Confessions of a (Christian) Gaming Junkie: Part 2

Not sure if this image is too irreverent but it is relevant if nothing else. In one of my last posts I confessed to being a gaming junkie. In this post I’m going to let you in on the dark side of gaming, from the perspective of a Christian gamer.

I grew up in a Christian home, went to church, and when I moved off to college I made the decision not to be just a cultural Christian but to be authentic. Tough to do sometimes, but still that’s my everyday goal. During the past year of law school playing games was a way for me to let off steam, de-stress, and generally escape some of the narrow confines that legal academic thinking can sometimes lead to. Gaming is a fun hobby for the most part, but there are moments when it comes into conflict with my moral philosophy.

Some of the more superficial examples of this conflict that come to mind occur during online play.  Typically folks who play online are polite and don’t resort to name-calling.  There are however two big exceptions:  Call of Duty 4 and Halo 3.  My online play is mostly limited to Halo 3, so I’ll focus on it.  During the average Halo 3 multiplayer match (capture the flag, territories, slayer, whatever), there are a handful of 10-15 year old squeaky voiced punks who spout some of the worst language you never want your family to hear.  I’ve heard folks called (and been called myself) a “fag”, “gay”, and lots of other words that go beyond good natured teasing or verbal sparring. I can’t understand how a kid can come home from school, get online to play Halo, and then spray f-bombs all over everything he says as if its’ the adjective of choice and not get in some kind of trouble with his parents.  Still, I can take the language–they’re just words spoken by anonymous mics, but it’s the intent of the words that is so jarring.

There are lots of blogs dealing with the hate-speech of online gaming, and I don’t really feel like rehashing those grounds. I do want to say that sometimes playing online is a very un-relaxing place, not because of the level of competition (I don’t mind getting pwned in a fair fight) but because of the level of hostility. There’s a church in Grand Rapids (Mars Hill Bible Church) that has a slogan, “Love wins” that I think is a great, simple way to keep the mind of Christ at the forefront in hostile situations, but I admit I have sometimes given in to the “dark side” of my feelings and tried to give little Tommy-ten-year-old a good talking to (which never works by the way).  It’s generally an exercise in futility to exchange insults, but it’s just one of the ways playing games has challenged me as a Christian.

One of the other challenges comes in the triple threat of fair play, communication, and patience.  The best example of this tension pops up, not during online play, but during co-op play when a friend is sitting next to me on the couch and he is totally a newbie, unable to even coordinate looking and walking (which admittedly can be a little complicated, but still, at least know whether you prefer to have your y-axis inverted!).  My friend Josh (who prefers to invert, and is not the generic newbie just described) and I are both in a “season of waiting” so I’ve had a lot of time to hang out with him. Sometimes we go out to do stuff, but often we’ll wind up playing the ol’ Xbox. Last time we hung out we tried to play Lego Star Wars on co-op, and let me tell you, that was the least fun I’ve ever had playing a game. Ever.  We had a really tough time getting through the levels, and I think I lost my temper once or fives when we both died and kept respawning on the edge of a cliff… True Jedi we are not. Anyway, that little debacle kind of shook me, at least to the extent a one-inch tall Lego Yoda can shake anything (the Force is strong in this one!), because I really wasn’t being fair to my friend in light of all the circumstances; I was totally not WWJD-ing with him. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are lots of little things that try your patience everyday, but there’s just something about playing a game together that brings out the best and the worst in our communication skills, our patience (and lack thereof), and our ability to integrate a fundamental sense of fair play in how we treat our good buddies. Huzzah.

Well if that last point didn’t warm your fuzzy bunny slippers, this one is bound to knock them right off. Or not. So I think probably the biggest conflict between being a gamer and being a Christian is that being a gamer teaches a kind of twisted materialism, while the teachings of Christ teach that simplicity and trust are fundamental tenets to a solid relationship with God.  “Techno-lust” may sound like some kind of kinky trance-dance, but it is not. Techno-lust is that little green eyed monster that tells you that you will in fact be ill if you do not get a new 3G iPhone, and that you may very well come down with chronic diarrhea if you don’t get a new Macbook within the year. Yeah, you know what I’m talking about. And techno-lust is not limited to things made by Apple, oh no.  Techno-lust is a major part of what drives the video games industry.  I say “industry” because it is possible for an individual to play games, not for the status or technology they have, but just for the pure and simple fun, for the story and characters, or because of a mild case of ADHD. But even if you are this gem of a gamer, the techno-lust will eventually filter down from the industry behemoth to you. First you’ll notice the ads for the next generation consoles–the Xbox 360, the Wii, the PlayStation 3. Then you’ll see a really spiffy trailer for one of the games–like Metal Gear Solid 4, or Halo 3, games that have genuinely good stories, better than a lot of movies in theaters, and hey you like a good story right? And the console has some really amazing secondary features besides just playing games; did you know the PS3 is the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market? Oh, and the Wii is definitely going to help you get off the sofa and do some physical activity… Right?

And so it goes, the techno-lust finds you, and you have talked yourself into spending at least three hundred bucks on either the Wii or the Xbox 360 (don’t be fooled by the Wii’s slightly lower price tag–they sell the controllers in parts, so you’ll end up spending more on it than the 360…).  Now that you have a system, you’ll need some games. Actually you’ll need lots of games–or so says the techno-lust, as that one new game has really amazing features, the graphics, the AI, wow this game is going to revolutionize storytelling and entertainment as a whole; plus there’s a huge batch of even better games just around the corner!

So you can see how this might be a problem for someone dedicated to living a life focused on the more important aspects of being.  I read Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline as a junior at FSU, and it changed how I think about a lot of things. One of those things is simplicty. Foster has a great quote in the introduction, where he says “Superficiality is the curse of our age. … The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.“  I’ve been reading Donald Miller’s re-release of Through Painted Deserts, and this theme is a recurring one for him, as he describes his frustration with billboards and commercials selling him more, newer, better, and how all of this stands in contrast to his growth towards a bigger, yet simpler existence.

I think all any person wants is a life of meaning. The problems crop up in how we define that “meaning” and who the “meaning” matters to.  There is a part of me that actually cares about my Xbox 360 gamer score–and I think I’m not alone in this concern. But beyond this pettiness, I want my life to be more than just the sum of days I spent in front of the TV–and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this concern either. It is a hard balance sometimes, to try to live each day on purpose and also not to become legalistic or pretentious when it comes to the value of entertainment (including what I used to consider “mindless escapism”).  Christianity is a religion that teaches us that life is best when there is tension–tension between what we know and what we cannot know, tension between childlike innocence and putting away childish behavior, and the tension of living “in” the world but not being “of” the world.  At the end of the day being a Christian gamer is just one more example of this tension.  It’s recognizing the tension, knowing when to pull back that keeps me centered.  And when it comes down to moral dilemmas, such as those faced during tough capture the flag matches, it helps to think “What Would Jesus Do For The Win?”