A few months ago, Jonathan Hutson created something of a stir by publishing an extensive exposé on the now recently published Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Jack Thompson even jumped on board, criticizing the game's developers and disassociating himself from the game's publisher, Tyndale, who also formerly published Thompson's own book.
Later, when the demo came out, I wrote up my impressions, concluding basically that the game has more problems than the representation of faith-based violence. It perpetuates stereotypes by preventing female characters from taking on leadership roles and homogenizing all converts to Christianity by depicting them as dorky Caucasians, whatever their appearance or ethnicity prior to conversion.
The story came up again with a local news report on the game. The headline on the story, "Local Pastor Against New Left Behind Video Game," refers to Rev. Tim Simpson, "the president of a liberal Christian group The Christian Alliance for Progress." Besides making sure to identify Rev. Simpson as a liberal, the reporter did let the guy get a good word in about the game's problems. They also talked to two young people who had apparently just bought the game. The overall narrative of the story, though, was that the depiction of faith-based is wrong.
Here's the video of the report itself. (I had a heck of a time even getting a link to that. If anyone can figure out how to pull it out of the page and upload it to YouTube, by all means please do so. I tried a few different add-ons that claimed to be able to do that, but couldn't get any to work.)
Incidentally, I'm not sure why the anchors and graphics identify it as FOX 30 -- I saw the exact same report on CBS 47. It seems they share resources since they appear to have the same weather guy and sports guy. In any case, I only get CBS 47 here in Gainesville. What I did find interesting, though, about the two network contexts (CBS v. FOX) was the anchor commentary to bookend the report. On the version I saw, the anchor concluded saying something like, "For now, this game is only available for the PC." But on the FOX version in the link above, she says, with a touch of outrage, "This game has received a rating of T for Teen."
Also, CBS used this as their lead-off story last night, segueing from it into the standard coverage of the report card NIMF released earlier this week (which I've heard is pretty reasonable this time). By this juxtaposition, Senator Lieberman's somber pronouncements about parental responsibility seemed to be aimed at the parents who allow their kids to play Left Behind.
I still think the issues around this game are very sticky. On the one hand, I don't categorically condemn violent video games, but on the other, I do want to criticize a game that uses depictions of violence to actively promote a violent world-view. I don't think it's hypocritical, therefore, to enjoy playing a game like God of War while condemning a game like Left Behind. God of War may be incredibly violent, but it's context is purely fantasy. We can (and should) ask questions about how violent fantasy affects kids, but the selling point of the entire Left Behind series is that it's real. It is technically fiction, but it's presented as something like historical fiction from the future -- the basic facts of rapture and violent conflict are presumed to be true. I don't know about you, but I think that presents more of a problem.
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