This does not appear to be a hoax.
We are totally, totally, totally playing this at my next gay irony party.
Left Behind: Eternal Forces:
Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.
Tyndale's licensing of the project infuriated one of its authors, Jack Thompson, a conservative Christian attorney and outspoken critic of video game violence, who told the Los Angeles Times that he severed ties with his publisher in a dispute over "Left Behind: Eternal Forces."
"It's absurd," said the video critic. "You can be the Christians blowing away the infidels, and if that doesn't hit your hot button, you can be the Antichrist blowing away all the Christians."
The description from the game site itself:
Wage a war of apocalyptic proportions in LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces - a real-time strategy game based upon the best-selling LEFT BEHIND book series created by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Join the ultimate fight of Good against Evil, commanding Tribulation Forces or the Global Community Peacekeepers, and uncover the truth about the worldwide disappearances!
How can an ordinary, mortal Jew ever hope to keep up with God's Own Self-Parodists?
Via Pharyngula and a little bit of Digby.
posted by Antid Oto @ 3:43 PM
4 Comments:
At 6:39 PM,
Layman said…
This report was very inaccurate. The game does not have the player try to establish a theocracy or kill people who don’t convert. In fact, you are penalized for killing people, even though Christian forces are fighting against the anti-Christ’s army. See more about the nature of the game, with quotes from secular reviewers who have actually played it:
http://christiancadre.blogspot.com/2006/06/truth-about-left-behind-video-game.htm
At 8:25 PM,
Solomon Grundy said…
Does that make us the army of the anti-Christ?
At 9:02 PM,
Antid Oto said…
layman, the quotes you use on your site say you are penalized not for all killing, just killing "civilians and innocents." Who decides who is "innocent?" The author of the original quote is extrapolating based on his own suspicions that "civilians and innocents" in the broader sense doesn't include "Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state." This may seem like extreme paranoia to you, but when major figures on the right regularly tell us that all of the above (except possibly Catholics) are The Enemy, it's hard not to make the jump.
At the very least it seems clear that in the game a) you do get into deadly fights with the "enemy," and b) sometimes you are trying to convert him/her. Also, you're trying to convert "civilians and innocents" before demonic forces can do it. You say tomayto, I say tomahto.
Finally, the report seems to be accurate in that you can command the forces of the Antichrist if you want to. Isn't that what the "Global Community Peacekeepers" are? Nicolae Carpathia's demonic black helicopters of the UN?
At 9:22 PM,
Antid Oto said…
I will grant you, however, that the implication is that conversion takes place at gunpoint, and that does not appear to be true.
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