Value-Games

Not to put a dampener on your idea, which I think is a very good one, but personally I don't believe the Games industry is mature enough yet to create such a game without trivialising the subject matter.

Games can certainly be very absorbing and their stories compelling, but I for one cannot say as I have ever learnt a moral or life lesson from a video game. Not that games have not attempted to tackle this type of subject matter, just that none have succeeded to the same degree as the best movies have.

But as I said previously, we are an industry and art form still in relative infancy. I eagerly await the game that moves me to the extent that film can/has.

/wonders what the rest of you think

I thought schindlers list was about how awesome gulags are ?:

Stalag... and no.

As for the topic, I agree with JamesL.

Also, why would you want to do a religious game (or morally/ethically/whatever "correct") game if you don't want to evangelize people?

On the second point: Most games are based around goals and enemies... what are the goals and what are the enemies?

If it was less based on religion and more on decisions you can make in the game than there are already a few games which let you chose (Jedi Knight, Fable, ...) but most people I know tend to play the bad guys as it is more fun to run around and kill people as to help them (opposing to their position in rl). And this is imo a key difference between movie and game, the movie doesn't let you chose to either make it 'easy' for you or not.

Medieval 2

Well the first game that comes to my mind in that context could be the Zelda serie, but anyway, usually almost every game make you play as the good against the evil, helping, fighting against opression etc .. and manicheanism is usually what religion is about..

Fallout for example shows in a biased version how nefast are xenophobia and intolerance by featuring mutants and humans.

I mean even in GTA a very contreversial game as it is, the hero often have some moral and fight against some villain stereotypes. Games that let you play as a complete evil character are very rare, and when they do, usually you got a moralistic ending that tell you you choose the wrong path.

So imho, it's already the case, games are teaching values. Still, about the basic values of whatever religion we are talking of, i think they are quite obvious and should be rather teached by parents than videogames ..

So i dunno, maybe you could pardon the last boss rather than destroying him, but where's the fun at ? So yeah, i rather like too see videogames teaching values in a laic way, rather than trying to convert people

I can't say I agree with JamesL. e-freak is onto something here, and I think the games industry, and the games themselves have evolved to a point where a really amazing story based game could be just as morally correct and great as, say, schindlers list.

I remember when playing HL2 ep1 and after the traincrash you need to help alyx away from the screaming zombie, then right after that she is quite sad and need to take a breather. I really felt for her at that moment, and this is what makes me believe that games is at this level.

But on the other hand, games are played by gamers, and as one here just stated; they would much prefer to be evil. What I do think tho, is that with some clever design, it still could be possible...

Hmm yes would be quite tricky. The problem with video games is you have to 'do' something, the player has to have input, otherwise it'd just be a movie. Vanquishing an enemy is by far the most popular thing to 'do'. Unfortunately for anything religious, that goes right out the window, since vanquishing damn near anything is wrong. This reminds me of a simpsons episode where Bart plays a christian video game at Rod and Tod Flanders' house. It was basically a first person shooter except instead of killing people you converted them.

The only way I can see this possible (without doing a Simsons-eque 'religious shooter') would be something like a monkey island puzzle kinda game. You run around and gather clues to some sort of mystery, with religious overtones.

Yea, I agree, players will most likely always think beeing bad is so much cooler so it would be very hard to do this right..

You could have the player playing the bad guy, while you had an arch nemesis through the whole game (you were following him etc, but he was always one step ahead doing nice deeds). And in the end, he wins because he gets rescued or get help from someone he helped, while you get betrayed because you were an asshole etc..

Could work, if done correctly

I think most games out there portray their protagonist as good and their antagonist as evil, especially western games who want to appeal to the all important American market. There are a lot of games where you’re an anti-hero and Chaotic Good but I can think of few where you’re completely evil and your antagonist is good.

The problem with games of morals and promoting religion are they are nauseatingly blatant about the entire thing. There are a lot of games out there that cover this stuff, morale, social commentary and psychology are prominent in a lot of Japanese titles, they just they don’t shove it down your throat. I can’t think of a single RPG out there that doesn’t have some evil doer that has regrets or some glum pessimist coming round, while on the opposite side the evil guys collapse under their own greed.

Quote from twiz

... Vanquishing an enemy is by far the most popular thing to 'do'. Unfortunately for anything religious, that goes right out the window, since vanquishing damn near anything is wrong...

nah you could vanquish gays or followers of other religious and everything would be fine for the church

if i was to design a game that teaches values the game would be about becoming an atheist and stop hating everyone around you ! ... actual atheist hate all religions ... i guess we are not better after all

actually i want to through another ingredient into the bowl and thats the whole "preaching to the already converted" thing that lets say michael moore does all the time. i think he is absolutely hilarious and right about everything but that doesn't matter because all his audience was thinking like him from the get go.

so if you wanted to promote a certain view / value in your game how do you make sure it reaches the people that NEED to learn about it ?

Quote

so if you wanted to promote a certain view / value in your game how do you make sure it reaches the people that NEED to learn about it ?

You basically can't. Except if it's controversial to it's limit. For example, a game that holds a very negative view on guns respectively the right to own guns (apropos NGA). There are lots of countries where such controversial discussions about that right exists (such as America, Switzerland, etc.). Something like that would definitely reach both the supporters and the enemies. It's just an example though...

Quote

Another thing i thought about was a similar game like Rainbow Six where you can take the terrorists as prisoners. If you let them alive they could help you or get you more informations and so on, while if you kill them you would lose team mates who don't want to work with you any longer and you would have less informations about other terrorist's places.

Abu Ghraib? Guantanamo? :roll: Not very valuable imho.

I thought this was going to be about budget games, not religious pish

In terms of a GTA game where you don't kill people, that would be a cool idea, walking around the city talking to people and using the facilities and stuff, kinda like Second Life except not shit.

Quote

Yes I thought about a shooter but i can't come up with it. An Idea I had was create a GTA Like game with the difference that you are not shooting other people but get shot every time. But if you do good to other people the whole city gets better. The problem is - 1 you force the player to accept certain things. 2 the game would become the more boring you do the right things (because the enemies vanish more and more).

That idea would fit with some kind of hero looking for people in troubles to help them. He'd develop his skills accordingly to his actions, positive or negative. That would have a lot of gameplay possibilities, but is also technically challenging if done properly.

Well, I really don't think this would be very influential in any way, but is an interesting approach to game design rather than killing/blowing up stuff.

sounds like the kind of game fags would play

Quote from Rick_D

sounds like the kind of game fags would play

These kind of comments are absolutely inappropriate.

Games are about fulfilling peoples fantasies. Nobody wants to play as a normal person and be conformist and nice to everyone.