Of Games and God (Part XI): The Adventures of Elroy

<<< previous post

Three months and ten posts ago I started this meandering journey on my blog, examining video games from a theological perspective. In that time we've explored a wide range of ideas and issues, from the way in which video games promote community, to the problem of video game addiction, from the way in which video gaming can help us understand the nature of kairos time, to the challenge of developing a distinctly "Christian" video game. We've talked about free will and predestination, the quest for transcendent immersion, and the moral quandaries we encounter as we game. 

If you've been with me throughout this series, you may have noticed that my personal tastes in video games are, in fact, somewhat limited. I am hardly avid in my gaming, and when you string together the titles I've spent any serious time with, a clear pattern begins to emerge: Dragon's Lair, Skyrim, The Witcher III, Minecraft, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time.

What all these games share in common, of course, is that they are all fantasy adventure games, set in some vaguely medieval time and place, played out in worlds misty with magic and ringing with the sound of swords drawn from scabbards.  Minecraft and The Witcher III are as unlike as any two games could be, and yet their appeal, for me, is the same. They both invite the gamer to explore an enchanted landscape, triumphing over evil with little more than a sharp sword and an even sharper wit.

As I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps I am not all that interested in gaming after all.  Perhaps I'm simply using gaming as a new means to an old end. All my life, my reading tastes have tended towards the fantasy genre. From Robin Hood to Narnia to Lord of the Rings, I read it all voraciously. So too with my favorite movies as a child. However bad the acting or thin the plot, if it included mystical creatures fighting evil in a magical world, I was sold. Maybe gaming for me is really just another way to scratch an itch I've always had for enchantment.

In his spiritual autobiography, C. S. Lewis discusses the ache he felt as a child for magical worlds and mythic beauty, referring to it poignantly as "the stab of Northerness."  Lewis himself felt the stab of Northerness in particular among the epic landscapes and tragic sagas of Norse mythology. I felt it reading the Narnia books he would go on to write having been so stabbed.

I found it other places, too.  The Lord of the Rings is sharp with the stab of Northerness.  So are Ursula Le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea books. And so are the best of the fantasy adventure video games I've mentioned here.  This, for me, is their great appeal. They create opportunities to feel the stab of Northerness while playing them.  If we are attentive to our own spirits when that stab is sharpest, we may just find that it is not really a swashbuckling adventure in the Kingdom of Hyrule that we're after, but just the experience of longing for it, itself.  And if we are attuned to this experience, we just may find that the real object of our desire is something that no mere earthly experience can satisfy.

Of course, it could all just be some old fashioned swashbuckling fun that we're looking for; and maybe those two things aren't so different as all that, after all. I'll let you be the judge. A number of years ago my son and I were learning how to use a video game design platform called Game Maker Pro.  After familiarizing myself with the basics, I decided to give my hand at video game design a serious try. You will probably not be surprised to learn that for my theme I chose a fantasy adventure quest, set in a Zelda-esque world crawling with orcs and swarmed with dragons. 

I am humbly happy with how my game turned out. I call it The Adventures of Elroy. And yes: I freely admit it's hardly no Witcher III for quality, but bear in mind that I did everything myself-- from the graphics to the music to the animation--and all of it from scratch.  

As a way of ending this series on a playful note, and as a way of possibly stabbing someone else with the same longing I found in the best fantasy adventure games, from Dragon's Lair to Skyrim, I thought I would post it here for your playing enjoyment. If you'd like to explore The Adventures of Elroy, click *here,* to download it and give it a try. May you experience, among other things, the stab of Northerness as you play.  And may you discover in that stab a desire for something--for Some One, in fact-- next to whom all the video games in the world look ho-hum in comparison.