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richardhutnik on 16 November 2009
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The Anarchyz said:
richardhutnik said:

 I will say, you may of benefitted by paraphrasing what Penn of Penn and Teller said about the Bible:

Penn: It's fair to say that the Bible contains equal amounts of fact, history, and pizza.

Fair enough.


I remember that Penn & Teller episode. It was one of the best.

About the SimChurch game that's actually a good idea, i would even expand it to other religions and beliefs. I always thought about a religious wars RTS, just because i love me a good RTS, but your idea is really interesting.

The nature of the Christian faith, with it producing megachurches, lends towards being a sim game.   Of course, one could end up doing more mainline churches also, and be a pastor for the church, and manage needs, have to work a second job, because you don't get paid enough money, battle sin and the like.  What would be interesting is you run the game through a lense that what the church teaches is true, and you adjust based on the denomination.  Like, if you are Penticostal, you end up actually having God intervening more in more signs and wonders sort of war.  If you are Lutheran, it would be different, and you allow women ministers there.  And it goes on.  Sell different faiths as expansion packs.  I believe people have approached Rick Warren, who wrote "The Purpose Driven Church" about this, but he has declined.

Once the Christian faith is able to be translated, then someone else could do other faiths, such as Judiaism, Buddhism, or Islam.  Or you can create your own wacky cult.  What I had envisioned here is a simulator different seminaries could use in the Christian faith.

In regards to religious wars, I feel it would be good to do more sim-history stuff, and have religion be a bigger role.  You could show the impact religion had in shaping the belief systems of society and show the impact of beliefs on value systems, and how societies shape themselves.  And then sort out this from that.  Maybe a place for that would be a Civ4 mod.  In Civ4, religion is t here, but doesn't impact culture in any way, except giving a generic boost to things.  The subject isn't touched, because of fears of protests.  End result is you are left with games that are poor knock-offs of other games, but with a religious theme.  They border on being like porn games.

I would say Dante's Inferno might be the closest thing we have seen to a religious game as a game that stands on its own right.