double standards? fun murderous video games ...

[newagelink]

I want to play this game.I saw a few news articles when Grand Theft Auto first made it big, about how horrible it was, but it died down relatively soon, and I certainly never saw it on the front page of any newspaper

Comments

[helzebel]

Because GTA is not attempting to turn its players towards the path of rampant crime sprees, while this game is trying to turn its players towards Christianity? Different purposes.

Also, you could turn that statement around: how is it not okay (from the point of view of many religious and right-wing commentators) to play games such as GTA, but it's okay if it's violence in the name of religion? (The response to that is that the violence in Left Behind had a bad moral effect and they want to convert people rather than kill them...)

My personal opinion is that the game is creepy and those books are creepy.

[capnstamey]

The books aren't creepy; I've read every one and, yes, it's bizarre towards the end, but so is the Bible book of Revelation on which they're based

[newagelink]

> Because GTA is not attempting to turn its players towards the path of rampant crime sprees, while this game is trying to turn its players towards Christianity?

Hm, the purpose of playing GTA? To pretend you're a criminal. Playing it certainly gives you savage satisfaction when you shoot a cop (or anyone) in the head, with pools of blood collecting as you take the money they drop, or stealing someone's car and then running them over with it -- and no one can deny that is the message, or the point, of the game.

I've not played this "Christian" game -- as the game makers say, it's not specifically Christian, as you can play it without knowing it's Christian -- but, according to the game makers, the intent of the game is not to kill. (As the article says, killing hurts your character or whatever.) Thus, it cannot be warfare; by the physical definition warfare means physical death and destruction.

> Different purposes.
Obviously. GTA is about murdering and stealing, whereas this game is about... fighting demons? Oh noes.

> Mr

[helzebel]

Firstly, just putting forward even more of my personal opinion: I don't actually like GTA. Or violent video games in general

[capnstamey]

(I meant everything is a double-standard, even within the church body. We are all humans, even we Christans, and we all are guilty of double standards more often than we'd like to admit. I wasn't saying that Christians are above human propensity for "double, double, toil and trouble" as the witches sang in Macbeth... sorry, I just took a Shakespeare class, and Macbeth has a great amount of truth about human nature in it).

I say bravo for evangelism, but I guess you could figure that.