Holy Play

March 11th, 2008

Imagine this, you’re the character in a video game, aliens from another planet are attacking you, enemies from another country are killing slaves, and an evil corrupt ruling power just keeps on sending their troops after you. Your character Striker needs to fight through the hoards of aliens, bullets, dead bodies, landmines, tanks, smoke and fighter planes in order to save the day and end the game, all by himself.

But instead, completely by accident you figure out that if you make Striker put his weapons away, have him kneel down, pray and ask for guidance there’s a peaceful way to end this game. Suddenly your weapons disappear and you gain a band of followers, who, like you fall on their knees and ask for guidance and peace, and then more and more followers join you, many of the aliens see you laying down your weapons and kneeling in an act of peace and they too join in on your action, suddenly all the army troops killing slaves see this and, instead of getting angry many of them decide not to shoot you, either out of inspiration or out of the decision not to kill an unarmed person.

All of a sudden you hear a deafening silence, most of the shooting ceases and you hear a baby’s crying, you look up into the face of who was your enemy and you realise they look just like you, and the aliens, who your army had just been killing look at you in the eyes and you see that they too are beautiful, even with two heads and 9 eyes, you smile at them, and offer them your hand of friendship. Then out of the blue, all of a sudden you hear a loud bang, you see your lifeline take a huge hit and the screen goes red, you’ve been shot. As you fall to the ground your character looks up to see one of the rulers is standing there, full battle gear on, holding a golden gun still smoking… You die.

In the closing scenes of the game you read that your followers never took a life ever again, that the rulers who shot you couldn’t hold control any longer as the people had found peaceful ways to resist their rule, and that the aliens having seen love and peaceful action in your actions had chosen to work with the peaceful revolution and help solve many of the world’s problems, end hunger, bring poverty to an end and free the slaves, they even helped humankind deal with issues around salinity, aids, drug addiction and more.

Does this sound like a reasonable ending to a video game? Would you buy this game, would you pay for it, would you play it? Why or why not?

Read the rest of the article here: Holy Play, Video Games, Violence, Gospel…