Category: Video Games

More on Quests

Do we need quests to survive? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I’m still writing about my presentation at Defend 2023 where I talked about video games and Christianity. Yesterday on my wall I wrote about the need for quests. Quests are goals that we have set for ourselves and seek to go out and accomplish. These could be simple goals that we can call our routine, such as brushing teeth and hair, showering, or other goals, like my going to talk to someone about auto insurance today or how I read X amount of certain books on my Kindle.

When it comes to games, quests can keep us coming back easily and give us incentive to keep going. Games tend to become less enjoyable after the quests have been completed. Sometimes, this happens so much that players make artificial quests.

This is also why some game systems have achievements in their games. A completionist is someone who often tries to complete every achievement in a game, though some of them are just impossible to do. I mean literally impossible. If you had an achievement about pre-ordering a game and it’s already out, sorry. You can’t get that one.

An achievement is a way of being told you accomplished something. You did something that was worthwhile. This is often especially so for men who are usually much more insecure than we come across as and who thrive on praise, especially if we have a lady in our lives.

As I thought about this last night, I remembered one time when I was married my in-laws wanted my then wife and I to come over and clean the windows. I remember I got high praise for how I did since I was extremely thorough, practically using a toothbrush and scrubbing every bit of dust I could find. Looking back, I realized it was a quest. I was given a challenge and I wanted to do the best I could.

So why do I not do that at my own home? Because that’s not a quest of mine and there’s no one I’m here trying to please. If I’m fine with the place, that’s good enough for me.

In our day and age, we don’t have quests anymore. When does a boy become a man? For us, it’s when he turns 18. That’s not really an accomplishment. Congratulations. You lived 18 years. Now to be fair, not everyone does, but it happens so often that we count those who don’t an exception.

Maybe one reason our young boys are often acting out and getting in prison or just getting women pregnant and neglecting fatherhood is because they are trying to demonstrate they are men? Could it be we actually could benefit from something like a rite of passage? Could we use something that a man can look back on and say “Yes. I am a man.” Naturally, there are counterparts for the women as well, but if we look in our prisons, most of the inmates are men.

The black family in America is often worse with this as fatherlessness is even more common. A father is often someone who indicates to the boy that he is a man. Without that, the boys will team up with other boys in an effort to become men. Asian families by contrast are often highly family oriented. Perhaps the Asian communities have better ways of establishing maturity.

Quests are our way to go out and do something and prove something and if we know the quest has a purpose, we are often far more willing and do so with more joy. If your quest is just to go to work and you think, rightly or wrongly, that you’re just being given meaningless busy work to do, you won’t care about your job. If you think you’re just a replaceable cog in a machine, why should you care?

And why do we do the work at our jobs? To earn an income. Why? So we can provide for our families. Why? So our children can grow up. Why? So they can do the exact same thing. If we think our lives are just going through motions and doing the exact same thing again and again, we won’t approach our lives with joy.

What about our Christianity? Do we often know what the point is? We often say the goal is to go to Heaven when you die? For most of us, there’s a good amount of time between when we’re born and when we die. What do we do with that time? We tell other people about Jesus so they…..can go to Heaven when they die….

But what about all that time in-between?!

It’s as if we view the gospel as everyone having a disease and the goal is to get them a treatment so they won’t die and then have nothing else for them to do except give everyone else the treatment. What do we do with all this time? What is the quest of Christianity?

It’s one reason I like to talk about the kingdom of God. That changes reality. It’s saying that we are spreading a kingdom and we are in a battle of good versus evil. Now we’re talking. Reality doesn’t just take place when we die. It’s going on right now.

Evangelism is then part of the battle of good versus evil. It is stopping evil from spreading wherever we can. It is us working together as Christians for a common goal to defeat the intruder’s work that came into that garden so long ago. Does that sound bizarre to you? Paul describes frequently in the New Testament such as Ephesians 6 and 2 Cor. 10 the Christian life as one of battle. What is the book of Revelation describing if not a massive war over the souls of men?

The Christian life should be an exciting one. We are all part of a journey, part of the greatest battle between good and evil that can ever be. If we’re gamers, our quests there should remind us of the importance of the quests that go on outside of the games. We are on a quest for the king, and He will reward those who play the game well.

But should we treat this as a game?

Now that’s another post entirely….

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

My Defend Talk

So how did my talk at Defend 2023 go? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was a last-minute addition to the conference giving a talk on video games and Christianity. I do remember I slept the night before, but I was nervous, which I was assured was normal. A regular speaker at the conference told me he always gets nervous before every talk and if you’re not, then there’s something wrong.

So my talk is scheduled for Thursday at 2. I had told Paul Copan I would be leaving his plenary a little bit early so I could go to the room to get ready and he thanked me for letting him know that. I went to the room and got everything set up, including my powerpoint, and I had three videos I played also during the talk for added effect.

One thought I had had was “Would anyone really show up?” Fortunately, I saw a couple of people come in and so that at least meant some people were interested. However, I soon found out that I had nothing really to be concerned about. People were interested in this topic.

Considering the size of the room, this was a full crowd. What about those people sitting on the sides? That’s because we had to bring in chairs for people to sit in eventually. It wasn’t just college age kids. There were several people in there, even ones who don’t really play video games themselves.

Fortunately, my powerpoint presentation worked well. I had mentally timed out how things would go and they went quite well. Something that surprised me when I was doing this research was that it touched on areas I had not thought that I would touch on. Obviously, this talk would be about topics like violence in video games and sexism and things like that. Right? Nope. Those were just side issues I gave references for at the end.

I ended up quoting John Cassian and Aquinas talking about acedia, known as the noon-day demon. This was a sort of boredom that came from life and how this is one reason we need quests in our lives. This is something I’ve been writing a lot on while reviewing Life Is A Game.

All of this was exciting to go through, but this isn’t even the best part so far. The best part was when Q&A came. Now normally, this is always the best part of any talk. However, something happened in my session that I had not seen happen in any other session. This is not to say it didn’t, but I had been in a breakout session whenever possible and I had not seen this take place.

It started with a guy who had a question saying that he was really good at a game called Apex and he could go professional or he could be a youth minister and should he do the fleshly thing and go with a lot of money or go with a calling. Now I do question the idea of callings like this, but the first thing I said was “Why assume going for a job that pays well to be fleshly?”

Soon, someone else spoke up and talked about what a good influence he could be in the world of Apex if he went that way and that’s when I was able to sit back and oversee a lot of what happened, but I realized what was going on was incredible. Organic discussion. The people in the class were interacting with one another’s questions and sharing their own experiences. For me, that is the best indication that it went well.

I did also stress this is an area that needs more research and I suspect I will do a lot of that. One point I pointed out is that I did an Amazon search for a book discussing if Christianity is fun. How many books are written on that topic? None. At least I didn’t find them.

There are 3.2 billion gamers in the world today. That’s 40% of the population. We need to reach them for Christ. Shouldn’t we understand them?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 4

What is a danger we don’t talk about in our society? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

As we continue our look at Edward Castronova’s book Life Is A Game, we come to him diagnosing a major problem in our world today. We are bored. Now some of you might be odd to think that is a problem. “What? So the remedy to the world’s problems is to just have some fun and all is well?”

Not necessarily.

Let’s start by looking at the problem. To some extent, we all know that he is right. I sit here in my apartment at the seminary. I have a TV with multiple streaming services and free services as well so I can watch virtually anything that I want. I have a PS4 and a Switch so I can play a huge multitude of games. I have the internet so I can find many more things to do. I have numerous books and I have a Kindle so reading isn’t a problem. I have a smartphone with even more things to do on there.

Even if you don’t have everything I have, odds are you have plenty of things. I wager still that you are likely bored sometimes. How many times have you gone channel surfing through streaming and said “There’s nothing on.”? How many times do you open up Facebook and just stroll for half an hour or so because you’re just looking for something?

Castronova tells us the monks actually had a word for the boredom. Acedia. It’s a restlessness in life so much so that just to get some excitement, some monks would actually put themselves in places of temptation. Acedia is a real problem.

We have that problem in our society because there is very little struggle. Our ancestors had to fight and work hard just to survive. They couldn’t go to the grocery store and didn’t have central heat and air and indoor plumbing and couldn’t go from place to place super easily. They didn’t have countless medications to treat most every disease out there.

And guess what happens when you play the game and it gets too easy.

I love doing math, which I’m sure is odd for you, but I would hate the thought of being asked to come and do some math problems, thinking it would be something complex, and get to a sheet of paper that just has adding single digit numbers together. Boring.

Now it could be there could be some degree of excitement in it if, say, I was put in a room with other math geeks and we all tried to see who could finish all these simple problems first, but the problems in themselves are not problems for me anymore. Without challenge, life is boring.

The same can happen in church services. I understand pastors want to speak on a simple level to reach everyone, but you can’t always speak on the lowest common denominator or the people who are not there do get bored. Yes. I get bored often in a church service because very rarely is anything new said.

Now to an extent, there is some good in this. If I stayed at a simple level in theology forever, my life would be lacking. I can even take those simple concepts and go deeper with them. Let’s consider the song we grew up with. “Jesus loves me this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”

Okay. Who is Jesus? He loves me? What is love? Why does He love me? The Bible tells me so? How do I know that’s what it really says? How do I know it’s reliable? How do I know it’s authoritative? Those simple questions can drive you endlessly into deep theology, but if you just stay on the surface, you miss that.

That’s just one of many reasons men hate going to church. This also ties us into quests. We need quests because we need excitement in our lives. We need to be challenged.

If we don’t have that, we fill it up with artificial entertainment. Castronova says that we have sex with one another as if wolves were about to devour our species. (No need for them to. Through abortion, we do that ourselves.) Whereas our forefathers would see sex as something pleasurable, yes, (Aquinas even said had the fall never taken place, the pleasure of sex would be even greater so thanks a lot Adam and Eve.) they also saw it as something deeper, a sacred demonstration of a covenant between two people and a revelation of God Himself. Turn on most any sitcom today and all you see is the pleasure principle.

We have a problem with obesity in our country. We often don’t eat to live, but we live to eat. We gorge ourselves and snack because we are bored. Many people on diets trying to lose weight are often told, and I think rightly, that they are eating not because they are hungry, but because they are bored.

Today, we have people on social media sites doing stupid challenges, like the Tide Pod Challenge, and while these challenges are stupid, note what they are called. Challenges. People want to do something risky. They want a goal to live for. They want something greater in their lives than just 9 to 5.

And often, we will invent grand problems so we can say we are fighting against a great enemy. It’s easy to talk about climate change and present it as a great disaster and then fight so you can say you’re fighting something. While I am skeptical of it, I understand that it can be fulfilling for people to have something to fight against.

Could this also be one reason why wherever the church has it easy, it tends to lose its effect? The church is growing in nations where persecution is rampant. Here in America, persecution is not yet rampant and yet people who identify as transgender, less than 1% of the population, seem to have more say than so many people that say they are Christians.

Without challenge also, it’s easy to wonder what we are living for. I have been pondering lately that could it be part of our educational troubles is our livelihood does not often depend on what we are learning. Do tests really help us learn? I don’t know if anyone has done the study, but I would be curious to see. After all, how many people study hard for a test and then promptly forget it all? They got the passing grade. How many of us passed tests in high school and now don’t remember what we learned?

Could this also be why gaming works so well? In 6th grade I used one of those geo-safari toys, I think that’s what they’re called, and got bored with North American stuff so I went and learned South American capitals. I don’t remember them all perfectly, but I know a lot more of them today than I normally would.

As someone who plays video games, I could still to this day turn on the original Legend of Zelda and go through both quests and find where everything is and beat the game. Did I ever have to sit down and take a test on this? No. I did it because it was fun and challenging and I learned.

When I first arrived at Southern Evangelical Seminary years ago with my roommate who I knew through TheologyWeb, we found we were doing quite well with our peers in knowledge. Why? Because we had been arguing this stuff for years online long before Facebook on that site. (If you want to debate my articles, go there also.) We had to know this stuff and it became a challenge. We used apologetics so much that we just knew it. We didn’t need to take a test on it.

When I was in Greek in Bible College, I did very well. Why? We had Parsons Tutor as our guide and it was a game of sorts and I would keep going through a lesson over and over until I got 100%. The challenge made it fun!

I am not saying this as someone who hates tests. I normally do great on them so there’s no reason for me personally to want to abolish them, but I am asking what really helps us learn and not just for the moment, but long-term?

When I am doing a game also, I voluntarily look up the information and research it. I want to know how to finish this quest? I will look it up. Back in the day also, something young gamers do not understand, we had to buy strategy guides and there was a lot of trial and error. There was no internet to look things up. We had to try again and again and work hard, but it was fun! When someone managed to beat a game, and normally that was me, the game prodigy, that was a cause of awe and admiration. What’s the result? I know this information long-term.

The prescription for our society then? Challenge. We need quests. We need to know what we are living for and why. Every man wants to provide for his family, but he also wants meaning and purpose. Wives will often want to provide and usually by being good housekeepers, but they also want meaning and purpose.

Christianity gives us that and we don’t know it. We sit on it not realizing our birthright. The Christian life is meant to be hard, but should it also be, dare I say it, fun?

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

 

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 3

What is your quest? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In our continuing look at Edward Castronova’s Life Is A Game, it is time to talk about quests. Quests are something common to a gamer. When I boot up Final Fantasy XIV in the afternoon, I see a series of quests that I can undertake. Some are simple. Some could just involve talking to someone and reporting back. Some could involve exploring a dungeon. Some could involve defeating a powerful enemy.

Gamers know the rule about quests. We can have the ultimate goal of the game overall, but it’s easy to get caught up in sidequests. These are quests that you take that are not essential to the story, but have their own benefits. Often times, the sidequests can be more enjoyable than the ultimate quest.

Sometimes also, the sidequests you can do in light of the situation can get hysterical. I was playing FF XIV and had a scene once where a baby in a skirmish got tossed in a body of water. Normally, the player jumps in immediately and rescues the child, but I had a pop-up for a requested dungeon raid come up then so the child managed to survive for half an hour while I raided a dungeon. Tough kid. In Final Fantasy VII, the meteor heading towards the planet will wait while you’re busy doing chocobo races. Also, sure, Zelda is in trouble, but hey, Link wants to go fishing!

Quests give us meaning and purpose. We want to have something that we are aiming for. C.S. Lewis once said that a ship on the water needs to know three things. First off, how to stay afloat. Second, how to avoid hitting other ships. Third, why it is out there in the first place.

Quests give us a purpose to be out there in the first place. Some quests we have involve small goals. You might have a quest to do laundry today or to go to the grocery store and pick up some items. You might not think of these as quests, but they are. You have a goal that you need to accomplish and you set out to do what it takes to accomplish that goal.

Some quests are much more long-term. As a student at a seminary, I have a goal of getting my Master’s and eventually a Ph.D. I also have a goal right now of meeting a good Christian girl and getting married. On the way, there can be several other minor quests on the goal of these quests.

You won’t go on a date unless you ask the girl out. On my end, I am also currently speaking to a therapist here at the seminary who is helping me with social relationships for the goal so I can learn to be social and interact with people better. It’s super difficult if you are on the spectrum. That’s a quest to get me to this quest.

To get the degree, I must pass the class. To pass the class, I must do the assignments. That means going to the library and reading the books. (And if anyone is feeling generous….)

Ultimately, something that has to be asked is what is my overall ultimate quest. Link’s is normally to rescue Zelda and defeat Ganon, again. (Though technically, based on the timeline, it is a different Link every time. If you don’t understand, it’s okay. No one really understands the Zelda timeline.) In Final Fantasy VII, it’s to stop the meteor and defeat Sephiroth.

For us, part of the idea of the game of life is we have to figure out our ultimate quest. What are we here for? What do we want to accomplish? Everyone wants to accomplish something. What is our goal? Earn the most money? Have the most fun? Be a good person? Some combination? What drives us?

If we want to play the game well, we need to find out. Otherwise, we could be questing for nothing.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 2

What position will we take in the game? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

We’re continuing our look at Edward Castronova’s book Life Is A Game and looking at how games are lived out. He writes that if he saw a Buddhist who was drunk, he would not criticize his devotion to his teacher, but he would question how seriously he took his teaching. After all, Buddhism does say a lot about self-control.

The same could be said about Christians, naturally, and yet this is something that needs to be kept in mind. When non-Christians want to bash Christianity because they see Christians living inconsistent lives, such as being heavily promiscuous, then that doesn’t say anything about Christianity. It says something about that particular “Christian.” (The person could really be fooling themselves into thinking they are a Christian.) If you see a Buddhist not living out his Buddhism, then that tells you nothing about Buddhism. It tells you a lot about the Buddhist.

When we choose a worldview, we are choosing how we play the game. We are choosing a position that we think best describes the game that has been created. When you play a real video game, you could debate what kind of worldview it exists in. Not all will be screaming something, as it could be hard to tell what worldview Tetris could be in, but what about a series like Final Fantasy? In this world, it is taken as perfectly “natural” that gods, magic, and stupendous beasts exist. Also often in these games, that good and evil exist is a given.

As a gamer also, I never really got bothered by the problem of evil which is brought up. Evil is something that since it is in the game often provides something for us to rise above, for us to conquer. If you’re a fan of mysteries, you understand this also. You read wanting to know who the bad guy is and in the end, how he gets tracked down and stopped.

This is not to say that evil is good, but we do realize it as a challenge for us all and we need a good worldview to conquer evil. Not only that, we need a good worldview to tell us that evil is real and that the fight is winnable. Somehow, many of us do have that idea that it is winnable.

If you read a book and in the end, the bad guys win and that’s it, it seems like there is a problem with the book. Somehow, we anticipate that no matter what is going on, the good guys will win. There can be a hint of anxiety in us at times watching a show or movie or playing a game and wondering “Will this last-ditch effort really work?” It does, and we are relieved, but not always surprised.

So in conclusion at this part, what do we learn? We learn that to defeat evil, we need a worldview that can be lived fairly consistently at least, as humans tend to fail to some degree at everything and that includes our worldview. We also need a worldview that tells us that evil is a reality and explains its place in our world. Finally, we need one that can show us that evil can be defeated and there is hope.

We’ll discuss more next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Life Is A Game Walkthrough Part 1

Are we playing a game? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

Spoiler warning for the old game Final Fantasy Legend ahead. It’s an old Gameboy game, but if you are planning on playing on an emulator or something, skip this part.

Your party in Final Fantasy Legend has climbed a tower twice that is said to lead to paradise, defeating the fiends of Gen-Bu, Sei-Ryu, Byak-Ko, and Su-Zaku, as well as their leader Ashura. (Fans of mythology should recognize those names.) There was a trap the first time going up so the party had to do it again and fight the first four of those fiends again, until they got to the top again.

This time, they seem to enter a peaceful and serene area where there doesn’t seem to be much of anything, except for one man, standing in front of a door.  They talk to him to find out he is the Creator and they were the first to finish the game. It was a game he made because people didn’t know what courage and determination meant so he created Ashura to see what they would do. He wants to reward the party and grant them a wish.

The party is indignant upon hearing this insisting that he used them. Eventually, it’s clear they’re picking a fight with him and so the party fights the creator. In the end, they win, and rather than go through the door, they choose to return to their world. (How much I wish we could get a story that would show what was beyond that door.)

THOSE WANTING TO AVOID SPOILERS CAN RESUME HERE.

What if our world also was a game? Granted, there are differences, as contrary to Isaiah 45:7 as read by fundy atheists, God did not create evil. However, He did allow it. My thoughts on this come from reading Edward Castronova’s book, Life Is A Game, which I heard about on a podcast on God and Gaming with two hosts, one being a Catholic priest, who both love gaming and they have Catholics on there who are in the game industry and Castronova was one of them.

He looks at game design and says “What if God created the universe like we create a game?” It’s an interesting hypothesis and I am going through it and in that spirit, rather than call this a book plunge, I will call it a walkthrough. This is one of those books that I am highlighting every night something I read that I find relevant. I am not just learning a lot about the world around me, but I also think I’m learning about myself and so many times I read something and I think “I can relate to that! I didn’t know there was a name for that!” By the way, I’m not even 20% through the book.

So let’s start with RPGs. These are my favorite genre of games. In these, one assumes the role of a character and makes decisions as him (or her) and really seeing the world through their eyes. Castronova says that these have shown us that people want to be heroes and have their lives matter and go on quests. (Another area that shows this I think is the rise of the superhero genre) It’s common in the world of RPGs for a player to spend 20-40 hours a week on one game. Consider how many people made plans suddenly when The Legend of Zelda: The Breath of the Wild came out. In Japan, there are laws on when a Dragon Quest game can come out because everyone takes off to play it.

Now we can look at this and say “What is wrong with our society in that people are wanting to spend so many hours playing a game?” or we can say “People are spending so many hours playing a game? Why?” Obviously, it is meeting some desire in the lives of those people, but is it just a desire to have fun?

Probably not just that, because while gaming is fun, there is also the reality of what is known as rage quitting. People get super frustrated because they can’t seem to beat that one level. Many times it’s common to throw one’s controller and just march off in a huff, and yet so many times we come back. Why?

What if we saw this not as a problem, but rather as a clue? Could it be possible that game design could tell us about the human condition? What if we did see the world as a game? Could that give us any insights into the nature of reality? Is this also a novel idea to see it this way?

And what is the purpose of play? Something to consider is play is its own end. People do not play so they can work, but we do work so we can play.

And how does this relate to our everyday theology and life? Is this part of the reason sometimes men hate going to church? Could seeing life as a game make us want to go deeper into understanding God?

I plan on exploring these questions as I go through this book. I don’t know how long it will take, and I also do not plan on blogging next week as I have the Defend conference going on. I hope you’ll be there, but if you can’t, I hope you’ll join me as we explore answering if life could be a game.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

 

Speaking At Defend 2023

What’s going on in January? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

For all interested, I will be speaking at Defend 2023 this year. Those interested in signing up for the event can find out how to here. We have a number of well-known speakers coming like Gary Habermas, Tim McGrew, Frank Turek, Paul Copan, Craig Hazen, Sam Allberry, Mike Strauss, and many others. I will be speaking at a breakout session at 2 PM on Thursday.

When Bob Stewart asked me if I spoke what I would speak on, he wanted me to send him a list of three topics I could do. I thought that everyone and their mother already speaks on a lot of the big topics. Honestly, if someone had to choose between hearing me on the resurrection or Gary Habermas, where will they go? I’d probably go hear Habermas instead even.

So what could I speak on that others aren’t speaking on but I think could be relevant to the people there? I had three topics. I had considered speaking on Autism and Christianity. I also was willing to speak on divorce and Christianity. My main interest though had a lot to do with what I had been reading a bit about and that was video games and Christianity.

That’s the topic then that I was asked to speak on. I had recently heard on Audible a book about the history of Nintendo and Super Mario in particular. I also had listened to The Gaming Mind and had read Grand Theft Childhood about how there is no real link between video games and violence. I am also reading Matthew Millsap’s dissertation on video games and theology. I found this kind of reading fascinating. I also noticed that there was a hysteria often whenever a new medium came out. I wanted to know how to better avoid that.

It wasn’t long after I shared the news on Facebook that people were immediately wanting to engage with me and discuss this. I find this exciting not just on an intellectual level, but on a personal level. Why have I gravitated towards games all my life and why is it that that played a role I think in my getting into Christian apologetics? A resonating quote with me after all is Peter Kreeft’s of “Apologetics is the closest you come to saving the world.”

When it came time to move to New Orleans, my DivorceCare leader and his wife came over to talk to my parents about their concerns and my leader said it well. “He has been playing games all his life and now he wants to go out and live those games. He really wants to be out there in the battle.” I have told people that in recovering from divorce, my slogan has been to play to win. I don’t want to spend my one life in defeat and a victim because of how she treated me.

Too often, those of us who are gamers are often dismissed. I did recently skim through the Gaming Alone post on The Gospel Coalition. I did notice the story about a seminary professor who wanted to start a gaming club when told that every domain in the world is meant to belong to God and when the call came out, he saw several students he didn’t know were there and he thought he knew everyone. He wondered if it was because these students tend to isolate themselves with games.

To an extent, we do, but I also wonder if it could be gaming is more friendly to introverts. When I go to a party, I am often miserable. I go to every event I can on campus because a friend told me if I want to meet women and get a wife, that is the thing to do. However, I am often bored intensely at them as it is difficult to talk to people and initiate conversation. Now get me to my D&D group that plays here on the campus and I have no problem with interaction with them. Most of my great friendships I have had in life have started with games.

I might blog more on this topic after Christmas, or I might wait until after the conference. I hope you will come and if you do, even if you don’t come to my session, if we know each other through a medium like Facebook, I would be thrilled to get to meet you. There’s always something exciting with putting a face to the name.

Please come to Defend 2023 this year and let me know if you signed up!

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America

What do I think of Jeff Ryan’s book published by Portfolio? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I like to listen to audio books while I’m out walking around and I am always interested in learning books about the gaming industry, something I’ve been a part of all my life. This one was a book about the invention of Super Mario and what he has done since then. The book goes through several chapters and many of them have a name that is a reference to a Mario game, though certainly not the focus of that chapter, a rather punny idea.

Mario is in many ways the unlikely hero in the book. Imagine you had a blank slate before you and you were sitting down to create a hero. What would you make? Someone like Batman, Superman, the Hulk, Iron Man, etc. is understandable. How many people went with pudgy little plumber in overalls that can jump on enemies’ heads and throw fireballs?

Yet that is what was created.

Of course, the first major game we think of with Mario was Donkey Kong. Mario had other games even before Super Mario Brothers and even Mario Brothers, but Donkey Kong had him there as the main protagonist largely going by Jumpman. Then a shock came in the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr., where it turned out that Mario was the villain.

From there, Mario went on to star in Super Mario Brothers and the world could not get enough of the plumber or his family. The story is the same for the most part, but the adventures keep changing. Bowser kidnaps the Princess. Mario goes and rescues her. Sometimes there have been variations of this, most notably Super Mario Brothers 2 which was a remake of Doki Doki Panic with Mario added in, and also even Super Mario RPG where Bowser and Mario joined forces to rescue the Princess and even after rescuing her, joined forces to defeat the villain Smithy.

For good or evil, Mario is stuck with Nintendo and Nintendo is stuck with him. Mario has far more games to his credit than anyone else and it’s easy for Nintendo to slip out a remade Mario game even years or decades later and still have it sell like hotcakes. Mario has arrived branded on everything and if there is any athlete who has the name Mario, what nickname does he get? Super Mario.

Ryan in this book takes us through all this history including the war with Sega and then after that, the battle against Sony and Xbox. It stops shortly after the Wii. I found this interesting saying the future would definitely have to include consoles with bodily motion involved and yet the next big one after the WiiU that Nintendo made was the Switch. This I consider a wise move since Nintendo has had great success in the portable market and the Switch combines both of them.

Mario is a hero for everyman. He doesn’t really excel at anything, aside from perhaps his ability to jump, but he is still the guy who is unlikely and yet going out every day to save the Princess and battle a lizard king who is often much bigger than he is. (Especially since so many games end now with a giant Bowser.) Mario has indeed conquered America.

If you are a fan of gaming, I recommend getting this one. If you want to know about the history of Mario, I also recommend this. I found this a quite enjoyable read and wanted to listen to it more and more. For we who are Christians, it reminds me we need to be in the gaming market as well and producing good games people, not just Christians, will want to play. We don’t need to create some fantastic superhero with an incredible story. An ordinary plumber can do.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth.)

 

Book Plunge: Grand Theft Childhood

What do I think of Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl Olson’s book published by Simon and Schuster? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I heard about this book while going through The Gaming Mind on Audible. Making a mental note, I went to my library website and ordered it. I’m thankful that I did. This has been an amazing read on the alleged link between video games and violence in children.

This is not a book written from a Christian perspective, at least explicitly. The authors do not state their worldview. However, the authors have interacted with the material they critique and have also included snippets of interviews they have done with children and their parents.

To which, a lot of that information should be encouraging to parents. Older children, for instance, happen to think there are some games that their younger brothers and sisters shouldn’t be playing and they won’t play when those people are around. Surprisingly, something they were often concerned about was swearing. After all, there are a lot of things in a game hard to copy, but swearing isn’t. All you have to do is speak.

Also, something that needs to be said is that many times, children actually do imbibe their parents’ worldviews more than parents realize and learn what to play and not play. Of course, this isn’t across the board, but children are watching and are learning. Quick pro tip here on how parents can better understand what’s going on in the games of their children. Play the games with them and/or talk to them about them. (Yeah. Actual interaction with your children works. Who would have thought?)

The authors also don’t just look at the fact that children play violent games, but often ask why they do. Many times, children say that this actually helps them deal with their anger. In an odd way, that could be saying that rather than cause aggressive behavior in children, video games actually help to alleviate it. Frankly, if there was a strong connection between violent video games and violent children, we would see a lot more violent children.

Also interesting is that if anything, NOT playing video games, especially for boys, could be more of a problematic sign. Remember the Virginia Tech shooter? Something odd his classmates said after about him was, “He never wanted to play video games with us.” Video games are often a tool of social integration and bonding. Kids today get together to talk about games like Pokemon. I started getting more friends in Elementary School and beyond because I had a reputation as being quite good at video games.

The authors also point out that the hysteria over video games has happened over most every new form of media that has come out. Violence and sex in these has never been new. Go back to ancient history? It’s there. Medieval times? Still there. Renaissance and Enlightenment? Yep. What would be an anomaly is a time where such stories did NOT exist.

What about sex in video game? Yep. This is covered. (Odd way of describing it.) Most of us know about Lara Croft and the hope of so many teenage guys to find a nude code to use for her. Now, many games can be even more explicit. Again, this is something that parents need to talk with their children about, but it is not a shock that females are made to be attractive in video games. The Final Fantasy series in X, XII, XIII, and relevant spin-offs from those games all had a protagonist with a very similar look based on what was attractive in Japan at the time.

So when is there a problem? It’s not in the gaming itself. It’s everything around that. If your child is becoming more withdrawn, has a dramatic change in moods, has no or very few friends, and is dropping grades, don’t blame it on the games. The games are often a way of dealing with whatever the real problem is. Find that.

For parents also, the last chapter is all about practical advice for you and it does enforce what I recommend. Play the games with your children, or at least talk about them. Show an interest in them. If the world of the Legend of Zelda means something to your child, find out why. You could get to understand your child better and your child will think they matter when you show interest in what interests them.

If you enjoy gaming and want to deal with criticism, read this book. If you are a parent and you are concerned about your children and video games, read this book. The same applies if you are a teacher or someone in ministry, especially youth ministry.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Helping Children Make Wise Decisions

How can children best make decisions? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
I have been reading a book called Grand Theft Childhood which is about claims that violent video games produce violent kids. (Review coming.) I read a section recently based on the interviews as parents and their kids were interviewed separately and they were talking about the ESRB rating system. For those who don’t know, that’s a video game system that rates video games in a similar way to how TV shows and movies are rated.
The mother was sure her 13 year-old son wasn’t playing any games she didn’t approve of. He gave a different story. He and his seventeen year-old brother knew how to trick her. When they went to a video store to rent a game, they sought out the worst one they knew she wouldn’t approve of. After she said no, they found the one that they really wanted which looked good by comparison then and she approved.
Most of us likely grew up with such tricks. Children I suppose have always been trying to manipulate their parents. For instance, do you want to do something that could be dangerous? Ask Dad first.
Now I don’t know the religious status of this family, but I did see a problem here with how we raise our children. These boys are teenagers and their mother is still having to approve their decisions? If they lived in biblical times, the youngest would likely at least be preparing to have his own children and the oldest likely already would.
How long can this last? When the kids go to college, does anyone really think that they will ask for Mom’s approval? Not a bit. They will immediately be doing the things Mom forbade them from doing.
What do you do then? Won’t they leave home and mess up immediately? Won’t they be the ones the parents tried to prevent them from being? There is a solution.
Don’t make the decisions as they get older. Begin early on teaching them how to make good decisions. Give them a worldview whereby they can make informed choices and they will be their choices as well. If they make mistakes, they own them and suffer the consequences. If they make good ones, they also own them and reap the benefits.
For many parents, it can be tempting to be helicopter parents and hover over their children to protect them from all harm. You can’t. If anything, in the long run, this will likely lead to more harm for your kids. If you teach them instead how to be wise in decision-making instead of just going by what feels good at the moment, you will set them up for a lifetime of success.
Remember, your job as a parent is to be the one to actually work yourself out of a job. When your kids reach the stage where they are making wise decisions independent of you, then you have succeeded. The old saying is that if you give a man a fish you feed him for a day but if you teach him how to fish you feed him for a lifetime. If you make your child’s decision you protect them for a day, but if you teach them how to make wise decisions, you protect them for a lifetime.
Also, if you want a resource for younger children, I definitely recommend Elizabeth Urbanowicz’s Foundation Worldview resource.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)