Pavlov's People

At dinner last night over at my in-laws, the topics of conversation were wide ranging.  We talked about Neil Degrasse Tyson's reboot of the Cosmos series, in part because my plasma physicist father-in-law knew Carl Sagan as a colleague.  He'd watched the new show, of course.  What did you think, we asked?

"I just can't believe people are that much dumber now," he said.  Ah.

The evening went on, and conversation wandered.  And then, said father-in-law noted that he'd downloaded Candy Crush Saga.  Which made me grin a little bit, and get to talking about the odd devolution of gaming.

I shared with him the interview I read with one of the designers of that pernicious little mindsucker, who'd explained that the game was created to be both addictive and frustrating.  It gives pleasure, sure.  But the goal of the game is not strategy, or thought, or diversion.  It is to 1) hold your attention and 2) get you to buy things.

As a lifelong gamer, I've noticed this change in online games.  I prefer strategy games, either turn-based, tower defense, or real-time.  I like a good puzzler, and games that play around with physics.  Those used to be, three or four years ago, the norm, along with shooters.

But that is not how games are evolving.  "Casual" games, they are called.

Less and less skill is required, replaced with gaming dynamics that are sparklier, more reward based, and more honed to keeping your immediate attention.

It's about stimulating pleasure centers, and getting you to repeat an action--either towards the end of frustrating you into making an in-game purchase, or simply keeping your time-in-game sustained while ads are run before your captive eyeballs.

That is, in point of fact, the stated purpose of these games.  They know what they are doing.  There's some serious psychology underlying their design.

Candy Crush does that, O my addicted friends, but there are other games that take it even farther.  Like, say, the surprisingly successful Cookie Clicker.

Here is Cookie Clicker.

What do you do to play Cookie Clicker, one might ask?  Let me explain the complex control system to you: You click the cookie.

Press it, and a cookie falls into the milk.

Press it faster, and more cookies fall, and the milk rises.  The more you press, the more cookies fall, and then you get more rewards.

You click the cookie.  That is the entire game.  You can also set the game to play itself when you need to sleep or eat, which will unlock something special, which helps insure your return to the clicking.

Oh, and your return to the in-game purchases, that let you make even more cookies.   And to the ads that scroll along the bottom of the game.  That's the real game being played.

Or to put it another way:  we are the real game being played.

Because that's not just a phone in your pocket.

It can do many things, and one of its most amazing functions:  It's a Skinner Box.

The Rift Between Realities

It's been inevitable, as gaming has drifted further and further into realism, and our engagement with the 'net has grown more and more all-consuming.  At some point, the reality that exists beyond the edges of that screen might be utterly forgotten.

But now it's here, because the edges of the screen are disappearing.  That's happening courtesy of the Oculus Rift, a product that has many in the gaming world all a-flutter.  It's a headset, a pair of screens that you strap onto your noggin.  There are other products like this too, one from Sony, and another that ditches the whole screen thing entirely, and beams images directly onto your retinas.  Yes, it does.

But the Oculus is the most potent of them.  The unit allows you to not just see the gaming world you're inhabiting, but to look around as if you are immersed in it.  It renders the whole thing in 3D, and is sensitive to not just perspective...like a gimbaled camera on a fixed mount...but to slight shifts in attitude.   You can lean in closer to inspect something, or cock your head.

You are in that world, be that the open world of Skyrim, a map in Battlefield 4, or the cockpit of a starfighter in Eve:Valkyrie, the first game designed around the platform.

On the one hand, I want to experience this.  Like, dude.  Seriously.  Dude.

On the other, I'm a bit leery.  Leery because it already feels like the intrusion of virtual reality into our awareness is taking a toll on our capacity for meaningful relationship.  Leery because it feels like a wonderful way to keep us permanently distracted, lost forever in a world that is entirely our own fabrication.  Or, more significantly, the fabrication of others.

And yeah, sure, we did this plenty before.  That was the place of daydreams, and of good books.

But the idea that we can completely blot out everything around us?  That the world inhabited by our children, or our friends, the real place, should be so easily set aside?  Already, we wander around with  our screens, tuning out the world.

Taking it this step further seems more than a wee bit on the dangerous side.  And no, it's not because twenty years ago I wrote a kid's book in which an evil industrialist uses a functionally identical device to enslave others.  Although that doesn't help.

It's that when we allow our every perception to be fabricated, mediated and filtered, and we lose ourselves in the fantasies that are created for that purpose, it seems there's a real risk that we will wander off from creation entirely.

And those who want reality for themselves, who want us distracted and inattentive?  They'll happily oblige us.

As tech-friendly as I am, this seems worth watching with some caution.

Faith, Morality, Gambling, and the Poor

An article on the front page of the Post today highlighted a peculiarity here in the great state of Virginia.    We Vah-ginn-yuns are among the ever-shrinking cadre of states that do not permit casino gambling.  It's a motley little group, comprised of some peculiar bedfellows.  There's a cluster of Deeply Red states, mostly southern, in which the refusal to allow gambling stems mostly from religious conservatism.

There's a small cluster of Deeply Blue states, meaning Vermont, New Hampshire, and Hawaii, in which gambling is prohibited largely because it's not really an industry, but rather a great way to separate a sucker from his or her money.  It disproportionately impacts the poor, and is a fundamentally anti-progressive "industry." 

What struck me in the article were two things.  First, the story includes numerous quotes from the Democratic leader of the majority party in the Virginia State Senate, who views "gaming" as the sort of economic activity that would be good for the state.  That State Senator Dick Saslaw would be in support of gambling is at least consistent, as he's also been the primary proponent of the recent spread of car-title-lending businesses in Virginia.  Loan sharking and gambling?   Guess he never met a predatory business model he didn't like, although how this attitude flies with the Democratic primary voters in his putatively progressive congressional district is beyond me.

Second, I was struck by a flawed assumption in the Post's coverage.  The assumption was this:  There are people who oppose casino gambling for religious reasons, and then there are people who oppose casino gambling because of the impact it has on the poor.  These categories were presented as if they were different…but I don't think that they are.  Not at all.

Here, the flaw in the assumption seems rooted in the idea that faith and religious morality are solely individual things.  It's just about me and My Personal Relationship with My Lord and Savior ™, or so the idea goes.  From that perspective, you only don't gamble because it's morally weak and imprudent.  And, yeah, it is unwise, but that's not the whole of it.

Because Christian faith is not just personal wisdom.  It's fundamentally relational.  Meaning, it has to do not just with ourselves and our personal prosperity and spirituality, but is radically oriented towards the other. It is rooted in compassion, a deep awareness of the impacts of our actions on other beings.  From that compassion, you look at actions that are causing harm to others, and are compelled to speak and act against them.

For Christians of all ilks and political persuasions, care for those who are struggling is a fundamental moral and spiritual imperative. Actions and behaviors that generate profit at the expense of another are radically in opposition to the core value of Christian faith, and that becomes particularly and doubly true when it comes to the poor.  

As Pope Francis has recently and wonderfully declared, you can't parse out faith from the care for the poor, not if our faith is to have any integrity.  

Gaming, Faith, and America's Demons

I've been waiting for a while for one particular game.  Dropping sixty bucks for a bit of amiable pastime is just not something I do, so when I buy, I go used...and I'm patient.  The experience will be the same six months after release as it would be new.  So why hurry?

Some games, though, are harder to wait for, and the one I started earlier this week was a particular test of my patience.  The game: Bioshock Infinite.

I'd played through portions of the original Bioshock, which was a brilliant, thought-provoking, and intelligent game.  That game was set in an underwater city called "Rapture," the creation of a John Galt-like figure.  In fact, the entire game was a riff on the premise underlying Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, laying out the fun-fest would ultimately result from a community based entirely on the premise of unfettered self-absorbed egoism.  Wretched, bloodstained dystopia, in other words.

It was a dark, bleak game, so unrelentingly unpleasant that after about eight hours of play I had to step away from it.  As much as I respected the vision and design of the game, Rapture just wasn't a place I wanted to spend time.  Sort of like Atlas Shrugged, actually.  Lord, but that book was a waste of life.

Bioshock Infinite is different.  It's equally dystopian, but the demons it surfaces are very different ones.  The vision of Bioshock Infinite is of a realm of seemngly idyllic perfection, a glorious city in the clouds called Columbia.   It's gorgeous, radiantly beautiful, so much so much so that those first moments when you step into the city leave you amazed.  

It is also, as you soon discover, utterly monstrous.  Columbia is ruled by a mad prophet, the psychotic Father Comstock.  This is particularly fun for me, given that it's an old family name...the side of the family that produced a whole bunch of Baptist preachers, as I recall.  Heck, he even sort of looks like me.  

Without going into too much detail, Columbia presents us with an alternate past where the triple demons of American hypernationalism, religious zealotry, and racism have been given the keys to the car.  It's like the 1904 World's Fair in Hell, a lilywhited sepulcher in bustles and flags and straw hats, masking is rot and death within.

I'm only about ten hours in, but the story arc reminds me that gaming has the potential to be powerful and affecting social commentary.  Yes, it's disturbing.  It's not a game for kids.  But unlike the hopeless, cynical, and exploitative character of games like the recent Grand Theft Auto, Bioshock retains a moral core.  Violence feels violent, which means it feels wrong.  Your character clearly struggles with his use of force.  As does Elizabeth, the young woman around whom the whole narrative revolves.  She's sympathetic and well wrought, appealing without being sexualized, and is refreshingly competent without seeming like an action figure caricature.

It is purposeful storytelling, a carefully crafted tale that illustrates how even such seemingly positive things as faith, patriotism, and pride in heritage have their shadow sides.  In fact, it comes across as classically prophetic, using the medium of interactive storytelling to force gamers to confront the darkest spirits of the American collective subconscious.  

Plus, it's a major riff on multiverse cosmology, the full ramifications of which I'll have to wait 'till the end of the game to experience.  Faith, politics, and the multiverse, all woven into one game?  

Lord have mercy, it's like the game was made for me.

Another World, Another Me

Over the past few days, I've picked up another game for the PS3.  It's a bit outside of my usual pattern.  I rarely play JRPGs (Japanese Role Playing Games), but the reviews had been so good that I felt like I wanted to give it a try.

The game is Ni no Kuni, which translates into English as "The Another World," or "Second World."  It's a delightful little fable about a young boy who loses his mother after a tragic accident, and his journeys into a magical world that exists in parallel with our own.

What made the game super-extra tempting was that it was the first foray into gaming by Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki's brilliant anime shop.  Ghibli has produced beautifully imaginative works like Spirited Away, Howl's Moving Castle, My Neighbor Totoro, and others.   I loves me some Ghibli, I do.

I've got about four hours of play in over the last week, and what's been most striking about this game is...well...it's just so kind.  It's one of the kindest, gentlest games I've ever played.  It took a bit of getting used to, actually.  Given that gaming tends to involve headshots and your character tearing out the still-beating hearts of your adversaries, encountering a game where your main character tries to mend the broken hearts and minds of those around him is just...different.

The protagonist is a boy, and a gentle hearted soul, not some jaded soldier or vindictive demigod.  Your missions involve bringing reconciliation to families, encouraging a soul out of a deep depression, and driving off the demons that have consumed a bitter, self-isolated workaholic.  How?  You use magic to borrow the joy and hope and enthusiasm from souls who have an overabundance and are willing to share, and then you pour those healing things into the hearts of the broken.  As a pastor, I could seriously use some of that magic myself.

It's a deeply Christian game, even if it's hidden behind wands and wizards and faerie kings with lantern nose-rings.  George MacDonald and CS Lewis would have approved.

Playing this game about a parallel world as I'm working through the edits of my forthcoming book on the theology of the multiverse is also interesting.  In Ni no Kuni, souls are "paired" across worlds, sharing experiences.  Their destinies are not the same, but they are linked.

In my own meditation and prayer life, one recurring and idiosyncratic element is my awareness that within the infinite complexity of God's creative self expression, I do not have a single destiny.  I exist, in all of my possibility, before my Creator.   This is both liberating and terrifying.   When I pray, and I do, I ask not simply for God's will to be done.  I know, within the knowledge of my Maker, that there rests the living knowledge of who I might be if I remained most true to the teachings of Jesus.   For God, I am there in that place already.

What I seek in prayer is to be conformed to that self that brings the greatest hope and joy into the world.  Not my most materially prosperous self, because material prosperity can come at a cost, and guarantees no happiness.  Not my most ferociously partisan self, because that self does harm it doesn't yet understand.  But that self that is most generous, most kind, most gracious.  That self whose scars have healed, and whose heart is whole.  I know that I exist there, that I can inhabit that place.

Gaming and Violence

Today, I'm standing down from gaming in all forms that in any way simulate violence.   There will be no shooting, first person or otherwise.  I will not jump on the heads of any Koopas.  I will not upgrade my archers in Kingdom Rush.  There will be no in-game violence, whatsoever, period.  In this, I'll be joining with thousands of other gamers who are choosing not to play any games that evoke combat, as a way of marking the impact of actual violence.

Which is fine by me, particularly the shooting part.  I've found that after Sandy Hook, my tolerance levels for media that involves firearms has diminished significantly.  It's a visceral, naturally occurring emotive response.  I just can't find any fun in it, not over the last week.  I'm not in the mood, any more than I was after 9/11.  One evening in October of 2001, I found just couldn't even watch this scene, encountered at random on cable, without thinking of all of those first responders.  I had to turn it off.  It just didn't seem fun any more.

That, more than anything, is why I'm standing down today.

Much has been made of the linkage between violence in media...particularly gaming...and the relentless dirge of gun violence in our culture.  The last two decades have seen the rise of increasingly involving and realistic virtual worlds, in which war and combat are a significant factor.  Battlefield 3 isn't Combat or Outlaw.

The depth, realism and immersive quality of modern gaming seems of a different character than any form of media that has preceded it.  The capacity to interact and participate in a virtual world is a new thing for humankind, and it's a little unsettling.   For many adults, it is also an alien thing, not a part of their experience of life.  As the United States flounders about grasping for some explanation for Sandy Hook that doesn't involve us having to regulate firearms, gaming has arisen as one possible cause.

We know, for example, that Adam Lanza gamed.   But what does that mean?  What does it mean that he was really into Starcraft?  It means that in that part of his life, he shared something with the vast majority of American kids. Objective research shows that 89% of American boys own game consoles...and 70% of girls.   Gaming is so pervasive that establishing a causal link between gaming generically and violence in our culture is not possible.

The linkage...based on data, objectively assessed...between gaming and societal violence seems tenuous, too.  That's not just because the rise of gaming as a cultural phenomenon tracks with a twenty-year decline in US crime rates.  When the United States Supreme Court took up the issue of banning violent video games last year, they found no evidence of a linkage.  You can read Antonin Scalia's opinion here.   When Antonin Scalia and Sandra Sotomayor exhaustively look at the evidence on an issue and come to the same conclusion, that says something.

That observation...that there is not enough evidence to come to find a causal or even a correlational link between gaming and actual violence...has been reinforced by the Journal of Pediatrics.

What we also know is that gaming is not a uniquely American phenomenon.  It is cross-cultural, totally pervasive throughout the developed world.  I know this on because I game, and I'll find myself occasionally on a server gaming with Aussies, or Brits, or Quebecois, or Germans.  None of those cultures come close to matching our rate of gun violence.  But I also know it statistically.  Presumably, a link between gaming and murder rates would manifest itself cross culturally, and it has not.  Gun violence is, in the developed world, a particularly American phenomenon.  We are the outlier.

Take, as a particularly potent example, South Korea, where gaming borders on being a national obsession.  Koreans are arguably the gamingest people on the planet.  What impact does that have on gun violence in South Korea?   None.   South Koreans have been known play video games until they die of starvation, to the point where time limits were put into place by law.   And yet gun violence is functionally nonexistent in that free and democratic society.  Their murder rate is just about half of ours.  Lord knows it's not because the broader Korean culture is calm and measured.   Sweet Mary and Joseph, is that not the case.  There's not a more fiery, passionate people on the face of God's creation.  Although nearly every Korean male must serve in the military, and is trained in firearm use, they don't kill each other with guns because they just don't have guns.  No guns? No gun deaths. That's why their gun-death rate is a tiny fraction of ours.  Period.

Still and all, that doesn't mean that gaming itself is without ethical challenges.  The potential impacts of gaming on an undeveloped or unstable child has never been a risk that I've been willing to take.  So over the years, I've monitored my boys and their gaming, something that I as a gamer am particularly able to do.  I know the dynamics of games, and which ones are less compatible with healthy spiritual and ethical development.

I've listened and watched their mental states, and seen as they've developed the capacity for empathy and rational thought.  I've talked with them about the difference between the real and the virtual, and listened to them as they've talked.   What types of games I've permitted them to play...and what movies I've allowed them to see...has been contingent on their development and their ethical awareness.

And while I'm comfortable having my intelligent, creative, inherently impulsive and inescapably hormonal pre-teen and teen sons around my PS3, I could not say the same for a gun.  One could, in a moment of foolishness, kill them.  The other could not.

For me, that seems Occam's-Razor-simple enough.

Gambling on Romney

The enemy of my enemy is my friend, or so the saying goes.

But I'm not quite sure that's always true.   Take, for instance, the peculiar reality that seems to have manifested itself in this current election cycle.

The nominee for the Grand Old Party is a straight-laced family man, who is often unfairly criticized for his tendency to seem a bit too much like a dad out of a 1950s sitcom.   His conservative Mormon faith is generally assumed to be, for good or for ill, a primary reason for why he presents the way he presents.  Where he's critiqued by the left, concerns about the social positions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints often surface.

This leads to a rather puzzling dissonance, though, because while my fading liberal/centrist oldline denomination and Mormonism might disagree on some...well...quite a few...things, there are some things we're simpatico on.  

One of them is this: we're shoulder to shoulder, bolder and bolder when it comes to gambling.

In a statement from 1950, the Presbyterian Church described gambling as "...an unChristian attempt to get something for nothing or at another's expense."   At around the same time, the First Presidency of the LDS issued a position statement saying that "..The Church has been and now is unalterably opposed to gambling in any form whatever.   It is opposed to any game of chance, occupation, or so-called business, which takes money from the person who may be possessed of it without giving value received in return."  

Neither of those positions have shifted.   Gambling, or so the official line of the LDS goes, weakens the community.   That's the current stance of the PC(USA), too.

It's also my position.  I think "gaming" is a wee bit foolish for thems that are eagerly getting taken, inherently predatory for those whose doin' the takin', and devoid of value whichever way.

I've been to casinos, and I find them both garish and depressing.  Gaming is not an industry.  It builds nothing.  It creates nothing.  It's entertainment, I suppose, in the way that someone taking your money from you and occasionally giving you the thrill of getting a fraction of it back is entertainment.   And sure, making money off of suckers by using the psychology of intermittent reinforcement is cunning, in its own way.   But as big business, it adds nothing positive to our culture.  I've said so here, and I have said so from the pulpit.

This makes the current partnership between the GOP and gambling money so weird.  I find it peculiar that a former LDS bishop would be willing to benefit from the $100,000,000 that has been committed to the GOP by billionaire Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.   One.  Hundred.  Million.  Dollars.  Those dollars were gained in a way that Mormons, Christian conservatives, and even wacko leftist apostate oldline denominations like my own view as morally questionable.

Here's the largest single commitment of funds ever by an individual to a campaign...and it's a gambling tycoon trying to get the candidate of the party that presents itself as representing traditional conservative Christian/Christian-ish values elected.

It's bizarre.  It's ironic.   It's so bizarrely ironic that it almost merits creating the word bizzaronic for the sole purpose of describing it.

But then again, politics is all about power, and money is power, so I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised.

Anders Breivik, Violence, and Violent Software

Last night, as we ate a late dinner following drum practice, I ran something by my eleven year old.  He and I both share an enjoyment of first person shooter games, and so I ran a bit of challenging FPS news by him.

That news came out of Norway, where the trial of mass-shooter Anders Breivik is underway.  Breivik, in the event you don't recall, is the man who walked into a youth camp with automatic weapons and proceeded to methodically kill seventy-seven unarmed individuals.

He's utterly unrepentant, viewing his actions as a necessary act of resistance against the forces of Marxist/Islamism, which he sees as all part and parcel of the liberal agenda.  In trial this week, Breivik claimed that he'd used FPS games to train for his attack, particularly Modern Warfare 2.  Video games facilitate violence, went the headlines.

So I asked my son what he thought of this.  He was skeptical on two fronts.  First, he noted that Modern Warfare 2 bears only a passing resemblance to actual combat.  It's frenetic, hyperkinetic, and not particularly representative of the dynamics of battle.   My eleven year old has a love of history, and knows that warfare itself looks and feels very little like the gaming experience.

Second, how much "training" do you really need to kill unarmed kids?   My son noted that the mass killing of helpless, terrified, fleeing civilians is not generally part of FPS games.  There, the game is about competition with equals, and testing your skills and reaction times against those of others who are equally empowered.   And it is simply a game.  It is not violent, because those playing it know and mutually assent to the rules of the game.  No physical or actual harm is inflicted to opponents.

The issue is not gaming software.

Nor, quite frankly, is the issue that Breivik is insane.  As the court has found, he is not.  We might like to think that the problem lies in some deep seated neurological problem, but the pathology of his monstrous acts has nothing whatsoever to do with that.   I've spent much time with schizophrenics in my life, and gotten to know those living with real clinical mental illness.  Some have been my friends.   From that context, it is clear to me that there is nothing wrong with the hardware of his mind.

I spent some time reading through portions of Brevik's 1,500 page manifesto yesterday.  Lord have mercy, what is it with these people and their manifestos?  It is "rambling," as they tend to be.  But it is not the work of a broken mind.

It is not the most original work.  In fact, it reads remarkably like the writings of other ultraconservative mass murderers, like also-not-insane Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh.  It also reminded me a bit of Ayn Rand.   It is utterly self-absorbed and convinced that it contains the One Great Truth Only The True Believers Know, wrapping a fundamental selfishness and disdain for other human beings in concepts like liberty and freedom.  It is the work of a mind in isolation, tuned only to those who echo its hatred.

The issue is the software.  Not the gaming software.  The wetware software.

What it is not is insane.  It is not mental illness that drove Breivik to kill, but a pattern of thinking that lead him down that path.  That pattern of thinking is not insanity.  It is better described as evil.  And it's OK to say that word.

Much has been made of Breivik being "Christian."  But his Christianity bears no resemblance to the teachings of Jesus.  Searching his manifesto for the keyword "Jesus" gets you some angry invective about how liberals have stolen Jesus, or are misusing Jesus to excuse being kind to and tolerant of Muslims.   The name of Jesus is dropped when he talks about being a Crusader or a warrior.  Where Jesus himself is mentioned at all, it is not in his core teachings of love, self-giving, or the Kingdom.  Instead, we get two painfully familiar proof-texts about how Jesus gives us the right to armed self-defense.

I say painfully familiar because a skim of Breivik's fulminations reads remarkably like the fury in the American ultraconservative blogosphere.  The same enemies are cited.  The same arguments are made.  The same anger is expressed.   Ultimately, it's an anger rooted in a transition-resistant culture, and its fear of loss.   Clearly, he was an isolated soul, who became so lost in anger and the silo of ultra-right-wing aggrievement that he stopped viewing other human beings as human.   That is true of any extremism.

And it is that programming, diametrically opposed to the love ethic, that has always been the heart of violence.

Gaming and Spirituality

For significant chunks of today, I've been prepping for a presentation on gaming, part of a first-Wednesday of the month series of evening seminars at my congregation.   As a pastor and a gamer, I've got a strong appreciation for both the joys and the ethical challenges in gaming.

There are some ethical sinkholes in the gaming world, to be sure, virtual La Brae tar pits for the soul.  But to be honest, none of them are any worse than handing Ayn Rand to an impressionable teen.  Grand Theft Auto might make them a bit more thuggish, but at least it doesn't make them prone to bombastic, overlong, compulsively self-absorbed right-wing prose.

As I've been prepping for what will be a general survey of the ethics of gaming, I find myself wondering if this new medium can be a spiritual thing.   Games can tell wonderful stories, to be sure, filled with deeply real characters that genuinely move us.   Those of you disappearing into Mass Effect 3 this week know what I mean.  Games can make us laugh.  Games can be filled with wit and humor and grace.  Games can genuinely stimulate us mentally, forcing us to think as deeply as any brain twisting puzzle.  Games can be as creatively open and playful as a box of LEGOs in the hands of a child.  Games can be art.

But can they be spiritual?  Sure, an eight hour nonstop gaming session can put us into a pretty altered state of consciousness, but that's not quite the type of spirituality I mean.

Can a game give us that sense of wonder and mystery that comes with the most evocative music, or the most beautiful paintings?  Can it give a sense of being connected not just to the creative intent of the human being who made it, but the deeper reality of the Creator who formed that human being?   There is certainly art that does this, cinema and music that causes deep stirrings of the Spirit within us.   Ron Fricke's Baraka stirs that in me, as does the early work of Kurosawa and Bergman.  The music of Arvo Part also speaks it.

But games?

Some have come close.   The spare, subtle games produced by thatgamecompany seem closest to that for me.  Next week, I'm looking forward to the release of Journey, the latest in their series of remarkably elegant and haunting releases.  Like prior games flOw and Flower, each delightful in their own way, Journey seems less like a traditional game, and more like a powerfully primal meditation.   It's only three hours long, but the reviews so far have affirmed that those three hours are deeply memorable and affecting.

As with any unusually grace-filled thing, I'm eager to experience it.

Gay Marriage and Skyrim: Conservatism Takes an Arrow in the Knee

Imagine, for a moment, that a fantasy novel had recently been released.  The book gets tremendous praise in popular media, and is driven by a successful ad campaign...some paid and in the mass media, the rest generated by an eager fan base.   It was a barnstorming, raging success, selling three-and-a-half million copies in its first two months.  It was such a success, in fact, that it was spawning internet memes and fan videos.   Not only that, but it's the kind of book that trickles down to kids, so that many tweens and teens are reading it.

Now think, for a moment, about the reaction of certain elements in American conservatism once they discovered that in this book, same-sex marriage was tacitly endorsed.

One would expect the usual response, the sort of silliness that was leveled against the really-actually-very-Christian Harry Potter books.    Some blogger, somewhere, would get mad about it.  Pat Robertson would say something.  I mean, Pat never misses an opportunity, right?  The Family Research Council would surely issue a stern missive.

But there's been nothing.   Nothing at all.

That's been the response, best I can tell it, to the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the recent multi-million-dollar blockbuster game from Bethesda Softworks.   It's a great, great game, exactly what I'd expect from the folks at Bethesda.  It is deep and complex and beautiful, and after forty hours in, I'm still marveling at how wonderfully and fully realized their vision of this land is.

As part of creating an immersive realistic world, you can, if you so choose, get married.

If you do, you get all sorts of pleasant little perks, none of which are even remotely R rated.  Your spouse will  cook for you if you ask nicely, making meals that restore your health and stamina.   They'll come live with you, assuming you've got a house of your own.  They'll sleep in the same bed you, which accrues bonuses to your well being and ability to learn new things.  It's not called the Cozy Spooning Bonus, but I'm familiar with that effect in the real world.

And you can marry someone of the same gender.

As Bethesda Softworks sees it, this is not a big deal.   This is, after all, a world in which you could also marry an Orc.  Or one of the catlike Khajit, or...although this seems non-conducive to connubial spooning bonuses...a horned, reptilian Argonian.  Not to mention that marrying a lizard would represent a significant escalation in the spousal thermostat wars.

Perhaps the lack of response is because it's not a big deal.

That there are same-sex marriages in Tamriel has no impact on my marriage.   I know they're virtually happening, sure.  But my relationship with my wife is utterly unaffected by hearing about unions outside of our own.  There are factors...like work stress and kid stress and financial stress and the siren song of self-indulgence that pours from our me-centered culture...that can have an impact.  Those need to be called out and resisted, because they do pose real threats to marriage and the deep, covenant relationships that are a blessing from our Creator.

But hearing stories about virtual unions?  It has no effect on my heterosexuality, or on that of my wife.  It does not effect us, or our relationship.  Or on yours.

If you're defending marriage, there are better things to do than worry about what Bosmer and Altmer choose to do.  It just doesn't really change anything.  So I guess folks have just decided to let this one slide. 

A pity those same folks don't realize that's the case outside of the virtual world, too.

'Nam

Being an online gamer does surface some odd moments of human interaction.

For my recently passed birthday, I was given a PlayStation Network Gift Card, with the knowledge that I was jonesin' for a bit of downloadable content.  The content in question was the Vietnam expansion for Battlefield Bad Company Two.  The remarkably robust gameplay, excellent modeling, industry standard physics engine, and amazingly rendered graphics have enticed me to put in many, many hours in BBC2.  The Vietnam expansion takes all of those things, and drops back into the Vietnam era.  It's functionally a whole new game for under fifteen bucks, and while it was very well reviewed and a tremendous amount of male yaya fun, I confess to having a few qualms about it.

There is, of course, the fact that I am the pastor of a congregation attended primarily by Asian-Americans.  It's a bit peculiar being engaged in simulated combat with Charlie, particularly given that Charlie looks like he could be certain members of my session.  Then again, the game requires that you alternate between being US Army and being NVA.  And, unlike the war itself, the game is devoid of racially charged language.  While the US forces do utter some pretty pungent and non-G-rated epithets in combat, the racist slurs that were an unpleasant reality among combat troops back then are notably missing.   There is no "good side" or "bad side." 

But more significantly, Vietnam is...well...it still feels close.  The game's astounding graphics really do evoke the tight, claustrophobic character of jungle combat.  It's lush and impossibly visually cluttered, and virtual death is everywhere.  And it isn't an ancient war.  We were deep in the throes of 'Nam when I was born, and it was the farthest thing from a game.  If you visit the memorial in DC, which I have, the staggering column of names on the blackened stone wound in the flesh of the Mall remains a stark reminder of how many young men lost their lives in that ultimately pointless war.   As a much younger man, I once looked for how many men who shared my common name had died in the war.  There were more than a dozen, including a David Williams who died the day before I was born.

It's a war close enough that those who fought in it are still with us. 

Even in-game. 

Yesterday, as I played on the North Vietnamese Army side defending the Phu Bai Valley from an American assault, I ambushed a squad of US Army soldiers as they made their way through a rice paddy.  Three of them fell before the fourth took me. 

The last of the three had the gamertag "1970VietVet."

That was striking, for a variety of reasons.  It was striking that I would be engaged in a visually realistic simulation of the Vietnam war, and taking down an actual Vietnam Vet.  It was striking that a veteran of that difficult war would be playing a game that so viscerally evokes it. And that this same vet, in the next round, would be playing as an NVA soldier.  For someone who knew that war personally, and likely lost friends to it, that must feel...odd.

It was a helpful reminder that while playing at combat is fun, the real thing...well...it isn't. 

Not at all.

Red Dead Religion

As Monday was technically a day off after returning from a pleasant and relaxing week skiing up in the wilds of Western Maryland, I kicked back and...after a few chores...settled in to play the PS3 game I'd been given for Christmas.  It was Red Dead Redemption, a wild-west open sandbox game, in which you can roam about the barren arroyos and tattered towns of the American West.  Or at least the American West as it was imagined by Sergio Leone.

It's been a remarkably well-reviewed game, one I've been eager to sample ever since I first read about it on the gaming sites I feed.  Even though it's a product of Rockstar, the game studio responsible for the intensely popular but basically evil Grand Theft Auto series, I was still eager to give it a look.  For some reason, setting things in the Wild Wild West makes the gunplay more distant and more palatable.  The existence of a morality system in which you aren't obligated to just be a thief or a thug also made Red Dead Redemption seem like something I might be able to get into in a Have Gun Will Travel sort of way.

After a full morning of gameplay, I find myself having a variety of reactions to the game.  It's gorgeous, of course.  The dusty trails and mountains of New Austin are stark and lovely.  Character modeling isn't the best I've seen, but it's still really solid.  The action...meaning the gunplay...is plenty fun.   The sense of immersion is great.  It's a really well put together sandbox.

It is also way too profane and splattery-unpleasant to let my boys anywhere near it.  This I expected.  It can get way, way negative.  But as I 1) don't gamble, even in-game and 2) won't randomly kill and skin every animal I see to rack up points, 3) make a point of not robbing or frequenting virtual prostitutes, I may not be putting in quite as many hours on this game as I thought.  Even playing as positively as possible, the broader ethos of the game is definitely on the adult end of the spectrum.

It's certain elements of that ethos, though, that are most striking.   The characters, pretty much without exception, articulate a view of the world that mirrors that of the Tea Party.  The Federal Government is universally described as distant, despised, and corrupt.  This is the Wild Wild West, of course, so that's not totally crazy.  Pretty much every narrative evocation of the frontier mentality includes some simmering resentment of authority.

But it seems to verge occasionally into the realm of the paranoid.  Take the core narrative of the story, for example.  It involves the wife and children of the protagonist being held hostage by Federal agents, as a way of forcing him to hunt down members of the gang he used to run with.  Kidnapping women and children?  Huh?  There were plenty of things wrong with our society back then, but I'm not quite sure that's something that happened in 1911 America.

Ah well.  It is just a game, after all.  No point in expecting too much.

More challenging for a pastor/gamer, within the worldview of Red Dead religion is inherently false and corrupt.  The opening cutscene involves the protagonist sitting on a train, listening as a minister condescendingly describes converting heathen savages to a young charge.  That same young charge is later found lost and wild-eyed in the desert, convinced that her faith will save her.   Faith is, in the world of Red Dead, just for hypocrites, or the insane, or is a Karl-Marx-Opiate tool of The Man. All that is real is you and your gun.

This isn't a factor of gaming being inherently opposed to Christianity, or faith generally.   Games like Okami or Enslaved adapt the stories of religious traditions in ways that are essentially respectful.  In other games, like Fallout 3, elements of faith are incorporated into the narrative, to the point of having central plot twists actively referencing the Bible.

But Rockstar being what it is, it's not hard to redact where the editorial bias lies in this game.   This is a gaming studio that can't visualize faith in anything other than a simplistic snickery Ricky Gervais "religion is just such bollocks" way.  Thinking otherwise would certainly get in the way of the destructive hedonism, compulsive selfishness, and relentless violence that is so prevalent the virtual worlds of Red Dead and the GTA series.

Still and all, New Austin sure is mighty pretty right around virtual sunset.  That and running down bandits should give me at least another 10 hours of gameplay.

Gaming, Violence, and the Supreme Court

I am, without question, a gamer.  Just about every evening, I kick back with my PS3 and play.  This has completely taken the place of watching television.  I'm not particularly into sports, and while I can enjoy a good football game or a rousing match of futbol, it's not something I make time for.  I have no patience for reality TV, and most scripted drama is too formulaic to hold my attention.  There are some great shows out there, stuff that's well written and worth watching, but I tend to approach those things as I would a movie...meaning I stream them, and watch them with my wife and/or kids.  If I'm left to my own devices, I just don't watch.

I prefer to game. Gaming is more interactive, more engaging, and if you get the right game, it's just as well acted and scripted.  For gamers, things get interesting tomorrow, because the Supreme Court is taking up a California law that bans the sale of violent video games to minors.  Specifically, they ban sales to minors of any game that involves, and here I quote:  "...killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being."

As a parent and a pastor, I understand the impetus behind this law.  Gaming is...well...it's not what it was when I started gaming as a kid.  I'm a regular player of Battlefield Bad Company Two, for instance.  I checked my stats recently, and found that I'd sent about 1,600 other players to meet their virtual maker.  It's a pretty intense game.

But I don't let my kids play it.  Not because it's violent, mind you.  They are, after all, boys.  But they understand the difference between simulated combat and real combat.  It's not that great a moral leap.  As my big guy puts it, "I'd never want to go to war.  There's no respawn, and you have to watch your friends really get hurt and die."  Instead, I limit their access because the vocabulary of the game is...well...appropriate to a war zone.  And I don't really want that sort of language in my house.

There are other games, like Grand Theft Auto or the brutally ultraviolent and hypersexualized Bayonetta, that I simply will not let in my house.  They may be well put together, but they go beyond just paintball-esque war games into a darker place.  Some inputs are to be avoided.  I won't play those games.  They're not good for ya.  Kids should not play those games...but they're already rated M, and not sold to minors.  I'm pretty intentional about placing boundaries around what my boys are allowed to play.  And watch.  It's called being a parent. 

In terms of blocking access to games that involve "..killing..an image of a human being.."  I think California has overreached.  The metric they're laying out doesn't just apply to some of the more extreme games out there.  It goes far beyond that.  Simulated combat is a central component of gaming.  Pretty much every Teen-rated Star Wars game, which are remarkably popular with boys, would need to be restricted.  As would many button-mashing fight games.  As would Outlaw for the Atari 2600, which is presented in all its brutal gun-blazing glory above.  It is killing, after all. 

This functionally removes California from the gaming marketplace.

I can't see how that definition provides a meaningful metric for what is and is not an acceptable game for kids.  If you're playing a game like Lego Batman, or Lego Indiana Jones, do you "kill" an image of a human being?  It's a Lego Minifigure, sure, but it looks like a human being.  What about games like, say, Dummy Never Fails, a physics game in which you hurl mannequins into objects?  That's definitely human-looking.

I'm not sure how California is going to regulate sales.  The gaming industry is rapidly moving from distributing games through physical media to distributing games via download.  Is California going to block access to gaming downloads over XBox Live or the PlayStation Network?  Or to downloads of games over iTunes?  My boys often get gift cards that allow them to access those games...if they did so directly in California, would that constitute a violation of this law?

Another often ignored but growing area of the gaming industry is free online flash gaming.  Through sites like miniclip or Candystand, you can play an amazing array of games that are paid for by ad placement.  Many of those games are superior to the console games of 10 years ago, and many contain simulated combat.  Unless California is prepared to become China, and to block access to large swaths of the internet, I just can't see how this law will be meaningful.

This seems, quite frankly, like one of those "what about the children" laws.  They're impossible to meaningfully enforce, and only serve to make Californian legislators feel better about themselves.  It's not just that it seems to fail the First Amendment test.  It's that the law seems painfully overwrought and fundamentally unrealistic. 

California needs to just pass Prop 19 and, like, chill, dude.

Gaming and Meditation

Yesterday morning, after running several morning errands, I squandered a significant portion of my day off on a recent acquisition. It was a gray and cool and rainy morning, so after walking the dog and popping by the store, it seemed a perfect time to drop into the deeply immersive FPS from Electronic Arts: Battlefield: Bad Company 2. It's a remarkably well crafted game, with a solid single player campaign and rip-snortin' online multiplayer.

As a lifelong gamer...I had an Atari 2600, back when that was the state of the art console...what I marvel at is just how immersively real games are nowadays. BBC2 is, from a standpoint of physics, simply astounding. Light shines off of surfaces convincingly. Trees and grasses move softly in the breeze. It has what gamers call "destructible environments," meaning there ain't nuthin' that don't blow up real good. Rather than relying on the preset animations of old-school gaming, the world of Battlefield is totally current gen. It has it's own physics, a set of virtual laws that mean things happen predictably, but they don't ever quite happen the same way twice.

It is also, once you get past the considerable blood and mayhem and destruction, rather beautiful. I've read several online reviews of this particular game in which the reviewers admitted to taking a break from the bangbangbang, and wandering off to a quiet corner of the map to explore the verdant virtual jungle in peace. That picture up above? That's what the game looks like. Putting down your pretend rifle, taking off your flak jacket, and walking back up that virtual Salvadoran hillside to find a secluded spot to sit and savor a cold cerveza has a certain appeal.

Yesterday, after four hours of nonstop high-intensity gameplay, I powered down my console and went to take my eldest son to an academic competition at a nearby school. Stressed-out helicopter parents were verboten in the room where the kids were showing their math chops, so I wandered off for a long, long walk in the surrounding neighborhood. As I wandered past the lush green lawns, speckled with the flower and color of a beautiful Virginia spring, I was...well...more aware of them than I usually am. When I go deep into an immersive FPS for a long session, it tends to induce an altered state of consciousness.

That's unsurprising. A meticulous simulation of a particular environment viewed from a first person perspective, rendered in high-definition, pitched through a large screen with surround sound and tactile reinforcement through a vibrating controller tends to create a powerful sense of place. Couple that with a surge of adrenaline, testosterone, and the intense focus and situational awareness that comes from simulated combat, sustained over several hours, and your state of mind is most certainly not what it would be normally.

From that game-induced state, I found myself deeply enjoying the reality around me as I walked. Though the neighborhood was a familiar one, my experience of it was as of a new thing. I was aware of the play of the breeze across my face, and the way that breeze could still be felt, softly, through the fabric of my shirt. I was aware of the intricacy of creation, of the scent and taste of it, and how deep it all went. I knew, though I did not do it, that were I to have placed my mouth against that telephone pole, it would taste of resin and dirt. I knew that if I touched that grass, it would be cool and dappled with moisture from the morning's rain. I watched the play of the leaves, and the cloud that wisped across the sky, driven by a distant storm. I was aware of my heart, my lungs, and the workings of my musculature as I walked. Everything was strikingly beautiful, and I felt a deep sense of gratitude at the mere fact of my existence. I felt very calm, very at ease, very present, and very centered, as much as if I'd spent the morning in meditation.

I'm fairly sure that's not how the Dalai Lama does it.

Gaming, Evil, and the Virtual World

Having recently read a blogosphere exchange about whether or not gaming can be art, several recent moments of online unpleasantness cause me to wonder if gaming can be actively evil.

As a pastor and a gamer, I try to steer away from games that are overtly negative. Meaning, I don't like games that require me to steal, or games that require me to harm innocents, or games that so deeply revel in horror that you can't play 'em without indulging in a fantasy of darkness. True, I do indulge in plenty of..err...aggressive games, and now and again wonder if my diet of simulated violence is entirely healthy.

Lately, though, I've been struggling with how to deal with my encounters with rather more concrete forms of gaming evil, namely, human beings. When you play online, you encounter all manner of blighted souls, and filtered through the medium of a game, it's a bit difficult to know how to respond to them.

I've played a little bit of a free online game called UMAG (follow the link, and you'll lose a few hours. You've been warned). It's a turn-based artillery game, in which folks fire shells at one another whilst texting comments that appear in little thought bubbles above your tank. It's simple. It's goofy. It's fun. Or it usually is.

Two nights ago, as I dropped into a game, the guy in position to strike at me texted the following to those around him:

[sumbuddy help me kill this Jew]

Suddenly, the game wasn't fun at all. With two Jewish boys and a Jewish wife and an extended Jewish family that I love more than I love myself, that kind of hatred tends to evoke a blind rage response. I took the guy out, of course, digging him into a hole and then dropping a MIRV on him. But that wasn't satisfactory. That sort of thing goes far beyond smacktalk, and into a dark place where play is no longer possible.

That was not the end of this week's online encounters with antisemitism. Last night, as I played through the delightfully frenetic FPS Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I found myself face to face with an opposing player whose avatar was named JEWSLAYER14.

Again, I took him out, with a fusillade of well placed rounds from the main gun of my BMD3 light tank. But again, that wasn't enough. Things were no longer fun. Someone who would choose that for their online identity is a person with whom I can't play, or have conversation. They are the Enemy, in a very spiritual way.

Electronic Arts, which publishes the Bad Company series, makes a point of booting such folks from their servers. Their Terms Of Service explicitly state that hate speech will get you thrown out...but folks like that still pop up. My hope is that my second encounter doesn't have 13 friends, but is number 14 because they've been kicked 13 times.

It does raise several conundrums about confronting virtual evil. First, it's very easy for evil to hide and reform and resurface on the interwebs. Removing a user for TOS violations is no more effective than deleting a spam email. They'll be back, with a different and equally offensive name, spitting out the same hatred they were before. There, I think folks in the gaming community are responsible for enforcing a community ethic. If someone goes beyond mocking you for your pathetic noobness and is expressing racial hatred, they're ruining the game for those around them. Gamers need not to tolerate that in their online friends, and if you're hosting a server and encounter someone who is eager to engage in pointless hatred, ban or block or kick them.

The difficulty comes with point number two. The "gaming community" is a pretty wildly diverse place. I've been on servers in the online game Warhawk, for instance, where everyone is screaming in Arabic, and the gamertags are things like jihad4ever1972. My suspicion is that a gamer with a tag like JEWSLAYER14 might not be booted from such a server.

Here, the question becomes how deeply a for-profit entity is willing to stand by the values of the culture from which it springs. The deep hatreds that have lead to such horrors in the meatspace world should be resisted wherever we encounter them.

If Electronic Arts and Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo put serious effort into keeping their games...you know...games...then gaming will remain a playground on which we can have all kinds of fun.

Violence, Gaming, and the Circus

I am, as a pastor and a gamer, rather selective about what I play.

This does not mean that I'm persnickity about only playing certain gaming genres. I play 'em all. Real time strategy? Love it. Turn-based strategy? Sometimes that slower pace is just what the doctor ordered. Tactical combat shooters? Sure, why not. Role playing games? Yup. Tower-defense? Oh yeah. Side-scrollers? Uh-huh. Nifty little free flash-based physics games? Oh my goodness. Don't click on this link, or you ain't gonna get nuthin' done today.

But as I select my virtual diversions, I find that I'm attentive to the gestalt or the feel of the games I'll play. That means I find myself setting certain boundaries around my gaming, boundaries that reflect both my interests but also my ethical framework.

Take, for instance, my approach to violence in gaming. I am, in the real world, not particularly fond of bloodshed. The reality of war harbors no appeal for me, and is radically opposed to the ethic of lovingkindness that stands at the center of Christ's teachings. In the actuality of the meatspace world, I'm not fond of either violence or aggression.

But I'm perfectly willing to play games that simulate combat. Why? Because as a male homo sapiens sapiens, I find the competition invigorating. I am perfectly willing to fire a TOW missile into a hapless cluster of circling noobs in Warhawk, or lob a virtual grenade into a bunker in Battlefield 1943, because it's just sport. It's ritualized combat, in which the human desire for competition is sublimated into a non-lethal and mutually enjoyable pastime. Some martial games, like the turn-based combat strategy game Valkyria Chronicles, are actually notably moral. I've been playing through that watercolor-Japanime game for the last month, and marvel at how it's narrative arc explores themes of racism, loss, and the humanity intrinsic in even an apparently faceless enemy.

That said, there are games that I know I will never play. These are the games that don't just present combat, but actively celebrate brutality. It doesn't matter for me if they have received astoundingly good reviews for both their technical prowess and the huge adrenaline rush they provide. I just won't touch them, because I have this deep heart reaction to my immersion in them. They're not spiritually healthy.

Take, for instance, the recent release of the final game in the God of War series. God of War III has arrived to absolutely boffo reviews. But ain't never that game gonna show up on my PS3. Why? Because one of the things that makes it so much "fun" is an endless stream of visceral, brutal killings. Hear the neck bones of your opponents pop as you break their spines in Dolby 5.1 surround! Watch in full 1080p HD as you rip the eye of your enemy clean out of it's socket! As the review at Gamespot gleefully puts it, the game causes equal parts "...nausea and sadistic joy." That has no place in my gaming repertoire.

I'm also unlikely to play the recently released game Bayonetta, which included as a centerpiece a hypersexualized protagonist who dispatched her enemies using magically-summoned instruments of torture, some of which are the same horrid implements that sit in the dark underground rooms of the world's despots and monsters. This trend in gaming seems to follow a familiar pattern. It's an old, old pattern, that path towards the more extreme and outrageous, for the thrill that is harder and harder to find as we grow more and more numbed by what has come before. It's our own virtual Circus, not in the Ringling Brothers way, but in the Roman way. Where once wrestling and races were enough, now even eviscerating a Christian or two seems BOOOO-RIING unless we get a slo-mo bullet-time close-up.

Sure, it's not real. But the stories we tell and the tales we hear and the things we see define us, even if they're entirely simulated.

From that knowledge, games that celebrate the monstrous, the gruesome and the brutal have no place in my little wall of entertainment. Garbage in, Garbage out, as they say.

Gaming, Creativity, and Society

I read a great deal of random stuff, and as part of that randomness, I'll occasionally peruse one of my wife's copies of Fast Company. It's a magazine dedicated to the amazing creative glory of capitalism, and tends to feature cool young people who've got the latest bleeding edge idea or product.

The June issue...now, of course, stale...highlighted the 50 most creative people in the business world. Among them were several gamer types, and the one with the most prominent picture was a Ms. Jane McGonigal, who does appear to actually be the free-spirited daughter of the Hogwarts instructor.

She's not so much a game designer in the classical sense, but rather, a games theorist and practitioner. Games include a whole variety of forms of play, not just those in the virtual world. In the words of her Fast Company interviewer:

She believes if people could experience the same emotional and physiological benefits in real life that they receive from gaming -- elation, adventurous thinking, focus -- people would be as engaged in their work and global issues as they are in World of Warcraft. However, for all the creativity that games can trigger, McGonigal concedes that they are only the first step. "Games are getting people to agree on a common goal and engage with that goal collectively for large amounts of time," says the self-styled happiness hacker. "But it's not like it's a magic button. They still have to do the problem solving when they get there."

She seems an endearing enough sort, but I'm not sure that gaming is quite so entirely positive. Yes, we learn through play. Yes, play trains us for the world. But gaming and organizing our lives around alternative or virtual realities may be, as Marx would put it, mainlining heroin for the masses.

Human beings are natural and collective problem solvers. It's what we do. More often than not, we mess up, but once we've cleared away the debris of our failed efforts, we organize again. It's that yearning for meaning thing. We find purpose in overcoming challenges, and in doing so together. That's what deTocqueville noted about us Amurricans at the very beginning of this fragile little experiment of a republic.

But gaming can be..well..a bit onanistic. We all know of the horror stories of young Koreans who forget to eat and die after a four day gaming binge. Or of pale pasty folk whose entire lives revolve around complex tables and throws of the dice. There are more subtle versions of this threat. Gaming can consume and redirect that desire to work towards a goal. Instead of providing the conceptual tools we need for the hunt or the harvest or the 2010 iPhone 3-GSXR or global hunger, we can become hermetically sealed away from reality in our gaming communities. Our creative energy and efforts can be consumed in a gaming phantasmagoria, leaving us nice and drained and ready for our life as a complacent cubicle drone.

I think the points she makes aren't inherently wrong. Gaming is...fun. Gaming can help us organize our thoughts and think strategically. It can certainly be used for training and indoctrination, or the U.S. Military wouldn't be putting so much effort into getting kids and soldiers alike to play America's Army.

But it ain't all virtual butterflies and flowers.

Celebrating Interfaith Conflict

Interfaith struggles have never made a tremendous amount of sense to me. Given that pretty much all of the world's religious traditions reject the idea of violence and embrace love for the other as somehow central to existence, it remains an amazing testament to human smallness that we continue to use faith as an excuse to have at one another.

This afternoon, in a moment of random faith-based dithering around on the internet, I encountered a lovely little side-scrolling flash beat-'em up, in which you can pit the iconic figures of all of the world's great religious traditions against one another. It's like that online classic Bible Fight, only for Unitarians.

The creators of the game have come under fire, predictably, from Islamic organizations outraged at the image of the Prophet. Why they don't like his nifty-keen flame attack is beyond me. The little game studio that made the game has since taken it off line...but, the Internet being what it is, it's going to be around for a while.

I'm more concerned, frankly, that the creators of the game imply that the Holy Spirit Attack can be used by both the “Father” and the “Jesus” character. That’s clearly taking the side of the Western church in the 880 Council of Constantinople, and exacerbates the filioque schism between Eastern and Western churches that began in the year 1054. The last thing we need to do is open up that can of worms again, eh?

And there is the little matter of the game folks totally misidentifying Krishna as Buddha. Oh well.

Even if it is just a tiny bit irreverent, the game is both funny and intentionally poignant. It clearly is a commentary on the religious hatreds that have torn and wracked humankind…even when those hatred are antithetical to the teachings of the founders of the faiths in question. As a follower of Jesus of Nazareth and a gamer, I’m completely in favor of such truth-telling.