LATEST RAGE: VIOLENT <i>CHRISTIAN</i> VIDEO GAMES "Violence Reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto" "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition" --Newsweek
Newsweek is reporting in its March 6, 2006 issue that a violent Christian video game based upon the hugely popular Left Behind books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (Tyndale House Publishers) will be released by Left Behind Games with "a level of violence reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto."
Christian Attorney Jack Thompson is conducting Talk Show interviews on this topic.
The following is a most remarkable excerpt from the Newsweek article:
Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon, whose company went public in February, says the game's Christian themes will grab the audience that didn't mind gore in "The Passion of the Christ." "We've thought through how the Christian right and the liberal left will slam us," says Lyndon. "But megachurches are very likely to embrace this game."
Though it will be marketed directly to congregations, Forces will also have a secular ad campaign in gaming magazines.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11567350/site/newsweek/
Mr. Lyndon is correct about the Christian backlash. It has already begun, headed by Miami attorney Jack Thompson, the nation's leading activist against the distribution of violent video games to teens because of the demonstrable violence they spawn.
Thompson's new book, ironically published by Tyndale House, Out of Harm's Way, chronicles the disturbing extent to which the American church has been transformed by pop culture. This bizarre "Christian video game" is the most disturbing example yet of the church's failure in this regard.
The church is supposed to be confronting and transforming the culture, rather than the other way around. Thompson is taking this message, and sounding the alarm about this "violent Christian video game" to Christian and secular media beginning today. Thompson has today contacted Tim LaHay, author of Left Behind, and asked him to pull the plug on this Christian murder simulator.
Thompson has appeared on roughly 80 national television programs over the last several years regarding the public safety dangers posed by the marketing of adult, violent entertainment to children, most recently appearing on 60 Minutes twice last year about a video game copycat triple homicide in Alabama spawned by Grand Theft Auto..
Finally, the following is from a Christian student, Joe Smoot, at Calvin College, who writes in his school's newspaper:
"The work [the Left Behind game] entails slaying non-Christians- The actual point of Christianity is to save others from eternal separation from God, not rejoice in the actual process of damnation."
Instead, we have here a violent video game, marketed to Christian kids in Christian megachurches by a "Christian video game company" which is training those kids that to kill nonbelievers is fun and consequence-free. Get ready, America: Christian Columbine clones of Klebold and Harris may be on the way.
ABOUT JACK THOMPSON-
Pictured on the cover of the book he wrote entitled, "Out of Harm's Way" (Tyndale House Publishers, Nov. 2005), a book highly critical of Howard Stern, Jack Thompson is a 1976 graduate of Vanderbilt Law School, where he was a classmate of Al Gore.
Jack Thompson is a former "hands-off-business libertarian" and "First Amendment absolutist" who subsequently became convinced that the entertainment industry must be forced into taking responsibility for the brain-altering and deadly results of the violence and indecency it is spewing into millions of homes, families, and minds.
An attorney specializing in litigation against the entertainment industry since 1987, he has been interviewed for hundreds of radio and TV programs about the link between violent video games and teen violence. His legal successes include: securing the first FCC decency fines (1989); securing the first verdict that a sound recording is obscene (2 Live Crew case in 1990); forced Time Warner to pull rapper Ice-T's "Cop Killer" from store shelves worldwide (1992); and received ACLU's "Top Ten Censors of the Year Award" (1992).
Recently, Thompson has represented parents of three girls shot at a school in Paducah, Ky., by a 14-year-old video gamer. He also got shock jock Howard Stern kicked off all Clear Channel radio stations and Clear Channel fined $495,000 for illegal indecent broadcasts. He also successfully predicted a "Columbine-type" incident on national television one week before it occurred, and he also predicted that the DC Beltway Sniper triggerman would be "trained on a sniper video game."
A frequent speaker on college campuses, Thompson lives with his family in south Florida where he is a lay leader in his Presbyterian church.
THE FOLLOWING NEWSWEEK ARTICLE MAY BE HELPFUL WITH SHOW PREP:
MSNBC.com
Culture: Gamers' Good News Newsweek
March 6, 2006 issue - Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition: Christians are finally getting a high-caliber shoot-'em-up videogame of their own. Due out on PCs in the second half of 2006, Left Behind: Eternal Forces is the first game adapted from the blockbuster books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Gamers familiar with the largely uninspiring and unprofitable history of Christian videogames will quickly notice two differences in Forces: the top-shelf design, which offers an eerily authentic reproduction of the game's Manhattan setting, and a level of violence reminiscent of Grand Theft Auto. The game revolves around New Yorkers who are "left behind" after the rapture. Players scour the streets for converts, training them into a work force to feed, shelter and join a paramilitary resistance against the growing forces of the Antichrist.
Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon, whose company went public in February, says the game's Christian themes will grab the audience that didn't mind gore in "The Passion of the Christ." "We've thought through how the Christian right and the liberal left will slam us," says Lyndon. "But megachurches are very likely to embrace this game." Though it will be marketed directly to congregations, Forces will also have a secular ad campaign in gaming magazines.
- John Ness © 2006 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11567350/site/newsweek/