Revival and Renewal

This is my first post in a while… and it’s about something that is out of the norm for me. One thing you may not know about me is that I am a big fan of video games, especially games with narrative and intriguing plot. Video games were a huge part of my childhood, from the old Nintendo 64 back in the early days to the full-blown RPGs of my high-school years. In each case I was caught up in the alternate narrative, the larger story within which I could find myself (in Charles Taylor’s terminology) in a “ready-made world.” Purpose, vision, and meaning weren’t questions which plagued the video game characters of my youth. Rather, they found themselves within a larger meaning, a world which needed heroes, instead of politicians, to swoop into the fray and make things right.

This desire I had for a ready-made world in which I could find myself both valuable and vital in many ways paved the way for my faith in Christ. This may sound counter-intuitive (could something as mundane as video games prepare someone for something like encountering Jesus Christ?), but it is nonetheless true. What I found in video games was a harsh, often violent world in dire need of someone who would make something right, who would make the story move into a place of relative peace and (dare I say?) salvation. There were dozens of stories in which a protagonist found his or her way through this violent world to save it, finding themselves along the way. They had purpose, they meant something, their world extended beyond themselves into some grand tale, albeit often a crude and harsh one. The world wasn’t a boring and scientific but rather a magical, enchanted place.

In other words, the world of video games is a narrative world. It is a world with a story, a world with some sort of right and wrong, and a world with a beginning and an end. In many ways, the ideology behind game worlds is more Christian than the ideology which drives much of the secular machine. The video game world (more often than not) is a place where one is expected to react to an overarching story which is actually true.

This overarching story, often, is a revenge-plot. Many games revolve around the concept of vengeance, of a wrong done in the beginning of the story which drives the plot forward. In some cases it is the murder of a loved one, or a nation wronged, or an alien invasion. Often it’s emotional, gruesome, and hard to watch. The popular game Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor, though anathema for die-hard LOTR fans, takes this route, with its protagonist sent back from the dead to avenge the killing of his wife and son. Vengeance, often, is thought of as a vindictive justification for things like violence, retribution, excessive force, and killing.

The writers of these games are tapping into a narrative structure as old as time, a story which forms much of literature and finds itself in nearly every genre. There is a desire within us to make things right, to undo what has been wrongly done, to see justice in the midst of a world where the unjust often go unpunished (cf. Psalm 37). What the writers assume, however, is that the right course of action in such a situation is direct action, that what should be done (if these pesky laws weren’t in the way) is to seek out the offender and have our will done upon them. Often these games recognize that such an action actually results in the death of both parties, with the nearly heartless protagonist having to dehumanize himself to achieve the revenge he so desperately desires. They see that vengeance is a two-way street, that to avenge sin in this way often means sinning, and that it consumes those who choose it.

These stories often end in a dissatisfying way, usually with the protagonist doomed to forever roam the violent world (in never-ending sequels!). One of the reasons I think video games are often critiqued for their writing is just this: there is a struggle to write a satisfying narrative wherever the subject is less-than-human, for there is no way to understand a story from the perspective of emotionless, callous beings. Where narrative takes a back seat these games often become simply boring. They aren’t life-like anymore, and we can instantly tell. They are no longer alternate realities; they are no reality at all.

Yet there is something which these tales grasp that is vital for an understanding of the gospel. Things should be right, wrong is really wrong, and justice is something which exists within the world of wrongdoing. Games go wrong in that they suppose the answer to evil is evil, but the fact that violence needs an answer is something which Christians should always embrace. The Christian answer to violence is a violent cross, when God himself took on the violence of the world and replaced it with grace. Self-sacrifice in the face of evil is only real answer which can satisfy the vengeance narrative, and these games would do well to learn from Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities, from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, and from other tales within literature in which a character has realized this same point. The gospel has much to say in the virtual world as much as in the real one; in both instances, violence will never be able to conquer violence, only a suffering servant can do that.