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

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.

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:Oh, the possibilities

[SetupWeasel]

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

Watch it very, very drunk.

So...

[Sylver Dragon]

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

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.