We Need Better Christian Video Games (Acts 1:1-11)

I recently added a piece to the museum of oddities that constitutes my office: a boxed copy of Bible Adventures for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Game developer, Wisdom Tree, put the game out in 1991 to an utter lack of critical acclaim or commercial success. It mainly sold through Christian bookstores, got written off as preachy, and played poorly. Video game website GamesRadar apparently ranked it the 68th worst game of all time, and Electronic Gaming Monthly similarly declared number 19 of the 20 worst games ever. However, I stumbled across it at vintage video game store in North Carolina and onto my shelves wonders it went.

Wisdom Tree and other Christian game developers have a long history of releasing some remarkably unremarkable video games for the sake of the Lord. They often feel thrown together by people who know a lot more about Jesus than they do about good video games. As a person who pours a lot of my life into digital ministry, I understand well the logic of wanting to meet people in the digital places where they exist, but Bible Adventures, Noah’s Ark 3D (where you run around the Ark flinging food at animals), or I Am Jesus Christ: Prologue (where you play as Jesus, but the Devil can kill you and give you a game over) haven’t met that mark. Christian kids get subjected to them, when they’d rather play Mario. Everyone else (including me on the video game segment that I need to bring back, Game Bad! Jesus Rad!) just laughs.

I love video games. Particularly, I connect with them as a means of storytelling. I enjoy books, movies, and television as much as the next media obsessed nerd, but one takes them in much more passively. You read. You watch. The story unfolds in front of you. In a video game, you take a role in the story. Maybe, the story travels in a linear direction, and you act out pre-scripted story beats. Or, the game might have a more open ended possibility space, where one creates their own tales. Either way, for me, a video game narrative forces me to engage to a much higher degree. Driving a character’s action via a controller moves me from observer to actor on the stage. Games will often begin with some sort of introductory cinematic or scene setting, but eventually, it hands control over to the players – to play the game.

In this way, the Christian experience should make for a much better video game that we’ve so far managed. Our image of Christ’s Ascension as told in Acts 1 centers on Jesus’s handing agency over to the Disciples. Up until this point, Jesus has driven the story directly. He healed. He taught. He died. He rose. The Disciples largely followed (or failed to follow). At the Ascension, Jesus commissions them to get to the work and exits the stage.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. (Acts 1:8-9 NRSV)

After Jesus does this comes one of my favorite mental images of the Disciples. I can picture of them staring slack jawed toward Heaven, where Jesus had flown in a cloud moments before. God sends messengers to snap them out of it.

While he was going and they were gazing up towards heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, ‘Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up towards heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.’ (Acts 1:10-11 NRSV)

They can’t just stand there, looking up, trying to catch raindrops in their nostrils, and waiting for Christ’s eventual return. They have to get to the work of witnessing.

This is partly why I wish that we had better Christian video games. When we read the story of the Ascension, we, the reader, are passive observers, watching someone else get called upon to act. The medium of the written word makes it harder for us to get the point. In a video game version of this story, all of a sudden, your controller would activate. You had watched Christ’s story play out, and now, you would have to move the story forward. A medium grounded on direct participation in executing the narrative paints the shift of the Ascension more clearly. Someone should make that and make it good this time.

Too often, we end up passive, sitting around, waiting to go to Heaven or for Jesus to come back. We read our Bibles. We attend a worship service. We hear powerful stories. These things make us feel good. We can observe God at work.

In reality the universe in which we exist is grounded on that God knows where the story needs to go, but humans have a ton of agency in actively pushing the story forward. We get granted the power and ability by God, but at some point, we choose to deploy these gifts as intended and become a participant in God’s mighty work rather than an observer of God’s work unfolding.