It's venomous bigotry made fun! "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" the game

[Nathan]

The new and upcoming "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" computer game, based on the disturbingly best-selling series of apocalyptic trash-lit books. It's an ultraviolent, hilariously inept, wondrously accurate portrayal of what every true right-wing Christian fundamentalist really fantasises about after they've had one too many pink wine spritzers and have logged a few hours in the gay chat rooms and have sufficiently indoctrinated their happily numb kids with tales of vile homos and scary "progressive" liberals who want to buy them candy and tattoo their sacrums and feed them organic hot dogs.

What's the game actually about? How do you play? I believe the pro-choice, pro-religion Talk to Action blog describes it best:

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.

Source

Imagine the reaction if, say, a powerful Muslim organisation came out with a major video game where Islamic fundies killed hapless Christians with machine guns in order to restore the world to Allah?

 

[highmystica]

I want the buddhist version of this game with biker buddhists that have logos like "yama kings" on the backs of their jackets and big scary "lords of dharma" tattoos ...

 

[Youngfox]

Now, as if the game itself was not controversial enough, it has been discovered that the publishers, Left Behind Games (a publicly traded company, even) have added money-changers to their particular temple. The game comes fully loaded with what some would term built-in spyware, in the form of in-game advertising that tracks the amount of time ads are seen, how often the game is played, and the player's geographical and personal information. It then sends this data back to the advertiser's servers. From the horse's mouth:

"All Double Fusion campaigns provide detailed campaign reporting for full accountability, and, unlike other media, advertisers only pay for the time their ads are seen...unlike TV, unlike the web, and unlike print. No medium is more accountable and measurable in terms of the actual time spent with advertising."

"Double Fusion's In-Game Ad Engine is a software component that gamer developers insert in their games. The Ad Engine is the seamless interface between the game and the advertiser servers, and works as a broker between the two, calling advertising creative elements as needed, providing them to the game to be displayed as ads in the game, and tracking impressions and views and reporting back to the advertising management servers."

The issue of advertising in games has been a hot topic lately, bolstered by widespread always-on access to the Internet. While surveys of gamers show that advertising in games is effective and generally unobtrusive if done properly, most people would feel differently if they knew their in-game activity and user information was being tracked. Most games that currently feature in-game advertising simply display built-in ads, or at worst download new ads from a server, without sending the user's personal information back over the wires. Left Behind Games plans to distribute up to a million sample CDs of the game through major churches and pastoral organizations. Will these people be informed that their personal information will be tracked, not by a higher power, but by an advertising agency?

Ironically, or perhaps otherwise, Double Fusion was founded in 2004 in Jerusalem, through US$10 million in venture capital investments from various firms including official Government of Israel incubator programs. Kirk Cameron, star of the Left Behind movie, was unavailable for comment.

Religious video game leaves spyware behind