Recently in expository coding Category

Something amazing happened on Wednesday - the Day of the Dead. Tim Schafer, a senior member of adventure gaming's Mount Rushmore, gave a very precious gift to the world by releasing the original puzzle design document for his epic game, Grim Fandango.

I'll be honest with you: I was not a big fan of Grim Fandango. I found the new 3D user interface frustrating, as well as many of the puzzles being obscure and unsatisfying. Even Tim comments on this: "reading this again, I’ve realized that holy smokes--Some of them puzzles were nuts. Obscure. Mean, even." But that doesn't mean that I can't appreciate quite how monumental an occasion this is, as we the public get an inside glimpse into the mind and workflows of a man who lovingly crafted some of the most influential experiences of my childhood, such as the inimitable Day of the Tentacle.

I use that word "crafted" because that's exactly what this newly released document shows: true craftsmanship. We see the incredible attention to detail, the pacing of the narrative as it builds and as the puzzles get increasingly sophisticated, always coaxing the player along with them. As somebody whose spent the last few years trying to write my own adventure game, what struck me most about this document is the sheer simplicity of it - it's well established that it takes a great deal of clarity and hard work to boil down something so vast as Grim Fandango into such a simple representation that conveys so much information in such a succinct way.

This is an incredible boon to amateur adventure game developers like myself, to get an insight into the creative process like this. Techniques such as the puzzle flow diagram is an incredibly useful tool for visualising the flow of the narrative and how the puzzles build and relate to one another - simple as it is. This is exactly the kind of help I needed to give me some very welcome motivation. Tim Schafer, I thank you! This is truly a precious thing you have given us, when it probably seems so ordinary and everyday for you. Now, Ron, how's about doing the same thing for Monkey Island? :-)

In a previous article I discussed some of the difficulties in making a genuinely Christian computer game that was also fun to play, and showed how a Point & Click adventure game might offer a way forward. Here I’ll give you my top five reasons why I think it’s a fantastic genre for use in Bible-teaching computer games.

What is a Graphic Adventure?

But first, what do I mean by a graphic adventure, or Point & Click adventure game? The classic examples I’ve used in the past have been Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. The creator of Monkey Island, Ron Gilbert, described the graphic adventure in this way: “games in which the pace is slow and the reward is for thinking and figuring, rather than quick reflexes. The element that brings adventure games to life for me is the stories around which they are woven.” They’re games in which the characters and the story are the focus, and players move forwards by solving puzzles and interacting with those characters. So what is it about them that make them so great for teaching the Bible? Here are five reasons that I’ve come up with, but maybe you have more!

1. A Focus on Narrative

It hardly needs saying that a large chunk of the Bible is in the form of narrative, stories in which we see the character of God in the way that he interacts with his world and his people. Teaching such narrative involves two things: the events themselves – what is actually happening – and then the significance of those events. It’s not enough to know that David killed Goliath – what is the narrative teaching us about God’s character when this unarmed Israelite shepherd boy slays the mighty pagan warrior with a single shot of his sling? When I tell people I’m making a Bible-teaching Computer Game, their first instinct is to assume I’m making some kind of First Person Shooter, “David the Giant Slayer”, in which you run around with your sling shooting pebbles at people. But even if such a game could succeed in teaching people that there was a guy called David who killed another guy with a rock (which is a problem in itself, given the possibility that you might miss!) it would be very hard to explain the significance of those events in an FPS game. Contrast that with a graphic adventure, however, where your character could watch David kill Goliath, and then go and talk to him afterwards and ask all sorts of questions about why he was so angered by Goliath’s defiance of the armies of Israel and what the source of his courage was.

2. Stories Take You On a Journey

One of the common objections to the idea of Christian computer games is the assumption that nobody other than Christians would ever want to play them. Looking at some of the games already out there, I’m inclined to agree! But one of the brilliant things about telling a story is that it lets you take your player on a journey – from disinterest to curiosity, from unbelief to faith in Jesus Christ, or from faith to ever more wholehearted living. Every great story involves a character changing in some way, learning from their mistakes and ultimately overcoming adversity. It’s exactly the same with great Bible teaching – it should never be a merely intellectual exercise, the imparting of knowledge without changing the way you think and behave. At the start of Monkey Island, Guybrush Threepwood had no idea what was involved in being a pirate, but by the end he’d learnt how to swashbuckle with the best of them. The whole point of a Graphic Adventure is to take the player on a journey, and that makes them an ideal medium for teaching the Bible.

3. Puzzles Make You Think

It probably sounds tautological to say that puzzles make you think, but that makes them fantastic as a way to help people apply what they’re learning from the Bible. Suppose you’ve been hearing a sermon about the sovereignty of God – how he is completely in control of events. The exact question your Bible teacher is wanting you to start asking yourself during the week is “how should I act in this situation if God is sovereign?” The puzzles in an adventure game can encourage you to do just that – find a way forward given the premise of the game, in this case that God is sovereign. Figuring out what those puzzles might be and thinking of suitable solutions for them is the tricky bit, but my experience so far is that when it’s done well it can be a really powerful tool for application.

4. They’re Fun To Play Together

When I was a kid, before the days of the Internet and multiplayer gaming, I used to invite one of my friends round to play on the computer with me, and inevitably one of us would be pretty bored for most of the time, as we sat there watching the other person playing. As other people have noted, most games give you a certain sense of satisfaction simply from interacting with them – steering your car, firing your gun, jumping between platforms. That means that gaming is really not a spectator sport – it’s boring for the person watching who is not getting that constant stream of satisfying feedback. By contrast, virtually all of the adventure games I played as a kid were played together with somebody else, without being the least bit boring for the one ‘observing’. That’s because the emphasis is far less on the basic interactions of gameplay – there is little thrill in instructing your character to pick up an inventory item. The reward comes from solving puzzles and making progress – something that can be shared equally by both the person doing the pointing and clicking, and the person by their side giving the ideas. Some people have highlighted this style of gameplay as a downside of adventure games – and it certainly does mean a certain amount of patience is required, meaning these games are not for everybody – but I think it’s the key to making them fun to play together. Parents might enjoy playing a Bible-teaching adventure game together with their child as a shared experience, or two siblings could enjoy it together.

5. People Grow to Love Them

This final point is a result of all that has gone before – rich stories with vibrant characters, taking you on a journey as you think through puzzles, perhaps in a shared experience with another person – all of these factors mean that people grow to really love adventure games. When I talk to people who’ve played Monkey Island, their eyes suddenly light up and their whole body language exudes an enthusiasm that I don’t often see when talking about computer games. Like a good novel or a beloved movie, great adventure games seem to capture a space in people’s hearts. Imagine if people were being made to feel that way about a game based on a Bible story – what a fantastic positive memory to leave people with.

So there you have it, my top five reasons why adventure games would work brilliantly as a way to teach the Bible. It’s my hope and prayer that my own Bible-teaching computer game will be able to put these ideas into practice and help people to learn how fantastic God’s word really is!

So far in my Expository Coding series I’ve been explaining the convictions behind my project to write Bible-teaching computer games. In this article I’m going to begin to explore what such a game might look like in practice. The evidence would suggest that making a genuinely great game that is simultaneously a genuinely Christian game is an incredibly hard thing to achieve, with many pitfalls along the way. Let’s start by exploring some of those pitfalls, and then look at my approach for overcoming them.

I Don’t Play Games to be Preached At

There are many people out there who consider the very concept of an explicitly Christian computer game to be fatally flawed. “Surely,” they say, “the whole reason I play games is to relax and have fun, not to learn, and certainly not to be preached at.” But to say that learning and having fun are mutually exclusive is simplistic in the extreme. Anyone who’s ever played LucasArts' classic adventure game “Day of the Tentacle” will remember the scene where one of your characters, Hoagie, gets stuck in a hotel 200 years in the past with America’s founding fathers. They’re all busy drafting the Constitution, and by talking with them you can learn all sorts of useless trivia. For instance, I learnt about George Washington’s penchant for chopping down cherry trees, about his wooden teeth, and about John Hancock writing his signature extraordinarily large in order to impress the ladies. Okay, so maybe it’s not all true, and teaching history probably wasn’t forefront in the minds of the designers, but the truth is that I did learn. What’s more, far from making me groan as though I was back in the schoolroom, it was tremendous fun and instilled an interest in that period that’s still with me to this day. I’m sure that we learn a massive amount by subconsciously soaking in information in this way from games and television and what have you, not to mention their cultural values. A Christian computer game that does this well could have a wide-reaching influence on a large number of people, with them genuinely enjoying playing it and without them feeling preached at.

Morality is Boring

An overreaction to the first problem, however, has lead some games designers to put less emphasis on Bible-teaching, worrying that it will feel preachy, and focus instead on promoting Christian values and morality. On the one hand, I don’t have a major problem with games like this, so long as they’re well made. After all, it’s probably better that our young people are playing something based on a Christian worldview than something that reinforces our culture’s distorted value system. On the other hand, they make me a little uneasy, since they just seem to be perpetuating one of the most pervasive fallacies about the Christian faith: that it’s first and foremost about rules and regulations, and being a “nice” person – and ultimately that’s pretty boring. The Bible, on the other hand, is clear that no amount of Christian morality will save you if it doesn’t flow out of a relationship with Jesus Christ. In the book of Colossians, for instance, Paul reminds his readers of the pre-eminence of Christ, the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Colossians 1:20). He shows how his ministry is shaped by seeking first and foremost to proclaim Christ (1:28), toiling and struggling to make sure that people are mature in their relationship with him. He goes on to warn of any alternative teachings based on “philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition…and not according to Christ” (2:8), and berates those who insist on asceticism and the worship of angels, but without holding fast to Jesus, the Head (2:18-19).

So you see, the goal of all authentic ministry is way more exciting than encouraging people to be more like Ned Flanders – it’s about introducing people to the person of Jesus Christ, and helping them get to know him better and better. A game that focuses on the awesome character of God is automatically going to be more engaging than one which just tells them how to behave.

Are You Worthy?

One of the main obstacles that stands in the way of people growing to know Jesus better, of course, is the sense that they have no need of knowing him better. Only people who know they can’t earn their own way into God’s good books are going to truly cry out for a saviour. My relationship with Jesus is constantly blighted by a sense that I don’t really need him – absurd as this is. It seems to me that this is one of the biggest danger areas in making a Christian computer game, since typically the aim of most games is precisely to earn your way to the finish line, proving your worthiness for all to see. That’s what the glamour of the High Score Table is all about, and it’s in direct conflict with the Christian message we’re wanting to promote. One Christian game even made it their official tagline: “Are you worthy?” It’s clear that a good deal of thought is going to have to be put into the game mechanics to make sure that our dependence on grace is not undermined, as well as other Biblical doctrines such as God’s sovereign control over the outcome of events.

Point & Click Bible Games

You may have guessed from my earlier reference to “Day of the Tentacle”, but I actually believe pretty strongly that a genre with great potential for solving some of these issues is the Point and Click Adventure Game. If you don’t have a clue what I mean by that, a good place to start would be the Monkey Island fansite The International House of Mojo, or the ScummVM project. These intensely story-driven games give the writers plenty of scope to teach in a more subtle way, as well as making it possible to feature a less-than-perfect lead character. LucasArts has a long tradition of rather weedy protagonists, like Guybrush Threepwood, Bernard Bernoulli, and (if your memory stretches that far back) the somewhat second-rate reporter Zak McKracken. Such down-to-earth characters allow you to easily convey the fact that there’s nothing remotely worthy about them, and to keep the spotlight firmly on God.

I’ll confess that I may be biased by the fact that I just really love adventure games, but I can see enough reasons to at least give it a try, and pray that God can use the results to bring glory to his name as people come to know his son more deeply.