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PlayStations of the Cross

theodp writes "Is there a place amid the witches, warlocks and diabolical monsters for Christian video games? The NY Times reports companies like Brethren Entertainment ('Entertaining for Eternity'), Digital Praise ('Glorifying God Through Interactive Media'), and N'Lightning believe that there is a market in faith-based video games. If the idea of Christian first-person shooters seems unlikely, so too did the idea of Christian pop music, which accounted for 7% of the total pop-music market and sold 43+ million albums last year."

9 of 267 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Crusades by hey! · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    You could run around and try to convert people, and when they won't give up all of their beliefs and conform to something they've never heard of, you can kill them.

    This would have been a great improvement upon the actual crusades, where people were simply slaughtered out of hand without the chance to convert. One account of the sacing of Jeruselem in the first crusade states that at one place in the city the blood ran to the depth a mounted knight's stirrups.

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  2. Re:Crusades by hey! · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Clearly an exaggeration.

    Very likely, but still indicitive, as was boasting of slaying infants at their mothers' breasts.

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  3. Re:Crusades by SPY_jmr1 · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    Bah, these guys need to go to marketing classes... If the story was as night, do you know how many vampires would have come running to that gig???

    it's a proven fact that anything with vampires in it will be an instant hit.

  4. Re:Crusades by macdaddy357 · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    To make it a challenge, some of the heathens would have to fight back, like those moozlim ayrabs who don't pray to jesus. When they do fight back, you get to call them terrorists and really bring out the heavy artillery.

    Your game would have to have some witch burnings, and some bonus stages where no one fights back, and wiping them out is pretty easy. Pogrums for example: those jews in their synagogues are probably just doing witchcraft in there. Go in and kill them and the rabbi, and burn the place down, later there is a level called holocaust where you really wipe them out, and later still; you suddenly support Isreal with your whole heart, and prop up this jewish state because it is part of your recipe for armageddon.

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  5. Re:Crusades by uncoveror · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Another good one would be Hundred Years War. In it, Catholics fight Protestants, and Protestants fight other Protestants for whose is the official church of the state all across Europe for a century. The Rolling Sones included a line about this in Sympathy For The Devil. It is my favorite part of the whole song:

    "I watched in glee while your kings and queens fought for ten decades for the gods they made."

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  6. Re:Crusades by b-baggins · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Hardly fiction.

    From the Encylclopedia Britannica.

    The Crusades:
    Organized by Western Christians in response to centuries of Muslim wars of expansion.

    The Crusades were usually military campaigns intended to halt or slow the advance of Muslim power.

    2003 edition Encylcopedia Britannica, Volume 16, p. 822.

    The first crusade was a response to the desecration of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (I mistakenly identified it as Hagia Sophia.).

    It was also a response to calls for help from the Byzantium empire in response to Muslim agression and expansion in the region.

    The first crusade was in 1095. The Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity occurred in 1054, and relations between the two were improving.

    Many people took advantage of the call for a crusade to liberate the Christian holy sites from Muslim aggression and oppression to engage in pogroms of their own. The People's Crusade being one of the most notorious. The People's crusade was condemned by bishops and the church, and many Jews were given asylum in churches and by the bishops from the army of the People's Crusade.

    As the crusades continued, they became more corrupt, thus leading to the desecration of the Hagia Sophia (some 200 years after the first crusade).

    The Crusades have become the favorite whip used to lash at Christians, just like the colonization of North America has been used to assault white Europeans.

    The Crusades were not the pure example of universal evil that automatically results from Christianity that Christian-haters would have you believe, just as Muslims were not the pious and saintly people living peacably at one with all mankind until assaulted by the evil Christians that these same people would have you believe.

    The truth is, Islam was a militarist, expansionist religion, and the crusades were a military response to that. And just like some political and religious leaders today hijack the extreme elements of Islam in order to kill as many Jews and infidels as possible, some political and religious leaders in the 11th-14th centuries hijacked the extreme elements of Christianity in order to kill as many Jews and infidels as possible.

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  7. You don't know jack about history by kosamae · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    For starters, the church did not divide when Rome fell, in fact, there was a long period of time after the fall of the Western Empire that the church stayed united (there were 4 patriarchs- Constantinople, Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria)
    The Great Schism came much later than the fall of Rome.
    Besides that, most of the Crusaders weren't practicing Christians, they were just mercenaries out to get themselves a free pass into heaven (Read Anna Comnena's "Alexiad").
    Furthermore, Rome did not want the crusaders to sack Constantinople, they did that to pay their debt to Venice, because Venice provided the crusaders transport into Palestine (only they never did, in the 4th crusade, because they stopped in Asia Minor).

    1. Re:You don't know jack about history by DavidTC · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      Um, no. I didn't say anything about the Great Schism at all. Your entire complaint seems to be the idea I was somehow talking about that, and I didn't even mention it.

      'The Church divided itself in half' is a perfectly accurate way of describing the way the church set itself up with Rome and Constantinople. Yes, in theory, it had already divided itself up with Antioch and Alexandria, and later Jerusalem, but I don't see how that's incredibly relevent unless you want to quibble about 'half'. Antioch and Alexandria didn't play an important role at all, whereas by the time fo the Fourth Crusade, Rome had long fallen and the Byzantian empire was being run from (duh) Constantinople.

      Constantinople was a seperate yet equal part of the Catholic Church, even with the weirdness about them excommunicating each other in 1054. (Look, I can mention the Great Schism if I want.)

      And I don't know why the hell you're talking about what they 'wanted' to do...they did sack Constantinople, and that's all I said.

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  8. Re:Crusades by Kosi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    The crusades and (christian) faith are entirely different things, although the latter was horrently abused by the former.

    Where did I say anything against faith? Ist just stated the fact that the crusades were "just" a gigantic rape, pillage and plunder tour, which was put under the sign of the cross for justification and other purposes.