A few months ago, I solicited the Escapist Magazine to write an article on the problems of creating “Christian” Games.  Originally, I wanted to write yet another article panning the Christian gaming community for creating yet another set of horrible and embarrassing games in the name of Jesus.  But after I saw an blog post written by Brian of JoyfulGames.com, despairing that “video games may be a completely incompatible medium for proclaiming the Gospel,” the contrarian in me was inspired to write on how Christians may being to approach creating great games, and perhaps even create a whole new culture in the gaming industry.

Why Should Christians Even Bother?

A lot of gamers are simply bored and jaded with their games.  They echo the words of Solomon in the Book of Ecclesiastes “What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.  Even the thing of which we say, ‘See, this is new!’ has already existed in the ages that preceded us.”  With this kind of attitude, it is no small wonder that arguably the most popular game critic is a man who became famous for his biting sarcasm, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw.

But this bitterness reveals an underlying anxiety, a deep seated need that claws at the soul: that there is more to life than simply staving off daily boredom which can only seemingly be relieved by what the game gods to bring to us: perhaps a new gadget, another way of playing the same tower defense game, or yet another level of sexual titillation aimed to tease and frustrate you out of your money.

What the Christian brings is a proposal – that not only is there more that Christ can offer to your life, but through good and faithful service to Him, He can transform the gaming industry itself.

To accomplish these ends, the Christian must address the following:

• Mastery of the Craft
• Mastery of Storytelling
• Faithfulness and Service to God

Mastery of the Craft of Game Design

There are a lot of well-meaning Christians in the game industry who set out on a mission, thinking that “all they need is faith” to accomplish their goals.  But no matter how much faith, or even how much money one can throw at creating the ultimate “Christian” game, they will fail if they do not master their craft.  Though young David had plenty of faith facing the giant Goliath, he also had plenty of practice with his sling beforehand, including slaying a lion.

There are plenty of pitfalls on the road to becoming a good game designer.  No matter how much faith you have, if you do not put in the hours and the practice to becoming good at your craft, you will not be able to produce the games that will be a proper expression of the faith.  The Christian blacksmith who spends his days talking about Jesus, neglects his craft, and is late on his deliveries is both a bad Christian and an incompetent blacksmith.

Mastery of Storytelling

Where the Christian game designer can truly excel is in creating games with a compelling narrative.  This means mastering the art of storytelling and delivering a message with both subtlety and respect to the audience.  One of the most compelling conversion stories I have ever seen was the musical “Les Miserables.”  There is no preaching, no altar call, no “confess Jesus as your Lord and Savior”, but the story moves you – it makes you think – and it moves your heart.

There has been an argument that a Christian game must present a moral choice for the player.  I disagree.  Almost every game I’ve played has a story in it where I’ve made no choices on what the protagonist does to the story.  The ones I remember have very compelling stories that are interspersed between gameplay sessions, almost like brief intermissions but I made no choices on the plot – I am just a silent witness and a participant in the “gameplay” portions, but not with the narrative.

As long as the narrative is compelling, the characters are real and sincere, then players have no problem being a “tag-along” for the narrative ride.  I’m pretty sure that if people can tolerate Hideo Kojima’s sermons in Metal Gear Solid 4, and can even call the plotline “compelling” then I would imagine that more skilled Christian narrators who have a sense of plot could do far better.

But even in a sandbox-like game like Grand Theft Auto could be changed dramatically if you could see the consequences of one’s actions.  What if being “wanted” was a permanent state that couldn’t be sugar-coated with a new paint job or a short trip to the police station?  What if the murdering of a prostitute made all prostitutes run away from you, or even call the cops on you?  Those are simple gameplay mechanics that can change how a person plays a game and views the world.  But what if you saw the more human aspects of prostitution, where an impoverished single mother has to make money for her child and takes drugs to live with the guilt of sleeping with countless men since she was a teen?

The Christian can certainly do much more with their games through story rather than simply making a Mario clone with the three wise men hopping through the desert. (I wish that was a joke and not a real game.)

Being a Good Christian

The gaming industry is a horrible place to work if you are a family man.  The long hours of work for little compensation is not the place to foster families.  Could it be that the reason the gaming industry is so full of testosterone fantasies is because the vast majority of people creating games are young single males?

But let’s take a moment and wonder what would happen if there was a game company that made excellent games with compelling stories (not even overtly Christian stories) that was good to their employees and fostered an family-friendly environment that nurtured their workers lives rather than exploited them?  What would happen to that company’s reputation, growth and the talent it would attract?  What would happen to that company simply on account of the fact that the people who ran it, were good Christians who took care of their employees on the basis of their faith and love of their fellow man? 

Would not such a company make even better games, more joyful games, more edifying games than companies full of anxiety, anger and despair?

In the end, it wouldn’t matter if they made Christian games or not.  The very presence of a company that sets an example of how to take care of its people is enough to change the gaming industry whose staple is the exploitation of the worker.

There are many ways to address the problem of creating a “Christian” game.  And I will be sure to revisit this subject again in the future.  But in the end, it doesn’t matter for the Christian game designer to make games on the Gospel.  What matters is that he is a good Christian. And being a good Christian is so much more than spreading tracts – it is being a living example of Jesus for a world that needs Him so badly.

Anime USA Mascot for 2008 - Unpublished

I’ve only mentioned it my profile that I am an “aspiring artist” but I just realized that I haven’t actually posted any of my art on my blog.  To the left is an unpublished piece I proposed for Anime USA 2008, a Japanese Animation convention held near Washington, DC.

The theme for that year’s convention was “kami”, the spirits or gods of Japanese Mythology.  My piece was not selected (and thus unpublished), but in all fairness, it could not hold a candle to some of the amazing digital painters who did the art for the convention.

I’ve long tried to do digital painting, but I can only do cell-shaded artwork.  The reason for this is that I am color-blind and so when it comes to the subtle shades of painting, I cannot see them.  But cell-shading is very high-contrast colors and I can use the assistance of the eye-dropper tool to pick out colors I know to be correct.

The piece was sketched, inked and colored in less than 8 hours because it was a rush concept piece I did for the convention.  The inking and coloring was actually done in Adobe Flash CS3.

I realize that I can do all the art as well as programming for any Flash game I would develop, but I’ve found that I can make very little headway if I start working that way.  When I start programming, it is hard for me to disengage from the code, and start drawing the assets I need.  The reverse is also true.  When I am drawing I just want to draw without the time pressure of getting back to programming.

Thus, I am reteaming with the artist of Space ROX, Jonathan Stuart, to see how much further we can get on the project and attempt to release our final product by the end of summer.

As much as my ego wants to do everything for the project, my experience as a programmer as well as my sense of the project scope dictates to me that the work needs to be divided.  Specialization of labor will allow us to produce 4x-8x more than if I continued as a one-man team.

Shigeru Miyamoto - He who needs no introduction

How Nintendo creates fun and lasting video games is not really a big secret.  It’s hidden in plain sight.  A lot of people like focusing on the “genius” of Shigeru Miyamoto as a game designer – maybe even as some kind of gaming “god” -  but very few focus on his method.

From an article reporting the development methods of Nintendo at GDC ‘09:

[Miyamoto] does a prototype phase for each game that has terrible graphics. We got to see the prototype for Wii Boxing, which had just colored boxes for graphics. This prototype phase has only very few team members (maybe 2 or 3) and ONLY focuses on the interaction. “Find the fun.” There is a lot of trial and error as they look for this fun.

And from an interview from Clinton Keith of High Moon Studios’ (in an article on Lost Garden) nearly 2 years ago:

“If you want someone to fail, you want them to fail fast, before they spend a lot of money. That’s how Nintendo was. When I was working on the Dream Team [at Angel Studios], they wanted us to do this DNA-based driving game called Buggy Boogie. You had these vehicles that would eat other vehicles and adopt their powers and morph. It was really cool. But they would sign three month contracts, and Miyamoto himself would say that he did not want any documents. He would just say, “Find the fun, and I’ll be back in three months to take a look at what you have.”

We went through about three iterations of that. We busted our hump trying different things, but at the end of it, he kept coming back and saying that it wasn’t there, and it wasn’t fun. We were a new company that didn’t know how to make games. After about six or nine months, he came back and said, “You guys have really worked hard, and we see the progress, but we’re not seeing the product. But another opportunity has come up for a fantasy golf game, so why don’t you guys work on that? In three months, we’ll be back. Show us a golf game.”

So rather than getting pissed off at us and canceling the contract after two years and millions of dollars, they spent just a tiny fraction of that with a small team and said, “Well, it was just a bad idea.” It maintained the relationship with them, so we could go off and do something else.

Small teams?  Iterative Development and Feedback Loops?  Rapid Prototyping?  This is all about Agile Development.

How many development teams start off with a huge product idea with massive story ideas and gimmick gameplay, then hit the ground running with full force teams, massive design documents, only to find out two years later when the game is in testing and about to go gold that the game isn’t even fun?

Bowser and Peach

Nintendo does the opposite.  It spends the most amount of time on the prototyping stage to “find the fun.”  Once they find a fun game mechanic that hits a certain critical threshold, that is when Nintendo leverages the full might of its development army to add content, graphics and tons of spit polish.  The story is built around the game, not the other way around.

That is why in many Nintendo games, you don’t really see the story unless you open the manual.  The game functions even without the story or an explanation on why mushrooms make Mario big or why the princess was captured by an evil spikey turtle.  It’s just FUN!

It’s all about focusing on gameplay before glitz.  Rapid prototyping, practice and feedback.