In the world of video games, there are not really any taboo motifs: wars, drugs, sex, or even brutal killings appear everywhere in games, they have never been banned. The exception was only religion, it seems a convention not to bring religion and entertainment together, but now things get changed. A lot of small and new companies begin to design games which using New or Old Testament as story background.
There are games like “Bible Champions”, “The Bible Game”,
“Bible Adventures”, “Adventures in Odyssey”, “Bible Man” etc. They have
explicit name revealing their religious content. These companies proclaims that
video games with Christian motif are produced to provide the positive choice
for teenagers, it could drive them away from sex and violence, and purify them
by penetrating Christian ideas in the games. Apparently, besides promoting the virtue
of Christianity, they also use religion as their selling point in the fiercely
competing market. They are sort of turning Christianity into commodity. And
some good Christian video games do get support from Christian communities.
Facing such a profitable market, why Christian games only
appears in recent years, and why only partial companies choose to produce them? It
somehow also reflects the complexity of the relationship between Christianity
and popular culture in contemporary society. How to interpret the religion? How
to avoid the controversy? And it is also very hard to characterize the
protagonists. In Christianity, Jesus Christ is the almighty Savior, and his
supernatural power is beyond human ability. Under this condition, how to
characterize the protagonists to be powerful human or even a savior? It is
quite a hard job to design an attractive and interesting game without challenging
some religious communities.
And we can also see that teenager is a vulnerable group,
whether Christian video games are a good idea is still to remain of deliberate.
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