Playing the Terrorist: Politics and Religion in Video Games

Keira Peney

Posted on Mon 17 Sep 2007 by Keira Peney under Other .
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Religious Video GamesSome of you may have heard of Left Behind: Eternal Forces. This is a video game that wears its religion on its sleeve; it’s set in a Christian world, with you battling the forces of Evil through the powers of Prayer and Worship. The object of the game is to save people’s souls.

Like many video games, it’s based off a series of popular books – the Left Behind series. Again, the books have a Christian ethos. It has generated a lot of debate about whether it is a propoganda tool that should be boycotted or simply a fairly uncontroversial unimaginative ‘more-of-the-same’ RTS game. Or indeed, whether it’s a healthy alternative to modern violent and amoral video games like Grand Theft Auto.

Christian games aren’t new – and neither are political games. Even in fantastical games set in alternate universes, like Final Fantasy 7, there are strong messages coming through. After all, you essentially play on the side of a terrorist group that blows up buildings in order to protest pollution and capitalism. The second something becomes more complicated than Pong, you start to generate a storyline – and storylines have always been about exploring, debating and informing. Video Games have flown under the radar, in much the same way cartoons did, because they were ‘for children’. As the video game audience grows up, however, they start to analyse the games they are playing, and subtext suddenly becomes important.

How much impact do these stories have? Do the people who became fanatical about Final Fantasy 7 turn into eco-warriors? As far as I can tell, most of them are hanging around on LiveJournal writing meandering fanfics. Do the people who play GTA go on violent rampages in crowded cities? It wouldn’t appear so. Are the people who play Left Behind: Eternal Forces going to all become born-again Christians? I’m leaning towards no.

On the other hand, it would be stupid to completely ignore a medium in which an entire generation of people are growing up immersed in. Of course culture has an impact. Of course stories have an impact. They carry a message, a moral, and a point-of-view. Revolutionary ideas have always spread through books, through television, through films. Advertisers and politicans know this. Would playing a good Christian video game make you more likely to go out and read the book series it was based on? Perhaps. And would that lead you to a greater awareness of Christianity in the culture? Perhaps. And would that later, a couple of years, maybe a decade, start you questioning where it all comes from, and what it all means?

Left Behind sells itself as an alternative to violent games. In truth, there are hundreds of non-violent games. Civilization 4 can be won without a shot fired and everyone happy, with peace, prosperity and health for all. Sim City requires you to build a functioning city, balance a budget, and occasionally stave off Aliens. The Sims is just like real-life, only not really. Monkey Island and Grim Fandango ask you to combine bizarre items into bizarre solutions. Abe’s Oddysee asks you to sneak, jump and whistle your way to safety, and rescue slaves along the way (okay, so there’s the occasional tempting of a guard into a meat grinder… maybe that one doesn’t count). There’s numerous golf games around, and few things in this world are less violent than golf.

Even World of Warcraft gets pretty interesting. Nobody is really evil, and nobody is really good. Each race just has different priorities. The game consistently makes fun of its own stereotypes, and the tropes of fantasy fiction. A player can cry “Down with the Horde! Filthy scumbags!” and ten minutes later log into their Orcish alt.

This has been a fairly meandering post, and doesn’t really lead to a simple conclusion. As a creator of video games, you have certain choices to make about what kind of a game you create, and what kind of conflict it revolves around. You can decide if you are using the game as a vehicle for a message, as the creators of Left Behind did, or as a springboard for something else. You can even leave it to the players to decide what kind of world they want to build or live in. I enjoy a challenge that isn’t solved with a well-placed bullet. But then sometimes all I want is a nice killing spree or two.

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One Response to “Playing the Terrorist: Politics and Religion in Video Games

Write the Game » Teaching Etiquette in Video Games? Says:
October 10th, 2007 at 8:34 pm

[...] this topic was touched upon mid September with the post on “Playing the Terrorist: Politics and Religion in Video Games”, that was a certain brand of narrow minded extremism which is not the focus of today’s [...]

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