Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 3

What is your quest? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In our continuing look at Edward Castronova’s Life Is A Game, it is time to talk about quests. Quests are something common to a gamer. When I boot up Final Fantasy XIV in the afternoon, I see a series of quests that I can undertake. Some are simple. Some could just involve talking to someone and reporting back. Some could involve exploring a dungeon. Some could involve defeating a powerful enemy.

Gamers know the rule about quests. We can have the ultimate goal of the game overall, but it’s easy to get caught up in sidequests. These are quests that you take that are not essential to the story, but have their own benefits. Often times, the sidequests can be more enjoyable than the ultimate quest.

Sometimes also, the sidequests you can do in light of the situation can get hysterical. I was playing FF XIV and had a scene once where a baby in a skirmish got tossed in a body of water. Normally, the player jumps in immediately and rescues the child, but I had a pop-up for a requested dungeon raid come up then so the child managed to survive for half an hour while I raided a dungeon. Tough kid. In Final Fantasy VII, the meteor heading towards the planet will wait while you’re busy doing chocobo races. Also, sure, Zelda is in trouble, but hey, Link wants to go fishing!

Quests give us meaning and purpose. We want to have something that we are aiming for. C.S. Lewis once said that a ship on the water needs to know three things. First off, how to stay afloat. Second, how to avoid hitting other ships. Third, why it is out there in the first place.

Quests give us a purpose to be out there in the first place. Some quests we have involve small goals. You might have a quest to do laundry today or to go to the grocery store and pick up some items. You might not think of these as quests, but they are. You have a goal that you need to accomplish and you set out to do what it takes to accomplish that goal.

Some quests are much more long-term. As a student at a seminary, I have a goal of getting my Master’s and eventually a Ph.D. I also have a goal right now of meeting a good Christian girl and getting married. On the way, there can be several other minor quests on the goal of these quests.

You won’t go on a date unless you ask the girl out. On my end, I am also currently speaking to a therapist here at the seminary who is helping me with social relationships for the goal so I can learn to be social and interact with people better. It’s super difficult if you are on the spectrum. That’s a quest to get me to this quest.

To get the degree, I must pass the class. To pass the class, I must do the assignments. That means going to the library and reading the books. (And if anyone is feeling generous….)

Ultimately, something that has to be asked is what is my overall ultimate quest. Link’s is normally to rescue Zelda and defeat Ganon, again. (Though technically, based on the timeline, it is a different Link every time. If you don’t understand, it’s okay. No one really understands the Zelda timeline.) In Final Fantasy VII, it’s to stop the meteor and defeat Sephiroth.

For us, part of the idea of the game of life is we have to figure out our ultimate quest. What are we here for? What do we want to accomplish? Everyone wants to accomplish something. What is our goal? Earn the most money? Have the most fun? Be a good person? Some combination? What drives us?

If we want to play the game well, we need to find out. Otherwise, we could be questing for nothing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 2

What position will we take in the game? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re continuing our look at Edward Castronova’s book Life Is A Game and looking at how games are lived out. He writes that if he saw a Buddhist who was drunk, he would not criticize his devotion to his teacher, but he would question how seriously he took his teaching. After all, Buddhism does say a lot about self-control.

The same could be said about Christians, naturally, and yet this is something that needs to be kept in mind. When non-Christians want to bash Christianity because they see Christians living inconsistent lives, such as being heavily promiscuous, then that doesn’t say anything about Christianity. It says something about that particular “Christian.” (The person could really be fooling themselves into thinking they are a Christian.) If you see a Buddhist not living out his Buddhism, then that tells you nothing about Buddhism. It tells you a lot about the Buddhist.

When we choose a worldview, we are choosing how we play the game. We are choosing a position that we think best describes the game that has been created. When you play a real video game, you could debate what kind of worldview it exists in. Not all will be screaming something, as it could be hard to tell what worldview Tetris could be in, but what about a series like Final Fantasy? In this world, it is taken as perfectly “natural” that gods, magic, and stupendous beasts exist. Also often in these games, that good and evil exist is a given.

As a gamer also, I never really got bothered by the problem of evil which is brought up. Evil is something that since it is in the game often provides something for us to rise above, for us to conquer. If you’re a fan of mysteries, you understand this also. You read wanting to know who the bad guy is and in the end, how he gets tracked down and stopped.

This is not to say that evil is good, but we do realize it as a challenge for us all and we need a good worldview to conquer evil. Not only that, we need a good worldview to tell us that evil is real and that the fight is winnable. Somehow, many of us do have that idea that it is winnable.

If you read a book and in the end, the bad guys win and that’s it, it seems like there is a problem with the book. Somehow, we anticipate that no matter what is going on, the good guys will win. There can be a hint of anxiety in us at times watching a show or movie or playing a game and wondering “Will this last-ditch effort really work?” It does, and we are relieved, but not always surprised.

So in conclusion at this part, what do we learn? We learn that to defeat evil, we need a worldview that can be lived fairly consistently at least, as humans tend to fail to some degree at everything and that includes our worldview. We also need a worldview that tells us that evil is a reality and explains its place in our world. Finally, we need one that can show us that evil can be defeated and there is hope.

We’ll discuss more next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 1

Are we playing a game? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Spoiler warning for the old game Final Fantasy Legend ahead. It’s an old Gameboy game, but if you are planning on playing on an emulator or something, skip this part.

Your party in Final Fantasy Legend has climbed a tower twice that is said to lead to paradise, defeating the fiends of Gen-Bu, Sei-Ryu, Byak-Ko, and Su-Zaku, as well as their leader Ashura. (Fans of mythology should recognize those names.) There was a trap the first time going up so the party had to do it again and fight the first four of those fiends again, until they got to the top again.

This time, they seem to enter a peaceful and serene area where there doesn’t seem to be much of anything, except for one man, standing in front of a door.  They talk to him to find out he is the Creator and they were the first to finish the game. It was a game he made because people didn’t know what courage and determination meant so he created Ashura to see what they would do. He wants to reward the party and grant them a wish.

The party is indignant upon hearing this insisting that he used them. Eventually, it’s clear they’re picking a fight with him and so the party fights the creator. In the end, they win, and rather than go through the door, they choose to return to their world. (How much I wish we could get a story that would show what was beyond that door.)

THOSE WANTING TO AVOID SPOILERS CAN RESUME HERE.

What if our world also was a game? Granted, there are differences, as contrary to Isaiah 45:7 as read by fundy atheists, God did not create evil. However, He did allow it. My thoughts on this come from reading Edward Castronova’s book, Life Is A Game, which I heard about on a podcast on God and Gaming with two hosts, one being a Catholic priest, who both love gaming and they have Catholics on there who are in the game industry and Castronova was one of them.

He looks at game design and says “What if God created the universe like we create a game?” It’s an interesting hypothesis and I am going through it and in that spirit, rather than call this a book plunge, I will call it a walkthrough. This is one of those books that I am highlighting every night something I read that I find relevant. I am not just learning a lot about the world around me, but I also think I’m learning about myself and so many times I read something and I think “I can relate to that! I didn’t know there was a name for that!” By the way, I’m not even 20% through the book.

So let’s start with RPGs. These are my favorite genre of games. In these, one assumes the role of a character and makes decisions as him (or her) and really seeing the world through their eyes. Castronova says that these have shown us that people want to be heroes and have their lives matter and go on quests. (Another area that shows this I think is the rise of the superhero genre) It’s common in the world of RPGs for a player to spend 20-40 hours a week on one game. Consider how many people made plans suddenly when The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild came out. In Japan, there are laws on when a Dragon Quest game can come out because everyone takes off to play it.

Now we can look at this and say “What is wrong with our society in that people are wanting to spend so many hours playing a game?” or we can say “People are spending so many hours playing a game? Why?” Obviously, it is meeting some desire in the lives of those people, but is it just a desire to have fun?

Probably not just that, because while gaming is fun, there is also the reality of what is known as rage quitting. People get super frustrated because they can’t seem to beat that one level. Many times it’s common to throw one’s controller and just march off in a huff, and yet so many times we come back. Why?

What if we saw this not as a problem, but rather as a clue? Could it be possible that game design could tell us about the human condition? What if we did see the world as a game? Could that give us any insights into the nature of reality? Is this also a novel idea to see it this way?

And what is the purpose of play? Something to consider is play is its own end. People do not play so they can work, but we do work so we can play.

And how does this relate to our everyday theology and life? Is this part of the reason sometimes men hate going to church? Could seeing life as a game make us want to go deeper into understanding God?

I plan on exploring these questions as I go through this book. I don’t know how long it will take, and I also do not plan on blogging next week as I have the Defend conference going on. I hope you’ll be there, but if you can’t, I hope you’ll join me as we explore answering if life could be a game.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Speaking At Defend 2023

What’s going on in January? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For all interested, I will be speaking at Defend 2023 this year. Those interested in signing up for the event can find out how to here. We have a number of well-known speakers coming like Gary Habermas, Tim McGrew, Frank Turek, Paul Copan, Craig Hazen, Sam Allberry, Mike Strauss, and many others. I will be speaking at a breakout session at 2 PM on Thursday.

When Bob Stewart asked me if I spoke what I would speak on, he wanted me to send him a list of three topics I could do. I thought that everyone and their mother already speaks on a lot of the big topics. Honestly, if someone had to choose between hearing me on the resurrection or Gary Habermas, where will they go? I’d probably go hear Habermas instead even.

So what could I speak on that others aren’t speaking on but I think could be relevant to the people there? I had three topics. I had considered speaking on Autism and Christianity. I also was willing to speak on divorce and Christianity. My main interest though had a lot to do with what I had been reading a bit about and that was video games and Christianity.

That’s the topic then that I was asked to speak on. I had recently heard on Audible a book about the history of Nintendo and Super Mario in particular. I also had listened to The Gaming Mind and had read Grand Theft Childhood about how there is no real link between video games and violence. I am also reading Matthew Millsap’s dissertation on video games and theology. I found this kind of reading fascinating. I also noticed that there was a hysteria often whenever a new medium came out. I wanted to know how to better avoid that.

It wasn’t long after I shared the news on Facebook that people were immediately wanting to engage with me and discuss this. I find this exciting not just on an intellectual level, but on a personal level. Why have I gravitated towards games all my life and why is it that that played a role I think in my getting into Christian apologetics? A resonating quote with me after all is Peter Kreeft’s of “Apologetics is the closest you come to saving the world.”

When it came time to move to New Orleans, my DivorceCare leader and his wife came over to talk to my parents about their concerns and my leader said it well. “He has been playing games all his life and now he wants to go out and live those games. He really wants to be out there in the battle.” I have told people that in recovering from divorce, my slogan has been to play to win. I don’t want to spend my one life in defeat and a victim because of how she treated me.

Too often, those of us who are gamers are often dismissed. I did recently skim through the Gaming Alone post on The Gospel Coalition. I did notice the story about a seminary professor who wanted to start a gaming club when told that every domain in the world is meant to belong to God and when the call came out, he saw several students he didn’t know were there and he thought he knew everyone. He wondered if it was because these students tend to isolate themselves with games.

To an extent, we do, but I also wonder if it could be gaming is more friendly to introverts. When I go to a party, I am often miserable. I go to every event I can on campus because a friend told me if I want to meet women and get a wife, that is the thing to do. However, I am often bored intensely at them as it is difficult to talk to people and initiate conversation. Now get me to my D&D group that plays here on the campus and I have no problem with interaction with them. Most of my great friendships I have had in life have started with games.

I might blog more on this topic after Christmas, or I might wait until after the conference. I hope you will come and if you do, even if you don’t come to my session, if we know each other through a medium like Facebook, I would be thrilled to get to meet you. There’s always something exciting with putting a face to the name.

Please come to Defend 2023 this year and let me know if you signed up!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

What do I think of Jeff Ryan’s book published by Portfolio? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I like to listen to audio books while I’m out walking around and I am always interested in learning books about the gaming industry, something I’ve been a part of all my life. This one was a book about the invention of Super Mario and what he has done since then. The book goes through several chapters and many of them have a name that is a reference to a Mario game, though certainly not the focus of that chapter, a rather punny idea.

Mario is in many ways the unlikely hero in the book. Imagine you had a blank slate before you and you were sitting down to create a hero. What would you make? Someone like Batman, Superman, the Hulk, Iron Man, etc. is understandable. How many people went with pudgy little plumber in overalls that can jump on enemies’ heads and throw fireballs?

Yet that is what was created.

Of course, the first major game we think of with Mario was Donkey Kong. Mario had other games even before Super Mario Brothers and even Mario Brothers, but Donkey Kong had him there as the main protagonist largely going by Jumpman. Then a shock came in the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., where it turned out that Mario was the villain.

From there, Mario went on to star in Super Mario Brothers and the world could not get enough of the plumber or his family. The story is the same for the most part, but the adventures keep changing. Bowser kidnaps the Princess. Mario goes and rescues her. Sometimes there have been variations of this, most notably Super Mario Brothers 2 which was a remake of Doki Doki Panic with Mario added in, and also even Super Mario RPG where Bowser and Mario joined forces to rescue the Princess and even after rescuing her, joined forces to defeat the villain Smithy.

For good or evil, Mario is stuck with Nintendo and Nintendo is stuck with him. Mario has far more games to his credit than anyone else and it’s easy for Nintendo to slip out a remade Mario game even years or decades later and still have it sell like hotcakes. Mario has arrived branded on everything and if there is any athlete who has the name Mario, what nickname does he get? Super Mario.

Ryan in this book takes us through all this history including the war with Sega and then after that, the battle against Sony and Xbox. It stops shortly after the Wii. I found this interesting saying the future would definitely have to include consoles with bodily motion involved and yet the next big one after the WiiU that Nintendo made was the Switch. This I consider a wise move since Nintendo has had great success in the portable market and the Switch combines both of them.

Mario is a hero for everyman. He doesn’t really excel at anything, aside from perhaps his ability to jump, but he is still the guy who is unlikely and yet going out every day to save the Princess and battle a lizard king who is often much bigger than he is. (Especially since so many games end now with a giant Bowser.) Mario has indeed conquered America.

If you are a fan of gaming, I recommend getting this one. If you want to know about the history of Mario, I also recommend this. I found this a quite enjoyable read and wanted to listen to it more and more. For we who are Christians, it reminds me we need to be in the gaming market as well and producing good games people, not just Christians, will want to play. We don’t need to create some fantastic superhero with an incredible story. An ordinary plumber can do.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth.)

 

Book Plunge: Grand Theft Childhood

What do I think of Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson’s book published by Simon and Schuster? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I heard about this book while going through The Gaming Mind on Audible. Making a mental note, I went to my library website and ordered it. I’m thankful that I did. This has been an amazing read on the alleged link between video games and violence in children.

This is not a book written from a Christian perspective, at least explicitly. The authors do not state their worldview. However, the authors have interacted with the material they critique and have also included snippets of interviews they have done with children and their parents.

To which, a lot of that information should be encouraging to parents. Older children, for instance, happen to think there are some games that their younger brothers and sisters shouldn’t be playing and they won’t play when those people are around. Surprisingly, something they were often concerned about was swearing. After all, there are a lot of things in a game hard to copy, but swearing isn’t. All you have to do is speak.

Also, something that needs to be said is that many times, children actually do imbibe their parents’ worldviews more than parents realize and learn what to play and not play. Of course, this isn’t across the board, but children are watching and are learning. Quick pro tip here on how parents can better understand what’s going on in the games of their children. Play the games with them and/or talk to them about them. (Yeah. Actual interaction with your children works. Who would have thought?)

The authors also don’t just look at the fact that children play violent games, but often ask why they do. Many times, children say that this actually helps them deal with their anger. In an odd way, that could be saying that rather than cause aggressive behavior in children, video games actually help to alleviate it. Frankly, if there was a strong connection between violent video games and violent children, we would see a lot more violent children.

Also interesting is that if anything, NOT playing video games, especially for boys, could be more of a problematic sign. Remember the Virginia Tech shooter? Something odd his classmates said after about him was, “He never wanted to play video games with us.” Video games are often a tool of social integration and bonding. Kids today get together to talk about games like Pokemon. I started getting more friends in Elementary School and beyond because I had a reputation as being quite good at video games.

The authors also point out that the hysteria over video games has happened over most every new form of media that has come out. Violence and sex in these has never been new. Go back to ancient history? It’s there. Medieval times? Still there. Renaissance and Enlightenment? Yep. What would be an anomaly is a time where such stories did NOT exist.

What about sex in video game? Yep. This is covered. (Odd way of describing it.) Most of us know about Lara Croft and the hope of so many teenage guys to find a nude code to use for her. Now, many games can be even more explicit. Again, this is something that parents need to talk with their children about, but it is not a shock that females are made to be attractive in video games. The Final Fantasy series in X, XII, XIII, and relevant spin-offs from those games all had a protagonist with a very similar look based on what was attractive in Japan at the time.

So when is there a problem? It’s not in the gaming itself. It’s everything around that. If your child is becoming more withdrawn, has a dramatic change in moods, has no or very few friends, and is dropping grades, don’t blame it on the games. The games are often a way of dealing with whatever the real problem is. Find that.

For parents also, the last chapter is all about practical advice for you and it does enforce what I recommend. Play the games with your children, or at least talk about them. Show an interest in them. If the world of the Legend of Zelda means something to your child, find out why. You could get to understand your child better and your child will think they matter when you show interest in what interests them.

If you enjoy gaming and want to deal with criticism, read this book. If you are a parent and you are concerned about your children and video games, read this book. The same applies if you are a teacher or someone in ministry, especially youth ministry.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Helping Children Make Wise Decisions

How can children best make decisions? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I have been reading a book called Grand Theft Childhood which is about claims that violent video games produce violent kids. (Review coming.) I read a section recently based on the interviews as parents and their kids were interviewed separately and they were talking about the ESRB rating system. For those who don’t know, that’s a video game system that rates video games in a similar way to how TV shows and movies are rated.
The mother was sure her 13 year-old son wasn’t playing any games she didn’t approve of. He gave a different story. He and his seventeen year-old brother knew how to trick her. When they went to a video store to rent a game, they sought out the worst one they knew she wouldn’t approve of. After she said no, they found the one that they really wanted which looked good by comparison then and she approved.
Most of us likely grew up with such tricks. Children I suppose have always been trying to manipulate their parents. For instance, do you want to do something that could be dangerous? Ask Dad first.
Now I don’t know the religious status of this family, but I did see a problem here with how we raise our children. These boys are teenagers and their mother is still having to approve their decisions? If they lived in biblical times, the youngest would likely at least be preparing to have his own children and the oldest likely already would.
How long can this last? When the kids go to college, does anyone really think that they will ask for Mom’s approval? Not a bit. They will immediately be doing the things Mom forbade them from doing.
What do you do then? Won’t they leave home and mess up immediately? Won’t they be the ones the parents tried to prevent them from being? There is a solution.
Don’t make the decisions as they get older. Begin early on teaching them how to make good decisions. Give them a worldview whereby they can make informed choices and they will be their choices as well. If they make mistakes, they own them and suffer the consequences. If they make good ones, they also own them and reap the benefits.
For many parents, it can be tempting to be helicopter parents and hover over their children to protect them from all harm. You can’t. If anything, in the long run, this will likely lead to more harm for your kids. If you teach them instead how to be wise in decision-making instead of just going by what feels good at the moment, you will set them up for a lifetime of success.
Remember, your job as a parent is to be the one to actually work yourself out of a job. When your kids reach the stage where they are making wise decisions independent of you, then you have succeeded. The old saying is that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime. If you make your child’s decision you protect them for a day, but if you teach them how to make wise decisions, you protect them for a lifetime.
Also, if you want a resource for younger children, I definitely recommend Elizabeth Urbanowicz’s Foundation Worldview resource.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

What Really Hurts Children

What is the real danger to children? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Recently, I wrote about the hysteria that comes whenever any new piece of technology comes out. It’s always argued that this will lead to the children being corrupted. The reality comes and goes and there’s no major change. Most of us look at what happened with comic books in the past as silly today. Odds are years from now today’s fear will seem silly.

But yet, no one can deny that children are being hurt. Yes. We do have problems with children committing violence and we do have problems with sexual promiscuity in children. Children often do drugs and children struggle with suicide, depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.

It’s really easy to blame this on the surrounding culture. It’s comic books! It’s TV! It’s movies! It’s music! It’s smartphones! It’s video games! It’s the internet! I am not denying that some of these can play a part, but there is something far more influential that comes beforehand that if this gets wrong, the others are far more likely to be hazardous to children. If this gets right, they are far less likely to be hazardous.

What children most need right is a stable family.

By this also, I mean that children living with a mother and a father both, and preferably their own biological parents. I realize that sometimes this can’t happen. I have a wonderful friend who’s a widower raising children on her own which is wonderful. A cause like being widowed suddenly due to a tragedy often cannot be helped.

Technically on my end, my sister is my step-sister as we have the same mother, but my mother left an abusive marriage and remarried my father and I come from that one, but my Dad has never treated my sister like any less of his own flesh and blood. I never got preferential treatment growing up that way. You could ask my sister and she would say the same thing.

Today, divorce is often prevalent because if the parents aren’t happy, well surely the children aren’t. Often, with a bad divorce, it doesn’t change the happiness of the children. Sometimes what they want most is their parents to work matters out and it can set the path for them to do the same.

If anyone thinks that’s what happened on my end, no. You can ask most anyone and I fought tooth and nail for my marriage and this was even when wise people told me I should seek divorce. I always said no. If it ended, it would be on her end, but I also told her when she was telling me she was going to divorce that I didn’t want her to do that, but if she sent me papers I would sign them. I wasn’t going to hold her hostage or anything.

Children can wrestle with abandonment over divorce and issues of trust. One reason I am sure of this personally besides my own reading on the topic is I am 42 and divorced and I still wrestle with this as a result of my divorce. It’s far harder when you’re a child who doesn’t have a fully developed cognitive faculty to know how to handle this or a whole worldview behind it. I remember the story of a man in his senior years who at the age of five had his Dad kill himself and he still wondered why his Dad didn’t want him.

Don’t think that just having the right parents is all that matters either. No. Invest in your children. If your children are engaging in media you think is harmful, talk to them about it. Find out why they like it. What are they really gaining out of it?

Don’t think also that if you’re in ministry, you can bypass this. You can’t. Some people can be so committed to ministry that they fail to be committed to their own families. I hate saying it, but Billy Graham was even like this. There’s an account of how he left his wife behind sick once because he had to preach somewhere. If children think your ministry matters more to you than they do, they are more prone to resent your ministry and the God that ministry is about.

Children need to be invested in. We can often think that if we take them to church every Sunday, which we should, then we’re okay, but it needs to be more. Christianity needs to be lived in the home. It needs to be shown. Christians need to do actions that will speak love to their children.

If this is actively going on, you have far less to be concerned about with the media around them. I have been in the world of video games since I was in kindergarten, and yet I have never had a violent streak or anything like that. I was a virgin until I married and will be one, God willing, until I marry again. I never use profanity and I have never had a drug problem. I have struggled with anxiety and depression, but overall, my upbringing has been very helpful for me.

Also, if you are someone alone raising a child, get them involved with someone who can be a role model of their own sex. If you are a man raising daughters, find a woman who is a role model for them and vice-versa for a woman raising sons. Let them know how they are to be.

Your children are yours and they are to be a great investment. You will be the greatest influence on their life. Use it well.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Book Plunge: The Gaming Mind

What do I think of Alexander Kriss’s book published by The Experiment? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I listened to this book on Audible while I was often out walking. Kind of funny that I was listening to it that way since usually I would be playing Pokemon Go at the same time. Kriss is a psychologist and not only does he write about games, he’s an avid gamer himself, whether it’s a video game or even D&D with his friends.

When he’s with some of his staff at a mental institution, they talk about a patient who’s been administered and the lady bringing him in describes him as “One of those gamer guys.” Kriss, in I am sure a protocol breaking moment, asks “What games does he play?” Most of the people around the table were probably sure that gaming was the kid’s problem. Kriss instead sees it as part of the personality of the person he is dealing with.

Kriss then wants to know what games the person plays and why and often finds clues to how they interact with people in that. I was sure I was going to enjoy this book when I heard the first chapter was called “Me, You, and Silent Hill 2.”. I have never played the Silent Hill games, but I have heard enough about them that I recognized much of what Kriss said.

He talks about also a topic that seems to be popular today of gaming addiction. Sometimes, it seems like it’s an obvious case. What about the lady who never played games at all really and could not stop playing Candy Crush? Most people would try to break the addiction, but Kriss decides to study her more and then they find out why she plays so much, find a much deeper solution, and she now plays the game still, but not to the obsessive length she did before. The underlying issue has been dealt with.

What about the boy who plays Minecraft constantly? As it turns out, Kriss didn’t take his side or his mother’s side, but eventually got to the point where the mother learned to understand what the child was doing in Minecraft and it led to such great conversations that the talks are now called the Minecraft Moments. Had gaming just been seen as a problem, this would never have happened.

Throughout the book, many issues are dealt with such as kids not being social due to video games or anything of that sort. What about the possibility of kids turning violent because of video games? Many of us know that this is really nonsense, but too many still think there’s a lot of truth to it.

As a gamer myself, I saw a lot of valuable insight in this and I’m still mulling over it. Why is it that RPGs tend to be my favorite type of game or why while I played several Mario games growing up, Link was the main hero I gravitated towards? Why is it that even as a Seminarian, gaming is still a major part of my life?

One great aspect of it definitely is the social aspect. I have friends I play Final Fantasy XIV with and when I had my first get together with students here, it involved playing video games. We played some Uno after, but we definitely played video games. These are bonders and as someone on the spectrum, I wonder if I would have made any friends growing up without the connection of games? I even think my being in seminary is a result of that as I see it as a part of the battle of good and evil.

If you are interested in gaming, I recommend that you get this book. If you are a parent of a child and you are concerned, I recommend this as well. Basically, if you love games or love someone who does, this is a great read to get. You can order it here.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Game Violence And Porn

Is there a difference? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was watching a political commentator talk about the topic of pornography and faithfulness in marriage. Does watching pornography count as adultery and having an affair? It could be said you’re not having sex yourself, but you are watching simulated sex to some extent. Does this count as unfaithfulness to your marriage?

If you are married, I say 100% yes that it does. Some might say, “But we’re doing it together willingly.” Even so, then you are both breaking your vows together by inviting someone else into your bedroom. It’s a private place meant to be for the two of you.

When I was married, we lived this out. There was a time we had someone staying with us who was fleeing a hurricane in Florida. When it came night time and we went to sleep, I told him if you need anything, you can call us and let us know, but don’t come in there. That’s our private place. That rule was always upheld.

However, this is about a different issue. The commentator asked a different question briefly and I wanted to address it since it’s a real question and I believe asked in all sincerity and I have asked it myself. What about video games that involve killing? Is that engaging in actual killing?

At the start, I suspect war games have always been with us to some extent. Little boys grow up playing with toy weapons and I really have no reason to think it was different in ages past. I’m sure little boys back thousands of years ago dreamed of being fighters and soldiers and would play with one another. Boys do tend to be aggressive and we can roughhouse regularly.

Of course, girls do this also some as nowadays, a girl can grow up pretending she is Wonder Woman, for example. There are plenty of other female superheroes that girls can be like. When young children play pretend, they are assuming an interface of interaction where what they imagine is for the time being true. A little boy pretends he’s Superman and a little girl pretends she’s Wonder Woman and for the time being, they live out as if that is reality, knowing that it is not, but it is called pretend for a reason.

Now video games have provided that interface for us where when we play a game, we accept the reality of the game and to follow by the rules that the game has set for us. If you play a game as simple as Pong, you accept that you can only move your blocker in a certain direction and you have to score X number of points before your opponent does. If you play Mario Kart, you accept that you have to drive such and such a way on the track and that you can use power-ups on the field, but alas for you, so can your opponents.

So what about violence in games? Like the children playing pretend, people know it isn’t real. So when kids play a game in pure imagination and one of them “kills” the other, in the end they all get up and go about their own lives or play another game. They know it isn’t real.

However, I think what is really important to ask is why are you doing what you are doing? For most of us who play games, we don’t kill the enemy for the sake of killing itself. Now there is something good about the feeling of taking down a powerful boss in a game, but there’s also the sense of good vs evil and stopping an evil force from hurting others who are innocent.

That means it is not violence for the sake of violence, but violence to protect someone or something else. It is a battle for justice, much like going to war is supposed to be or self-defense. If there is anything tapped into inside of us, it is the idea that we want justice.

Now some have suggested that playing video games leads to violence. Unfortunately for those wanting to argue that, there is no hard correlation that has ever been found, but yet this has been assumed so long most people take it for granted. For those wanting a stronger case on this, I recommend reading Moral Combat: Why The War on Violent Video Games is Wrong.

Let’s also remember that this is not new. It just has a new target. When films started coming into their own, the exact same thing was said about them. Back in the 60’s, there was a war on comic books. I find it amazing that so many of my fellow political conservatives jump on these bandwagons.

Why is that? One of the ideas of conservatism is personal responsibility. We all accept that some people get dealt a hard hand in life, but like playing a card game, if you get a bad hand, well those are the cards you play with. You make the most of them and many people have and played very good games doing such and come out to be successful.

We say that if a man rapes a woman, he can’t blame the action on how the woman was dressed. If a couple gets pregnant, personal responsibility should be accepted and the baby brought to term. If you are able and capable, you need to be part of the working field and providing for yourself and your family.

Yet when it comes to people being violent, we try to blame anything else that is responsible for the violence, except, well, the person themselves. If anything, we should consider looking to what is often most immediate as influences first off before anything else, the family, realizing that this is not also hard-wired. What values and beliefs was a child raised with and how does that influence them?

I will present my own self as an example. I grew up in a Christian home and I was in church every Sunday and when I left home, that didn’t change. I have also played video games all my life and many of them involve combat and battle, yet I am the driver also who if it is safe, will hit the brakes before I hit a squirrel even and don’t relish the taking of life like that.

That doesn’t mean I’m opposed to combat. There is a time and place for it and if someone threatens me or someone I care about, I hope I will rise up to the challenge and take them on if need be. Had I grown up in a different environment and been raised a different way, I could have turned out very differently.

Now having said that, if you do have a problem with any sort of game and think it is wrong to play that game, then don’t do it. I have played Mortal Kombat with some friends before, but I could never do a fatality move. I don’t really like games that show a lot of blood in them. Gore is not appealing to me.

So how about pornography by contrast? When one watches porn, they watch because they want to see sex and sex they don’t really have a right to see. They want to take what is meant for the private sphere and put it in the public sphere. Sexuality is a means in itself and the person or persons being viewed are simply being viewed for their own pleasure and usage, which can affect easily how they see other people.

Not only that, but there is also reason to believe that many boys who grow up watching pornography can struggle with ED. Yes, I know porn is becoming a problem for girls watching it, but ED is not their struggle. It’s harder and harder to find men who are not affected as most of them have watched porn. I am thankful that by the grace of God I have avoided this temptation. It is a real one at times still, but it is overcomable.

But what about you? I have presented my thoughts on the matter of games and violence in them and about pornography. I am always interested in hearing what others have to say, especially my fellow gamers. Feel free to leave a comment.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)