Dodging The Bulletstorm

What is our place, as Christians, when it comes to critiquing culture? It’s a question that is incredibly important not just to those who write for a web site like this one, but to all Christians who desire to live a life that’s not inherently withdrawn from culture. It’s also a question I had to deal with head on recently.

Recently, Gamasutra published a piece that I had written about a videogame called Bulletstorm. It’s a game that, no, I haven’t played but I’m annoyed by nonetheless. I explain why in my article, which you can go read if you want. When I was writing it, I knew it would get some negative comments, but what followed kind of took me off-guard.

Within the day, the comments section had exploded, and I started to notice my article popping up quite a bit on twitter. It became clear that because I was one of the first to be critical of this game on moral grounds, that I was striking a nerve with people. The responses were relatively varied, ranging from the depressingly predictable to the incredibly encouraging. The creative director of the game, Adrian Chmielarz, while coming across as somewhat defensive, still did a decent job of at least engaging the article, and I appreciated that. Some of the game writers I most respect seemed to like the article okay, and that really made my day.

One criticism of my article really got to me, though, and it was best and most concisely expressed by one of the creators of the Duke Nukem series, George Broussard through the following tweet: “Ridiculous Gamasutra article on Bulletstorm. http://bit.ly/gLuZKU Oh, never mind. Christ gamer.” The sentiment, of course, being that it makes perfect sense that such a ridiculous article would be written by a Christian, and that it therefore invalidates the article. This was an idea expressed over and over within the comments section, and always to essentially avoid and/or write-off the argument. It was said in-lieu of an actual discussion of the issues, in other words.

It’s not as if I hadn’t thought of this before, and in fact, I struggled a lot while writing the article with that very issue. Was this the kind of ethical issue that only a small amount of Christian gamers should be concerned about? In other words, was I just writing for an entirely wrong audience and thereby unnecessarily stirring up trouble where it need not be stirred?

Before you guys all respond with a unanimous “NO WAY” I should probably point out that such a thing is possible. It’s really a question of audience, and this is an important principle for Christians to keep in mind, even if they’re not writers: non-Christians don’t always need to be confronted every time they violate some specific Christian ethic. Living in the world means living with people who have different values and standards than us, and that doesn’t matter so much. What matters is that even those of us with the right standards have failed to live up to them, and our only hope is the gospel. No amount of decrying or rebuking is going to change that.

So I struggled, a lot, while writing that post. I worried about whether I was simply going to come across as a knee-jerk reactionary Christian and whether I would alienate people I need not alienate. Ultimately I decided that this was one of those things that the world probably would and should agree with us on. I don’t know what you want to call it: common law, universal morality, or whatever. But to me, the brazen quality of the objectionable content and its apparent intent pushed it over that “questionable” line to something else – something that people of all faiths, creeds, and persuasions can look at and say “Wow, that’s a horrible idea.”

At some point, we have a responsibility, like any decent human being would, to speak up when something is wrong, even if it makes us look like a close-minded fundamentalist to those who disagree with us. The key is to never lose sight of the essentials: that we are not beyond sin, that we were shown incredible grace and love, and that even while we speak truth to those around us, we show them at least the courtesy of doing the same for them. I don’t know how you do that over the internet, except for engaging the argument as fairly and thoughtfully as possible. Still, I would love to sit and talk to Adrien about his game face to face, though I doubt that will ever happen. There’s a lot of amazing things he and his studio did with that game that doesn’t make me want to cringe, and I’d love to hear about how all of that took shape. And I hope that one day, if I ever get to meet George Broussard, he’ll shake my hand and hear me out, even if I am a Christ-gamer.