God and…Gaming?

So Games…and God?

This is a fun, nostalgic post for me if I’m honest. After years of teaching and ministry I am right now a full time stay at home dad and part time pastor in my church (and somewhere in there a writer) and so I am a casual gamer at most.

When I say ‘casual’, I mean, ‘my PlayStation has an inch thick coating of dust on it almost constantly and so my gaming is limited to about 3 minutes on my phone after I have put baby boy to bed before I pass out…”.

So, casual.

I’m not even remotely going pretend there is deep theology or revelatory wisdom in the words to follow. I wrote this because I found it fun, I’m really just sharing what games impacted me growing up and what little God lessons I may have learnt along the way while playing them. For much of my childhood, I would play with God. Whether it was toys, climbing trees, painting models or play video games, I often had this sense I was doing it with Him, He was somewhere in the room, just in the corner of my eye. Those little shared moments were meaningful to me.

Compiling this list was a fun trip down memory lane. I realised doing it just how many games of my favourite games I played were about good triumphing over evil, teams and families working together or just trying to do the right thing. Many of them were just about the joy and delight of play, something that as an adult I find myself in greater need of as each year goes past.

Some of the games were also about blowing up bad guys. It’s hard to deny that.

God speaks in strange ways though and as a visually oriented guy, sometimes, just sometimes, I remember a lesson He taught me through a computer game of all things.

Here’s my list. 12 games I have loved and the God lessons I’ve been leaning along the way.

Golden Axe: Warrior (1991)

This little RPG was one of the first games I remember getting on our Sega master system (that came out 1985!). My grandma took my brother and I to a game shop to get what we though would be “Golden Axe” the Arcade game. It turned out someone at Sega had acquired the rights to that game name, they stapled the word ‘Warrior’ on the end of it and then completely proceeded changed every possible element of the game so it was completely unrecognisable. Ultimately Sega just wanted to cash in on the success of Nintendo’s ‘Zelda’ series and so they basically copied the game near on entirely. If you do a google image search for both games it’s mind boggling how similar they look - Sega really wasn’t hiding this was a copy!

I didn’t know or care about any of this at the time though. This was one of the first games I’d ever ‘committed to’, and the first ‘open world’ game at that. There weren’t ‘levels’ per se, you chose how where to go and explore. Making your way through different labyrinths, forest worlds, snow and rocky worlds, upgrading your gear and abilities as you went. It was all so new to me and I loved it.

I learnt you had to pay your dues and build yourself up to explore the harder areas. You’d get creamed if you went into one of the harder areas with your rookie sword and shield. This game wasn’t very forgiving, though the sense of achievement you got when you defeated one of the bad guys in his labyrinth was worth all the long hours!

I learned a life lesson here, one that would come up later in faith and ministry - Don’t rush ahead just because you can.

Wonder Boy 3: The Dragons Trap (1989)

This is just the most delightful game. It was relatively under the radar until a few years ago when a French company did a remake for iPhone and PlayStation of it with beautiful new artwork. I was so pleased as I’d had so many happy memories playing this one.

The story is simple. You’re a man, you flight a dragon, he curses you and you turn into a lizard. The rest of the game is you trying to turn back into a man, fighting baddies and dragons on the way. Each victory turned you into something new on your way back to being  human (lizard-man, piranha-man, mouse-man, lion-man and hawk-man). Each with their own abilities and special zones where only they could travel.

The music was beautiful, the artwork was colourful and fresh, the game was hard but not impossible. My brother and I stayed up late one school night as I was so close to completing it. At the crucial moment, after much button mashing, I did it, I completed the final boss…only for my dad to pull out the plug from the TV kill the game dead!!

Apparently I’d been told multiple times to stop playing and go to bed and this was the last straw. I never saw the ending credits. It took nearly 30 years before I was able to play it again and with no cheating, complete it, before I had the satisfaction of watching those credits.

The lesson here? Listen to your parents. And some things are worth waiting for.

Monkey Island (1990)

This game! Even thinking about game makes me smile so much.

“My name is Guybrush Threepwood and I’m going to be a mighty pirate!”

These are the first words out of your characters mouth and they just set the tone for one of the funniest, silliest and most creative games you’ll every play.

Made by LucasArts, this was the first ‘point and click’ game I’d ever played. The puzzles were so bizarre and satisfying to solve, the characters memorable and the whole thing rarely took itself seriously. I remember playing this on our first home PC with our tinny midi sound speaker playing out the 8-bit music like it had been recorded on a primary schools Casio keyboard.

You learn how to be a pirate, build a crew, charter your ship and go in search of your lost love who has been kidnapped by the ghost pirate LeChuck and taken to the mysterious Monkey Island. It’s all just so silly but yet so well written, the jokes still stand up today.

This game gives on simple but important lesson - try not to take yourself too seriously.

Little Big Adventure 2  (1997)

I adore this game. I genuinely love this game, it is treasure.

Made by French company Adeline in 1994 (this game is very French!) this was the first open world 3-D game I played. For non-gamers, that meant you could go anywhere you wanted, a freedom in gaming that was unheard of back then.  It was also the first game I’d played with voice acting characters which felt like a big deal too.

So much of the game is just exploring and discovering. You want to talk to other characters, you want to explore every inch of in this beautifully imagined world. All throughout the game the beautiful music drives you on buoyantly at every step. You should see the YouTube comments for music tracks from this game, this game really does has a place in people’s hearts.

There is little nuance or deeper meanings to be found in this game. This game is just pure happiness. It’s very pure. You can’t help but feel the joy and delight that was poured into it by its developers. The plot is surprisingly complex with some pleasant twists and turns, it would take too much space to summarise it here, but in simple terms, you’re saving the world.

I poured many hours into this little game and I don’t regret a single one of them. Every little victory, every little moment you work out how to get into a new area or get out of somewhere you are stuck felt like a huge achievement. The games goodwill always bringing you back for more.

LBA2’s lesson is that we all need more delight in our lives. Nine year old me started to understand that one summer thanks to this game. 38 year old me is still asking God why I so easily let delight get crowded out…

Diablo (1997)

Oooooh, should a game with a name like this be on a list by of favourite games for a pastor…?!

Ultimately this game is about good overcoming evil. You play a warrior, rouge or mage, your being to protect the town of Tristram from the evil forces trying to overwhelm it. Initially seeking to cleanse a desecrated church from the darkness within, you have to descend deeper and deeper into the monsters domain to rid the town of its oppressors.

A quickly used ‘town portal’ scroll will get you back to the town for healing, repairs and guidance. Talking to the villagers will give you insight into your quests or provide new ones. Each villager is expertly voiced, giving a depth to their character that I had not experienced in gaming up to this point. The town elder Cain’s familiar greeting ‘Stay awhile, and listen’ will forever be with me.

The music is so atmospheric, the guitar piece that is the Tristram town music is a masterpiece in tone and ambience. The crypt and deeper levels of darkness are eerie and unsettling. I would turn the lights off in the room I played this game and turned the sound up just to dial up the tension, the game has scares, no doubt about it. You have a feeling of loneliness as you play but a reassuring sense of the righteous mission you are undertaking. You’re the only one standing between this town and it being overrun by darkness, so you plough on, taking the light into the black.

There’s a lesson in that I think. I’m not sure how often I think of this game, but when I do I am reminded of that solitary figure going onwards into the dark not flinching or holding back. Sometimes you just gotta lead by example.

The other lesson I’d take from this game is to never go into battle without a full stock of health potions. That’s a keeper.

Championship Manager ‘95/96

This was the first football manager game I really played, and in many ways the only one I really ever committed to. I’ll be up front, I cheated on this game…a lot. It was back in the days of windows 3.1 and 95 when you could intentionally crash a game without saving your progress and then reboot it where you left off, start again and play for a different outcome.

So if I was 2-1 down against Liverpool and it didn’t look like my team was going to turn it around…’ctfl / alt / delete’ would freeze the game, I could then go back into it, and keep replaying the match until I won. If wanted to buy Brazilian Ronaldo and he didn’t want to come, I’d keep doing it until I could negotiate a price that worked.

It’s terrible I know, it’s the lowest form of gaming. But I enjoyed being the Premiere League, FA Cup, League Cup and Champions League winner 5 seasons in a row. So what are you going to do?

This game was perfect for me, there was just the right amount of complexity for my teenage brain, but far less than the modern day manager games which are just feel too complicated for me to enjoy.

The reward of cheating was success in the game but my continued crashing of windows did start to mess up our computer. This was the computer my dad paid for and used for his work, that I was allowed to use for the occasional game. After he started noticing lagging problems with it I realised it was due to my…influence, and so I had to learn how to really play the game.

Cheating comes with a price. We think mostly we can get away with it, but we never really do. The delight and joy that its ‘success’ brings are never as pure and as good as when you’v worked hard for something. That’s my God lesson here.

Command and Conquer (1995)

This was a game unlike any other that I or most of my friends had played before. It was about tactics, patience, planning and scheming…and sometimes blind bravery and aggression.

You play as either GDI (the good guys) or The Brotherhood of Nod (clearly the bad guys with a name like that). The goal was to build your base, defend it and keep your footing while you were  building up your army. Each mission eventually had a point where you sent everything you had en mass down to knock on the enemies front door and start kicking some backside!

The music in the game is like a Rocky montage, each track driving you on to keep building and keep fighting, giving you an over inflated view of your own leadership prowess. The mechanics and the enemy AI were very polished for the era, you really had to think tactically how you were going to complete the missions. Air strikes to knock out the power stations? A tank army to punch through the defences? Land a chopper with some explosive experts in the back of their base and take their radar down before they know what’s happening?

All of the above and risk some major RSI in your mouse hand? The decisions were yours!

Some friends and I used to play this online (as adults) on a Sunday evening after church. We would think we were great until as a team we played other in the online forum and get creamed within seconds by pro gamers who spent 10 hours a day honing their skins in building a base and a tank army while you’re still tying your shoelaces.

One lesson from this game was clearly one of humility…especially when it’s another gamer humbling you! The main lesson though I took from this game was one in patience and planning. Noah was very patient building his Ark. Nehemiah was very patient rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls. It seemed to work out well for them.

Deus Ex (2000)

Merge with an AI and become a ‘benevolent’ ruler, hide in the shadows like the illuminate and rule the world from behind the curtain, or flick a switch and kill all technology in an instant and take the whole earth back into the dark ages…

These are the potential endings you get to choose to step into in this incredibly complex narrative and action game.

Your character, JC Denton has to twist through conspiracies, political factions, global corporation espionage and a even global pandemic on their way to uncovering the truth in this cyberpunk noir world where they whole game takes place at night (despite the main character wearing sunglasses constantly).

This game was just so involving on so many levels, you had to think. You could go into a mission all guns blazing but it was rarely the wisest choice. There was often an air duct shortcut, or a door panel that could be hot wired that would get you there faster and quieter. You could ask no questions and do your job taking down the terrorists threatening the normal way of life, or you could stop and question them, judge for yourself if they really were the bad guys.

I’d never played a game that presented you with so many morally grey choices. It didn’t make it easy to ‘do the right thing’. Any choice you made had a consequence and a repercussion in the game narrative. This was involved story telling, it was rich and I loved every second of it.

The lesson from this one…there is always more going on under the surface than it appears at first. Also, in life, if you’re ever looking for a short-cut somewhere, look for the air duct, there’s always one somewhere.

Spider-Man (2018)

This is the nerwest game on my list but there’s a simple reason, this game just works. On every level. The game design is huge, you can just swing around New York and land in any spot in the city and start interacting with pedestrians you find there. You can stumble into the middle of police car chase or a bank robbery or you can hang upside down on major landmarks taking selfies.

The game is gorgeous. From watching a sunset standing atop the Empire State building one moment, to gliding past the dizzying lights of the nighttime city, this game is just bathed in colour and vibrancy.

The movement for the web slinging feels natural and intuitive, and the power levels for Spidey feel about right, he’s able to take on a group of thugs, but wave after wave of them tires him out, meaning you have to play more tactically. Taking out a gang of arms dealers silently, one by one, webbing them up covertly in the shadows is a lot of fun.

The game is both serious and very funny, while still retaining the childlike fantasy feeling of literally being Spider-Man, swinging through the city, standing up for the little guy.

The story is very moving as well, a tragic retelling of someone trying to do good for the world and losing themselves in the process. It’s not just some alien overlord trying to rule the world, when you get to the ‘final boss’ it hurts that you have to fight them. You know they are a good person but they have lost their way and gone too far. The emotional buy in is real.

‘Come to me all of you with heavy burdens and I will give you rest”, Jesus said. When I think about the bad guys in this game that you have to defeat I can’t help but be reminded, most of them were good people who got hurt, broken or lost in their way. They, like us can end up causing destruction if we don’t allow for time to rest, recover and heal. Going to God for grace, peace and true rest is the only thing I have found that will lift the heaviest of burdens.

So that’s my Spider-Man lesson - don’t try and do it all by yourself.

Mass Effect 2 (2010) / Dragon Age Origins (2009)

This is a cheeky 2 for 1 game as both these were made by the same developer, around the same time and are very similar games, other than one being set in space, and the other set in fantasy world.

Both have are epic locations, deadly enemies and grand operatic scale plots to navigate, the games are vast, but somehow they are personal too. In Mass Effect, your character Shepherd. is trying to defend humanity from extinction on a galactic scale while reluctantly working for a morally questionable highly financed agency that’s literally brought you back from the dead. In Dragon Age, you play the Grey Warden, a reluctantly recruited protector tasked with building an alliance from waring and resentful races to defend the world from the Blight, a hoard of darkness and evil wanting to overrun the world.

These were the first games I’d played where you had to create your own character. You built their look, what they wore, you even had dialogue choices, so you could be kind and heroic, or a real jerk. The real joy for me in both these games though was the teams you got to build.

Throughout both games you meet eclectic and three dimensional characters who you need to recruit to your mission. They require convincing, some of them need your help before you can get theirs. You have to court them, work on them over time, be patient with them and sometimes choose the tough love option and give them a kick.

You can’t progress in either game without a team, and if you neglect them throughout the game when it comes to the end you will suffer! The final mission in Mass Effect 2 is called helpfully ‘the suicide mission’ and because I hadn’t properly upgraded my teams gear the first time I played it, I lost three of them instantly and unceremoniously. That was a real bummer.

These games drew me into their world building and made you care as much about the fate of the world as they did the hearts of my squad mates.

The God lesson here was a simple one. You don’t need a lot of friends but you do need a few good ones. 1 Thessalonians 2 says “we shared our lives with you…”. We need this, coming alongside each other, genuinely and authentically. Isolated living won’t get you very far.

Stardew Valley (2016)

This game is pure charm and joy. There are no other words for it. This game is just happiness bottled.

Stardew Valley couldn’t be more different from any of the other games on this list. There are no levels, no missions, no requirements to do anything, no bad guys to defeat and no worlds to save. You simply inherit a farm from your grandfather…and that’s it.

Somehow it has become one of the most involving and difficult to put down games I’ve ever played. Hours can just drift by as you can spend your days tending the farm, raising animals, foraging and planting. You can ease through the days checking in with friends in the local pub, chatting to the villagers or fishing down by the river.

That’s the joy of this game, it’s pacing is so gentle. Morning, evening, nighttime just soothingly pass by, all as you do things exactly the way you want, at the pace you want to do them.

The beautiful retro pixel graphics and music all work together along with genuinely touching moments of dialogue with the villagers. They are surprisingly real and whole as characters, even as little pixel people. You become part of their lives and they become part of yours.

I still play this game now, and God has whispered a couple of lessons into my heart as I’ve spent time in its world. Firstly - slow down. Life doesn’t need to be a race to get to the end. We all need to lift our foot off the accelerator and slow the pace down and enjoy the little things. John Maxwell talks about ‘the Jesus who moves slowly through the crowd’. That’s the pace I want to live at.

The second lesson I’ve taken from Stardew Valley is to care about your passion projects.

Why this lesson? In this game the designee and coding, the music and the story scripts, not to mention all the lore and setting…and every other facet of it were done bu one man. One guy did all of it! It took him four years but he never gave up. I’ve read interviews with him where he thought he was wasting his life creating something that might never see the light of day or be liked by anyone. It was a passion project born out of hard work, long hours and belief that it was worth it. The guy just wanted to bring a bit of joy to people’s lives. That was his motivation.

Since its release the game has been downloaded over 10 million of times on countless platforms. It even comes as standard on Tesla’s in car display! One man’s hard work and commitment is now enjoyed by millions.

This is a beautiful lesson and a good one to finish on. Don’t give up on the passion projects that God has put in your heart. Don’t baulk at the hours it might take or succumb to doubt and fear that no one will care about it when its completed.

I firmly believe God has poured creativity into all of us, we all have something to bring to the world, something to birth or steward. God doesn’t desire for any of us to be like the servant who buried his talent in the ground, afraid to take a risk with it or do the hard work.

My book has got into many people’s hands, it’s not a New York Times best seller by any means, but I’m so glad I put the hours in. I know it’s made a difference to some people. I’m writing my second one now and this particular lesson feels very relevant to me right now!

So, in the words of Dr Lazarus from Galaxy Quest “Never give up, never surrender!”.

Or perhaps in the words of Paul in 2 Timothy 4:7 “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith”.

So…Gaming and God?

Yeah, it’s not the deepest theological post in the world, I’ll grant you that. I encourage you though, look back to your childhood, those play times, those times of delight. What did God speak into your heart as you played? What did you learn? What unlikely sources did He lovingly plant a message in your heart through?

Is there something you should be creating? Is there something good and pure that you should be making space for in your life right now?

‘till the next time : )

A

(p.s. Apologies for using a gameboy image with this post and not including any actual gameboy games…)

Previous
Previous

(Part 2) Your 2024 North Star

Next
Next

6 Months on, was my book a “success” or not? My lessons from chasing a God given dream…