Tag: video games
Leave The Children Alone
Is there a problem with leaving the children alone? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Many of you reading this are not gamers, and so when I tell you there’s a big debate going on in the gaming community, you might be tempted to dismiss it. Don’t. This actually is relevant to you. If you have children in the school system, you need to pay attention to this. If you care about what the LGBT group is doing, you need to watch this.
It all started with someone complaining about the Armenian parents protesting their school considering more Pride material and the parents didn’t want this. An altercation took place and no one knows for sure who started it. One streamer posted about it and said we’re in a dark place and we should just let people love who they want.
A streamer who goes by NickMercs replied with saying that they should just leave the children out of it. That’s the real issue. You can see the tweet here.
NickMercs had made a bundle collaboration with the Call of Duty game series put out by Activision. After he said this in response, the bundle was removed from the store. The response by the fans was immediate.
They aren’t happy.
Here is what Call of Duty said themselves.
One other major streamer known as Dr. Disrespect decided that that was enough. He made a livestream video of him removing the game from his library. There is language in this if you don’t want your children to watch.
Now many of these guys would really see no problem with the LGBT community. They’re in many cases for “equal rights.” However, they do not want to see children being targeted and in comments sections are often tagging the FBI to alert them about groomers and pedophiles. (Personally, I don’t think we should say pedophiles as Philia is just friendship. Pederasts is a much more accurate term.) Many of these guys grew up playing games and are not parents themselves.
Some of these people are now saying that the community as is is a cult. If you say one thing that goes out of line against them, then they shut you down. Note that this is not saying that all people who are LGBT are cultists, but there is a mindset.
And let’s consider this still. What was the supposed statement made that went against pride? Leave the children alone.
So if you are making a statement about leaving children alone, you are opposed to pride and you are anti-LGBTQ?
That says a lot, doesn’t it?
I already shared a post about what is going on here and another one recently here. However, the gaming community has found another video and are letting others know what is going on. I urge you to go to around 5:40 in this video, although if you want to watch the whole and hear more about the “controversy”, feel free. Please do not watch this with small children around.
The LGBT group is now making it clear that their goal is to get the children. Our president has also now draped the White House in the rainbow flags so you know what side he is going to fall on. The big battle of our generation is going to be for the safety of our children.
The gamer community could have been one of the worst to go after. These are people who play games where they often have to plan out strategies, get all the information they can, and work as a team. Many of them also want to pass their hobby on down to their children so you can expect they want to have a good relationship with them.
There is an active movement going on to boycott Activision and Call of Duty. It’s odd that Activision has chosen to jump on Nickmercs immediately when they themselves have a less than glamourous history. They ignore repeated complaints from gamers about their games, but they jumped right on this one. Also, it’s worth pointing out that in America, many of their games have pride flags in the games, but for some reason, if you’re in the Middle East you don’t get those. Really standing with the LGBT community. Right?
If you’re a non-gamer and you made it this far, I hope you now see that this is relevant to you. They are coming for your children and if you stand against them, you are the enemy. There is no community they will not try to get a foothold in. If you are a non-gamer, speak out against Activision and Call of Duty anyway. While I don’t play Call of Duty, I am a gamer and I am taking this very seriously. I have spent much of this weekend watching the videos on this gathering more and more information.
Parents. Please step up now. They don’t want to leave your children alone.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Book Plunge: Play More Games
What do I think of Matt Larson and Mark Krupa’s book? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
For those following me on YouTube, there have been some difficulties, but I have not given up Gaming Theologian at all. I’m still doing a lot of the research, which includes this book. I saw it during Amazon browsing and kept waiting for the Kindle price to drop some, but no. I went on and got it. It’s not wildly expensive, but I was still going through another book at the time so there was no rush.
But I did get it and I found myself enjoying the book. Most of the chapters are really short and can be read one at a time. The author is an avid gamer himself who has three boys who are also gamers. The whole family is Christian.
I don’t understand the title as there’s really no reason given to play more games. It’s more like understanding game playing. Why do people play games? How should parents handle matters? How should grandparents? What do kids want their parents to know?
Yes. That last one comes up. There are chapters where the sons are interviewed and give their answers to questions about gaming. These are definitely chapters parents need to read.
There was even a chapter interviewing the grandmother about her grandson’s interest. Nothing was left unturned. This shows not only an outsider perspective, but it also demonstrates the importance of family in all of this.
One of my favorite looks was finding couples who game together. Ah. The dream. Whenever I hear about couples like this, it gives me a little bit of hope again. It would be great to find a devout Christian girl who loves to play her games as well.
One of the most important parts though is a look at life in the Czech Republic. Here, one of the authors comes as a missionary and works with the people there and gaming has been an inroads to help with the church. For those who don’t know, gaming is a very close-knit community. I don’t know much about GamerGate, but from what I have heard, the gamers all came and worked together to accomplish goals regardless of political or religious views.
As the missionary sought to set up a community and used gaming events to do so, non-Christians would come and help out and explain the best ways to bring about such an event. If you’re wondering, yes, there were non-Christians who came to Christ through the love of a Christian gaming community. Right now, I am trying to do what I can here on my own campus to help us reach gamers in the area.
This book is a very enjoyable read and like I said, it’s short. You will also laugh at several times, particularly a chapter that I loved the opening where Larson talks about the things his children say when they are watching him gaming, and he’s not doing well at all. If you want to understand the world of gaming and how it works with Christianity, try this one out.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Book Plunge for Fun: Armada
What do I think of Ernest Cline’s novel? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I have been trying to read more fiction lately. I have going through two of the three books in the New Arcadia series, but I’m waiting for the third and final one to come out before I write about that series. I do know it’s going to be the last since I emailed the author.
I saw this book by Ernest Cline and decided to get it. Cline is the one behind books like Ready Player One which was turned into a movie. So far, all of his books seem to be related to the world of gaming. I will try to avoid giving any major spoilers.
Anyway, in this book, Zack Lightman is in class when he thinks he sees out the window an alien spacecraft. Not only that, but it looks like one from one of his favorite video games. At this, he thinks he must be going crazy. After all, didn’t that happen to his Dad? His father, who died long ago, believed that the gaming industry and the movie industry worked together on games and movies involving aliens in order to prepare us for an alien invasion.
The reader can tell that Zack is not going crazy though knowing the nature of a book. There really is an alien invasion that is coming and it really is connected with Zack’s favorite game. What happens after all of this? At this point, I choose to remain silent, but I do have some observations to share.
Technology seems to be a strange beast. On the one hand, we talk about all the great goods that it gives us. On the other hand, we talk about how it can lead us to an early grave. In this one it’s kind of mixed in that we have technology and we depend on it to some extent, but at the same time, can it be a sufficient savior? If our technology is what we are dependent on, what would happen if a race ever showed up that had better technology?
Along those lines, there are times that Christianity is shown in the novel. There is a character who is a skeptic of it and one who is a firm believer and another who it is not known their position, but they sure can quote Scripture. I do not know the beliefs of Cline, but I thought this was a good way to treat the topic in his novel. After all, if an alien invasion took place, there will be people who will be turning to God.
I saw some reviewers say they thought the novel was predictable. There were some parts I was guessing, but overall, no. I tended to read a chapter a day but there were many times I was tempted to skip ahead, not because I wanted to get it done with, but because I really wanted to know what happened. I never did, but that temptation was there.
If you enjoy gaming or movies like Star Wars or the Star Trek series or anything of that sort in the realm of science-fiction, this is a good one to give a try.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Of Mario and Bud Light
What can we learn from both of these? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Well, there’s two things you probably never thought would be teamed up. I did go and see the Mario movie Saturday and I definitely enjoyed it. For someone who has been playing video games and been involved with Nintendo for most of my life, I saw so much that I recognized and thought that most importantly, the movie stayed true to the game series.
Not only that, but this movie is setting records and giving Disney competition. Critics are slamming it also while audiences love it, something that again tells us that critics are out of touch with America. Many of the reviews I have heard or seen slamming the movie are completely out of touch, such as asking “How does Bowser wanting to kidnap Peach and force her to marry him work with MeToo?”
Well, for one thing, Bowser is a villain….
I have heard one commentator on this say that Illumination studios did want to put some “progressive” elements in the movie, but Nintendo put their foot down and said no. Nintendo has generally tried to avoid politics. They made it clear that Mario is to be the hero of this movie. Good call, Nintendo. The critics may be laughing at the movie, but Nintendo is laughing all the way to the bank.
And they have plenty more franchises that they can make movies out of. Let’s face it. We know the Legend of Zelda movie is coming.
Meanwhile, Bud Light is tanking. They have been silent on social media. Why? Because they got a fake trans activist to sponsor their beer and the consumers did not like it. Now I don’t drink alcohol, but I also don’t forbid anyone drinking it either.
Disney also had movies like Lightyear and Strange World go down. Why? Because Disney has ceased to be family-friendly and if your emphasis of your movie is “Woke”, then families are less likely to go and see it. Families did go see Mario because it was friendly to family and the generation that has families now grew up playing Mario. It was just as much for them as it was for the kids. The older generation like myself can go and see it and get great joy out of it, but there’s enough the younger generation would recognize.
Now we can sit back and say that people don’t want to see “Woke” movies, but you know what other movies they don’t want to see? Christian movies. Frankly, I don’t blame them. The only reason many of us see Christian movies is that they are Christian movies. Non-Christians don’t see them.
Why? The same reason that many of us don’t see “Woke” movies. The emphasis is on the “Woke” in those movies. They mainly want to point out that we have a gay or a trans character. Isn’t that awesome? How many people do you know say “I want to go see a movie. Which movie has a gay or trans character in it?” I remember going to see the latest Power Rangers movie, which had a character on the spectrum in it. I did not go see it because of that. I saw it because it was Power Rangers.
Let’s take this to my own specialty area of video games. There have been Christian video games. Most of us don’t know about them for good reason. They sucked for the most part. Now I did enjoy the original Wisdom Tree trilogy, but the only reason I think I picked it up was it was a Bible game. Turn it into anything else and I won’t. There was a remake of a kind of Wolfenstein game that was Noah’s Ark with him capturing animals, but if you had a choice between that or Wolfenstein, who will play the former? Only someone who already cares about the Bible. The non-Christian will go to the former every time.
A few months ago I watched a video on the history of Christianity and video games. I left a comment pointing out that the original Legend of Zelda had religious references, such as the magic book was called a Bible. Nintendo didn’t really want religious imagery, yet Link’s shield does still have a cross on it. (There is imagery in Japan that indicates Link could be a Christian.)
So let me show you some of the comments from this video and I will be removing names.
“I’m not Religious but if they actually made a bible game that was like Bayonetta, God of war or hell even something like skyrim or Breath of the wild, I’d play it”
“My dream Bible centric game: It just needs to be a reskinned Fallout New Vegas or Witcher 3 but I want Easter Eggs and Bible references out the wazoo. So your character Ezra will be walking through the marketplace on his way to offer a sacrifice at the Temple. Off to the side are a group of men with one donkey. One of the men will be swearing up and down,” I TELL YOU THE TRUTH! THIS DONKEY SPOKE TO ME!!!” He’ll just be met with jeering and accusations of lunacy. “Balaam you’re going crazy!” Later, you’ll be traveling to the next town and you’ll encounter this Balaam and he’ll be arguing with his donkey. You’d even witness the donkey talk back and make snarky remarks. Because you’re the protagonist, the odd pair will speak freely with you. Because Balaam was a prophet, he’ll have good fortune telling abilities and maybe he’ll join your party. The main thing, the Bible has so many great stories but they’re strung along thousands of years so timelines will have to be compressed immensely.”
“I like how thia video helps evolve the meme-like concept that Christian games are bad to be more of a understanding of the approach these games are made with. They arent there to make a game; they’re there to convert…”
“I am a Christian myself but totally get that you can’t label everything in the popular media with a belief system…music, movies, AND video games, too! This is one of those videos where even reading the comments are fun! I can’t tell you the number of folks I’ve run across that make you feel like an unbeliever when you’re not also signed up for all this additional stuff. I’ve never played one of these video games–never knew they existed!–but I am thinking they stink as much as most Christian music. You just can’t force yourself to like something that you…just…don’t.”
“Would love to see an open world rpg set in the pre flood antedeluvian world that gives you free will choices.”
“I think if christians tried making a good game instead of trying too hard to make it “holy” then they could do it. Im christian and I know there are tons of themes for video games. I mean look at a game like fable. That was an amazing series that could have similar elements to an open world rpg. Like living in the days after noah when the tower of babel is being constructed and living in the harsh middle east. Christians or at that time Yahwists would have still needed to defend themselves from bandits and the like. We live in a much safer society today. Having spiritual beings influence npcs and having the main player set an area right from the influence of principalities would be cool”
Okay. I don’t want to overwhelm you. There’s plenty more. Here’s something else I notice looking through the comments. I don’t really see arguing or bickering and this is a video about Christianity! I see people coming together in agreement.
Ultimately, what’s the secret? What makes Mario a success in the movies? Why did Bud Light bomb?
Because fun should be fun. When people want to do something fun, they generally don’t want a political or religious message thrust upon them. There’s a reason a lecture is referred to as “preaching.” Preaching is in a sense synonymous with boring.
Nintendo followed a simple concept. They made the movie fun. They made it something people will want to see and tell their friends to see and take their own families too.
And notice something from the comments Christians. If we made games and movies that were fun and not just thrusting Christianity down peoples’ throats, they would play it. It doesn’t matter if it’s Bible-based or not. What matters to a gamer is “Is the game fun?”
Now I happen to like playing games that touch on philosophical issues and I like movies and TV shows like that too, but I won’t keep watching something or playing something if it is boring. My ministry partner does this in his videos. Sure. I can watch a video again if I want to go back and get his take on an idea, but I watch them for another reason. They’re fun.
What do we need to learn from this? Make media and make it Christian, but also make it fun. Make it something people will want to watch. If we don’t do that, we’re just as guilty as the “woke” crowd. When the message drowns out any enjoyment, people aren’t interested. It doesn’t matter if it’s “woke” or Christian or anything else.
Thus, i encourage us to start a revolution in this area. Make sure our content is good. If the product is good, people will be interested. If Bud Light wanted to up the sales, the way to do that was not to politicize that. The way to do that was to improve the product. Make a good product and people will buy it. Make good media and people will use it.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
A Question on Violence and Gaming
How do I answer an objection like this? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Since I have a YouTube channel dedicated to gaming and theology, a niche I saw very few people addressing, it’s not to be a surprise when someone shoots me a question. A husband and wife I am good friends with wanted to ask me one. It goes as follows and I am quoting:
So I was wondering something based on your work with video games. I have an acquaintance from a Christian group who has a Twitch account streaming video games. (This person prides himself on being a conservative Christian and has been on his wife for being too theologically liberal). He invited some of us to tune in and I checked it out. He was playing a game I’d never heard of called “Resident Evil”. Within 30 seconds, I heard over the top vulgar language and saw a character being tortured to death. Is this the kind of game that’s common among the Christian gaming community?
Good question.
Now at the start, I have never played Resident Evil, though I am trying to get into Bioshock because of the rich philosophical themes, not because I just enjoy first-person shooters. However, I did really enjoy Goldeneye back in the day. Everyone did.
That doesn’t mean I don’t know about Resident Evil and have never seen gameplay about it. However, when I hear at the start that there was torture and vulgar language, I don’t stop immediately. It’s easy to make a hard and fast rule, but two things give me pause.
As I told them, when I was in high school, I remember being in English and the teacher showed us a movie. We had to watch it in more than one class as it was a long movie, but I do remember we saw full nudity in women. You could see a woman in a bed completely topless. I remember there was a lot of violence. People were being killed constantly. There were then scenes with several women totally nude. Keep in mind I didn’t grow up in a liberal area. I grew up in the Bible belt.
However, I bet most children in the class that if they went home and said they had watched this movie, their parents would not be concerned. They would ask what they thought. It would lead to a good discussion. I’ll go further. If I ever get blessed with children, I will want them to watch this movie one time at least when they are old enough.
The movie was Schindler’s List.
If you have a hard and fast rule against anything like what was described in the question above, you will be prone to miss this movie, and yet it is a classic. It points to a great period of evil in our history and something we need to talk about. If you look at the women who are nude and just think about sex, you have a serious problem.
Lately also, I have seen people saying that if we object to Drag Queens and certain books in our schools, then we should object to the statue of David. After all, he is fully nude. The difference here is that the intent of David is not to be sexual, but to show the glory of the human body. It is not to sexualize David. The intent of porn and many of these books is to sexualize.
Another reason this gives me pause is because I think of what skeptics say, especially about the book of Judges. Consider Judges 19 where you have a gang rape take place and then the body of the victim is cut into pieces and sent to the tribes of Israel. Skeptics ask how something this awful can be included in the Bible.
Yet this whole section is also about how wicked Israel was at the time and the consequences of living in an ungodly society when there was no godly king. It is not to celebrate the time. It is to say “Don’t be like this time!”
Thus, when it comes to these games, I make no hard and fast rule for the most part. If it leads you to sin, don’t do it. If it doesn’t, then the only thing to really consider is how other people might see it. That should be kept in mind.
Some people might play Resident Evil (RE) because they enjoy the gameplay and they enjoy the puzzle solving and the skill involved in playing a shooter game. That doesn’t mean that these people will become mass shooters.
Some people will point to school shooters, but many of these actually did not play video games. An example of this is the shooting at Virginia Tech where the student was known for not playing games. It could be this made him an outsider to the culture of people who were gamers and thus could actually be a warning sign.
If first-person shooter games were the cause of these kinds of violent outbreaks, then we would expect that there would be far more outbreaks than there are. There aren’t. The overwhelming majority of people who play these games will never kill anyone with a gun in real life.
I read a book on audio recently that talked about a lady named Daphne Maurer who was doing research on vision and at the university was looking for some guinea pigs for the tests. The only people there were the video gamers in the computer lab because, well, nerds hang out at the university. These people were playing first-person shooters and when given the vision tests, they aced them incredibly.
What Maurer found over time was that people who played these games consistently tend to have better vision. After all, you have to survey a whole area and watch for any movement and know it well and you have to be able to get a shot in quickly if a target shows up and quickly identify if they are a friend or a foe. These people learned how to do that.
Ultimately, and this said in light of the very recent school shooting in Nashville, the problem is actually not the guns. The old saying is true. Guns don’t kill people. People do. They will use any weapon whatsoever. At the start of Bioshock, your main weapon is a wrench. The largest mass killings done in America were done with planes and with trucks with fertilizer.
The problem is us. We are sinful people. The sexual revolution has especially raised the breakdown of the family where those good moral beliefs were supposed to be taught. Many of us who are gamers like myself want to avoid real-life violence. I will break to avoid hitting a squirrel while driving. If anything, a lot of us want to overcome evil. Edward Snowden even said his exposing of government surveillance came from playing video games.
There are plenty of good books on this. I recommend Moral Kombat: Why The War On Violent Video Games is Wrong and Grand Theft Childhood. I ultimately contend that the best solution is to restore the value of human life and to restore the family and undo the sexual revolution.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
MAR10 Day
What does it take to be a hero? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
You work for a gaming company and you have been given a task. Make a new human hero to fight evil. Okay. You think this could be a fun task. So how will you make your hero?
If you want to make a man, odds are you will make someone strong and muscular. You will make someone who has a no-nonsense attitude. This is someone who can tear through bad guys without a thought. You could also make him a James Bond type who is smooth and seductive and quite the Ladies’ Man. You could make a fighting type like Bruce Lee or Chuck Norris. You could make a Punisher type who would blow away enemies or a Batman type who seems to excel at all of the above.
If you want to make a woman, you could make someone muscular or someone who is more sleek and agile. You could make her a bombshell so that she will stun any man that sees her by her beauty and make all the women want to look like her. She will likely be a great fighter, someone like a Black Widow.
Now let’s look at who Shigeru Miyamoto made.
Odds are, without knowing who this is, he hardly strikes terror in your heart.
Somehow he has taken off. Is he muscular? Nope. Skilled at weapons or combat? Nope. He is actually a little pudgy and his career is a plumber. His sidekick and brother, Luigi, isn’t much better. He’s trimmer and taller, but he’s usually also a coward.
Yet today, March 10th is the day that he is celebrated. It’s known as Mario Day. I tried to see how many games he has had, and all I found was that he has over 200. This is in about 40 years or so. We could say that would be at least five games every year.
Mario has done everything. He has been a soldier, a doctor, a go-kart driver, an athlete in most every sport, an RPG hero, a party game player, and of course, the regular rescuer of Princess Peach. You could pretty much take any game and if you want it to do well, just slap Mario on it.
So what does Mario have to do with Christian apologetics?
In our day and age, it’s easy for us to think that there’s little that we can do to change our world. We can look at Marvel superheroes and think “Yeah, but I can’t do those kinds of things.” Mario is our different figure.
“But he does have power-ups!”
Yes, but if you look at the games and even the TV shows that were made, those power-ups would affect anyone who used them. Princess Peach and Toad could benefit from them. In some games and TV shows, Bowser himself benefits from power-ups. Thus, there seems to be nothing that says only Mario can use these power-ups. If anyone else had these power-ups, they could use them.
What makes Mario a hero for us all is that he is us. Anyone can do what Mario can do. Mario has enough reasons to think that he is not a hero and yet, he keeps going and defeating the enemy every time. He is going against a villain in Bowser who usually has greater resources and power and a personal army and yet, Mario wins every time. (And somehow Bowser gets to play sports, ride go-karts, and play party games with Mario and his friends.)
And yes, sometime this will show up on my new channel. (Please like, subscribe, and share.)
Who is Mario then? He’s you. He’s me. He’s a guy that has a lot of heart. He just wants to go out and defeat Bowser, or whoever the enemy is, and rescue the Princess, or whatever the goal is.
We live in a fallen world and we often think we can’t do anything for the gospel because we are not as great as XYZ. That has never stopped Mario. Mario has always kept going and faced much greater dangers than many of us face.
Mario is a picture for us. We don’t have to work to be like him per se as he has no physique or anything of that sort. (Save his jumping ability) He’s just a guy with an ordinary job wanting to do something great.
I wonder what could happen with our Christianity if we looked at the world and said we just want to do something great and live our lives fighting against the armies of evil.
It’d be nice to find out.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
New Resource
What do I have for you? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Okay. This is going to be brief, but I wanted to introduce this resource for everyone and I know that I don’t want to fill up the screen with a lot of words and a long article about just one talk.
So here it is.
Recently, I have received my talk that I gave at Defend 2023 on Video Games and Christianity. If you want to listen to it, you can go here. There will, unfortunately, be not video as there were no cameras in there. If you want the Powerpoint, all you have to do is ask.
Even if you’re not a gamer, listen to it. You might wind up getting something that blesses you unexpectedly.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
Book Plunge: Playing With God: A Theoludological Framework For Dialogue With Video Games
What do I think of Matthew Millsap’s dissertation? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
“And Matthew Millsap wrote his dissertation on video games and Christianity.”
My ears perk up as I’m in my systematic theology class last semester and hear these words. I immediately look up this man and find him on Facebook and send him a message. Before too long, he’s happy to send me his dissertation. In preparing to write this also, I contacted him and asked where others could go if they want this dissertation as well and he said you can contact him on Twitter.
So theoludological. I had never heard that word before and my spell check doesn’t even recognize it. It is a combination of ludology and theology. Great! That explains it! So what’s ludology? It’s the study of games. Amazing I never even knew that there was a name for what I have been doing through so much of my life.
Millsap and I are quite similar. We’re both gamers and we’re both at this time 42. We have both been playing games for pretty much all our lives.
Fact check true on the above meme.
When you go through the dissertation, it’s clear that he has a great knowledge of games. Something interesting also for me is that the games he plays seem to be more of a different genre for the most part than the ones that I play. He seems to enjoy first person shooter types and other similar games and I am much more into the RPG and JRPG genre.
Still, he has got me curious about the Bioshock series at least. (Available on the Nintendo Eshop if anyone is feeling generous)
This dissertation is divided into seven chapters. The first is about interaction with pop culture and the lack of interaction with video games. The second is about the origin and history of video games. The third is about narrative themes in video games. The fourth is about theology’s dialogue with other forms of narrative material. Chapter five is where the meat of this work is and shows how this interaction takes place and why video games are different from other forms of media. The sixth shows it in practice with a look at the game Journey. The final chapter discusses implications and further areas of research.
One possible researcher being the one writing this blog.
I was definitely pleased reading this to see how much Millsap definitely is familiar with video games. To some extent, probably a little bit jealous too picturing him getting to read so much about games and at the same time consider it theological research. I could easily picture him, seeing as he’s married, sitting on the couch playing a game like Bioshock and his wife saying “Honey! Can you take out the trash?!” “Not now, dear! Doing research for my dissertation!”
One of the rare times that excuse would work.
If you are unfamiliar with the history of video games, Millsap will give you a good crash course on it in this dissertation. He is also right in there is very little interaction with this medium. When I gave my talk at Defend this month, I was pleased to see how many people showed up. Why? Because this is a topic we need to talk about and there were people of all ages and of both sexes in there.
That being said, the narrative aspect is key. Yesterday, I watched a video on Final Fantasy IV and considered just how much a story difference there was. Final Fantasy IV when it was released over here was Final Fantasy II as Japan kept the next two games in the series to themselves. (And why did we just not declare them our political enemies at that point?!) Something I was surprised I hadn’t noticed was the marked difference in story between I and II. I was a bare bones basic account, but II was a dialoguing adventure with personal characters with real names and twists and turns.
Many games today do have stories. Many outsiders don’t realize that, but just as you watch a TV series or a movie or read a book because you want to know what happens next, so also you play a game because you want to know what happens next. Of course, there is the difference of player agency. It doesn’t really take skill to watch a TV show or movie or read a book to find out what happens next. With a game, unless you look it up on YouTube, you have to play the game successfully to know what happens. Some games even make it harder by having different endings and only those who do the game well will get the good ending.
When we look at the fifth chapter, I mainly noticed his interaction with Craig Detweiler. Consider this quote that he has from Detweiler.
Am I equating cinema with Holy Scripture? Heavens no! The Word of God is a special revelation unequaled in human history. I am not baptizing all art as sacred or all inspiration as divine. Yet God has revealed himself in ways beyond the written word. The Bible itself is a litany of unlikely communiques. Christ promised if his people did not praise God, the rocks would cry out (Luke 19:40). Perhaps those
rocks have recently taken on pop cultural forms. It does not denigrate a sacred text to study other texts; I am merely affirming what the Spirit is already doing. God does not discriminate. The Spirit can communicate via inspiring films like The Shawshank Redemption (IMDb #2) or cautionary tales like The Godfather (IMDb
#1). We need role models and warning signs. While the religious community questions prophets’ credentials, divinely inspired artists keep on singing songs, telling stories, making movies.
While I do think the phrasing can be bad here some, I think when Detweiler speaks of God revealing Himself in movies, I don’t think he’s saying the movie is like Scripture. However, I think what He is saying is that one can see in a movie sometimes an idea of who God is. I remember hearing about a Jehovah’s Witness who left the cult after watching the Passion of the Christ and realizing they didn’t have to go through everything the Watchtower said. One can get theological insights watching popular media like movies and certainly God can use a movie, a book, a video game, a TV show, to draw someone to Himself. I also don’t doubt that Millsap would disagree with this.
At the same time, Millsap did think there was a lowering going on when Christianity was explained in gaming terms.
Jesus dropped into the game of our world with both remarkable (even divine) skills and crippling limitations (of humanity). He explored many comers of his Middle Eastern “island.” Among his contemporaries, he made both friends and enemies. A tightly knit, dedicated community arose around him. Jesus and his clan experienced plenty of grief from aggressive and uncooperative rivals. He was eventually fragged during a deathmatch on an unexpected field of battle. He submitted to the rules of engagement, even while resisting them, proposing an alternative way to play. After three days, Jesus respawned, took his place as Administrator, and redefined the way the game is played
I understand Millsap’s concern here in that this can seem like crude language at times to describe Christianity. After all, respawning in a FPS is really normally not a big deal. Everyone does it. However, I also thought, “What if someone wasn’t a Christian and was a gamer and I was trying to explain Christianity to them?” I could use language that is similar to this. We could say that Jesus was the true respawner much like Lewis said Christianity is the true myth. What we can do in a game, Jesus can do and did do in reality.
Despite all of this, Millsap is definitely right in all of this in how we need theological interaction. The stories he gives from Bioshock I found particularly fascinating. I have listened more than once to the introduction from Andrew Ryan in the first game on YouTube. If you want to listen to it, you can do so as well.
Many of us would agree with some of what Ryan says in this. A man should be entitled to the sweat of his brow. Many of us could also say that while God doesn’t claim all of it and lets us have some of it, we should give some of what we receive to Him.
In the third game, he tells us the story is about a “prophet” who has a cultic form of a Christian type of religion and how someone has to go to his floating island to rescue someone. Despite what some people might think, games like this wrestle with moral decisions and questions. There are many games out there that are extremely philosophical. Consider even Final Fantasy X where the game is all about a quest to defeat a mindless, destructive beast known as Sin.
In the sixth chapter, we look at Journey. I had bought this game and I didn’t get much into it, but perhaps some weekend when I have a couple of hours, which is how long Millsap says it takes to finish it, I could do that. Millsap chose this game because it is an easy one to learn and there is no violence done by the character and it tells a story. Another one I would consider would be Stray, because after all, who wouldn’t enjoy getting to play as a cat?
I definitely agree with his conclusion. There are plenty of areas for extra study. Games are becoming one of the main features in our culture, especially with the rise of smartphones. We Christians have too often been behind the times on this interaction. We need to change that.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)
The Use Of Entertainment
Why is it that we enjoy what we enjoy? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
Last night, in the midst of some gaming and watching some shows on YouTube, I returned to thinking about my life here in New Orleans. I have thought about how our country used to be much more Christian than it is now and yet New Orleans is now known as a hotbed of crime, drugs, and well, we all know what really goes on at Mardi Gras, which should sadly be a Christian celebration. What has happened to this great city and how can we change it?
Then I thought about how it has been said before by G.K. Chesterton that fairy tales don’t exist to tell us that dragons exist. Children already know that. Fairy tales exist to tell children that dragons can be beaten.
Let’s start this with a subject I don’t care for that much. Sports. For the most part, the idea of watching sports should be that someone goes and watches these people on the field and then decides that they want to be like that person and is willing to work out and practice the game too. Now for some, this is impossible and they can remember what they used to do or dream about what they might do in eternity someday. I think of those with severe disabilities or those who due to an older age cannot play like they used to.
Completely antithetical is the picture of someone who sits down on a couch to watch a game and goes through a whole box of Oreos at the same time. This is not to say you have to be a fitness king, but if you do care about sports, you should care about your own physical condition. Sports should get you out of yourself.
With fantasy, it is the same, whether we are talking about old Greek plays, novels like the Lord of the Rings, TV shows and movies, or video games. All of these are meant to give us heroes to emulate and people that we are to look and say “I can overcome what’s in my life as well.” With sports movies, we often have the story of the underdog, such as movies like Rocky or Rudy, where we know that the team or player we want to win will be the hero in the end because they never give up.
In the world of gaming, we have the same going on. A player playing a game can see a boss villain they have to fight that is gargantuan compared to them. In reality, most of us if we saw such a villain would not bother to really try even but start realizing that our time has come. In fantasy, it is the opposite. You are even more certain that you can win and you try again and again and again. The size of the enemy doesn’t make it impossible. It just makes the victory all the greater.
So it is also with every challenge that we face today. The Greeks told their plays I suspect in the hopes of spurring other young Greek men on to greatness. Hebrews tells us a list of heroes of the faith in an effort to say “Be like these people.” Today, we tell stories of people, real and fictional, in an effort to inspire greatness in us.
That should be the purpose of what we do today. If we are captivated by the battle of good and evil on the screen or in literature, we had sure better be fighting it in our own lives. If we believe that the villain can be overcome no matter what, we need to live accordingly as well. It could be tempting to say “That’s fiction, not reality”, but as Chesterton again said, “Truth is stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves.” In fiction, the characters normally aren’t aware of a supreme deity watching over the story entirely. In reality, we should be, and that should change everything.
Enjoy the story, but also use it. If you care about sports, care about your own physical condition. If you care about the battle of good and evil, be ready to fight it yourself.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)