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[Vortex13]

TheJediSaint wrote...

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

Why would the Christians need to be oppressed by a secular regime though for it to be marketable to a mature audience? In all likelihood it would probably drive away any mature audience as it would seem like you are trying to push the agenda that anyone who rejects religion is irrational and oppressive and that the only way to enlightenment is through Christianity.

The whole idea of an oppressive Secular or Atheist  regime is an oxymoron as the whole idea of Secularism is that people should be free to form their own opinions and beliefs without being oppressed by the beliefs imposed on people by religion.

I think the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China under Mao count as oppresive Atheist regimes, but that's a different debate.

A game based on the idea of Christians being oppressed by a secular government is the stuff of fundamentalist conspiracy theory, so it's not going to appeal to a wide audience.

I do think a game with strong Christian themes can be marketable, but I think the conflict of the story needs to be spiritual and personal in nature in order to be appealing to a large audience.  

You ninjaed me.

Anyway, I would personally agree that a game with strong Christian values would be better as a fantasy, rather than real world setting. Real world settings are generally more 'sensitive' then fictional ones are.

[Gandalf-the-Fabulous]

TheJediSaint wrote...

I think the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China under Mao count as oppresive Atheist regimes, but that's a different debate.

Well technically they replaced the worship of religious idols with the worship of themselves, they weren't so much enforcing atheist beliefs but rather their own. Atheist is a very broad term as the only belief that is common among atheists is that there is no god, it is very hard to create an oppressive regime based on Atheism because there are no real beliefs under atheism that can be used to oppress a population, there are no judgements based on morality and any belief that can be used to oppress anyone comes not from their beliefs as an atheist but their beliefs as a man.

Vortex13 wrote...
Where's the crazy atheist that hinders anything that he doesn't agree with?

I am sure there are plenty of crazy characters within popular media who can be seen not to believe in god however they are defined less as atheists but more as men, just men, the fact that they don't believe in god is irrelevant to their craziness.

Vortex13 wrote...
Eugenics and their use in the justification for the Holocaust was used by secular people.

Wasn't Hitler Christian?

Modifié par Gandalf-the-Fabulous, 04 avril 2013 - 05:01 .

[Harmless Citizen]

Mr Mxyzptlk wrote...

Religion and Race are two entirely different things, please remember that before trying to discredit somebody by throwing around false accusations of racism.

Because obviously there isn't a majority demographic in Islam, it has no connection to culture or ethnicity, and it has no sociopolitical context whatsoever. And Hitchens and Dawkins and Harris didn't openly support profiling and brutal warfare (hint: they did). Eugenics, of course, also has a clean history and isn't informed at all by racism and racist institutions. But thank you for the insight.

Look, I don't have time to educate you on imperial posturing, political code-switching, ethnoreligious complexities, and the political history of Western involvement in Southwest and West Asia, and I'm not trying to get banned or derail this thread, so you can go ahead and make all the excuses you want for them and be wrong by yourself.

Modifié par Random Nobody, 04 avril 2013 - 05:53 .

[TheJediSaint]

Gandalf-the-Fabulous wrote...

TheJediSaint wrote...

I think the Soviet Union under Stalin, or China under Mao count as oppresive Atheist regimes, but that's a different debate.

Well technically they replaced the worship of religious idols with the worship of themselves, they weren't so much enforcing atheist beliefs but rather their own. Atheist is a very broad term as the only belief that is common among atheists is that there is no god, it is very hard to create an oppressive regime based on Atheism because there are no real beliefs under atheism that can be used to oppress a population, there are no judgements based on morality and any belief that can be used to oppress anyone comes not from their beliefs as an atheist but their beliefs as a man.

Oppressive regimes are oppressive because they wish to protect their power.  It really doen't matter what they belive, either religiously or politicaly. 

[MichaelStuart]

Vortex13 wrote...

Or maybe the story could be set in the real world, but it cast God and Christianity in a appealing light. It wouldn't nessassarily have to be a Bible study game, it could just buck traditional elements. Things like having the protagonist be a Christian, or switching the traditional roles of the crazy religious zealots oppressing the poor and down downtrodden; make the Christians out to be the sane people oppresed by a secular regime for example. It wouldn't even have to quote Bible scriptures every five minutes, just have the plot depict believers in a favorable light. 

Zealots, regardless of what ever belief, are the weakest story antagonist.
I can't think of any story were the the antagonist motivation basicaly amounts to "I'm right, your wrong, now shut up and die" was ever marketably own this alone.

Modifié par MichaelStuart, 04 avril 2013 - 09:07 .

[Megaton_Hope]

Vortex13 wrote...

Or maybe the story could be set in the real world, but it cast God and Christianity in a appealing light. It wouldn't nessassarily have to be a Bible study game, it could just buck traditional elements. Things like having the protagonist be a Christian, or switching the traditional roles of the crazy religious zealots oppressing the poor and down downtrodden; make the Christians out to be the sane people oppresed by a secular regime for example. It wouldn't even have to quote Bible scriptures every five minutes, just have the plot depict believers in a favorable light. 

You'd pretty much have to set it in the "state atheist" Soviet Union (or its equivalent), to get that kind of setting. It'd be tricky having a dissident hero running around in a society like that, and not...y'know...winding up in a gulag. The thing about secular societies is that they allow people to have what religious beliefs and practices they may want to have, just so long as those beliefs and practices aren't being mandated by the government.

There are options other than a straw man against secularism, of course, if you want the feeling that Christian religion is threatened and the hero is making it stronger. You could take the early Roman empire, for example. From about 34 AD to 313 AD. The heroes could be, say, Christians running an underground, smuggling Christians to safety after they are discovered by the authorities but before their capture. Or even a little after, since that's only when it became legal, not when it became the official religion of the Empire. Couldn't be after 380, though, because then it's Christian Rome persecuting non-Christians.

Or if inter-sectarian violence among Protestants and Catholics works, you could set it in England from 1558 through 1603, when Catholics were threatened with charges of treason, and "priest holes" for hiding visiting clergy began to proliferate. Bonus, you can include Shakespeare plays as background elements. Of course, the bad guys there would be Protestants.

[Harmless Citizen]

I think making a game like that, about persecution and direct action, would be even less marketable than the sort of game being discussed before. I mean, it could be done, but I think it'd miss the mark and not really reach its full potential. In such a game, the conflict wouldn't be the intersections of humanity, spirituality, and faith, but direct physical threat. Religion would be entirely incidental, because oppressive regimes are not something exclusive to secular societies or theocracies (and can be completely divorced from religion full stop). In the end your primary mechanic and mode of experiencing the world is going to be violence...which isn't necessarily bad, but is pretty tired at this point and doesn't work to maximise that human element.

I was thinking more along the lines of a game similar to Journey, which, if you've played it, you know has excellent game design and delivers a story without a single word.