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."

Comments

FWIW

[Otter]

N'Lightning is a terrific name. Or maybe I just spend so much time reading about Mandriva, Linspire and Hairy Warthog that anything half-sane sounds good.

"PlayStations of the Cross" is also pretty clever -- a bit too clever for a Slashdot submitter. Let's see, did he just copy the NYT title...yup.

Re:FWIW

[Naikrovek]

yes, but did he copy the funniest department line every grace slashdot from the NYTimes article?

from the forgive-me-father-for-i-have-HADOKEN! dept.

(its even funnier than my suggestion of "from the stuff-that-antimatters dept" on a story relating to antimatter research)

Crusades

[austad]

I'm looking forward to a game, we'll call it Crusades: Kill the Heathens.

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.

I know it's not realistic though, that would never happen in real life.

Re:Crusades

[DavidTC]

That's better than the Fourth Crusade, when they sacked Constantinople, which had been Christian since it was founded. (Well, renamed.)

In fact, it was the Eastern half of the Church! It wasn't some splinter group, the Church had divided itself in half when Rome fell, and they both recognized each other. In fact, 9 years latter, Bishop of Constantinople was placed second to the Pope!

After the Pope learned of the first attack, when the man the Crusaders were paid to put on the throne was put there, the Pope forbid them from attacking again, which they did anyway when that man died.

Not only did they attack it again, but they then burned the city. After they had conquered it.

The Fourth Crusade has to go down in history as the most absurd of the Crusades. Watch the Church...attack itself! Let's convert those Catholics to Catholics!

Non religious

[superpulpsicle]

I am totally non-religious, I could care less about worshiping anything. After signing up with a subscription based music service (Rhapsody), I found it shocking that christian pop/rock/hiphop sounded this good.

In fact, I have turned my view 180 degrees. I used to think religious folks never stop whinning about gangsta/satanic industrial music and video games etc. Now I seriously think they deserve a chance to be marketed.

(Organized) Religion is always a cash-cow

[Kosi]

I wonder that it took so long until someone saw the enormous potential to make money in sticking $RELIGION stickers on computer games.

Re:(Organized) Religion is always a cash-cow

[cyber0ne]

It's not really a question of just saying "this game is religious" that will make it sell. Generally, marketing based on that is best suited for parents buying games for their kids, usually young kids. Thus, such religious games tend to be geared towards a very young audience and, while they do sell, they're not really all that popular.

I would be particularly interested in religion-based games that target a more mainstream audience, as most other popular games do. Let's face it, if you take Western religion as an example, the Bible is full of violent conflict that would be great for a game.

The problem as I see it, however, is in the approach taken in designing such a game. It is often a project taken on by a religious group, not a gaming group. In their eyes, the story needs to be exact, otherwise it goes against their religion. After all, you can't risk letting a child see David actually get KILLED by his enemies on the screen, that would be heresy in their minds.

Thus, the games tend to play out more like a movie than a game, which goes back to being geared more towards small children than mainstream gamers. They have to be able to risk that bit of what they call heresy if they want the game to be interesting. If you're going to play David and fight all your enemies, there needs to be an actual risk of losing if the game is to be at all enjoyable.

Re:(Organized) Religion is always a cash-cow

[Enrico Pulatzo]

"entirely non-violent"? Is this the same guy who fashioned a whip and drove salesmen out of the temple?

Re:(Organized) Religion is always a cash-cow

[Anonymous Coward]

> You would just end up with games like "Christ Christ Revolution"

Totally, I can never get that "wine wine water wine water loaves wine wine fishes loaves loaves" combo in level 7.

Syncretism

[hey!]

Fusion of differing systems of belief, especially when success is partial or the result is heterogeneous.

As much as one might long to go ad fontes -- to the wellspring, Christianity as we know it in the West is irretrievably commingled with the violent, demon haunted world view of the northern tribes it filtered through. Certain elements of the ancient first and second century viewpoint can be recaptured, such as proximate parousia (the belief in the imminent Secnd Coming), but somehow they come out with more than a soupçon of Ragnarok in them.

So, we have the violent fantasy of divinely sanctioned holy war, in which, drawing the sword in the name of the Prince of Peace, indulging one's blood lust is not only sinless, but a positive good.

For most, Holy War is of course a metaphor. But where there is a metaphor, be certain that some will take it literally. Games are only games of course, except when they are indoctrination. That's difference between a Christian FPS and, say, GTA, which although it is disgusting in my opinion, is also harmless because it is meant to be, and is understood to be an absurd view of the world.

Lots of money to be made

[moof1138]

There is a fairly large subset of Christians in the U.S. who really want to hide from modern society. They are threatened by secular society, threatened by contemporary culture, threatened by modern science, etc. Marketing escapist stuff that helps to reinforce their little worldview would certainly be a cash cow.

Re:Lots of money to be made

[CrazyJim1]

When society is selling sex, drugs, and immoral behavior, of course Christians would not want to indulge in it. I used to like GTA:Vice City, but since God spoke to me, I threw it away and didn't buy GTA:San Andreas. There are definately video games out there that God doesn't want you to be playing. The trouble is that they're not always easy to spot. You could be playing an RPG, and then towards the end it could force you to worship some false god to continue. Video games are notorious for suprises popping up. Thats why it would be nice for some Christian games. Games a morally straight person won't have to worry about sinning in the heart to play.

Re:Oh, the possibilities

[SetupWeasel]

You do know that there is a movie by that name.

Watch it very, very drunk.

Get outside the box

[FreshMeat-BWG]

Scott Wong, of Brethren, acknowledges that ''the actual act of pulling a trigger and hunting down something -- somebody might have a problem with that. I always tell people that if you want good drama, you have to have conflict -- without that, you can't make your point.''

I didn't realize that the only solution to conflict and the only way to create drama is "pulling a trigger and hunting down something".

I am a Christian and I look forward to seeing high-quality Christian-themed games (even those including forms of violence), but to really create a new market that doesn't simply compete for shelf-space with other FPS titles, wouldn't a new gaming paradigm be a better opportunity?

For that matter, there are other game types that could be well suited to spreading the Word of God that don't require killing someone or something such as puzzle, adventure, strategy, simulation, etc.

I am not arguing that a Christian game should be void of violence, but these Christian game developers should not lock themselves into the mode of thinking that the only way to develop a hugely popular title is to compete directly with other hugely popular titles such as other FPS titles with gratuitous violence.

Christian developers say they will not embrace: the moral relativism embodied in the R.P.G.

So violence is OK, but looking at things from other perspectives is not? Again I don't think these guys should make this assumption across the board. Let someone play the role of Satan; however, if this is a faith-based/Christian game that is to teach a certain message, then I would assume playing that role would provide the opportunity to teach the lesson of why playing that role is not as desirable as it initially seems.

Christian game reviews

[Reignking]

There are plenty of Christian-centered game review web sites out there...

I can see it now..."You turn the corner" "You hear something" "You ask yourself, WWJD?"

Re:First Person Shooters?

[cyber0ne]

But I know few Christians that ever consider that, since it would be inconvenient.

You know mostly lazy Christians.

Read the Old Testament for the more violent epics. Consider this for a video game:

You are recruited into the king's army. You fight battle after battle, each one more challenging than the last. Eventually, you have more political clout than the king himself because you're such a great war hero. The king then tries to kill you, but his own son betrays him and helps you flee. Actually, I forget what happened between the fleeing and the king's death (feel free to look it up, it should be in the books of Samuel), but eventually you return and are crowned king yourself. You fight more battles, further establish your kingdom. You raise your son to be a great leader after you. Etc. Etc.

If done well, such things could make for pretty good video games. And that's just one character in one religion (or one combined source of a couple religions).

Re:As a Christian...

[Meagermanx]

So what you're saying is- Wait. Okay. So basically all Christa- Nope. I can't do it. Too easy.

So...

[Sylver Dragon]

So, when do we get the hentai game based on Lot and his daughters?

The original DOOM series.

[Stoutlimb]

The more you kill, the further you descend into the pits of hell. That sounds like a pretty good faith-based lesson for people. Go play Doom.

Bork!

Not about conversion

[bluGill]

These games are not about converting you to my religion, they are about giving me a passtime that doesn't violate all the principals of my religion.

My religion tells everyone not to watch (or own) a TV. There is nothing evil about a electron gun in a vacuum tube exciting a few phosphors (substitute your technology of choice). What is evil is what it is used for. Nothing is wrong with using a TV so you can take college classes from someone on a different continent. There is something wrong when you use TV to show sex, violence, and so on. (I picked two extremes, you have to decide where the dividing line is between them - if you even agree sex and violence is evil).

Video games are not evil of themselves. They can teach puzzle solving skills. A game of pac-man once a week has no value, but it isn't evil. (addiction to pac-man is evil, but that isn't the fault of the game itself) However most of the popular games go far beyond the line.

I'm not sure I agree that christian games are the solution to the problem. However the problem being solved isn't a reach out to non-Christians, it is a lack of things Christians can do.

Re:Wha-wha-wha?

[darthtrevino]

I don't know man. I listened to Christian music exclusively for a few months. It was a little bit too much for me. Or perhaps to be more precise too little.

The big problem with the Christian subculture is that it is very ivory-toweristic. Meaning that when I was in youth group in high school, we were discouraged from listening to non-christian music, which means "not from a Christian label". Instead of training ourselves to discerns what's right and wrong in the world and actively engage it, we wall ourselves into our own world and make it sinful to engage with anything else.

That's just bad reasoning and you'll find it all over American Christianity, and it's a big reason I don't go to Christian bookstores anymore. I get this feeling that there are some people at the top making big bucks by building this subculture of isolationism and labeling all secular media as evil.

And honestly most Christian music sounds tripe and disingenuine to me. (not all, just most).

...So I've been listening to alot of U2 lately.