Yahoo News relays the unlikely Hollywood Reporter headline Video game biz converting to Christianity. This is at least a shred of hope in the wake of the Grand Theft Auto mess, if only to create some balance to the sleaze being peddled on the store shelves.
A quick perusal of N’Lightning Software Development’s website leads one to believe they’re struggling a bit but doing good work. It would appear that their games are fairly decent (though I haven’t played either yet) from a production angle, and of course, fairly high on the morality scale.
Christian Gaming is a good site for relevant information, including a review of Catechumen and supposedly Ominous Horizons, though the link appears to be broken at the moment.
Sleaze is making its way out of the Leisure Suit and into other video games and it’s a shame. It’s argued that it makes a game more gritty, more realistic, or simply more fun, but just a few years ago players weren’t clammering for more crap in their games. They just wanted better games. Publishers and developers should get a more responsible grip on how to answer that request.
Personally, I don’t have a problem with violence in video games when it’s in the line of duty — say, in a game such as Ghost Recon 2 — or if it’s cartoonish — as in Ratchet & Clank. After all, most Christian folk appreciate the defense of freedom, protection from criminals, and enjoy blowing up space skank.
Tags: Game design · Platforms
6 responses so far ↓
1 KirbyMeister // Aug 29, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Yeah… having violence tacked on for no reason is just stupid. Although GTA doesnt have the sex out of the box, you need to unlock it with a cheat-code device and around 10 different codes, and THEN play for around 4 hours getting a girlfriend just to get a sex scene of which you see in ANY R-rated movie. And the gamers didnt like it anyway, since it replaces a point at which you get stat bonuses with another hoop to jump through, and the threat of police coming to cap you if you fail the minigame.
2 Elementalist // Aug 29, 2005 at 11:39 pm
It’s as though introducing christian inspired games is some sort of panacea (if a legitmate problem exists). You run the risk of replacing one extreme value set with another. A better approach is educating parents on ESRB ratings and generating an atmosphere of responsibility.
3 Neil H // Aug 30, 2005 at 4:08 am
Presumably a christian game based around assassinating foreign dictators would be ok …
4 Administrator // Sep 1, 2005 at 11:39 pm
KirbyMeister - if a kid knows they can play a sex game if you get a cheat-code device, enter a bunch of cheat-codes, and do this and that and the other thing for four hours, then that kid will get a cheat-code device, enter a bunch of cheat-codes, and then do this and that and the other thing for four hours. It’s stupid, gratuitous, and irresponsible to include the “mini-game” in GTA. Actually, it’s stupid for parents to allow their kids to play GTA in the first place. Society is screwed up enough.
-bill
5 Administrator // Sep 1, 2005 at 11:51 pm
Elementalist - Introducing Christian-inspired games isn’t likely to be a panacea, and I don’t think it was stated as such, but some morality is sorely lacking in what now passes for entertainment. “Extreme?” If you mean Christian ideals are extreme in that they embody love for even your enemies, sacrifice and service for others above yourself, then yes, Christian ideals are, as you say, extreme. And I would welcome them in some form in entertainment.
It’s a tough sell, of course, to have a game character run around loving everyone (no, not like in GTA
) to win points doesn’t sound all that fun. Attacking people with a sword but calling your sword the Word of God strikes me (no pun intended) as disingenuous or… misguided.
I believe game developers and publishers (or filmmakers and television writers for that matter) can go a long way by simply not taking the easy way out (yes, that’s right, take the narrow road). At least have a character who’s conflicted, who struggles with right and wrong, who must sometimes make tough decisions.
Saturating our minds with run-and-gun murder, rape, and pillagery has an effect on us. Individually and as a society. I’m not personally asking for a bunch of Care Bear games or something, just some balance and a touch a morality.
ESRB ratings are a guide that are routinely ignored in some quarters, but you’re right that parents need to be more responsible as well. The computer, PS2, and XBox are not good babysitters.
6 Administrator // Sep 2, 2005 at 12:31 am
Neil H - Yes, I see your winky.
Presumably a christian game based around assassinating foreign dictators would be ok …;-)
Dunno. Does it have good reply-value? Are the graphics at least passable? How’s the playability?
Seriously, how about this: an agent or spec ops guy is sent to assassinate some hooligan foreign dictator, and meets with all sorts of situations — potentially hostile or maybe not — along the way. But there’s a catch: you’re a Christian and must complete your mission and get back alive (oh, let’s say in time for your daughter’s dedication at church next Sunday
). Each game is dynamic with respect to who and what you encounter.
This time, you are there to kill, but end up helping a guide you recruited at a bar get information on a twelve-step program, then birthing some calves for a crazy old gunsmith who’s got your weapons and is finishing some work on them, and then escorting his chatty old wife across town and through insurgent battles to her sewing circle. She tells you about how the bad old dictator actually has a soft spot for old seamstresses and wouldn’t it be nice if she could knit him a beret and maybe he’d give up his Communist ways and help her and her friends set up an internet shop to sell their knittery.
So anyhow at the old ladys’ gathering you’re surprised to run into the dictator admiring their work and talking up some things he’s heard about Google. Do you attempt to report back that he’s maybe going soft and might be ripe for turning to the good and just ways of Capitalism? Do you trip him and hope he breaks his neck? Do you murder everyone there with the weapons at hand? Do you slip out then pop the Commie thug as you’d been planning? Hmmm… that old lady was so nice but you don’t really have time to report back and follow through with laying the groundwork for his change of political heart (as you no doubt would be expected to do). Gotta be back by next Sunday…
If you had talked to the guide some more (or spent your time sobering him up) you might have learned that besides funding terrorism, the dictator was keen on lying to old ladies then sending his Commie lieutenants to kill them in their sleep and steal their meager belongings. The guide is a drunk because he used to be one of those Commie lieutenants back in the day.
So the moral of the story is to do your good deeds, make some friends, birth some calves, and let Communist dictators be bygones, before they kill more old ladies. Duh.
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