Slashdot Mirror
Onward, Christian Geeks
The arrival of the first Christian computer action game opens a whole new chapter in the never-ending struggle between technology and the self-proclaimed forces of morality.
In the post-Columbine era, when computer games, the Net and other elements of geek culture are being blamed for murder, nothing that used to make sense makes sense anymore.
The new idea seems to be that while opponents can condemn TV, movies and the Net for causing violence, violence can also be used to promote wholesomeness and spirituality. It's a confusing time to be a moral guardian.
Shipped to computer stores this week, "The War In Heaven" is Doom Meets the Bible. "It may sicken traditional gamers, but my gut feel is that this game will be a hit," said Ann Stephens, president of PC Data, Inc., a research firm that tracks the $1.5 billion-a-year PC market, predicted to the New York Times.
Until "The War In Heaven," software with overtly religious themes has tended to be staid and educational, like children's games that quiz players on their scriptural acumen. There is, for example, the big-budget, Christian audience-marketed "Charlton Heston's Voyage Through the Bible," a CD-Rom released in l995 with readings by Heston (now president of the National Rifle Association) and video clips of the Holy Land.
"The War In Heaven" is a different story. Players are confronted with hissing horned monsters wielding swords and other weapons. Not surprisingly, the Christian player has two choices. He can follow "The Divine Path of Obedience," become an angel and progress up the 12-level ascent to Heaven. Or he can opt for "The Fallen Path of Power," follow Lucifer, become a demon and war against blonde angels with silvery wings.
One might assume that a Christian game would forego violence, but gamers who have e-mailed me (I haven't seen the game myself) say that would be a mistake. There's mayhem and killing, but no splattering of blood or scattering of body parts. It's rated "T" by the Entertainment Software Rating Board -- suitable for those 13 and older. Maybe they should add an "H" rating for holy.
The game's designers -- Theodore Beale and Andrew Lunstad, co- founders of the software firm Eternal Warriors -- say they're trying to reach a broad audience of gamers reared on Doom, Unreal, Quake and Diablo. The idea seems to be that if there's any group in need of soul-saving, this is probably it.
God called him to design "The Wars In Heaven," Lundstad has told reporters, adding "Let's face it, when you have angels fighting demons, it is going to be controversial." The violence, its creators claim, is merely a role-playing depiction of "spiritual warfare," the notion that non-physical agents of good and evil (which might well include TV, movies, the Net, animation and recorded music) are constantly at war and that their behavior affects people on earth.
If a person chooses to play "The War In Heaven" as a demon, explains Lundstad, he progresses by disobeying the Bible. "You have to do things that are more and more distasteful, from blasphemy to striking a praying angel," he explained in an interview. Not surprisingly, the evil path leads to destruction.
I've personally never been fortunate enough to get a direct communication from God, though perhaps that's because he doesn't yet use e-mail. But without question, many geeks are already on the wrong path, loving stuff like "South Park" and "The Simpsons" as they do, Satan's productions all. (He was even in the last "South Park" movie.) They might actually revel in blasphemy and angel-bashing.
Technology, from film to TV to the Web, is often blamed for triggering spiritual failings and degradations. But the theological notion of spiritual warfare put technology and contemporary culture smack in the middle of an epic conflict, choosing between the pathway to God or the interstate to the other place.
Religion and freedom have never really gotten along, from the persecution of Galileo to the demands by Orthodox Jews that Jerusalem shut down its cinemas on Friday night to Islamic attacks on writers and reporters in some Middle Eastern countries. Technology, a disseminator of so much information, a force for freedom, has always come under fire as Satan's ally.
"The War in Heaven" turns this on its head. The new spirituality seems to work this way: if you obsessively kill characters on Diablo or Quake, you're an evil, perhaps even murderous geek who might one day turn on your neighbors and classmates. But if you slaughter demons en route to heaven, you are merely acting out the will of God.
Finally, the online devout can rationalize some of the many contradictions that arise when they blame pop culture and the digital age for violence among the young, which otherwise makes no sense at all.
American notions about violence, culture, technology and the young have been surreal for decades, in that they are hardly ever connected to truth or reality. Violence among the young has been plunging at the very same time parents, politicians, journalists and educators are up in arms about it.
Last week, the Justice Department announced that, for the first time in half a century, more people are using guns to kill themselves than to kill others.
This week, a New York Times/CBS News poll found that American teenagers' fears of and immediate experience with violence have diminished sharply in recent years, along with the crime rate. Teen-agers reported fewer problems with violence at school and in the streets and correspondingly fewer worries; the percentage who said they feared being victimized dropped from 40 per cent in l994.
There's never been any substantive evidence to support the idea that TV shows, movies or computers have been a factor in the recent series of shootings -- statistically rare but horrific nonetheless -- in American schools.
Nevertheless, journalists and politicians continue to link the killings with technology and pop culture, managing in the process to persuade a majority of the American public that movies and computer gaming are responsible for a worsening tide of violence among the corrupted young.
Such ideas seem more related to the Inquisition than to one of the world's most technologically advanced societies, but there they are.
Perhaps games like "The War In Heaven" suggest some looming confrontation, an Armageddon-like battle out there in the digital ether for the collective souls of geeks. It's one battle geeks are well prepared to fight. They'll grab their joysticks, deploy their amassed arsenals and rush out to meet the Millenial Crusaders. Geeks have been trained for this thier whole lives; the forces of righteousness will surely be blasted to bits.
The bad news is that if "The War In Heaven" sells, expect a slew of Christian (and soon, no doubt, Jewish and Muslim) save-the-soul games marketed by greedy Web entrepeneurs who want to appear wholesome while raking in big money. Sunday school might be in for some radical change.
The good news is that ultimately such developments will drive software censors and moral guardians nuts. CyberNanny, unable to distinguish between spiritual and secular slaughter of demons and digital blondes with wings, will soon be blocking God along with the Playboy website. The new boundaries of spiritual warfare are so fuzzy that it will no longer be possible to even pretend to be able to distinguish the allegedly good guys from the reputedly bad.
Will it run on Jesux??
John Katz, like many strong-opinioned people, has fallen into a classic and STUPID trap, and for some reason it always really pisses me off.
Katz' column can be distilled into the following statement:
"Christians condemn video games as violence, but they've put out a Christian-themed violent video game that they say is ok because it's only killing 'bad people.' This is hypocritical but they don't see it and it's really funny."
What Katz ignores, ignores, IGNORES is the fallacy that is implied by the above statement. The fallacy is as follows:
"All Christians have exactly the same views, and all those views are terribly narrow-minded."
This statement is so laughably untrue that I don't even know where to begin.
Katz, where do you get this view? Do you really think there are no Christians who enjoy a good game of Doom? Do you really think there are no Christians who think that the idea of a link between video games and violence is, to put it bluntly, just plain STUPID?
Perhaps he's not aware of the strong (but unknown) anti-athoritarian movement in various branches of Christianity? Of course he is. And why is that? Because Katz, like many people, has fallen victim to the same source of information he whined about during the wake of the Columbine massacre:
The press.
The press, which has proven itself to be nothing more than a ratings seeking sensationalist group anyway. The press, which immediately following the Columbine massacre branded all internet geeks as bomb wielding withdrawn psychopaths, which branded goth's (of all people) as bloodthirsty ticking time bombs ready to take out a High School because they wear black trenchcoats and sometimes listen to German Industrial Bands and Marilyn Manson.
Yes, this press ALSO tends to focus only on the right-wing, conservative Christian Movement. And do you really think they do so for ANY OTHER REASON than the fact that the Right-Wing Christian Movement equals RATINGS?
So do you think, perhaps, that the entire sum of Christianity just MIGHT NOT be represented in a balanced manner on the news?
OF COURSE NOT. Just like any ideology, only the "exciting" part is reported in the Top Stories. Christians who leave people alone and volunteer in the community and do nice things for people are BORING and get IGNORED. Christians who like to play video games and believe in Free Speech and think of Women as Equals, rather than Objects, are BORING and get IGNORED.
So when a bunch of Christians come out with a violent computer game with a Christian theme, Katz cannot CONCEIVE of a group of Christians who wouldn't have a problem with that. Obviously, it's the same right-wing group that hates women and blame everything on the homosexual community and believe Clinton is the AntiChrist and the Internet is Satan's Tool.
Of course, Katz is also very pithy when he states that "religion and freedom don't get along."
Here's a clue: When religion is used as a method of SOCIAL CONTROL, it doesn't get along with ANYTHING. But anyone who has any kind of religious faith -- regardless of what it is, Christian, Judaism, Moslem, Buddhist, whatever -- will tell you that if it's being used as a form of social control, it ceases to be a religion.
Have you ever read Tosltoy? He's a Christian _Anarchist_. Do you admire Dr. Martin Luther King? He was a Minister, you know. He didn't leave the faith to start a civil rights movement. (Oh, and he even got on TV a few times, without being a conservative prick.)
Are you familiar with the Abolitionist movement in the pre-civil war era? Religious based. Familiar with a guy named Mahatma Ghandi? Well, he certainly was a religious leader -- oh, but he wasn't a Christian, so I guess that doesn't count.
This game seems unbelievably silly, and I have no interest in playing it -- I'd rather play one where I _can_ see the body parts fly apart -- but I don't see where you get off beating all Christians with the "Right Wing Idiot" stick. Game over, insert two tokens to play again...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
> lives; the forces of righteousness will surely
> be blasted to bits.
Katz, you send out more crap than a hand grenade in a sewage works.
I'm aware how futile it is to try to penetrate your highly effective fact repulsion field, but here's some actual real information:
- Many geeks are not religious...
- ...but many also are.
- Many religious people are not geeks...
- ...but many also are.
- There is no inherent conflict between geekiness and faith.
Indeed, many famous and prominent geeks are Christians. You might be aware (but you probably aren't) that Slashdot itself (together with many thousands of other sites) is written in a language called PERL. The geek who inveted PERL, whose name is Larry Wall, is well known as being a Christian. He isn't a in-your-face bible-thumping damnation-decreeing Christian, but hey, neither are most Christians.At the end of the day, Katz, you are in no position to understand the minds of Christians or geeks since you are clearly neither.
How come whenever something about Christianity on /., everyone assumes that all Christendom is behind it, and it will inevitably end in A) moral confusion and/or B) holy wars and/or C) unjust persecution of geeks. Sorry to crush a collective dillusion, but Christians _are_ capable of independent thought, and aren't necessarily bent on starting a second Inquisition. And then there are comments like "They might actually revel in blasphemy and angel-bashing." refering to watching The Simpsons? There is not a commandment that says "thou shall not laugh." And then we get the comment "Religion and freedom have never really gotten along." Nice tie, but it doesn't explain a few people like Gangis Kahn, Napolean, or Hitler (who prosecuted the Jewish RACE much more so than the religion). I am sorry, I guess it is just more 'fun' to live with a severly outdated, extremely prejudicial view of the religious.
It always amazes me how many people talk about Christianity as if it's a big corporation, or a giant collective. People talk as if an action taken by a single Christian is representitive of all Christians. I could see how someone might get that impression in the States (from what I hear) because there are large, politically minded Christian organizations.
At its heart, Christianity is following a leader, Jesus Christ. The act of following Jesus is subject to all of the human failings that apply to following anything else. If God was interested in making his followers robots that only do his will, he could have made all humans that way. Instead, he chooses to give us the choice to follow him, and even creativity in the way we follow him.
"Bugs are harder to cope with than features, because they are less well defined and less well designed."
"It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblences to merit."
Katz, you seem to be a victim of your own rhetoric.
This game is trying to reach an audience of Christians often neglected by the "mainstream" world, both Christian and non-Christian. Despite what many non-Christians many think, not all of us Christians are people who scream "the Internet is the Devil!" at the first accidental web search for "free JPEGs." However, this does not keep you, the man who decried schools everwhere for their stereotyping of geeks, goths, and other form of introverts, from stereotyping and lambasting Christians.
I haven't seen the game. To tell the truth, I'd probably find it a little cheesy and would prefer more mainstream games. However, it is an attempt to create a quote-unquote religious game that is not Yet Another Boring Moral Quiz. This is an attempt that should be looked upon favorably or brushed aside if it truly is a poor game, but is instead being bashed simply because the religion in question is Christianity.
Get this in all of your heads now -- we Christians are NOT the Borg. We are individuals, and some of us think a little differently from each other. Hell, if that weren't the case do you think we'd still have all our stupid little denominational squabbles? The seeming contradiction over the creation of a violent game after so much has been said about violence in the media being the root of all evil is because it wasn't the same person giving the two different messages!
This is not News for Nerds. This is another excuse to pigeonhole all Christians into one monolithic entity and call us fools for not agreeing with one another. Well, listen to your own message for once. Christians are people and have their own differing views -- and that's okay.
By the way, Katz.. Just because you've never felt like you been sent the touch of the divine doesn't mean you should be mocking people who do. If you really want to send a message that we should be open to other people's views, you should quit being so hypocritical about religious views. (Not that there'd have been a word about this on this sight if it was a Muslim or Wiccan game...)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I really don't think that the point is that ALL of Christendom is behind this. I would assume most moderate and intelligent Christians would find this game as silly and hypocrite as non-Christians. The point is that the same moral-authority types propagate this as "wholesome" that think it's evil if a 15 year sees a naked nipple, an 18 year old has a beer, and think it's a really good an worthy thing for everyone to be able to buy automatic weapons (and lay the blame for Columbine on South Park).
I'm not much of a Doom/Quake/you-name-it fan, but I don't think it's evil. If a teenager is incapable of differentiating between killing in a game or on TV, the cause can't just be his playing Quake.
If you do find Doom & Company offensive, this game is just as bad, what kind of a medieval concept of religion is it that allows killing for God? Ok, it's basically the same moral argument used to justify the death penalty.
Anyone downloaded this already, it seems so ridiculous that I'm tempted to believe this is a farce along the line of JeSux.
On the one hand Jon Katz pushes tolerance for those who are different and freedom of speech for all. On the other, as in this article, he seems to be doing the opposite. Why all the venom against Christians Jon? Would you make the same nasty, baseless, comments about a game representing Jewish or Muslim mythology? How about Hindu? Paganism?
Not that I really care about the game in question myself. I doubt I will ever play it, much less pay money for the privilege. Nor am I in the target audience. And the idea of a violent game intended for christians does seem a bit hypocritical. Although perhaps not, if you read the old testement.
But it doesn't reach the same heighth of hypocrisy as Jon here! He speaks in a harsh tone about one segment of the populace, yet writes so many impassioned articles questioning why the general populace and traditional media do the same with geeks. Perhaps Jon thinks Christians are safe targets right now...
And notice that at no point is the game reviewed on its own merits as a game. Only on the content. I wish I could moderate articles down -- I would count this one as 'flamebait'.
Jack
- -
Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?