Lots of people have been sending me links to this NY Times story on churches adopting video games to lure teenagers back to the faith. I am amused. I find the trend to be a very encouraging sign.
To get this out of the way: I don’t think violent video games make for violent people, so the whole argument that this is not in harmony with the message of the church is silly, to my mind. I also don’t see the message of religion as being one of peace, anyway, so even if it did lead to teen violence I wouldn’t see any incompatibility with Christianity … just more of the same.
I’ve played Halo … poorly. I’ve liked Bungie’s games since way back when they were a Mac-only shop, and my family played the network games together (See? Family values!) quite a bit when the kids were young, and I stood a chance. Nowadays, on those rare occasions that I try, I get turned into a smoking, bouncing pile of gibs a little too quickly, or Connlann takes me out with a single well-placed shot with the sniper rifle. Aside from my inability to play at all competitively, though, I think they’re impressive works of art, and I mean that entirely sincerely. The message may be crude and single-minded and geared too exclusively to a narrow demographic, but they’re technically amazing. Right now they’re at the Lascaux cave art stage, all focused on young males and hunting, but give ’em time, there’s a vast potential there.
So why am I encouraged by churches adopting video games?
It’s a sign of desperation, and evidence of decadence. There was a time when the church was a center of literacy, when they were temples to art, and when they inspired great art. Look at them now. They’re refurbished grocery stores. They’re boring brick modernist warehouses. They smell of industrial parks and cheap stain-resistant carpeting. There is no art in modern churches. They are not inspiring great music (with maybe the exception of some gospel, but even that is fading). Rock has roots in religious music, but look now at Christian rock…pathetic, unoriginal attempts to ape secularized rock, replacing lyrics that worshipped cars and girls with strident screeching for Jesus.
See how low they’ve sunk. They’re reduced to enticing youth by lifting elements of secular youth culture wholesale — they aren’t even trying to modify the message of the games to fit them to the church, and they definitely aren’t trying to create something good within the genre (their attempts there have flopped spectacularly). What we’re seeing is another sign of religion’s growing irrelevance to the life of the mind.
I’d be happy to see churches all across the country turned into free video game arcades. It would be a far better use of those rotting hulks than their current purpose.
I was one of those “Lots of people,” and now I get first post. I can’t help myself!
I wonder if the church is aware of the game’s biggest map, Valhalla
Ah yes, the warm, fuzzy feeling of getting head shot after head shot with the sniper rifle. Unreal Tournament online for Jesus, praised the Lord!
Hmmm…maybe it’s more Buddhist with all the reincarnating after you get fragged. In any case, it’s a religious experience.
I thought Valhalla game came out in 1980, a few months after Hobbit (which also had an impressive map).
Yeah, as if the godbots weren’t stupid enough already. Now the next Lee Strobel book will be “Teh caes 4 lol ur noob”.
Chapter 1: Gawd > Dawkins lol
Chapter 2: Dawkens is teh sukk! lol
Chapter 3: ZOMG nerf teh athiest lol
Chapter 4: “My dick is 12 inches long, and I’m so high right now!” (use teh voice chat 4 jesus lol)
Chapter 5: OMG u roll athiest u sukk lol
My first thought on reading this post was that Bach would turn in his grave. Then I thought of the Matthew Passion, (which I can enjoy woithout reference to the words). That was music theatre, as were his cantatas, which he knocked out at one per week, including rehearsals.
So, are the churches only doing what they’ve always done – turn to popular culture, but popular culture has been debased as it’s been democratized?
LOL me, too! Flung the NYT link to PZ as soon as I finished reading the article.
I couldn’t help laughing at the desperation that these churches are going to to “bait” the youth. I guess yelling at teens and telling them that they’d better accept Jesus or they’ll be grounded and go to hell isn’t quite as effective as it used to be.
I do think, however, that it’s ironic that these churches are going forth linking killing (even if virtual) with salvation. It’s odd … I swear I heard that theme before somewhere …
On the upside, maybe this means that Microsoft will have more money to fix their problems with Vista that all my programmer buddies are screaming about.
Or, even better yet, that Gates will have more money to give to combating poverty and diseases, supporting scientific research, and giving out scholarships, which is a FAR more productive use of money than the budgeting priorities of your average televangelist.
Reminds me of my stupid morg foster mom. I caught her watching MTV on the sly and her excuse was, “I’m watching it to see how bad it is.” Yeah, right, LOL
From the article:
… so we decided to use some good old-fashioned violence!
While I’d agree that providing free equipment for playing Halo might very well lure teens into the building, I somehow doubt that the “message” of Halo (what there is of one) agrees with what the church is peddling.
It could be worse, I guess. Next thing you know, the churches will try luring them in with Bioshock.
Having said that, I’m still working my way through the Halo 3 single-player campaign (on Heroic). Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to preventing some religious fanatics from destroying the galaxy…
Perhaps there is hope for our species yet. A year or so ago I read about a survey concering religious attitudes of young people (I cannot remember exact specifics, unfortunately). The upshot was that the faith heads were worried about the declining numbers of young people in their ranks. Perhaps we are reaching a tipping point with regard to the fortunes of religion and atheism. If churches have to rely on secular culture to draw in kids, then I think they’ve already lost. If their message isn’t enough (and it most certainly isn’t) they have nothing to offer, and kids are smart enough to recognize it.
Richard Harris, CFD #6: It’s an interesting notion, except that the church had a great deal to do with the development of early music. There was some back and forth between liturgical music and the secular stuff, but Bach’s Passions (and they are wonderful pieces) and cantatas and whatnot were part of a long tradition.
You are right that the popular culture has been debased democratized, and now the church is floundering, trying to catch up. Look at Harry Potter: the zealots denounced it as Satanic (watch Jesus Camp for a prime example of this), while the more moderate ones just let it go. Now we have things like Looking for God in Harry Potter.
The less said about Christian rock, the better.
It wouldn’t surprise me. The Ayn Rand/Objectivist/atheistic theme in that game would be perfect for a church-sponsored videogame, since it’s shown as leading to a nightmare dysfunctional society. Pursuit of pure science running amok, etc.
If you play the “good” path, you get to constantly “save” little children too… separating them from their guardian demons, and converting them from evil to good. That’s creepily close to a Christian theme already. Oh well, I played it for the art direction (which is fantastic).
Maybe they should try out some Christian games like Super 3D Noah%27s Ark? ;-)
All those St. Christopher medals will make great video game tokens.
Be fair–if you’ve played a lot of Bungie games, you know their target demographic was historically “Aficionados of H.P. Lovecraft and the Song of Roland who enjoy translating Latin for fun.”
In most other games, the easter eggs are funny pictures or super-weapons. In PiD and Marathon, the easter eggs were access to more of the story. I liked that sense of players’ priorities.
Much of which evaporated when Microsoft bought them and Seropian left, sadly. But it was great while it lasted.
Bungie? PZ played Marathon! PZ played Marathon! *dances*
…wait, did you?
I find it funny that the churches do not appear to have realized how critical of religion the Halo series is. You spend the majority of all the games trying to stop religious fanatics, and halfway through the series some of them see the error of their ways, become atheists, and try to convince the rest of the Covenant to give up their faith.
I mean, seriously, the main villain–the Prophet of Truth–is basically an alien Jerry Falwell. He wants to bring about the apocalypse to kill all the sinners, and constantly contradicts himself–in the end he is too cowardly to die with the rest of the galaxy, so he hides away in intergalactic space.
Of course I played Marathon! I killed at Marathon!
Well, speak of the Devil!
Those wacky guys at Landover Baptist Church inform us that:
Good News For Christian Video Gamers!
Unreal Tournament 2004® Bible Based Maps and Characters are on the Way!
“I felt my heart flutter with excitement when Timothy rescued Jesus in the nick of time and was able to position Him in a spot under a tree on the Mount of Olives and use a sniper rifle to kill over 20 Sadducees before they even knew what was coming,” said Pastor Deacon Fred.
Landover Baptist is a parody.
I know, I know, Morgan’s Law and all. What makes it obvious is that it’s linked to from all over whitehouse.org, which is a parody, too (unlike the .gov one).
Landover Baptist is a parody.
I know, I know, Morgan’s Law and all. What makes it obvious is that it’s linked to from all over whitehouse.org, which is a parody, too (unlike the .gov one).
There. Fixed that for you.
For all you Bungie fans, you may now all celebrate that Bungie and Microsoft are splitting up. They might even make Mac games again!
Really? That’s great (although I hope they can manage financially.) Can we dream of a Bungie/WideLoad remerger?
>>Bungie? PZ played Marathon! PZ played Marathon! *dances*
There are obviously many things which we do not understand, and may
never be able to.
Anton Mates:
We share your pain. I was hoping that the Halo series would complete the Heptalogy and usher in a Grand Unified Storyline. Sadly, it was not to be. :(
When I was in high school the local Southern Methodist church would have a gaming night on Fridays. Free food and a 16-player Halo lan party in exchange for listening to some youth pastor ramble for 15 minutes is a pretty good deal IMO.
I don’t think anyone payed much attention to the preacher anyways. There were always sighs and groans whenever we had to stop playing. Once they even tried to get us to sing songs… That didn’t go over so well.
Someone’s never played Baldur’s Gate…
Or Homeworld. No, games aren’t at the cave art stage. They’re at the Britney Spears stage. The Baroque masters of gaming have come and gone, and now it’s all pandering and marketing and focus groups and Pepsi products.
“Aficionados of H.P. Lovecraft and the Song of Roland who enjoy translating Latin for fun.”
As a member of said demographic, I have to admit that I was never all that interested in Bungie’s games.
PG – Check this out
Here is a video of a guy names “angry video game nerd” hilariously reviewing Bible Games for the old 8 bit nintendo. It’s so hilarious I can’t watch it on public wifi because I laugh so hard they call the cops on me. It’s 20 minutes long, but if you watch 3 minutes, you’ll watch the rest.
On the one hand, I should be pleased at PZ’s point.
On the other hand, I’ve already seen evidence of this “how low can they go” shop-for-new-converts… but they did it with my all-time, decades-long favourite television show.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/6991351.stm and http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=65823&in_page_id=34. Those filthy church bastards took my “Doctor Who”. I’m not forgiving them for that.
“Doctor Who” (or video games, or whatever) can’t gain from this… well, nothing but surface tarnish, anyway.
I’d just like to stick my neck out and put in a good word for Pedro the Lion and American Pearl, both ostensibly Christian bands. Pedro the Lion’s Diamond Ring is one of the best acoustic guitar songs I know of. Neither band is truly groundbreaking, but both are well above average.
If you think that the use of storefronts and converted warehouses for churches is a sign of the decline of Christianity you should strongly consider reading Finke and Stark’s “The Churching of America, 1776-1990: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy” and some of their other works . I suspect that they would see it as a sign of Christianity being healthy. In a nutshell: they argue that religion in general (and Christianity in particular) has higher level of adherence when there is a diversity of different religions competing in the marketplace. The presence of many storefront churches is a sign of such diversity and the high demand for religion.
If the churches are going to start pushing video games, it seems to me the obvious place to start would be the DOOM series: Three games entirely devoted to battling the very legions of Hell itself! What could be more righteous than that?
And Mindbleach, I can’t believe you left out Stryper! What’s wrong with you??
Lissenin to “Soldiers Under Command”, Blastin’ demons with the ol’ BFG10K…
Good times.
On what churches are coming to:
In the second half of a round-the-country driving trip, today I was driving through the northwest corner of Arkansas. I saw a church that was in an old service station. (There was also a “Bait” sign in the window.) In Georgia a couple of weeks back I saw a sign that said “Church for sale.”
Sorta related. For years i’d thought to myself “it’s too bad they don’t use videogames in retirement homes. They’d be perfect for the elderly.” And now there are retirement homes that have Nintendo Wii’s in them. People should do what i think more often.
I agree with jomega, DOOM was practically made for the church – blasting away at hell-spawn – what could be more godly? And the “soul cube” in DOOM 3 was perfect, just a rationalization away from collecting souls for Jesus. Also wasn’t there a figure of Christ in one of the Id games? One of the Quake series I think.
Since the storyline of the Doom games involves humans (an individual human, actually, who is clearly extraordinary in courage, resourcefulness, and skill, as well as having a strong sense of moral duty–the original Doom manual mentioned in passing that the player character was transferred to Mars after refusing an order to massacre civilians and backing that refusal up with force) triumphing over the forces of incarnate evil not by appealing to a higher power for salvation but by their own efforts, it’s actually pretty much antithetical to Evangelical Christianity, if not Christianity in general. If anything, it’s a humanist allegory.
Note: self: finish thoughts.
should continue “–but never indicated to be anything more than a good soldier)”
Azkyroth said:
an individual human, actually, who is clearly extraordinary in courage, resourcefulness, and skill, as well as having a strong sense of moral duty
Yeah, like um … Jesus! See? DOOM is perfect for the church!
I deliver my comment in a tentative voice – my emotions, perhaps, akin to those of Gustaf Johansen as he watched the entrance to the stone vault of R’lyeh open. While Johansen was met with Cthulhu himself, it is the hordes I fear. That stated, I offer up my comment as sacrifice.
As a self-labeled “Lovecraft aficionado” and a person who has translated Latin before (only for the purposes of D&D), I’m putting it on record that I have played and loved Bungie’s games. I suppose this puts me at odds with Graculus (#28).
I love many other video-games as well, and feel the mighty Myers may have been wrong about the current state of video games; the target demographic of developers is and has been maturing since their inception. While there are plenty of adrenaline-inducing, mindless shooters aimed exclusively at teenage males, there are also plenty of sophisticated RPGs that consist of complicated intrigue mixed with romance. There are also games targeted specifically at the female market and those with strong female leads (granted the majority of these characters are unrealistic “sex dolls”).
Video games are also long past their “cave art” stage when their only purpose was basic entertainment. Now, the majority of video games are breathtakingly beautiful and lifelike in their graphics. (I believe “technically amazing” is the approximate term Myers uses.) If technical improvement was all that had occurred, video games would still be out of their Lascaux stage. However, video games have certainly done more than improve technically, the medium has evolved the ability to communicate sophisticated themes, to deal with sensitive issues like race, class, religion, etc.
I feel that video games are at least on par with movies and novels in their ability to convey meaning and that several video games are equal to the classics of both mediums. Video games, like any technology-driven medium (e.g. the Internet), have evolved incredibly fast.
I apologize for the length of my rant, but I suppose as a long-time lurker and first-time poster I had a lot to vent. I love this blog and please keep the posts coming P.Z., Dark Priest of Cthulhu.
“Ad Meiorum Cthulhi Gloriam”
Azkyroth, these three things you have brought together in your post:
extraordinary in courage, resourcefulness, and skill, as well as having a strong sense of moral duty
refusing an order to massacre civilians and backing that refusal up with force
never indicated to be anything more than a good soldier
…when brought together, constitute for me the ideal of what the military is about.
Actually, the thing I can’t explain the Fundies not getting into is the tabletop game Warhammer 40,000; there’s more than enough demons and monsters out there to fight; and IIRC, plenty of Holy Orders the characters join in order to do it.
More on the topic of the Churches appealing to popular culture to get kids back, there is nothing more cringe-worthy than watching a Fundie trying to sound ‘cool’ to a bunch of at best agnostic, and probably atheist, adolescents.
My father went to a Catholic school run by the Jesuits, and I quizzed him one day on whether he and his classmates had been religiously indoctrinated (he was never a churchgoer for as long as I can remember). He stated that they had ( alongside their purely secular subjects) been given a religious education, but that there had been a great deal of discussion, including of the possibility that God might not exist. This was pre-Vatican-II. When I joined the local church youth group, what I found was that I’d stumbled into one of the FOUR Evangelical Anglican churches in the whole of Adelaide (nominal population 1 million). And I got preaching and threats of Hellfire for unbelievers.
When I eventually decided on a bit of spiritual renewal and went back to the Catholic Church to do my adult confirmation course, the liberal discussion was a breath of fresh air. Maybe it was just that parish. But the you-beaut populist ‘Cool Christian kids going along to rock masses’ thing failed dismally, whereas the centuries of tradition, art and music succeeded.
I’ve stopped going to church at all now, unless for cultural things like marriages, funerals and christenings (I think these are still important). But the Catholic liturgy (especially in Latin, which I’ve experienced once) is a thing of (literary and musical) beauty that all the jumping, thrashing and screaming of the Pentecostalists can never, ever match.
I had meant to address this with the “never indicated to be anything more than a good soldier” part but it slipped my mind in the original comment.
Heh. “I come not to bring peace but a sword” indeed. Though I’m pretty sure they’d find a game that involves literally playing god at least questionable if not outright blasphemous. O.o
To build on Atheotatus’ post, I cited the Baldur’s Gate series specifically because of the moral and philosophical depth explored by that series (especially as further interpreted by its [shamelessplug]extremely active modding community[/shamelessplug]). A few other good examples include Deus Ex and Fallout 1 and 2 (though Fallout 2 is notably lackluster in the “technically amazing” department, being instead a rather spectacular early casualty of the irritating “release now, patch…hey, look, a bird!” trend among some developers) which have some fairly heavy political overtones and seem designed to make the player think about the questions involved there, the alternate-history speculations of the Red Alert series, and the sociopolitical and ecological themes of the main Command and Conquer series. Starcraft is pretty good for this kind of depth as well (and Kerrigan is probably the best female villain ever created). Even Unreal 2 ponders the concept of duty and its relationship to conscience at some length. There are probably others…
“Though I’m pretty sure they’d find a game that involves literally playing god at least questionable if not outright blasphemous.”
Like the Black & White games?
One game I would recommend for a church would be Medieval II: Total War (especially with the recently released Kingdoms expansion pack). Religious conflict (Catholic vs Orthodox vs Muslim) is a major theme in the game, and many Christians would certainly go wild over the opportunity to lead holy knights to crush and massacre Islamic infidels. For that matter, this game could work for a mosque, too, albeit for the reverse reason…
Dungeon Keeper, Bullfrog Productions, 1997.
“I don’t think violent video games make for violent people.”
Come on PZ – you’re guilty here of many of the errors you castigate people for all the time. I think you need to read some of the relevant scientific literature before making such a sweeping statement.
I’m with Baratos on this one, Halo is the last game I’d imagine a church using to pull in teh kidz.
I think someone somewhere spotted that it was “very popular with the young people” and decided to use it as their bait without actually playing through it and seeing what the underlying themes are.
Which is all kinds of funny.
Oh, there’s plenty of evidence that video games don’t make people violent. Sheesh. Look at the sales numbers vs. the numbers of violent crimes committed by gamers. Correlation doesn’t equal causation, anywho. I don’t know if there’s been a study of number of incarcerated violent offenders and how many were gamers prior to arrest, but I’d imagine that a lot of them would have been indoors playing rather than out doing something unlawful if they had been.
For me, as the mother of teens, I can see right off that my kids, their friends, and other kids that are part of their various groups, are good, decent kids. They have game systems at home, they like to watch TV shows which may or may not contain violence, they’ll even stay up all night watching one cheap slasher flick after another at a sleepover. . .but I’d trust any one of them to do the right thing if challenged. The ones who are scarier are the ones who have nothing to do. Go to the convenience store that’s open 24/7 in the middle of the night, and they’re all hanging out there. And they are not, I might note, playing video games or watching violent TV shows or movies.
So, not only is the church doing something that’s going to be viewed as “lame” (I won’t use the currently popular word) by the kids, but they’re fishing with the wrong bait. If they want to attract the kind of kids they can really save, they need to open a convenience store, have a parking lot full of junk cars, bare walls, spray paint, and large heavy objects suitable for tossing and causing damage. Then they could. . .ummm. . .I dunno. I’m having trouble tying loitering and vandalism into the message of the gospels. Well, that’s for the churches to figure out. I’m just telling them how to get the kids to show up. Heh.
It gets worse. My fiance, who does 3D computer animation, just had a recruiter call him to try to talk him into a 6-month all-expenses-paid gig working on a project for Scientology. We think it’s a video game from some of the hints the recruiter let drop, one of the more interesting of which is that they are not letting their own members work on the project. He actually managed to keep his voice and his lunch down as he told the recruiter, “Thanks, but no thanks.” And thanks to South Park, we think it’s unlikely they’re going to find any trained animators dumb enough to work for them.
I think the old rules about balsphemy and idolatry went out years ago. There is nothing so crass, nothing so tasteless that a fundagelical won’t approve if it’s still somehow “pro-Jesus”.
From what I’ve seen, the “evidence” that violent video games contribute to youth violence is on a par with the “evidence” that homosexuals are incapable of being good parents, both in terms of the actual state of the research and the mindset of the people who advocate the position.
Not much to add other than another great game series:
Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series of games have been amazing.
Great eye-candy as well as hundreds of non-linear task threads. They seem to be games that you either love or hate, but I loved them.
Not to say that sniping in Unreal Tournament isn’t really, really fun. Or racing in Need for Speed – Underground isn’t a blast, or….
I’ll shut up now.
I have to agree with you Flex, the Elder Scroll series has been great in both playable content and story.
The Baldur’s Gate series was also awesome, and I personally have been enjoying Neverwinter Nights as well (it helps that I’m a recovering D&D addict who, having gone away from home for graduate school, has yet to find fellow players).
Fable is another wonderful little game with a great story line. The Suikoden series also delivered some wonderful tales with an amazing ability to make you care for almost all 108 characters you controlled (II and V were the best in my opinion).
However, that just covers RPGs and Action RPGs, some FPS games have also delivered great story lines, Halo for one. Half-life 2 was another great game, and Bioshock has been a deep and disturbing look at a failed Utopia so far.
There are a lot of great games out there, and they are only getting better. Anyone else extremely excited for Too Human, a sci-fi action game embedded in Norse mythology?
I would like to nerdily point out that one of the best examples of videogame artistry hasn’t been mentioned. Planescape:Torment is a fantastic story-based rpg that has as much dialogue as most novels. You’ll definitely get a mental workout with that one (plus, based on the D&D Planescape setting, it’s great for us recovering D&D addicts ;-) ).