I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the best selling books of the past decade have been converted into a video game for kids and young adults. That's right, available in October, is Left Behind: Eternal Forces. Max Blumenthal has a post on the game and its use as part of a planned Evangelical crusade in Iraq. CNN filed the report above. (Hat tip to Ed Brayton.)
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tags: researchblogging.org, mental health,
Some reading to start your weekend. Science:
Jennifer Senior has this essay, reviewing new anti-Bush books by Lewis Lapham and Sidney Blumenthal, in a recent issue of The York Times Book Review.
Uncensored video below.
I'm not sure that stopping to pray in order to increase your game strength is any weirder than relying on strategically located medpaks, ammo or weapons. All along we've relied on extremely sloppy housekeeping from game adversaries.
I suppose that there's a not-so-subtle manipulation of the shut in audience going on here. Conventional games manipulate the impressionable to hand over money to the game developers based on ever growing desensitization to violence. That's acceptable based on free speech, fair trade and capitalism.
So I gather that global violence desensitization is not an issue, but targeting UN soldiers for religious reasons is.
Games with religious warfare seem to me a lot more closer to reality than ones where players lop off heads of Orcs or throw about magic potions. But then so do games where special ops go into Muslim strongholds to kill extremists. Again, desensitizing our youth to kill the Muslim bogeyman is OK; but what will we do when the bogeyman presented is an atheist, gay rights activist or just a plain librul?
Yup, that's a dilemma all right.
FYI, that video is a year old and the game has already been released. It came out in November of 2006. It got mediocre reviews and was largely ignored by gamers everywhere...
The thing about Christian games is that they are never published for consoles, and thus don't reach a wide audience....since pc gaming is dead.....but then again this site isn't about the gaming industry.
Anyway....it's a sad, sad world when Jack Thompson and I agree on something
Blumenthal is a "blumen" idiot who's never played the game (not even the demo). In fact, most critics of the game have criticized it sight-unseen. People who have actually played the game completely denounce the claims that the game promotes "convert or kill" in any way, shape or form.