Spunky Homeschool

God Games

Jun. 10, 2006 at 11:59 AM

Are you going to let your children play the new "God Games"?
Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!
Points are given for salvations and deducted for killings. Playing by yourself or in a group over the internet, you can:
Conduct physical & spiritual warfare : using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world.
According to their website, the goal is to create a new genre of video game entertainment.
To date, not one high-quality video game has been marketed to this same audience. It is management’s belief that LEFT BEHIND will be a catalyst for a new genre of video game entertainment; known, as stated by the Wall Street Journal, as "God Games".
You can watch a short ABC News clip on the games here.

In a recent LA Times article this is what one critic had to say,
"We're going to push this game at Christian kids to let them know there's a cool shooter game out there," said attorney Jack Thompson, an author and outspoken
critic of video game violence. "Because of the Christian context, somehow it's
OK? It's not OK. The context is irrelevant. It's a mass-killing game."
I'd rather have my children spend their time praying for the real forces that defend our nation each day; then mindlessly sitting at a computer fighting off imaginary ones. Further, a sanitized version to compete with games like Grand Theft Auto is ridiculous. This creates an appetite I just don't want to introduce in my children. Once the appetite is created it needs an increasing thrill to satisfy the appetite. Needless to say, we're leaving these video games behind.

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3 Comments and Trackbacks

posted by homeschoolhelp on Jun. 10, 2006 at 12:05 PM

I hadn't heard of these games before reading about them on your blog. We definitely won't play them. It makes me think of the worldly direction many churches are going nowadays -- be like the world to reach the world. I just don't agree with that philosophy. Marketing "Christian" worldly games isn't the answer to the "gaming" problems. Thanks for sharing the information about this!
Blessings,
Dianne

posted by AcceptanceWithJoy on Jun. 10, 2006 at 2:14 PM

I had just read about this game yesterday and I was still too speechless to even think about adressing it in my blog.

I don't have anything to add to what Paul Proctor has already said.

posted by WalkInFaith on Jun. 10, 2006 at 8:26 PM

To me this falls into the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mentality. No thanks. Not every hand involved in the creation of such a game was a Christian hand and not every vendor will be a Christian vendor. So it puts a Christian "foot" into a world/society door - such games will be sitting right beside absolutely non-Christian games and there really won't be much difference between them. Again, no thanks.

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