Interesting to see how people can even seriously discuss about whether or not racism is involved when they talk about a religion in which the main protagonist is clearly a white male, either with blonde or chestnut-auburn hair (although common sense tells you he should indeed be at least cafe-au-lait, but most likely rather full brown, and definitively have black hair), and in which women, who are the decline of morality and the source of all evil, are worth as much as the dirt under your shoes.

As is everything or everyone "black" (such as the raven, who committed the heinous crime of not finding land when there was none to find, bummer that nasty bird).

The three magi on the other hand, a Persian, an Indian, and an Arab, hail to The Boss, so they count as "good guys", which you can see from the fact that they're white...

How many black popes were there again, in history?

But back to topic, I'd argue that a Christian RPG would be troublesome not so much because of the religious fanatics who would love it or hate it, condemn it, or fight with others over it.

It's troublesome insofar the by far overwhelming part of the Bible is "Yo, fucker, listen up! I am your boss, do as I say or I'll turn you and everybody you know to ashes!" in one way or another. As in, towers are being toppled, people are confused and unable to speak, blinded, turned to salt columns, entire cities are buried under fire and brimstone, crops are destroyed, innocent first borns are murdered, etc etc.

It goes so far that you can't even say God is a "good" god (nor his son), according to some stories in the Bible, and even more so according to the censored "non canon" parts of the Bible. If you think about the story of Job, for example... no matter how you argue, the Bible's depiction of a God who tortures an innocent man for no reason other than not wanting to lose a gamble is a pretty lame one.

Such a scenario (the big guy behaves like a prick whenever he wants, and there is nothing you can do) doesn't really leave a lot room for "playing", not in a very entertaining way anyway.

So, basically:
Thoughts/ feelings
Suggestions (tittles, mechanics)
Would you play it?

If you're interested in primarily game design input, this could be moved to Game Design.
If you're interested in primarily marketing/publishing input, this could be moved to Business/Law (or you could post a question there).

[Edit] Or if you're happy with all the discussion you're getting here, I can just shut up and let things be! :op

>Address one sentence of the article.

Really?
You are going to complain about me quoting the opening line of the article and then support your position via a single sentence which says 'some' might consider it to include religion?

So your 'defence' of it being 'racist' for someone who is a Christian so that 'some' might include religion under that banner... well, if we are going to play that game then still nope, because I'm willing to bet that the vast majority of people, if asked if they considered Christianity to be in some way 'another race' would look at you like you were crazy.

So, once again, you have no real position here and if anything you are basically crying because one member of a group wants to do something which would appeal to another member of that group... I mean, seriously, THAT has got you bent out of shape?

As for the rest of your initial post, I didn't find anything else worth commenting on thus I quoted the one bit I wanted to comment on; did you some how not understand that? Do you want me to explain in future post why I'm only commenting on one bit of your rambling madness? Would that make it easier for you? I mean, it's got to be hard understanding others given how angry you clearly are about the subject and anger is known to reduce mental capacity.

Interesting to see how people can even seriously discuss about whether or not racism is involved when they talk about a religion in which the main protagonist is clearly a white male, either with blonde or chestnut-auburn hair (although common sense tells you he should indeed be at least cafe-au-lait, but most likely rather full brown, and definitively have black hair), and in which women, who are the decline of morality and the source of all evil, are worth as much as the dirt under your shoes.

The fact that the religion has be controlled and twisted by a group of white Europeans has no relevance with regards to if doing something which has Christian focus is some how racist or not.

I'd be taking the same defensive position if the religion in question was Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Paganism or any other belief system you want to throw out there.

ya you could play the angel of death going around killing Egypt's first born children from the hands of the mothers holding them. It'll surely shine some lights on what the bible is all about.
Or you could play some father trying to find his own son so he can kill him because god said so.
It'll be a good game.

The plague was targeting firstborn male sons directly. And it's direct retribution for the Egyptians murdering every male child born to the Israelites (only an estimated 1/10th of the male children survived). The response is killing only the firstborn male of every household that passively or actively participated in the crimes.

In mankind's own sense of morals, if someone breaks your leg, you break theirs as 'justice' (an eye for an eye), and then break their other leg as 'punishment'. Here, the Egyptians enacted a wide-spread and far reaching genocide against the Jews to kill every male infant. God responded by killing only 1/3rd of the male infants. Not only is it "just" by mankind's own moral system, it is actually merciful.

God is just and merciful. We claim we want justice when we are wronged, but what we really want is justice and excessive punishment to 'teach a lesson' to whoever wronged us, and then we also want a blind eye turned towards us when we do something wrong. We want a corrupt judge, because we have corrupt morals. God isn't corrupt and doesn't turn a blind eye when we want Him to, and God isn't corrupt and doesn't dish out excessive punishment against our enemies. It's true justice, but merciful and not overdone.

God doesn't show favoritism either - the amount of plagues and disasters brought on Israel when Israel did even worse things than the Egyptians proves that. It's really interesting when you look into and study these things and think about them intelligently.

There really is hundreds of great stories there, they just require some digging to unearth. I don't know whether they are good fits for videogames, considering the non-linear nature of some games, but they definitely would make decent movies or TV shows or books if done well. And I agree that so far, most Christian media has not been done well. But some areas of Christian music has really gotten very good in terms of quality, if you ignore 'mainstream christian' music. But even the mainstream music is at least tolerable, compared to 50 years ago.

Most the stories in the bible are compressed down and just tiny windows into the greater picture of what was going on at the time, so there are very few stories there that give alot of detail to work with. In particular, since so little dialog is recorded, sometimes it's really hard to get into the person's head and figure out what they were thinking and what their personality is.

My favorites though, are Daniel (who lived through the collapse of the Babylonian empire, and rise of the Media-Persian empire, during the reigns of four different kings) and the life of David.

The bible covers so much of David's life (compared to just tiny snippets of events in other peoples' lives) that it gives alot to work with because alot of events were recorded.

Daniel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel were all living and prophesying during the same time period (i.e. they were roughly contemporaries) and likely had heard of each other. They were also aware of that the events going on in their time were the same events that Isaiah, a few generations earlier, had foretold. Daniel was very familiar with Isaiah's works, because Isaiah not only foretold that Judah (the southern nation of Israel) would go into captivity, but foretold when they would come out of it again... which Daniel lived to see in his old age. (speaking of unbiased justice, part of the reason Israel went into captivity, is because Israel refused to free their slaves that God had commanded them to).
Daniel became second-in-command over Babylon, under Nebuchadnezzar, while Ezekiel was a prophet to the Israelites in captivity in Babylon, and Jeremiah was a prophet to the Israelites left in the land in Judah.

I feel the biblical stories would be better for settings in games with original stories, rather than trying to force-fit an existing storyline into a non-linear medium.

But it isn't about Christianity or even religion, it's about picking your target audience on an arbitrary basis.

No, it's about picking yourself as an audience, and then saying, "Wait, there are others like me who might want the same kind of game...".

Not everyone likes history, but there is definitely a niche for historical games. Why not the areas of history covered by the bible?
Since a major part of the Bible is history, and it is the single most debated and verified group of historical records we have, not to mention one of the most well-read and well-known portions of history, with people reading it across the most ethnic, cultural, and geographical boundaries, to ignore it just because you don't like it seems pretty silly.

Wow, this thread has devolved quickly.

Wanted to say that contrary to Frob's first post an RPG doesn't have to be an open sandbox world where you can do anything you want. Unless we're looking to get into a genre naming debate but I don't think that's the direction this thread is going to go.

If you take an FF game and remove the combat you essentially have a story on rails which given the low possibility for story branching is probably the sort of approach to be looking at. Then adding mini-games, puzzles, or fetch quests that fit with the story should be a way to hold the player's interest while driving the story forward. With minimal ability to impact what happens in the game you are going to need some sort of challenge give to the player. But it seems to me that combat in the garden of eden is bad idea because not only would it be out of place given what the environment is supposed to be but it's not in line with the task that you're trying to have the player do.

That's exactly what I was thinking and I'm currently rethinking that level into some kind of tutorial for the game.

18 posts before this thread got terribly derailed by someone. Not bad.

Yeah, that's another thing I was getting at. There doesn't seem to be any games for Christians that share the same graphics quality and mechanics as mainstream games. I often think that Christian children may feel a bit left out because their parents deem games like CoD inappropriate due to their beliefs. So, maybe this can provide some kind of alternative.

And you really believe this bible RPG game of yours is going to be up to par with Call of Duty series in the eyes of kids? No, it'll end up at best just like the other sorry attempts of the religion genre. Because you're picking target audience as something that is not a target audience.

No, the problem is not that there's no Christian-version of CoD. The problem is that some families FORBID these kind of games from their kids. It's not just Christians that forbid and not all Christians forbid. These people are themselves responsible for their kid being left out.

No, sorry wrong choice of words. I meant that I could start using some of the mechanics an 3d art to bring it CLOSER to mainstream games instead of the ones I've seen that seem to be 2d and cartoony.

kseh, on 22 Jul 2014 - 10:55 AM, said:

If you take an FF game and remove the combat you essentially have a story on rails which given the low possibility for story branching is probably the sort of approach to be looking at. Then adding mini-games, puzzles, or fetch quests that fit with the story should be a way to hold the player's interest while driving the story forward. With minimal ability to impact what happens in the game you are going to need some sort of challenge give to the player. But it seems to me that combat in the garden of eden is bad idea because not only would it be out of place given what the environment is supposed to be but it's not in line with the task that you're trying to have the player do.


Again treating the bible just a setting. I think a book that has events spanning many hundred years (or whatever they claim officially, it's hazy) doesn't make that great of a setting for a role playing game.

A setting that is based on the past which may or may not include elements that have either actually existed or otherwise been altered in magical or fantastical ways... Your right, that sounds like a horrible idea for a setting. That sort of niche game could never be successful.

Who are you going to play as?

You would play the character that the programmer(s) has set the player out to play and do whatever the programmer(s) has set for you to do. Whether it is a quality, entertaining game or a good interpretation of the bible remains to be seen after it's completed. In general, I would expect the quality of the game to reflect the talents of the team involved.

@OP (would I play it)

I will be honest, I am somewhat biased in that first person perspective games don't tend to appeal to me and the label of it being a "Christian game" tends to cause me to prejudge it as ending up either preachy or kitschy (as I said, the FF style mechanic you mentioned as a challenge or puzzle does not appeal to me). So, to get me to actually play it would mean fighting my preconceptions. The over all idea of the game, because you don't really see it done well, does pique my curiosity such that I'm interested in confirming my preconceptions. But I've learned that in the end, whether or not I play game is a fairly impulsive decision and when those impulses are combined with preconceptions, it seems unlikely.

But that shouldn't stop you from trying to make a quality game.

(edit: just noticed your reply, glad to hear you're rethinking that level)

Won't be surprised if this thread gets derailed into a debate against Christianity.