expository coding: June 2009 Archives

Yesterday on BBC Radio Four's Sunday programme (about 10 minutes before the end) they shared some preliminary results from a National Biblical Literacy Survey carried out by St. John's College, Durham. The results will come as no surprise, but they do paint a sorry picture of a nation that has forgotten God:

• Encouragingly, 75% of people surveyed owned a Bible, though few ever read it
• 57% could say nothing at all about the story of Joseph and his brothers, despite the popular musical
• 60% could say nothing at all about the Good Samaritan ("wasn't he the man who helped the woman at the well?", asks one interviewee)
• One of the commentators involved in education said many of her students couldn't even tell you which came first: the crucifixion or the resurrection of Jesus

"Why does any of this matter?", you may ask. Kudos to Nicky Gumbell, one of the guests on the show, for a very clear presentation of what's at stake: God tells us that the Bible is the ultimate revelation of his character, will and plan, and that it's therefore powerful to change people. As the wonderful Vijay Menon often likes to put it, it's pure dynamite. Ignorance of the Bible is ignorance of God, which is ultimately the world's biggest problem.

Sounds to me like a great time to be making Old Testament adventure games to help share with people the amazing message of the Bible.

Ever since I came up with the idea of making some Bible-based computer games a little under four and a half years ago, I've been using the phrase "Bible-teaching Computer Games" to refer to my endeavours. On my cute little Moo business cards and my Twitter profile I even refer to myself as "the Bible-teaching computer games guy". But why that particular phrase?

The Negatives

One purpose of using the phrase was to deliberately disassociate my game from other more obvious labels like "Christian computer games" or simply "Bible games". The history of Christian computer games is a pretty sorry story, and the very phrase conjures up so many bad associations for people that I didn't want to be painted with the same brush. My game is not a game about morality or something designed merely to impart facts about the Bible. If it were then I'd have no interest in pursuing such a project - I think it would bore me to tears just trying to write the thing, let along playing it! The phrase "Bible-teaching computer games" is not something I've come across elsewhere, so I hoped it would mark mine out as being a bit different and new (not to mention the fact that it's great for SEO!)

The Positives

On the flip side, I wanted to communicate something positive about what my project is seeking to achieve: I'm unashamed about the fact that I do want to teach the Bible, just not in a boring classroom style way. Bible teaching isn't Bible teaching unless it engages the heart and grabs our attention: good Bible teaching moves and inspires and challenges and humbles. There's nothing boring about that!

Where It Fails

The sad reality is that I'm not sure the phrase Bible-teaching Computer Games actually achieves what it sets out to do. As this forum thread demonstrates, people just hear two immediately off-putting words: "BIBLE" and "TEACHING" and they picture the very worst examples of what I'm trying to avoid - cheesy Christian entertainment combined with every gamer's arch-nemesis: the dreaded EDUTAINMENT!! They groan immediately at the very thought of it.

Without a good video clip showing what I DO mean by the phrase, it's very hard to counter such attitudes. I face a serious marketing battle, and so I need YOUR help in coming up with a better phrase. How would you go about marketing the idea of a Monkey Island-style point & click adventure game set in the midst of an Old Testament narrative, that aims to show the player truths about God and how they cash out in the real world in an engaging and enjoyable manner? Or do I stick with what I've got and just prioritise making a kick-ass demo video? Why not Twitter me your thoughts or drop me an email?

If you're interested in my Expository Coding endeavours then please sign up for my Bible-teaching computer games mailing list!

It's a great irony that I spend much of my life wishing I had more time to work on my Bible-teaching computer game, and yet whenever I get a whole day to work on it with no interruptions my productivity levels seem to plummet and I end up feeling like I've squandered my precious time. I always seem to get far more done per unit of time when I'm scratching together the odd hour here and there before work or whenever it happens to be. I've been puzzling over this and trying to make sense of it all, and what I can do about it to make sure I hit my milestones, and I have arrived at a theory.

Overwhelmed By Potential

An empty day looms ahead of me, daunting like only a blank piece of paper can be. My mind is filled with ambitious thoughts of what I could accomplish in such a time: "I could whip up a quick model of every location in Act One and still be done in time for tea!" I'm quickly overwhelmed by the heady potential of such prolific achievement, and my expertly trained procrastination kicks in: "That sounds like rather a lot of work. I think I'd better just lay here on my bed for a few minutes to get my strength up", I tell myself.

NO!!! No no no! I've come to realise that this is never going to work. Not only does it seem far too much like hard work, but it requires coming at the problem from a complete standing start - like committing the first paragraph of your epic novel to paper. The amount of inertia you need to overcome just to get going is immense. I think the approach I need to take is to break my goals up into little "micro-milestones": never mind what I'll be doing after lunch, let's just focus on what you want to achieve during the next hour. And never mind about getting it finished and perfect - what's the simplest, most fundamental nugget of work that will convey the essence of what you're trying to work towards? Trying to script out a puzzle about crossing a stream? Well then, knock up a quick stream texture and apply it to a simple quad for a landscape. You'll find it much easier to improve upon that by incrementally adding in more details than if you tried to make something perfect straight off the bat from an empty editor window.

It's also given me more confidence that there IS value in even a 40 minute slot to work on the game, if I can find slots like that regularly enough. The nature of the work I'm doing at the moment means that over a month or two, small but regular bursts each morning with the odd full evening or weekend could be enough to get a complete prototype of the whole game done by the end of the summer. As long as I don't focus on the fact that I've got a whole summer stretching out in front of me like a blank piece of paper, just waiting for me to finish off a prototype, that is!!

Now is a fantastic time to be developing a point & click adventure game. In case you've been hiding under a rock all week, this has been a HUGE week for Monkey Island fans across the globe: not only have LucasArts announced that they're rereleasing a special edition of the original Secret of Monkey Island for the XBox 360, introducing a whole new generation of gamers both to the legendary franchise itself but also (hopefully) to the very concept of an adventure game; but even more than that, the incredibly talented guys and gals over at Telltale Games are releasing a brand spanking new episodic Monkey Island adventure in the form of Tales of The Monkey Island.

For years it looked like adventure gaming was relegated to a tiny niche dominated by aging geeks, wistfully remembering the glory days of a by-gone era. With these two new announcements this week, there is hope again that the games industry might be finally waking up to the massive potential the genre has to tell a compelling story with humour and style. They vindicate the very concept of a modern graphic adventure being financially viable, making this a fantastic time to be developing a point & click adventure game.