Trained to Thrill?

Swords, demons, minotaurs, and dungeons. Sounds uplifting, doesn’t it?

Actually, for the thousands of Christians who love PC-based video games, it may be an answer to prayer. The Interactive Digital Software Association says 60 percent of all Americans purchase computer and video games. There are probably more Christian gamers out there than one might think, but they remain an uncounted segment. In 1999, the video-game industry (which includes computer games and their console counterparts, like Sony’s PlayStation) pulled in $7.4 billion, about $697.5 million of which came from PC game sales.

Of the 215 million computer and video games sold in 1999, plenty were of the nonthreatening variety, including (according to research firm PC Data) the top three PC games of the year: Roller Coaster Tycoon, Sim City 3000, and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. But shelf space at stores is overpopulated with dark and intense titles. Sure, many have been concerned about the most violent games, but until recently the makers of games like Unreal, Diablo, and Doom met little real opposition.

That all changed when two students stalked the halls of Columbine High School almost three years ago with rifles and trench coats. In the aftermath of the massacre, the boys’ video and written memoirs indicated an obsessive love of Über-violent games like Doom and Quake. Hand-wringing turned to blame-sharing, and everything from the music of Nine Inch Nails and the movie The Matrix to video games spent some time under society’s glare. Eventually the heat faded and the continued success of such games showed that interest in the genre had only increased. But some continued to stalk violent video games like the demon hunters so common to the genre.

One of these was a computer programmer and gamer from Oregon who had conceived of an action-packed role-playing game for Christians. Ralph Bagley pitched his vision for a high-quality “first person shooter” game that involved all the tension—but none of the gore—to several investors. None bit, but Bagley pressed on. In the furious national aftermath of Columbine, however, several of the same investors called him back and expressed a desire to get involved.

About the same time, a local company that had risen to the heights of the gaming industry with the blockbuster success of Seventh Guest and Eleventh Hour was closing its doors. Designer Graham Devine had accepted a position with id Software (creator of Doom) and would eventually become the main designer of Quake 3. His former staff was suddenly unemployed. Bagley made some calls and was able to assemble a design team almost immediately. N’Lightning Software Development was born, and work on its debut game Catechumen commenced immediately.

Bagley was committed to creating a game that he would want to play. “We intended to show the kids that being a Christian is not a position of weakness but of strength,” Bagley says. “We wanted to show that the dark side is not the winning side. It’s Christ that’s the ultimate winner.”

The game is set in Rome, A.D. 171. The persecution of Christians by Emperor Marcus Aurelius continues unabated. In order to protect and preserve the faith, new converts are personally discipled for a period of at least one year. During this time they are called Catechumens. In the game, the player is the Catechumen, and his job is to search the Roman catacombs for captured Christian brethren, including his mentor. The path involves mazes, battles, puzzles, even a fight with a lion in the Coliseum. The payoff is ultimate victory, both physical and spiritual, and involves a showdown with Satan himself.

Though the target audience at first was other Christians who loved the genre but detested the gore, a vision quickly coalesced for Catechumen to reach beyond the defined Christian subculture. “We gave it a biblical focus, but we didn’t want it to be preachy,” Bagley says. “We wanted to expose the kids who are playing all these games with all the garbage in them to some life. We created the concept of picking up scrolls as health items, and having them flash on the screen, exposing the kids to the Word of God that way. We left the preaching pretty much out of it.”

Such a strategy, he says, helped when it came time for marketing. “Many secular distributors are willing to carry our game because it’s not real preachy, but we have over 300 verses of Scripture in the game, and that goes into the kids because they have to pick up those scrolls. The Word of God will not return void. We’ve seen a tremendous impact within the gaming community just in the last few months since the game has been on the shelf. Kids are writing in telling me, ‘I never knew the Bible said that cool stuff.'”

The team began production in spring 1999. Eighteen months and $850,000 later, the game was released into the Christian market. The demand for Catechumen began to take off in the general market after some wise ad buys in magazines like PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World, and fortuitous inclusion of the three-level free demo (which can be downloaded at catechumen.com) on around two million demo disks to readers of U.S., U.K., and Japanese game magazines. Demand increased after favorable and enthusiastic reviews in USA Today (“deftly matches its secular counterparts challenge for challenge and thrill for thrill”), the Chicago Tribune (“the most ambitious effort to date” of “a groundbreaking crop of Bible-inspired action titles”) and Web sites like SeriousGamers.com (“proves without a doubt that a first-person-shooter title can still be immensely fun even without extreme levels of violence and gore”) and Gamezone.com (“a welcomed spin on an established genre”). And a recent arrangement with software distributor FindEx assures the game will soon be on shelves at CompUSA, WalMart, Babbages, and other stores.

Catechumen is exploding out of the confines of the Christian underground into the jaded and cynical gaming universe with authority. The reason is simple: It’s all about quality. Unlike Catechumen‘s Christian market predecessors War in Heaven and Saints of Virtue (both of which Bagley said he has played and enjoyed), this one was made with the kind of budget that allowed for industry-standard visual rendering, sound, and detailed game play. Catechumen is still maybe a year behind the bleeding edge of the industry (its one-player-only structure is considered a sin by several of the reviewers, for example), but is graphically advanced enough to require some serious hardware. The game’s soft-sell approach to faith doesn’t hurt. Though it is obvious from the very beginning that there is an agenda at work, the issue is not crammed down the player’s throat.

“There are compromises to deal with,” Bagley confesses, “but ultimately when we released the game, we were shocked at the secular demand for it.” Those who are convinced that seeing brief images of occult symbols (or violent and sexual imagery) has an effect on the viewer can be encouraged that Catechumen instead uses hundreds of Bible verses.

The main weaponry is an assortment of various spiritual swords given to the player by muscle-bound guide angels. The Swords of the Spirit (eight different variations with increasing amounts of power) blast various types of spiritual energy at the bad guys. The enemy is made up of demon-possessed Roman soldiers (who are surprisingly mild-mannered) and a slew of nasties from the dark side. Demons, minor devils, minotaurs, hellhounds, fallen angels, leviathan, and the “Big D” himself all make appearances. (“We have taken some creative license with the game’s premise,” the instruction manual duly notes.)

The swords actually “save” the Roman guards, who end up kneeling in penitence (to the “Hallelujah” chorus, no less) instead of sprawled in blood when you vanquish them. The nasties basically fall over dead and then evaporate. They get harder and harder to dispatch as the levels increase, but it is not always force or battle that wins the day. The use of subtlety and restraint again demonstrates that this is more than another mere blast-the-baddies Doom clone.

Though Bagley says the general-market enthusiasm caught him off-guard, the real surprise has been from parents. “I’ve been getting 25 to 30 e-mails each day from parents thanking me for creating this game and encouraging me.”

Bagley has no designs to lead the only company creating Christian games, or to be vitriolic in providing an alternative to violent games. “The bottom line is that we need more life-based games,” he says. “The only way to deal with all the garbage games is not to go protest or boycott but to create an alternative. Hopefully the quality is enough that the consumer finds it to be worthwhile.”

Bagley envisions N’Lightning as the company that can get the ball rolling, but he certainly hopes others join the effort. “God providentially provided this game for us,” he says. “We’re working on a new game right now that will be twice as powerful as far as the ministry aspect, and still it’s not a preachy game—it’s just a fun, high-quality game.”

John J. Thompson is the author of Raised by Wolves: The Story of Christian Rock & Roll (ECW Press, 2000) and runs TrueTunes.com.

Related Elsewhere

Learn more about N’Lightning Software Development or contact N’Lightning designers with your feedback and ideas.

Download a free demo of Catechumen or pick up tips and hints from the designers.

Read Catechumen reviews from CNet’s Gamecenter.com, Justadventure.com, and Seriousgamers.com.

USA Today also profiled the game in “Catechumen: First person shooter on road to Damascus.”

Catechumen can be purchased at Amazon.com and other software retailers.

Christianity Today‘s Wired World provides several technology stories including:

Ten Books, Twenty Two Ounces | Will the incredible lightness of reading make the e-book the format of choice? (Feb. 12, 2001)

Is God.com Dead? | Investors lost faith in iBelieve.com, Lightsource.com was extinguished, and Crosswalk is being run over. What happened to the for-profit Christian Web site boom? (Feb. 9, 2001)

‘We All Believe In Something’ | And Beliefnet believes the answer to serving both God and mammon lies in being as interfaith as possible. (Feb. 9, 2001)

Internet Pornography Use Common in many Libraries, Report Says | Librarian-researcher claims American Library Association thwarted study.(March 21, 2000)

Mormons, Evangelicals Tangle Over Web Site | Continuing copyright lawsuit against an evangelical ministry that counters Mormon teaching and history (Feb. 9, 2000)