Convert or Die, the Game

[Monty]

Ah, yes. It’s December. Christmas is just about here. What better way to celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace than having your tykes play Left Behind: Eternal Forces? Your future missionary will learn that he has to either convert the Muslim hordes or gun them down. Of course, gunning them down’s not spiritually the best thing to do, but there’s a cure–for the killer, not the victim. All the killer has to do is pray to regenerate his spirit points. To ensure you know the enemy, they have “Muslim-sounding names.” Well, at least one enemy is a rock star. Having your character stand too close to him will cause your character to lose spirit points.

Why is the enemy Muslims? You’ll love this response from the president of Left Behind Games to that query:

When asked about the Arab and Muslim-sounding names, Frichner said the game does not endorse prejudice. But “Muslims are not believers in Jesus Christ” – and thus can’t be on Christ’s side in the game.

“That is so obvious,” he said.

[Thalion]

I’ve been staring at my monitor for ten minutes, trying to think of just the right thing to say.

I’m just too appalled to think.

And very, very sad.

[Oakminster]

Now see, I find this offensive:

*Players can choose to join the Antichrist’s team, but of course they can never win on Carpathia’s side. The enemy team includes fictional rock stars and folks with Muslim-sounding names, while the righteous include gospel singers, missionaries, healers and medics. Every character comes with a life story. *

No, not as a religious person, which I’m not. It offends me as a gamer. What is the point of playing a game you can’t win with either side? That’s not a game, it’s an infomercial.

[42Geek]

what next? a missionary game where you try to convert the heathen savages, or the “oh the horror?” secular people?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

Well, well, well. It’s a Simpsons episode come to life.

[Monty]

I may regret asking this, but here goes anyway. Skald the Rhymer, which episode?

[BraheSilver]

Bart spends the day at the Flanderseses’s house. He picks up a game controller, but they only have one game: Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster. Apparently the point is to shoot at cavemen and devils to turn them into suit-wearing halo-sporting Christians.

Bart: Got 'im!
Rod (or is it Todd?): Nah, you only winged him. He’s a Unitarian.

[anu-la1979]

From the article:

But Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a “thumbs-up.”

Come on now…the copywriters must have been cackling to themselves. My fave co-worker and I try to inject that type of shit into documents any time we can…

[Sublight]

@Monty

I may regret asking this, but here goes anyway. Skald the Rhymer, which episode?

It was one of the early episodes, I believe when they’re having flashbacks to Lisa’s birth (Bart has to sleep over at the Flanders’ while Homer and Marge are at the hospital).

I love when they reach the boss enemy.
“Oh, no! The gentle Baha’i!” blastblastblast

[ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]

Wired article.

So the great surprise of Left Behind: Eternal Forces is that it actually kind of rocks. It’s a classic real-time strategy game: Starting with a single “recruiter,” your job is to proselytize followers, level them up into an army of soldiers, medics and “spirit warriors,” then bring a hard rain down on the forces of the Antichrist. This all takes place in a sprawling version of Manhattan that is rendered with breathtaking accuracy – down to the precise location of Duane Reade drugstores – and superb camera work. Actual battles offer nail-biting action, forcing you to make split-second decisions as helicopters swarm through the air.

…
I kept wondering when the game was going to throw it down and truly embrace the apocalyptic Christian vision. This story line isn’t merely of armageddon, but Armageddon. Thus, the last Left Behind book – Glorious Appearing – concludes with the ultimate triumph of Jesus in a phantasmagorically gruesome holocaust. As predicted in Revelation, the savior returns to Earth, chides Satan for defiling the planet (and for inventing Darwinism), then proceeds to slaughter all unbelievers, dissolving their tongues and bursting their bodies like overstuffed sausages. As millions die in transports of agony, the ground becomes a swamp of blood and mud, and some extremely unpleasant things happen to the Jews who refuse to convert. As for the born-again? They stand around watching and cheering.

Critics and moderate Christians were, as you’d expect, totally appalled when that book came out. But what’s truly fascinating is that, at least as far as I played the Left Behind game, nothing remotely this ghastly takes place. Indeed, it’s quite sanitized: Those killed in battle fall to the ground without gore, and eventually fade away.

Why not go the extra mile? We’ve got all these cutting-edge computer graphics – couldn’t they easily render this bloodbath? Sure, but as the Left Behind game designers explained to me, they were worried about offending their audience by having too much gore.

Which is the ultimate, and gorgeous, irony of this game. Left Behind fans are apparently more worried about simulated violence in video games than about believing an actual prophecy of the future – endorsed by their spiritual leaders – in which their friendly Jewish, Islamic and atheist neighbors have their tongues dissolved in screaming agony by a fire-eyed Jesus.

Wheels inside wheels.

[Revtim]

If it had the gory Armageddon, I would totally play this game.

[asterion]

@BraheSilver

Bart spends the day at the Flanderseses’s house. He picks up a game controller, but they only have one game: Billy Graham’s Bible Blaster. Apparently the point is to shoot at cavemen and devils to turn them into suit-wearing halo-sporting Christians.

Bart: Got 'im!
Rod (or is it Todd?): Nah, you only winged him. He’s a Unitarian.

Bart: All right! Full conversion!

[smiling_bandit]

It is single-player only, hence the side of evil can’t “win;” you can only lose.

Actually, I like the idea of a game where the object isn’t to kill the enemy, but to make them happy and productive.

[Captain_Amazing]

I guess I’m not so offended by the idea that the game puts Muslims on the anti-Christian side…I mean, if the game divides everybody into “Christian vs. everybody else”, then obviously, like the game designer says, the Muslims are on the “everybody else” side.

What’s more offensive, I think, is something the PC Gamer reviewer realized:

http://www.pcgamer.com/archives/2006/12/12106_-_the_dif.html

In Left Behind, you recruit followers by talking to people on the street and increasing their spirit levels. When the level is high enough, they become your “friend,” and can be trained to pursue a number of careers, including soldier, medic, musician, builder, or recruiter/evangelist.

Unless, of course, you make the mistake of recruiting a woman.

[screenshot showing picture of a woman recruit]

Yes, you read that right: women are limited to just two career choices. Welcome to the 1950s, when women could only be singers or nurses. (To be fair, I’m sure if there were teacher and homemaker professions in the game, women could do those, too.) All of the rest of the careers are critical to your success in the game, meaning that if you had a group made up entirely of women you couldn’t succeed, but a group of all men could. Without exception, every female friend I showed these screens to gasped when they saw it. Several used language unbefitting young ladies of stature to describe their feelings toward people who would make a conscious design decision to limit the potential of women and encourage players to pass them over in favor of men. And I have to say, I agree.

[Cervaise]

@anu-la1979

From the article:

But Plugged In

Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.

[The_Weird_One]

@anu-la1979

From the article:

But Plugged In, a publication of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, gave the game a “thumbs-up.”

Come on now…the copywriters must have been cackling to themselves. My fave co-worker and I try to inject that type of shit into documents any time we can…

And what better to plug these assholes than the baby Jesus.

[Terrifel]

I wonder how long it’ll be until some crafty gamer comes up with a game patch or something that allows Satan to win.

[Malthus]

I’d love to get a copy of this game. It would make a great Christmas present for the “gag gift” pool (though to qualify, it has to be less than $10).

[Queen_Bruin]

@Skald the Rhymer

Well, well, well. It’s a Simpsons episode come to life.

“You only winged him; now he’s a Unitarian”.

[Queen_Bruin]

@The Sausage Creature

“You only winged him; now he’s a Unitarian”.

And I see BraheSilver beat me :smack: .