American Evangelicalism has a simplistic understanding of theology that borders on childish and strongly discourages any sort of questioning of the narrative, which is sad when you consider that Protestantism literally started from people questioning the narrative put forth by the Catholic church.
This makes Biblical teachings an extremely shallow well to draw from, because any deviation from the fundamentalist interpretation of the scripture is blasphemous. Assassin’s Creed is blasphemy. Xenogears is blasphemy. The entirety of Final Fantasy is blasphemy. You can’t really do much but childish retellings of Biblical stories within a very narrow presentation, or you’ll alienate the core audience.
I think you could make absolutely rad christian games. The games would probably have to be pretty heretical but they could still be christian in nature.
His conclusion tl;dr is that the Protestant ethic opposes fun and leisure at a basic level and is therefore incompatible with video games.
My corollary based on this conclusion is that NFT play-to-earn games are actually Christian games.
If I had to guess, it may be because of the thought stopping nature of (some) faith-based thought. You would also need either a game studio that was willing to explore/pursue those ideas.
But you’d think with all the right wing Christian money swirling around in the US that there would be some kind of evangelizing effort through gaming.
Edit: Just remembered that Chants of Sennaar is a really cool take on the Tower of Babel concept with puzzles based on deciphering languages you don’t know. So that’s one interesting one.
Supergiant should make a game with some thirst trap saints.
Why? Because The Bibleman Video Game Adventure: A Fight for Faith, a perfect game, already exists; what more do you want?
Envy is a sin btw.
Excuse me, The YOU Testament is right there!
Neon white is the good Christian videogame. You literally save heaven
It’s definitely heretical based on what I’ve played, though. The angels are portrayed as absolute assholes who take advantage of the structure of damnation to force the neons into servitude, while compromising their moral high ground to do so.
Great game and soundtrack. I don’t care about heresy, in fact I like it.
there was one good game… LarryBoy GBA review