Without spiritual challenges or questions, these characters become automatons of destiny, acting out a story they don't control or participate in making. So you end up with violence without pain, faith without doubt - a one-dimensional cartoon of everything religion stands for, stripped of its sense and resonance.
Let There Be Light
Even still, the solution isn't as simple as plunking a grieving father covered in boils down into post-Apocalyptic New York. Doubt is a deeply personal experience, one that everyone has. But oddly enough, doubt only makes sense at the time and to the person having it. Even Job is alone in his misery, and his friends, helpless observers, just can't understand how he feels. So how do you replicate such a specific, unique experience as a crisis of faith into something as broad and mass-market as a videogame?
The trick, I think, is to make the violence inseparable from the player: That is, give the player the opportunity to explore her own crisis of faith, to feel it from the inside out, through her own actions and freedom of will. The interactivity of videogames offers a great advantage: The divide between character and observer is already half-scaled, and in certain types of games (adventure games or RPGs, for example), the barrier is even lower. So to seize upon that open-endedness, Christian games would need to take a page from GTA and allow players to make any choice that they see fit, be it Christian or evil or some gray space in between; and, more importantly, to permit all options at all times. Give players that freedom of choice to be tempted by Satan, to be convinced by God or to dabble with both - just like real life, just like the rest of us do. Give players the full experience of the consequence of free will. Games like Planescape: Torment understood this well, feeding off players' emotions and moral choices to drive the plot.
Yes, it's risky. Conceivably, some impressionable soul could be seduced by evil (or, well, as much as anyone could be seduced in a videogame). But you can't do doubt halfway. A crisis of faith is a violent, brutal affair, and if it's going to work in a videogame, that game has to commit itself to the idea fully. Sure, people might still shun these titles (after all, doubt is not nearly as sexy as exorcising demons), but then again, they'd probably have shunned them in the first place. At least this way, the games are honest, treating players with respect and not like some "built-in" audience.
Besides, look again at the Book of Job. After all his fears and suffering, after all his questions and tirades, Job scores a reprieve from his pain. God doesn't apologize for the bad times, of course, but He does eventually restore Job's fortunes, healing the sores, refurbishing his property and, best of all, blessing him with more children. Out of that darkness and tribulation, Job's faith has actually become stronger than it was before. His doubt was not something to be feared, or avoided, or shunned, but rather embraced, because it made him a better person in the end.
Maybe it's about time the same thing happened to Christian videogames, too. A crisis of faith is, after all, good for the soul.
Lara Crigger is a freelance science, tech and gaming journalist whose previous work for The Escapist includes "Mind Over Matter" and "Searching for Gunpei Yokoi". Her email is lcrigger[at]gmail[dot]com.
