non-existance of a supernatural being. Only personal belief and experiences.
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