The Left Behind folks, still reeling from their disastrous launch last year, are gearing up for the release of their expansion pack next month... As an offensive strategy, they are trying to intimidate the Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders in the blogosphere who led the charge against this awful game...Christians should not sit silently while corporate money-grubbers make a buck out of perverting the Christian faith. Nor should we sit silently when a game is marketed to children promoting religious violence while American soldiers are dying overseas in the middle of a religious and ethnic civil war.

RE: False information posted on your site about the video game LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces

To whom this may concern:

I represent Left Behind Games Inc., the developer and publisher of the LEFT BEHIND series of video games. Your organization hosts a website that has information posted about this game. Unfortunately, there are many statements on your website which appear to be false and misleading. This type of misinformation may cause significant and irreparable harm to Left Behind Video Games Inc. and must be removed.

Left Behind Games Inc. generally supports free speech in the media and understands how important it is to have various opinions presented for public consumption. It will not, however, tolerate the publication of information regarding its products that is false or misleading.

Left Behind Games Inc. is demanding that you immediately remove any and all information contained on your site about the above stated game that is false and/or misleading, including any such statements or commentary and the responses thereto. This includes posted comments made by others in the context of reading the incorrect or misleading statements.

If you do not comply immediately, the company will be forced to pursue additional legal action which will include claims for damages, costs of suit and attorney's fees. This may subject you and your organization to significant legal and financial damages.

Left Behind Games Gets Apocalyptic with Bloggers [gamepolitics]

Following a post on The Nation by Max Blumenthal in which he slammed the game's inclusion, which was due to be mailed overseas with socks, snacks and other evangelical instruments, it appears that OSU may have decided to nix the poorly received game. For those not in the know when it comes to Left Behind: Eternal Forces, it puts the player in a post-Rapture scenario, in which you command an army of holy soldiers against those left behind (get it?). Either convert your enemies, putting the love of Jesus in their hearts, or blast the bejeezus out of them by shooting them in the heart.

The game has received its share of detractors, seeing public outcry from liberal groups, Islamic groups, Christian groups and, naturally, The Daily Show.

Kill Or Convert, Brought To You By the Pentagon [The Nation]

No, not really. Really, he just quit and the CEO for the Christian game dev company wants more people to join him.

Left Behind Games officially accepted the resignation of senior vice president Jeffrey S. Frichner, but CEO Troy Lyndon still wants the souls jobs of the company's three remaining board members.

The shake-up comes just months after Left Behind Games reported a $4.1 million loss for its third quarter. While LBG hasn't said why they are seeking a new board, it's pretty clear things aren't going too well over there. Brian Crecente

Left Behind Games Begins Executive Purge [Gamasutra]

Software that features "violent racism" or "religious violence" was targeted by both (along with other distasteful displays of rape, incest, bestiality, etc.). Each proposal, dated about a week apart, would require specially designated areas for games that feature content they consider unsuitable for minors as well as proof of age checks.

Both proposals, virtually identical in their text, require that anyone who appears to be under 30 years of age show ID to purchase a mature title. I hope this bill passes, just so I can be carded by the nice man at EB when I try to buy Bonestorm DS next time I'm in New York. Michael McWhertor

N.Y. Bill Limits Racial & Religious Violence in Games and Proposed New York Law Would Block Sale of Violent Games to Minors [Game Politics]

The PC game features stealth gameplay, with the only announced weapon being a "high tech slingshot" used to take out surveillance equipment. According to the following press release, the game is also notable for having the "largest environments ever seen in the Christian gaming world" and for zzzzzz... Damn it. I'm just so bored thinking about not killing things!

Keep your eyes peeled for forthcoming media and impending controversy. Michael McWhertor

Tribulation Knights Official Site

Christian Video Game Tribulation KnightsTM in development

ST. LOUIS, MO Dec 31, 2006 - Tribulation Knights is a brand new video game in a series of Christian video games. The first of the series is a stealth based third-person adventure for the PC, developed and published by Atomic Design Laboratory.

Storyline:
The main character, whose name has not been released yet, is a recently trained agent of the life saving organization known only as the "Tribulation Knights". A "Tribulation Knight" is an agent of a secret organization created by a now destroyed Christian church association. Their mission is to insure the freedom and safety of the new Christians existing during the time of Tribulation. This period after the rapture known as the Tribulation will be a time where new Christians worldwide will experience persecution for their faith.

The storyline is an interpretation of the Bible concerning the end days. A worldwide cult organization is gaining control of the planet and is planning to incarcerate Christians who do not join them. The Tribulation Knights aim is to prevent that. The missions range from gathering intelligence to releasing fellow operatives from interrogation cells, to saving groups of incarcerated citizens from the clutches of the powerful Enforcers.

GamePlay:
Tribulation Knights features stealth as one of the most important and critical aspects of gameplay. What truly sets Tribulation Knights apart from other games on the market are its game rules. Shooting and killing of game characters is absent from this game. A high tech slingshot is one of the primary tools available to a Knight and it is used to take out surveillance and alarm systems. An on-screen partner provides critical information in your time of need.

If the player is detected by any of the various types of surveillance, World Rule Enforcers, or by citizens loyal to the World Order, an alarm will sound attracting unwanted attention. If an alarm has been triggered then the mission might end prematurely, or the NPC enemies can become more aware when triggered. The enemy can capture the knight, which forces the player to replay the level or start again from a remote prison cell. The missions require the player to remain almost invisible to the enemy for most of the game. This requires taking less traveled routes like the ledges of tall buildings, going down dangerous back alleys, crawling through air ducts, and navigating miles of sewer tunnels. Sneak peaks can be found on the website http://www.tribulationknights.com

Release Date:
A release date has not been announced.

About Atomic Design Laboratory:
The interactive entertainment developer Atomic Design Laboratory is a startup founded by John Nelson. The company is located in the Midwest United States in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

Rabbi Game On PCs [Reuters]

The game we are ashamed to actually like, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is getting fire and brimstone from Christian groups who say the title promotes violence and intolerance.

Presbyterian minister and president of Christian Alliance for Progress Rev. Tim Simpson says the PC games promotes "faith killing" and mucks up biblical prophesies. Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon counters with:

The game is designed to be a classic battle between good and evil, but it does not gratuitously depict violence or death.

Chalk up those criticisms to one thing: Street cred. Brian Ashcraft

Christian Group Doesn't Like Christian Game [Next-Gen]

Besides fornicating, playing games and drinking booze on someone else's penny, we had one goal for E3: To hate on Left Behind: Eternal Forces. And we really, really wanted to hate it. Unfortunately, we did not. The game is actually pretty fun. BUT, our goal, we lost sight of our bitterly cruel E3 objective. Pathetic! And even more pathetic, our inability to spew venom on this PC game has ended up on the box. Reader Dan sends this scan along with an LA Times quote juxtaposed with our typical idiotic blather:

I have to hand it to them, they know what they're doing.

Yep, and apparently we don't. For shame. Brian Ashcraft

"All of the units are essentially Caucasian," he said, adding that it wasn't intentional.

"It was more a matter of which (models), quality wise, were good enough to make the grade," he said. "Since every person is unique and there is only so many body types, we had to limit how many models we were going to do. Otherwise we would have had to do hundreds and hundreds of models and that would have taken forever. So we stuck with the models we already have and we will add more. We already have both genders represented, so we will just add more ethnicities as we go."

I asked Bauman if he was worried that people might perceive the lack of minorities in the game as something racist. He reiterated that that wasn't the issue at all, adding that if you look at the plot of the book, it would simply mean that the minorities of the game were the ones that had ascended to heaven.

"The way we twist that around is to say, 'OK ,so all the white guys are the ones that got left behind'," he said. " There is no statement being made there."

The developers, most of whom are based in Kiev, are in the throes of finishing up the game, which is due out this October, but Bauman says that as future maps, missions and expansion packs come out, they will make sure to add new unit models, including minorities.

Expansion packs?

I can already see the packaging: Left Behind: Eternal Forces...Now with Minorities!!!! Brian Crecente

Note For more on Left Behind: Eternal Forces check out my sit down with the developers.

Stow the pitchforks, turns out all of that talk about Left Behind: Eternal Forces being a disguised hate-game is a bunch of crap. I just spent a few hours meeting with some of the Left Behind Games folks about their religion-themed real-time strategy title, and while it's chockfull of subtle Christian messaging and even some overt proselytizing, it's not at all about running around killing heathens and metrosexuals.

The plan is for the game to include 40 missions based loosely on the goings-on of the third, fourth and fifth books of the Left Behind series. Essentially, you start the game, which is set in New York City, with a third of the population ascended to heaven and the rest of the planet divided into three groups: the Tribulation Force (good guys), the Global Community Peacekeepers (bad guys) and neutral, undecided people.

Unlike with most RTS titles, the units in Eternal Forces are individual people instead of clusters or squads of people.

Greg Bauman, marketing manager and associate producer for the game, said that each of these people have their own life and faith back-stories. All said, there are 350 or so stories written for the characters in the game, Bauman said.

A character's attributes include both health and spirit. To take out a Global Community Peacekeepers, lead by the Antichrist, you can either kill them or convert them. While killing them takes them out of the picture, you lose one point from your score and the unit you have doing the killing loses some of their spirit. If you convert the person, they join your side and you gain two points.

Conversions are done by pumping up a person's spirit score to above 60. If a person's spirit drops below 40 they join the bad guys, anything in between and the person is neutral. You convert a person by preaching at them (or bad-mouthing them) with special units. Bauman said that your units' spirt drops over time if left unattended, so you have to baby-sit them You also have to look out for your units' health and food needs.

Once you convert a person to your army, you can train them to become one of several different classes, like a medic, soldier or builder. Each of these units can be upgraded. Training and resources are garnered through buildings. Since the game takes place in New York City, you don't actually build new structures, but convert them to your needs with builder units.

If you strip the religion out of the game, you're left with a real-time strategy title with some very interesting twists in it. First is the concept that killing affects armies differently.

Because killing a person lowers a unit's spirit value, doing so can hurt a Tribulation soldier, but help a Global Community Peacekeeper.

To help balance this out, Left Behind Games threw in demons.

The computer-controlled demons appear if the GCP player's spirit remains low for too long. Of course, to recruit and maintain GCP units you need to keep your spirit low. So a demon is bound to pop up eventually. Initially, this may seem like a good thing, because the first thing a demon does it attack the Tribulation units. But once they're gone it tears into the GCP units as well and it's nearly impossible to kill them. The best way to deal with a demon is to use preachers, which of course the GCP forces don't have.

Kind of a cool concept.

I also find the concept of spiritual warfare very interesting. As Bauman explains it, if pulled off correctly it will add a new level of strategy to the game. Powerfully spirited units will be able to quickly convert well-armed bad guys. Conversely, the very spiritual characters tend to move slower and are very bad at physical combat so they can be sniped by soldiers.

There's no way for me to say if this game, taken outside of its bible-thumping, is fun. I've always believed that you can't review an RTS without spending a considerable amount of time with it. This genre is all about careful balance and nuance. But from what I saw, the game offers decent graphics, but may be a bit too shallow to fully engage hard-core strategy gamers.

While I think the mechanics are interesting, this is one of those games, like most RTS, that will live or die online.

It's only in the online portion of the game, which supports up to eight players, that you can play the bad guys and it is online where people will spend most of their time with the game, Bauman says.

I also talked to Bauman and Jeffrey Frichner, president of the developer, about some of the deeper implications of the game. I applaud the effort of any game designer to inject deeper meaning in a game, but at the same time it's easy to wonder just what sort of messages they will include.

Bauman says the goal of the game is threefold: To entertain, to get people to think about God and to get people to talk about God. The game, which has plenty of death, but no blood, is geared toward gamers 13 to 34, he said, adding that pre-sales at stores like Gamestop have been "good." (The game is shipping with a number of different SKUs. Some will include a free bible, others a free copy of the first book and still others cheat codes.)

I asked them how they choose who to classify as the "bad guys" of the game, while writing their back stories. Did they have "bad" characters with back stories that described the person as being gay or maybe having had an abortion?

Bauman said no, they didn't.

The idea, he said, was to develop archetypes that people could identify with. I had him click on a bad guy I selected randomly in the game. Reading through the five or six paragraph-long life story, the guy came off as a workaholic who just didn't have time for religion. His faith story described how he joined the Global Community Peacekeepers. The guy saw the group as a movement that hoped to bring peace to the world through unification and just wanted to start out with them on the ground floor.

Bauman said that most of the "bad guy" life stories were that innocuous.

While the game has a very obvious message it's pushing, the version I saw didn't really beat your over the head with it. The only scripture in the game comes in the form of occasional power-ups. You find a scroll, read a line of scripture and an angel appears to bestow increased spirituality or some other buff.

Between each mission there is also a page that pops up with a Christian message and some Christian music. The one I saw talked about the second-coming and how it's real. The screen does have a button on it that lets you skip right back to gameplay.

Both Frichner and Bauman say they see video games as a new vehicle, a newly discovered art form that can be used to spread their particular message. It's funny hearing a group, often associated with being anti-games, defending video games the same way companies like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have been doing for years.

This is the sort of game that players need to embrace, not for the message or even for the gameplay, but because it helps evelop the detractors which is the obvious and inevitable outcome to any new media cultural backlash.