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Digital Praise Takes Up Christian Gaming Cause
Thanks to GameSpot for its article discussing the formation of a new Christian videogame developer, Digital Praise, formed to create a "planned line of non-offensive games." CEO Tom Bean notes: "Digital Praise is founded on the principle that fun, exciting computer games don't need to be flooded with violence, sex, hate or images of horror", and the company's official press release discusses "development on two games based on the Adventures in Odyssey radio theater series", arguing: "As long as new game titles are top quality - offering exciting game play and high production value - we believe that interactive Christian games will skyrocket in popularity much like Christian music did 15 years ago."
From the press release:
:p
"Digital Praise is committed to releasing fun, exciting game titles that promote virtues and family values like forgiveness, tolerance and kindness, rather than the violent and sexual behavior that is the mainstay of most popular computer games today."
This single sentence implies two things:
- most games today actively promote violent and/or sexual behaviour;
- any kind of violent and sexual behaviour is a bad thing.
Starting with the second point, I think that we can all agree that this is utter nonsense. Violence and sexual behaviour are facts of life, and are two of the things which most actively define ourselves and our surroundings. Apparently it refers to the 'turning the other cheek', and the 'no sex before marriage/sex is solely for reproductive purposes' parts of fundamentalistic Christian beliefs.
Moving on, I'm guessing that even a game like the Sims is considered to be offensive by certain people. FPSs are violent by nature, but it would be ridiculous to state that the violence in this type of games promotes more violence (looking at the crime statistics for the US, the number of crimes committed since the introduction of Doom in the early '90s has sharply decreased, and never can a criminal act be directly attributed to a game).
Besides, there are already plenty of games which are totally PC and 'lots of fun'. They're called children's games
Anyway, those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change, so this press release isn't exactly news, or even mildly shocking. With a couple of minor adaptations you could turn it into a press release regarding Christian music.
Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
Between Christianity and Islam, I'll always choose Christianity.
It's always assumed that there are two poles to choose from. Two colors. Black or White. Yes or No. With us or Against us.
Just what the hell is the non-Christian, non-Muslim world to do?
BTW, honestly, there are too many similarities between Christianity and Islam. The difference is that Christianity is more moderated and "elaborate" in social justice, and allows room for individualism. As long as that individual is Christian, that is.....
I know you are (sucessfully) making a joke, but I'll go ahead and respond.
.
I do agree that the quoted individual did mispeak a bit. I believe Christian music has significantly gained credibility in recent years, but I wouldn't describe it as "skyrocketing" and I disagree with his history.
Christian music was HORRENDOUS for a very long period of time. The musicians had a heart for God, but not an aptitude for writing lyrics or music.
Originally the genre was nothing more than the equivalent of hymns or thinly-veiled theology set to not always competently played music. Obviously this brought a lot of deserved ridicule.
I put 1995 as the year that Christian music started to not suck.
That year the self-titled Jars of Clay disc debuted (along with it the song Flood), as well as dcTalk's Jesusfreak. Both displayed expert musical skill along with lyrics that actually MEANT SOMETHING to listeners.
Fast forward to today, and it's not unusual to hear about overtly Christian artists having secular success. Switchfoot (and their Meant to Live) is the current poster child for this.
But I think the biggest impact is in the bands that you aren't aware are Christian, which I (and others) call "Christian-influenced."
2001's most played radio song (as determined by Broadcast Data Services) was Lifehouse's Hanging by a Moment
Lifehouse is comprised of Christians, write on Christian ideas and themes (many of their songs can be properly interpreted as worship), but also intentionally allow their music to be correctly interpreted secularly.
They don't compromise their Christian roots and beliefs, while not beating non-Christians over the heads with the Jesus Stick.
Bringing this back to gaming (since this is the games section of Slashdot), I believe Digital Praise will be successful if and only if they are able to produce games that are as technically credible and enjoyable to the player as that which is currently on the market.
It's great to focus on God and attempt to glorify Him. But in order to have impact in the world at large, you have to have relevance as well.
Christian music (eventually) learned this lesson. We'll see if Christian gaming does.
- Neil Wehneman
My legal education, in nifty podcast format
Strawman detected.
In an average TV crime show, the hero of the plot kills one person per episode. An average New York police officer draws their gun about twice in their working lifetime. An average FPS player kills several opponents per minute.
What they're looking for is a game which is closer to Real Life, both less traumatising/anaesthetising for the player (however small the doses of trauma are) and better training for Real Life.
Children's games don't fulfil that aim because they are too simple.
I notice that you don't directly address your first point. Meanwhile...
Not. To be precise (AFAIK) all that you can make a valid claim for is "existing FPS implementations are all violent", and this represents a poverty of imagination, not a natural feature of the genre.Does a paintball FPS exist - where the objective is to tag opponents rather than killing them, or perhaps paint them with enough of your team's colour to initiate them into your side? If not, maybe it should. How about an FPS where the objective is to stick radio tags to wildlife? How about an "orbital debris hunter" FPS? How about a waldo FPS, where you're working on mechanical stuff in high orbit (or maybe you're in a ship orbiting a planet that needs terraforming), and there's a couple of seconds of lag in the feedback loop, maybe even a slowly-varying few seconds? Much harder to master than Quake, and much easier to set up for a meaningful ranking system.
Any of these can be intricate and exhilarating, and there's absolutely no need for them to be nasty or gory. How about a baseball FP[BatterPitcherFieldsman]? How about a first-person run in a fibreglass suit to emplace sensors in and/or collect samples from an actively erupting volcano?
The problem is your viewpoint. It's not an honest one, it's only an excuse to run people down from faux philosophical high ground. If your aim is to convert Christians to your own (short-sighted) way of thinking, you should be pushing this for all it's worth, as a foot-in-the-door way of weaning Christians onto more violent games. But no, you're too busy looking for immediate peer-group approval instead, so you're not. News flash! There is more to life!
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
The words "niche market" come to mind. They are obviously targeting a very specific audience: people who want to play games, but who want to feel safe and moral while doing so.
I would posit that the vast majority of us who play games with violent or sexual content do so for the following reasons:
1. They're fun.
2. Normal, being a relative term, people can't do the things in meat space that they can do in computer games. They like that. They feel free. They get to step outside the boundaries for a bit.
3. Fragging helps to release tension. Sure, you would really like to go after Phil at the office with a rail gun, because he fucked up again and really made you angry. Go splatter some bots instead. You won't end up in either the electric chair or strapped to a gurney with a needle in your arm that is about to deliver to your bloodstream some chemicals of a very dubious and harmful nature.
4. A lot of geeks, nerds, dweebs, dorks, and whatever term you choose were kicked around a lot when they were younger. Violent games are a way for them to kick back in a manner that, while cathartic, is not harmful to others.
I suppose most of these points are intertwined.
There are already a great deal of fun games available that are non-violent, non-sexual, and non-Christian. I submit, for example, games like Enigmo, Text Twist, the wiley veteran Tetris, UpLink, etc. These are but a few examples.
I think that this company is merely using the tired argument that violent games lead to violent behavior. If anything, I would argue the opposite. I, for one, have become so jaded by violence in the news that I really don't care anymore. Some more soldiers exploded in Iraq again today. Some more Jews killed some more Palestinians. Some more Palestinians killed some more Jews. I've heard and read it so many times that I don't even care anymore.
This company just wants to offer alternatives that disseminate Christian values, which, I think, is not necessarily wrong. More power to them. However, I do believe that their market share will be rather slim and limited to Christian fundamentalists.
SiO2
It takes two to tango. Until you know about the individual Christians and what exactly it is that they're ruining, generalisations like that are at best pointless and in practice usually dangerous. Forex, if they're "ruining" a society which frowns on charity for fear of damaging the recipient's karma, then I'm all for "ruining" that. But I'd need more data than you've supplied in order to make a call there.
More-or-less genuine Christianity is also "ruining" (depending on your PoV) hundreds of Orthodox rabbis every year and hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of Mohammedans. In return, many Mohammedans have demonstrated that they would rather murder their own than see them convert, including their own children (that's a pretty clear demonstration of the inferiority of their argument). How do you feel about that? Your answers might teach you a lot about your own anxiety.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Calling horror and violence something foreign to the church seems a little off kilter- anyone remember the crusades?
Making the moon less necessary since 1998.
Here are a bunch of people who are saying we don't like the current crop of games for a number of reasons. So instead of protesting and trying to make it so that others can't play they are going to make their own games. In a free country this is exactly what people should do. One of the points of free software is that people can take it and make it better, for whatever value of better they happen to want. Even if its something that is totally un insteresting to you and me.
If these folks want to make their games power to them. Remember in the USA fundemtalist christains are a very large number of people.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It is a shame that it takes a group as descredited as any religious organization (don't start me on this one, just my opinion OK?) to tackle excesive violence and demeaning or exploitatve sex stereotypes.
I, being a non religious person, am sick and tired of games whose only aim is to brutalize as many characters as possible in the worst possible way.
I think game designers have a moral responsibility towards society, specially having in mind that many of their "customers" are impressionable young persons, I am not saying that there should not be ultraviolent, sexually explicit or politically incorrect games, the point I am trying to make is that game developpers seem to think that without at least one of the above they can't sell.
It is a testament to how wrong they are how Tetris, Pac Man, Myst, SimCity and other games like thes are perhaps the most successful in all time,
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
So the games won't be based on bible stories then?
Free as in mason.
Young Earth Creationist
Thank you. If just all of you could state that up front so that the intelligent ones could stop reading right then.
it's in my head
Allow me to interject with a few sobering facts from reality, taken from a book that a lot of people know of, but rarely actually read with their brains turned on:
Sex and Violence - Lot (A just and righteous man) invites a mob to rape his two daughters:
"Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof."
Hatred, Violence and Sex - Moses, after he and his army kill the adult Midianite males:
"Have you saved all the women alive? Kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."
Hatred and Sex - Homosexuals must be put to death:
"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."
Images of Horror - God kills everyone (men, women, children, infants, newborns) in Sodom and Gomorrah by raining "fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven."
So, which cosy little world of make-believe is Digital Praise living in? Have they actually read the bible, or are they "buffet christians", content to pic-n-mix tidbits from their holy tome?
For more delightful treats from the bible, visit www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
Compare a previous rather similar Slashdot story:
Recruit More Women Developers, Attract Women Gamers?
Quotes: "Half of the population isn't having input into what's being created... And the one thing that I learned is that people make games they like to play. Having a diverse opinion helps games"
Contrast with: "Digital Praise Takes Up Christian Gaming Cause" (that's this story)
Quotes: "those smug, fundamentalistic Christian types never seem to change"
Read the various comments on both articles.
Sure they're not about the same thing. But it sure is enlightening if you really think about it.
Well, I am one who fits in that category too...
My opinion is that this will be a hard sell. The problem is that almost all games (except some in the adventure genre) are based on conflict. Almost all games involve either shooting (FPS) or battle/conquest (RTS). If you want to go completely safe for everybody, then the games are not likely to be too fun.
There have been some games which break the usual genre system, but those are generally experimental, and as such is a risk for the publisher.
On the other hand, if they just concentrate on making good games without going out of their way to cover me in objectionable language and needless gore, then they may count on me as a customer if their quality if good.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
No one would pick up that case here in Canada either. You say it's a Christian school so I'm assuming it's not a public one. Private organizations can set their own policies regarding hiring and membership. That's why the Boy Scouts don't have to accept homosexual members for example.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
I was wondering the same thing, and read most of the books (up through half of the fifth).
The main distinction between the two was the framework and the underlying worldview which permeated both works.
Both Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia are set in modern-day England, both involve every-day children that the reader can easily identify themselves with, and they both embark on journies which said readers would like to envision themselves.
The main difference to whom one answers. In the Chronicles of Narnia, sorcery is something that is not for mortals, and shouldn't be meddled with (the two main mortals I can think of using magic in CoN are Dr. Cornelius in Prince Caspian, and Diggory's uncle in Magician's Nephew.) All magic is recognized as above one's self, it's not a solution to problems (it doesn't set scrubbers to wash pans automagically, etc).
But as said before, the main difference is the worldview, and what it would instill in a child fantasizing about what they wish they could do. Witchcraft is a real thing. I recognize this, I believe it, and have known people with very personal contact with this (as I'm sure most of us have). Both stories recognize the existence of good magic, and evil magic, but it is a problem when the users of magic are not ultimately answerable to any being higher to themselves. In Harry Potter, if you're strong (whether it be the Ministry of Magic or Voldemort's Death Eaters), you can be the end-all-say-all. Morals are arbitrary, though granted HP & friends do exhibit many noble charictaristics, Harry still has no accountability (unless you count the sparse teachings by Dumbledore) for his lying.
It's all very abstract, and I don't feel qualified to say "Harry Potter is evil, you shouldn't partake of it!". However, for myself, I've read them, though when I found myself enjoying them too much, it sent up a warning flag in my mind, and I decided to stop reading halfway through book 5. If you can read it, and not feel prodding of the Spirit to do otherwise, then I do not speak against you, and I can only support you and try to encourage you in your walk. :)
A similarly tough example in my own mind is why Tolkien is okay and HP is not -- though I follow similar reasoning for all of this. Basically the worldview behind the story, and who is Ultimate in the story: people or Something Else.
Respectfully,
clint
You make a good point about most games these days being either FPS or RTS. I think the reason for this is that those games are simply easier to come up with and produce. It is hard to be creative. But when someone does get creative it can pay off big time. I don't have the list but on the top ten selling games of all time there are many non-violent games. Games like The Sims and Tetris were very popular. America is still a very Puritan nation for better or worse. So even if most gamers aren't Christians or have no problem with gore and foul language, the people with the money do (I know there are exceptions, I'm talking in broad strokes here). So if you can tap into that market successfully, you can make a lot of money. For an example, even though its not a video game, look at The Passion. I think tha there is a longing in America for a rejection of the current moral decline, and if this company can tap into that they will be very successful.
*The Bill of Rights - void where prohibited by law
I'm no fan of Christianity (I'm an atheist--christian raised), but I must admit it's in general not as intolerant and hateful as Islam (at least its extreme branches). Christianity used to be just as bad, but over many years reformed into a slightly more open-minded and less violent religion. Today many Christians are still close-minded and I have talked to many who think that any religion other than Christianity (or even Protestantism) is the Devil's work.
From what I understand about Islam, one of it's main tenets is that the religion should not change or modernize. And it makes sense, since Islam to me seems to be the most "primitive" major religion. And in that I mean that it still objectifies women and endorses holy wars and the like, whereas Christinanity, in general has given such things up. Of course there's the occasional Christian nut, like the lady who drowned three of four of her children because she thought they were possessed, the people who blow up abortion clinics, and then there's David Koresh. But there aren't whole organizations (anymore) of Christians whose sole aim is to kill nonbelievers like there is in Islam.
A note to any followers of Islam: I don't mean to insult all Muslims, I don't have a problem with anyone of any religion unless: (a) they try to convert me or (b) they kill people don't believe what they do. As long as you don't do one of those things, I will have no problem with you or the branch of your religion that you ascribe to. I have met quite a few Muslims who I'm sure just want to live their lives and practice their religion in peace and I have no problem with that.