Gamespot article on Christian game developers...

MeridianFlight

MeridianFlight

New Member
Gamespot article on the Christian Game Developers

There was a Christian Game Developer's Conference over the weekend in Portland, Oregon (I was two hours away! I should have gone! Monkey nuts!).

Anyway, Gamespot was there to cover it, and they interview several Christian Game Developers. Here's a link to the article. http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/01/news_6130117.html

A couple of things were, well, interesting. If you read the article, apparently there's a Christian FPS title in the works that faces off Christians and Jews against demonic forces. The game could very well receive a "Mature rating." I'm not entirely sure a "Christian Doom" is the right way to go about witnessing through the videogame medium. Here's a quote from one of the developers.

"'I'm a pretty hard-*** Christian, God really motivates most of the things I do,' De Margheriti said."

So what is everyone's take on this?
 
That should be interesting. He can still be a hard-donkey christian if he swears, but it's not a very good witness.
 
Ugh.

This is bad news for several reasons.

1) Cursing is NOT representing the Christian faith. My goodness, that quote alone pretty much undermines any respect he may have ever been able to earn. Horrible, horrible move.

2) In my opinion, Christian games are only going to cheapen our faith in the eyes of non-believers. If they are making them for Christians only, fine. But people are going to laugh at any game where you "build up faith to unleash a miracle or the finger of God."

3) A Christian MMO sound cool, but really our goal is about sharing Christ. And we can't do that to each other, we need non-believers to share with. Our presence in secular MMOs like Guild Wars and WoW is much more of a witness than hiding in our own little perfect online gaming world and not being seen by the rest of the secular game players.

4) Any Christian game that gets a Mature rating should flat-out not happen. Again, this will only make people laugh at us and call us hypocrites. It's hard enough to defend playing games like WoW and Guild Wars that have magic and supernatural evil to a non-believer. Trying to explain why our "Christian" game has blood and gore and got a Mature rating is a task I never want to have to take on.

All in all, I almost wish this had never happened. Being so close, I do wish I'd gotten down to Portland for the conference though. I think things could be done to make cleaner games without them being specifically about Christianity.
 
Any Christian game that gets a Mature rating should flat-out not happen. Again, this will only make people laugh at us and call us hypocrites. It's hard enough to defend playing games like WoW and Guild Wars that have magic and supernatural evil to a non-believer. Trying to explain why our "Christian" game has blood and gore and got a Mature rating is a task I never want to have to take on.
Click to expand...

<signs name under Slice's>
 
I believe it would be possible to make christian videogames that could sneak in under the radar and penetrate mainstream circles. The trick of course is a subtle inclusion of the Good News that isn't so subtle that it can be glossed over easily.

Of course gameplay that is addictive but not contradictory to biblical principles is a must. I'm talking about Tetris blocks labeled with scripture either.
 
Oh maybe, sorry...I must have missed the previous post.

The article was posted August 1, 2005 though...perhaps this is just more press on the same thing.
 
I think we are going to see here what has already been done through mainstream games. It will probably be very easy to designate the games in this first wave, but as time goes on and the games develope, there will be some games that contain the elements of the non-christian games (graphics, animations, action sequence etc) but will also capture Christian themes.

Gen
 
It's one of the more even-handed articles I've seen on Christian Gaming. Gamespot's coverage of The Bible Game at E3 sounded more like satire.
 
I did get something good out of that article anyway... I have to get Dance Praise for the kids! Unfortunately it won't be out till October, and after reading up on it, my kids want it NOW.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top