Christian Gamers Guild Detailed

I've been involved with the Christian Gamers Guild for more than ten years. I think the biggest problem people are having with the above quote is that it is taken slightly out of context. The statement is meant as a reproach to Christians who have abandoned gamers and gaming as either "lost causes" or "evil". It is not a call to arms. Too often Christians have pointed fingers at gamers and called them all sorts of things. It's no wonder there is a lot of animosity between the two subcultures. The CGG is more likely to take the Christian community to task for its sins than they are the gaming community. We're our own toughest critics. The CGG is about building bridges between the two groups. It's about saying to Christians, "Hey, gaming isn't inherently evil. If you dis gaming because of your ignorance, you're missing out on a lot of fun and a good opportunity to meet a lot of really great people. Stop being stupid." and to Gamers, "Hey, not all Christians are close-minded, bigoted jerks who want to take away your toys, spoil your fun and try to make you all into good little boys and girls."

Well, I for one do not worship any deity but I cannot say with any degree of certainty that there is no God.  There might be a God, and there might not be a God.  All I do know for sure is that Christianity and Christian beliefs are not for me, but I am not going to tell someone that they shouldn't be a part of Christianity if they hold dear to those values.  I just want the same courtesy in return, and in most cases I get it.  :)

Some would go so far as call Thompson (among others) an anti-christ (there were suppose to be many. The idea of there being only one is popculture and cannot be found in the bible).

So, when there's shit like 'GayGamer' floating around on the internet, everyone's okay with it, but when someone proposes a Christian-themed organisation, people are all up in arms about it?

Am I missing something?

I think that most people (but not all) who have responded here seem to be missing the point, and went off on tangents against Christianity and religion in general. The purpose of the Guild, it would seem to me, isn't evangelization, but instead to show gaming and fantasy in a positive light within fundamental/evangelical/etc streams of thought. I see this as a very good thing.

Also, another point is, why should the religious feel the need to be less creative? There are strong aversions to breaking that status quo within fundamental ideals. "Better the devil we know..." it is dangerous business to open yourself up to new ideas, and the reality is that many people are scared that they are too weak to be challenged. "Is the Triforce going to cause me to reevaluate my view of God and possibly see it in a new light?" I see it as a good opportunity for anyone (Christians or otherwise) to be able to draw universal truths out of a beautiful, artistic, intellegent and creative medium. Why shouldn't Christians want to create the highest caliber content and do it in a way that appeals universally to all people, regardless of spiritual background? How often does an absolutely atrocious "Christian" movie come out, or a terribly written religious book hit the shelves? Why does anyone feel the need to differentiate religious from secular, when in reality they should be focusing on just making a quality product, and - guess what - the creators just happen to be religious.

I am a Christian, devout, evangelical, born-again, and I love videogames of all kinds - smart, violent, or just plain fun. I am an artist, and I have a high potential of working in the game developer field. For me, I don't want lame, half-assed, uninspired piece-of-crap work that passes in the name of "Christianity" to be a representations of who I am as a person. I want to represent an artistic and fanstastic vision of humanity at its best.

Yes, it does mention that Christian Gamers are just like any other gamer in the world.

And I do believe that even christian gamers love games like Final Fantasy and even Legend of Zelda even though the gods or goddesses (or Espers) in some of those games have different names or elements. But even then, with the element of Good Vs Evil in RPG's, there is allot to like in the view of the Christian Gamer.

The site even goes into the myths of RPG's and even notes what RPG crittics have said and the reason why these critics are wrong basicly they judge a game without even knowing how to play it.

for example ---------

Do these games have sexual overtones?

Critics say that sex including rape is common in these games, including Dungeons & Dragons. But there are no rules for either in the books. As many times as we've read these arguments no one has ever cited one specifically. From reading the rules, you'd think the characters were all eunuchs--there are veiled passing references to where babies come from, and that's about it. The succubus may be a demon of sexual temptation, but it kills by touching in a combat attack just like anything else, and not by any sort of lascivious sex scene. Yes, there are some suggestive sketches here and there, something close to what appears on the cover of Cosmopolitan but that it's not real (the Eldritch Wizardry book sometimes cited was pulled and the cover replaced after very few copies were sold, because the cover was too lurid sexually and had slipped by without the approval of the company executives; nothing nearly so bad as that was ever published before or since). This is, after all, a real company trying to market a real product in the real world, and it uses the marketing techniques of our age. It's not like Playboy or Penthouse, not even in the softer versions which were around in those days. It's just suggestive enough that boys will buy it but most parents won't really worry about it. There are pictures that are mildly offensive and unnecessary, but they certainly don't approach the standards of what shows on public television today.

In a sense, the real problem is not sex but the lack thereof. Mythworld is one of the only fantasy games that admits venereal disease exists (although it is hardly emphasized, with only a couple of mentions: a disease which can only be contracted in specific circumstances, and in treasure, potions that can treat it). Sex is an important part of life, and there is a degree to which games have misrepresented reality precisely by ignoring it. However, in our culture it is a very difficult issue to address in any context, particularly in games, and will probably remain outside the mainstream of role playing games for the foreseeable future.

It may be that sex and rape rules have been written by particular players for their games; but some of us have played for over twenty years with hundreds of people and never been in a game in which they were used. While some adult-only game groups do have sex in their story lines, virtually all insist it be "off camera". Rape is a perennial subject in game discussion lists, but even there the consensus is that it be restricted to adult groups, have player consent, and be played as a tragedy. One of the most potent arguments against it is that one of the players in the group may have been a victim, and this is nothing to play with.

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That to me indicates that we as gamers can really appreciate this site allot because the Christian Gamers Guild is allot like us, they are trying to spread about the good things in Videogames while also talking about the myths of what has been said about RPGs,

If only a more christian gamers would stand up and talk about GTA being like a Modden Day Bible where you have to play though the game and the challenge is not to commit any sin. That would be a really good thing to talk about.

Funny line from the interview btw:

To add to that, I think today more and more churches are becoming open to gamers. Not as much as we’d like, but for the church to survive, and to be true to the biblical text, it must be inclusive.
And to many more than gamers. And I think that’s the easiest way. “So you’re going to reject someone because you don’t like gaming?” My response has been “good, because I don’t like golfers.”

Yeah, I'm not really into golf either.

Odd to note that not one person in the article said that non-Christians shouldn't be allowed into the game with their beliefs, and yet people here are saying precisely that about Christians?

Go onto their site and read their goals before jumping to conclusions, please.

There are people here embarassing us by attacking a group that, regardless of their thelogical standpoint, are on our side when it comes to differentiating between reality and fantasy. Let's stop bashing them because they are Christian and start supporting them for trying to represent our views from a standpoint that can be accepted in a very wide context.

I don't particularly care too much about religion.  I have my beliefs and that is good enough for me.  If those who are religious wants to game, then let them game.  Just because one is a Christian does not mean they can't roll a die.  On the other hand I don't like it when religious people get in such a fury about their religion.  I have always believe that religious beliefs should be a private affair between oneself and his or her deity of choice.  Parading around with a banner on one's back is just tacky.

My main beef with Christianity (mostly tis the conservative evangelicals), and any religion that does this, is how they like to deny civil liberties on people based on how they were born and how they choose to live their life.  People need to mind their own business and stop trying to run the lives of others.

[The Christian Gamers] believe that "Christians have too long allowed non-Christians to dominate the imagined world of role-playing

so by that do they mean there are really no MMO's for Christian intent, no people are speaking about Christianity, or that they believe more non-Christians play then Christians. I'm but for goodness sakes it's a game. And by too long are they implying that they were being the better person by standing by while people talk about their own guild or swearing. Now I don't think that they are going to be a big enough force to actually do anything to were it will annoy any of us. But to say that you as a group of god fearing people are sick of people discussing, oh I don't the game instead of religion that just seems a little arrogant.

I don't mind religious guilds in MMO's or anything, but introducing religion in games is a bad idea.  All it is going to do is start many pointless arguments and make everybody mad.  Just look at the flame war right now over a simple topic.  But then again, controversy does sell...   look at GTA and Manhunt...

I'm cool with whatever as long as no one objects to me role-playing at the Cathedral in Stormwind as a secular communist decrying religion as the 'opiate of the masses' and a massive fraud perpetrated to relegate the proletariat to miserable existences while the ruling elite and the bourgeois merchants live heartily off of the labor of workers. The idea of an afterlife is the invisible chain that maintains this imbalance plaguing human, dwarf, gnome, draenei and elven kind! Join me, brothers and sisters, as we take back our secular vision of a Stormwind without Cathedrals or Kings!

Seriously, I really don't care, but considering that the majority of the United States is made up of those who identify themselves as Christians, and many of them play WoW, what are they really even taking back? It's like those fundamentalists who claim that Christianity is under siege, that somehow Christianity is being shunted aside, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of those in positions of governmental authority are Christians. Christianity is here, it's powerful and lots of people are cool with it...let's not be so insecure.

WoW is not pre-Constantine Rome, y'know. Say what you want to say, but others who pay $15 a month may want to proselytize about their beliefs as well. And if that starts killing the entertainment value of the product, expect Blizzard to take steps to shut it all down...because secular is safe. That's why the Founding Fathers wrote a Constitution, so we didn't end up like the Europe of the past with its many sectarian wars. Let's not fight each other...unless it's PvP of course.

I guess the great thing about being a pagan is that you're able to grasp issues as they happen. It's nice to see Christians finally catching up. I mean it only took them 330 years to finally "get" Galileo.

I'm not sure where this was all missed, but for some reason people take the fact that Christian's want to make and play games to mean that you're going to get in-game alter calls and that and the end of the game you'll have to watch the Jesus video. I don't remember that in the Lord of the Rings, and while C.S. Lewis did write just straight up theological works on Christianity, he also wrote dang good fiction that didn't brow beat people with his faith yet still incorporated amazing amounts of spiritual insight. The point is that being religious and wanting that to affect your creative works and hobbies doesn't automatically equate with door-to-door evangelism so I think some of you guys can just chill for a bit on all your religion hating.

Finally: if you've had a bad experience with Christians in the past I understand, I don't know a person who hasn't actually, but trust me, there are Christians who aren't morons out there and if you really wanted to talk about Christianity with them they would do it. Picking lame fights and making fun of poor-thinking fundamentalists doesn't seem like an intelligent way to talk about religion, and it makes you look just as bad as Christians you react so strongly against. Let's face it, running away from virulent Christian dogmatism by embracing virulent Agnostic dogmatism doesn't really make much sense.

And I'm out.

 is it wrong that i enjoy chicks comiics so much? lol (for their stupidity of course) man i probably was a lousy D&D player i hit lvl 20 and played for about what? 4 years and i was never invited to a coven. the chick in the comic only had to hit lvl 8!

From their FAQ page:

" If the world sees that we stand for the truth, they are more likely to listen to us when we tell them the Truth of Jesus Christ."

They also refer to muslims as "unsaved".  This is a group looking to preach their "good word" through online games.  They can go f*** themselves- I don't want these people invading yet another part of my life trying to "save" me.  People don't play games to have some asshole preach to them.