(no subject)

[danalwyn]

I think I've found religion.  I've always entertained some doubts about organized Christianity, but any religion that will give me an assault rifle and an armed helicopter, and then send me off to smite the ungodly in the streets of New York is OK in my book.

In other news, I think that the Left Behind: Eternal Forces Real Time Strategy game may suffer just a bit from mixed messages.

(Thanks to aphrodeia for reminding me of this, and for ABC for reporting on it.  You can see the ABC video of the demo here)

Comments

The game is real, but hte description is not

[(Anonymous)]

The report is very inaccurate. The game does not have the player try to establish a theocracy or kill people who don’t convert. In fact, you are penalized for killing people, even though Christian forces are fighting against the anti-Christ’s army.

See more about the nature of the game, with quotes from secular reviewers who have actually played it:

http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2006/06/truth-about-left-behind-video-game.html

Re: The game is real, but hte description is not

[ithmarvin.livejournal.com]

WHAT

Oh, well. I'll just put my money into Half-Life: Episode One.

Re: The game is real, but hte description is not

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I think you fail to quite understand the problem.

First is the genre that you're shipping this game to. This is an RTS game, and the market of people who play RTS games have basically settled on a particular model for how they play the game. Worse, it looks like an RTS, and that puts your gamer in the mindset. The entire point of webcams is so that you can photograph the look on your opponent's face when eight upgraded carriers pop into existence above his base and begin reducing his Zerg Hive to a hole in the ground. No matter what mechanism you introduce to keep track of souls, you're going to have people go out and try their best to maim each other in online battle. Besides, it will give the people who play the Anti-Christ a hell of an advantage in team combat. An RPG would have been a much better format (a stealth game of sorts probably would have been even better).

Second is that conversion engines will, by necessity, cheapen Christianity. This really isn't my problem; Jesus doesn't pay my bills these days, but it smacks slightly of disrespect. Conversion engines generally don't work. The one in Age of Empires worked because the game's timescale is so messed up (you can build a castle in about the time it takes a trebuchet to fire fifty shots). It takes the same amount of time to convert the average heathen to Christianity as it does to convert the average Christian to Islam. Suggesting that either action takes about fifteen seconds is going to get you into trouble later if it does take hold in the minds of young players. Even if it doesn't, the subsequent attitude about conversion is going to weaken Christianity's missionary activities by making them seem foolish and too long. Like I said, this doesn't bother me in the slightest, but shortchanging evangelism might bother some of its adherents.

The final thing is that you have to watch the tools you give people to do the job. If you give a man a hammer, things tend to get nailed. If you give him a bunch of guys with assault rifles and a tank, and then tell him to go out and minister to the spiritually poor, the best you can hope for is mixed results. If you want to make an RTS where the purpose is conversion then you should have designed the entire thing differently, and not used the standard setup derived all the way from Command and Conquer. As long as you give people the tools, expect them to use them as they were meant to be used. You can even make Left Behind: Grand Theft Auto, give people bonus bucks for spreading the Word and for helping old ladies across the street, and they are going to take their Bibles, smack some lady in the head with them, jack her car, and run over all the pedestrians in Chinatown. I know. I've done it (sans Bible). Hell, when they gave me an assault helicopter I promptly went out and blew up everything blow-uppable in the city (including a few minutes spent hunting down the paramedics).


In conclusion, there are plenty of ways to make a game innovative and enjoyable by breaking the mode. There will always be another Sims, or Katamari Damacy, or Pokemon, or whatever, until we're frickin' sick of them. They could have done a lot more by breaking out of the mold. By choosing to confine themselves within the stereotypes of the RTS genre, and by attracting gamers with the promise of graphic violence and the characters to carry it out, you set your self up for trouble. If you want to make a clear message, there are plenty of other ways to do it that don't get you in this kind of situation.

Re: The game is real, but hte description is not

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I should add some definitions for my non-gamer readers:

RTS: Real-Time Strategy, the most famous being Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, and Command and Conquer. These games handle all interactions in real time, as opposed to turn based games such as Civilization and Master of Orion. Most of these games depend upon rapid reaction time, and in some, taking advantage of a faulty AI.

Conversion Engine: An Engine is a tag for how a particular item is handled mechanically in a game. For instance a graphics engine describes not only how the graphics look and are rendered for the player, but also the general way in which they are displayed. When I speak of a conversion engine, I am speaking of the actual mechanics of conversion. Do I push a button and click? Does the computer roll digital dice and figure out who converted who? Is there a sidequest with this as the goal? How is it handled in-game?

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

On the bright side, you can choose to play as the Antichrist.

So, after the Rapture happens, when the UN becomes the dictatorial Satanic one-world government we all knew it was all along and Good True American Bible-Believing Christians are being persecuted just like they are in America today!!1!, and the legions of the Antichrist draft the rest of us in to join their evil ungodly campaign of evil ungodliness - then we'll all have combat training already!

[eye-of-a-cat.livejournal.com]

...and, er, that's about the third or fourth identical "but it's not like that!" message I've seen left on a post relating in some way to the game.

It's a militaristic, paranoid, theologically insipid action game based on a series of militaristic, paranoid, theologically insipid novels. What is it about this that's worth defending?

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

I'd go for it if they can make blowing shit up fun. I've always wanted to tear down New York (or pieces thereof).

[aphrodeia.livejournal.com]

Good thing you have anonymouses around to correct us all. *nods*

Heh.

[skyshark.livejournal.com]

The "Left Behind" series has usually relegated the unsaved to being cannon fodder that don't need to be considered--in the first one, there's a doctor in the airport who says he has nothing to do, while planes are crashed outside.

[bladed-crescent.livejournal.com]

Praise the Lord and pass the ammo!

[danalwyn.livejournal.com]

The Lord's guns do not run out of ammo.

[bladed-crescent.livejournal.com]

He arms those who arm themselves.