How Games And Religion Could Mix 180
An anonymous reader writes "The Passion of the Christ brought in $370 million at the box office. The Left Behind book series have sold over 63 million copies. And Christian Rock is growing more and more popular. But the video game industry has so far ignored the topic of religion. CNN/Money's Game Over column talked with game developers (including id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead and Diablo co-creator Bill Roper) about the reasons behind this - and asked them what sort of game they would make if they were creating one with a religious theme. The answers ranged from a Moses RPG to a faith-based MMO."
Passion of the Christ, the videogame (Score:3, Funny)
Choose Your side!! Christian or Pagan, the Choice is Yours!!
-Eric
Makes total sense. (Score:4, Funny)
Both games and religion are make-believe, it only makes sense that they merge. Jesus with a BFG-900 taking on a 50M tall Ganesh with glowing laser-tusks could be fun.
hmm (Score:5, Funny)
:plx i need grp
:i wont tk guys rly
religious games (Score:2, Funny)
There was one I remember where you were Noah, you had to pick up animals and throw them in the ark, but none of us could figure out what the controls where to actually get them to stay in the ark.
Seriously... It was something right out of the Flanders' household...
Imagine a Scientology MMORPG (Score:2, Funny)
You'd start out with quite little, and have to work your way up through various 'levels', while either having to live in the game or by spending tons and tons of real life money just to get cool stuff in the game. You'd get addicted to the game, and they'd keep adding things to it to make sure you don't leave. The game would be set in a weird sci-fi world where things are totally ridiculous, but you don't realize so at the time.
Oh.. hang on, that describes, um, almost every MMORPG that's out now
Final Fantasy VII (Score:3, Funny)
You obviously missed out on FF7. No part of the outcome of that game could be altered by human interaction, and it was one of the bestselling games in the world at the time.
Nethack (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Imagine a Scientology MMORPG (Score:1, Funny)
Oh wait I hear a knock on my door, one sec.
How about... (Score:3, Funny)
Heck we could even have it Deathrace 2000 style where you just run down all religious types you see when you're driving, like those "two guys on mountain bikes" types... Bonus, if you get them both in one shot.
Wow... this could be a whole new game "GTA: Down Wit' Religion" (pun intended).</sarcasm>
Sigh...
Just start with the right quote (Score:3, Funny)
Already been done... (Score:3, Funny)
Rod: Keep firing; convert the heathens!
Bart: Got him!
Rod: No, you just winged him and made him a Unitarian.
Todd: Look out, Bart! A gentle Baha'i!
Bart: All right! Full conversion! Thanks guys, this really cheered me up.
Video: Second Coming! Reload, reload!
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/BABF10 [snpp.com]
Obvious (Score:1, Funny)
Umm...the Bible?
Re:Games and religion? (Score:3, Funny)
His point of view was that he doesn't want someone preaching at him and trying to convert him, or at least doesn't count that as entertainment. (And I'll wholeheartedly aggree with him there: if I wanted to hear someone preaching, I'd go to church. When I start a game, I expect entertainment, not preaching.)
So your point is... what? That anyone who isn't an "anti-religious zealot" is just dying to hear you preaching? It might come as a surprise to you, but no, most people really aren't just waiting for you to come enlighten them.
"hypocrite. Look it up."
Ah, good. So if presumably you're not a hypocrite, I suppose you actually like someone coming and trying to convert you to _their_ religion.
Great! Well here's mine:
My religion is that it's all a MMO. (Great graphics, huh?) And we're all the creation of the Game Designer. It all started as a university assignment. (Let's be honest, noone but a student waits until the last 7 days to even start.)
So it took Him a bit of messing with the Transform & Lighting code (Let there be light), physics and such, and finally he even had a working map for it: Eden. Not a big one, and definitely no challenge playing that one, since everything respawned in abbundance. But hey, it's a start, and not a bad one.
And then He had two players. And lo did the Game Designer rejoice, and even let them name the NPCs. (Can be an euphoric day for any MUD admin, so I can understand the guy.)
Except those two abused bugs. That's players for you. You tell them "Stay away from that tree 'cause it's unfinished and still does funny and unbalanced things to your stats" and what do they do? Right. Ask any MUD or MMO admin if that's a surprise. (Well, other than the surprise that He didn't ban their cheating asses.)
So, anyway, to cut a long story short, from there it went on with a player wipe (the flood), implementing a buggy language system and watching it run amok (tower of Babel), and various other such mis-haps. All the way to Jesus pulling a Leroy stunt and aggroing two large groups at the same time, namely the romans and the jews. Noob, really. Any experienced player could have told him you need to pull from large groups, not rush in and aggro the lot of them.
Well, there you go, that's _my_ religion. I don't doubt that since, you aren't a hypocrite, you didn't mean only others should listen to _yours_. That would be hypocrisy. You, undoubtedly, are glad to be enlightened to someone else's religion, right? Glad I could be of service