The rapture has come, and the believers have been gathered up and taken to heaven. As for everybody else: They've been left behind to duke it out in a smoldering, apocalyptic New York City.
That's the scenario in a soon-to-be-released Christian-themed video game. Meanwhile, in the real world, the Christian community is engaged in its own skirmish over the virtues or vices of the concept of a Christian video game that involves killing.
"Left Behind: Eternal Forces," which is made for PCs and will be unveiled at the E3 show next month, is a classic struggle of good vs. evil.
Here, the angelic Tribulation Forces and the demonic Global Community Peacekeepers, led by the Antichrist, battle it out to convert secular, neutral units to their respective sides.
Players participate in "battles raging in the streets of New York," according to the game's fact sheet. They engage in "physical and spiritual warfare: using the power of prayer to strengthen your troops in combat and wield modern military weaponry throughout the game world."
The scenes and challenges that unfold — as players control more than 30 unit types from Prayer Warrior to Hellraiser to Spies, Special Forces and Battle Tanks — are based on the prophecies from the Book of Revelation as interpreted by the popular "Left Behind" book series, by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
On the one hand, it's perfect content for a video game — set in a fictional, futuristic world with a black-and-white view of what's good and what's bad. Take those elements and tie them directly to the Bible, and now you can market an exciting, conflict-ridden game to the Christian community, enticing them with something that, if packaged differently, might come across as potentially harmful to wholesome Christian youth.
But on the other hand you have ... something that's potentially harmful to wholesome Christian youth (or any youth for that matter).
A Newsweek article last month said the level of violence in "Left Behind" makes it "reminiscent" of "Grand Theft Auto" — a game well-known for depicting shocking levels of brutality and accused of inspiring hooked teenagers to commit real-life copycat crimes.
The CEO of Left Behind Games — a company started specifically to turn the book series into video games — said the Newsweek article was uninformed. He said the game won't be rated any higher than a "T" for teenagers, and that it depicts nothing more menacing than what he calls "Star Wars violence."
"Our game has no blood, no decapitation, no vulgar language," Troy Lyndon said. "Our game does not have gratuitous violence for the sake of showing intestines on a doorknob."
He insists his company has produced an inspirational source of entertainment with a good message, without compromising on quality.
"We believe parents need a substitute for the degrading moral values of 'Grand Theft Auto' or some of the top-selling titles," Lyndon said. And you can't get gamers to switch over from "Grand Theft Auto" if you only offer a conflict level of, say, Pong.
