Jesus ex Machina

After realizing that the hit FPS series Halo had nothing to do with earning eternal salvation, a few video game development companies have sprung up with a God driven business model. They infuse their games with good ol' Christian Values in an industry otherwise dominated by satan worshipping, morally corrupt, T&A crazed pagans.

The pervasive influence of the Religious Right is getting a little outta control don't ya think? First it was skater evangelicals, now this. You don't exactly see games about ACLU lawyers fighting off hordes of Commandment weilding activists do you? What happened to letting kids learn proper values by teaching them to stomp on turtles and hurl them at innocents while spitting fireballs all in the name of saving the princess?

So you must be asking: if these are video games, there must be violence right? And here comes the ironic hypocrisy of this whole thing.

Pat and Mackenzie Ponech, a father and son from Edmonton, Alberta, have built and distributed a game with the portentous title Eternal War: Shadows of Light. You play Eternal War in the role of an angel named Michael, called to Earth to intervene as a despairing teenager named John contemplates suicide. The intervention takes the form of a rather violent, though gore-free, battle with the demons in John's mind. ... Eternal War is mostly an orgy of shooting and stabbing just like many secular games -- but toward, presumably, a different and better end.
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But since when do we equate religion with nonviolence? While most faith-based gamemakers draw the line at realistic gore (humans in one game, as they are dispatched from earth, literally see the light), you need not go as far back as the Bible to be reminded that Christianity does not shy away from violence if the goal, even in a fantasy context, is a righteous one. ''We've talked about the righteous anger, if you want to get into it,'' Pat Ponech says. ''In the Bible there were battles where, even myself reading through it, I think: Gee whiz, you go in and clean out an entire city, leaving no one alive, not even the animals?''
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"Spiritual warfare -- that's the whole premise in both of our games."

Interesting how they use the argument that violence is excusable as long as you have the right god behind you. Sounds a little like some other fundamentalists doesn't it?