Som(a)niloquy

CGDC 2010 – A Pleasure As Always

It’s midnight on Saturday and we’ve spent the last three days at the 2010 Christian Game Developer’s Conference in Portland, OR. Once again I come home with a lot of things in my head that really span the gamut of available emotions.

In many ways, Soma Games was born at the 2005 CGDC. And I’ve grown to have a tremendous amount of loyalty to that group, people I’ve come to know over the years simply because we keep going to this conference each year. And once again I’m struck by the disconnect between the actual size of the conference (about 30 or so people this year) to the disproportionately large shadow it casts out in the world. It’s purely anecdotal but I have this strong impression that folks outside the conference wishing they were there or waiting to hear what comes out of it is far bigger than a few dozen folks in PDX would suggest. I guess that shouldn’t surprise me though. There is such an obvious (and well documented) gap in the video game market for faith-friendly games, perhaps it only makes sense that this underserved market niche is somehow always watching to see what will come of each year’s conference. I also know that there is a large but mostly hidden block of Christians working in the secular game industry. We’ve had several contact  us at Soma and several more attend CGDC over the years – I know many of them are anxious to see one or more companies bust out with genuine commercial success so they might work on a project that doesn’t rub against their values in uncomfortable ways.

Once again the best part was the people. Seeing folks again that I’ve really come to respect and admire, also meeting new ones like this one first-timer who winds up speaking on a topic on her first trip to CGDC. Certainly a very interesting topic, but I was really struck by how much wind was on her! For someone relatively new to walking in the Spirit, she had Jesus Culture coming off her like heat off a Death Valley roadbed – can’t wait to see what happens in her story next.

Still, for all the great experience I have at CGDC I can’t help but feel like there could be so much more. I feel like there is some huge kingdom-opportunity that is being missed here when the thing remains so small and unknown. Of course the reason that happens may be simple enough – time and manpower (or money which solves the other two). I know CGDC is put on by a bunch of volunteers, none of whom make the conference or the parent org a day-job priority. I’m not at all faulting those folks, the situation is what it is, but still I long to see the thing gel into something more than it is even if only to draw more people. I was very excited to work a little with Seth this year to organize a CGDC whitepaper project along the lines of Project Horseshoe. If nothing else, CGDC can provide some vocabulary and start to define terms in a space that really needs them. In fact, the first topic we scrummed out was “What is a Xian Game?” – you’d be surprised how difficult it is to define something like that. I won’t get ahead of myself here but I wound up pretty happy with the results of that discussion as well as the ‘Violence in Xian video games” topic.

Well, it’s bedtime but I did want to say thanks to everyone who came, supported or tweeted. Ws had a great group again and Soma was particularly happy to be able to come back again with the biggest presence we’ve ever had and win the Swing award.

——-

PS : Now with a little sleep I remembered there were a few things I wanted to mention.

There were two games at this year’s CGDC that were not newcomers but games I’d never had the chance to really see in action but finally did. The first was Vastar from Exodus Studios. I’ve been acquainted with Rebecca or years now and I think Vastar was released at least two years ago but I’d just never had the chance to see it – but it really well done. I’ll let her own site describe it to you but we were impressed. The other was Guitar Praise from Digital Praise. Some people have dogged this game because it is, in fact, a shameless copy of Guitar Hero. But it never claims to be anything so I can’t see the problem. But this is the first time I’ve actually played the game and I found it very cool and very fun. I like the songs, I like the already proven game mechanic, so I’m good. $90 feels pretty high these days when I can get Guitar Hero for ~$60 these days and the fact that it’s not on XBLA seems like an obviously oversight but the software and graphics are solid and I wish I’d purchased the game last year.

The Lament of a Flex Developer

or “Why Apple broke my heart and Adobe is holding the pieces”

by our very own Ryan Green

April 8, 2010 was the day the first salvo was fired, all out war declared, and the following day an Adobe employee named Lee Brimelow had his emotions get the better of him. His blog post told Apple collectively to… well… ahem. Apply screws to themselves.

See, the following Monday, was a day that I, as a Flex / Flash developer, loyal Apple fan-boy and AppStore developer had eagerly anticipated with bated breath. Monday, the 12th, was the day when the world would open up. When those, like me, whose livelihood depends largely on the Adobe Flash Platform would finally be allowed into the mobile space; unencumbered; invigorated; and empowered.

Continue Reading…

Pride Comes Before A Fall

I just read an article in Bloomberg Businessweek called ‘Apple’s Endlessly Expanding (App) Universe‘ in which Steve Jobs is quoted as saying “We only shipped [the iPad] on Saturday, and on Sunday we rested.”

…Selah
Continue Reading…

Coming Down Off The Flash Fence

For the last several weeks (or has it been months now?) I’ve watched the Flash wars from a distance. Not for lack of interest but for lack of time. It’s been a busy season around here and for all the rhetoric I think I sensed that for all the headlines I really didn’t have the information I needed to make an informed decision. But I’ve had the chance to get more-or-less caught up and I think I’ve come to a place where I’m willing to come down off the fence.

I think Steve Jobs is right.
Continue Reading…

Legion Goes Way Beyond Heavenly But Kicking

So I ducked out out of house way late the other night to see the new movie Legion. I’m a big fan of Paul Bettany but to be perfectly honest I didn’t go in with very high expectations. I knew there was some mix of angels and demons and guns and you know, that sounded like it might be kinda fun. But I wound up seeing a movie much deeper and much more thoughtful than the previews suggest.

At its heart, Legion is about the line between following God’s heart and following His command. I’m going to just skip any theological issues I might have with the movie because it’s really not a theological movie at all, and yet it’s deeply about the meaning and cost of faith and obedience.

Continue Reading…

The Book of Eli Pulls No Punches

I slipped out late on Sunday night to catch this new Denzel Wasington movie The Book of Eli. I didn’t really know what to expect but walked away really impressed with a movie that shot unerringly straight at deep divide between faith and religion. And I hope this aint news to you – but the two have nothing in common. Continue Reading…

Every Game Has A Worldview – Whether You Like It Or Not

No matter how much you may want video games to be plainly fun and devoid of any ethical or moral message (If I had a dollar for every person who said that to me…) it will never happen. The statement is nonsensical on the order of whether or not God can make a rock bigger than He can lift. There’s a season in our lives where that statement might seem profound and ‘paradoxical’ but at some point we grow to understand it’s nothing more than semantic nonsense masquerading as deep insight.

• Every single video game includes a set of rules.
• Every rule implies an underlying assumption or statement about the game’s vision of its self-contained reality.
• Any collection of assumptions about reality is, by definition, a worldview.
• Ergo: every game explicitly or implicitly preaches its worldview to you.

Take The Sims for instance. Any male or female character can more or less pursue a romantic relationship with any other character – those are rules. The implication is that the characters have no built in sexual identity but rather it’s all a matter of choice or environmental influences. That’s a part of a larger worldview of the Sims that all come to describe a world that rewards certain things while punishing others, it allows certain things while diasllowing others – it, like every game, is constantly enforcing a very specific worldview through every interaction the player makes in that context. (You know what’s ironic here? I strongly suspect the makers would tell me that homosexuals are born that way and can’t change. That for them it’s not a matter of ‘choice’ though their game mechanic clearly implies that it is…but I digress.)

Now admittedly, different games do this to a greater or lesser degree…mostly lesser. But even pong is built on assumptions about what constitutes fair play and whether or not it’s ethical to compete and keep score…assumptions a lot of people are coming to disagree with these days.

This is no trivial or academic point, especially for us at Soma Games. As gaming grows and matures into the primary cultural medium of our generation its important to know the power of what we’re working with. It’s a well known axiom that games are some of the best learning tools ever created. So let’s get rid of the puerile notion that “it’s just a silly game” and wrestle with larger implications. At first that’s simply to be more cognizant of what we’re being taught but for content creators it’s also to embrace the deeper power of this medium and be willing to build our worlds with full awareness of the message we’re sending.

What Happened to the Wild Things?

When my son was born a little over three years ago my good friend Mark brought over a selection of books he thought to be essential “must read” tomes for any little boy. Where The Wild Things Are was in there and I’ve read those 200 or so words to Odin  probably a thousand times. We love that book and we love the pictures and my toddler sees no psychological complexity to a boy in a wolf suit. Why then did Spike Jonze feel it necessary to turn it into something all Jungian and dark and disturbing.

Look, every once in a great while I can appreciate a movie like this…once in a great while. My real problem is the way a piece of joy and sweetness and innocence from my life has been hijacked to sell some kind of overburdened hyper-symbolic look into the pathos of a troubled tween. Continue Reading…

Why Video Games are Important

If you’ve ever received the dismissive glare of your mother-in-law as you talk about the mad exploits of Master Chief or Marcus Fenix the you know that there is a major awareness gap in America that lies somewhere between 40 and 50 years of age. On one side of that line are folks for whom video games are a common and integrated part of their lives. On the other side are folks who saw a 2600 a while back and ‘were not impressed.’ For the most part, the people in charge of the mainstream media and the capital allocation structures are all on the ‘not impressed’ side of the equation.

Those people are wrong. Continue Reading…

The Seven Mountain Prophecy and Soma Games

A book about Christians being active and influential in various social ‘mountains’ really whets Somas whistle. We’ve always seen ourselves as change agents in an industry that lacks any Christian voice…looks like we’re not alone in that mission.