Left Behind Game Developers Send Lawyers After Critics
Like most, I love to kill people of faith. I don't have a real preference—Wiccans; Extropians; Star Wars fans—as long as they cry out to some deity when I pop their noggins with a high-powered rifle and giggle as their brain foams over their skulls like a science project volcano.
So for me, Left Behind: Eternal Forces—a videogame based on the apocalyptic Christian masturbation novels which allows players to kill unbelievers—was game of the year. (Or would have been had I played it.) Other games might have better gameplay, but when I killed Half-Life 2's gas-masked guards in City 17 I knew that theirs was a life already bleak with post-alien-invasion nihilism—to kill a Half-Life guard was to set him free from his toil into the tepid void. Killing someone in Left Behind meant I was not only taking their life, but sending them to a realm of eternal torment, ruled by gnarled attorneys who slaked their thirst at rivers of molten devil feces.
Which isn't all that different from the world that developer "Left Behind Games," creators of Eternal Forces, is trying to create here on Earth. They've sent a deluge of letters to various bloggers requesting that negative comments about their game—which was panned by critics but will soon receive an expansion—be changed or removed. One of the letters was sent to Daily Kos, who did a pretty thorough job of tearing it apart, uncovering that LBG's lawyer has his office in his mom's house.
Left Behind Games Gets Apocalyptic with Bloggers [GamePolitics.com via Game|Life (I stole your image, Chris!)]
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Joel, while I can't say I support the game concept based on the short description you gave of it, I can say this:
While in general I find boingboing.net entertaining from time to time, I find the comments that popup about Christianity disturbing.
Talk about gadgets and such all you want, but let's try and check our attacks on anyone's belief system at the door.
Then again, maybe I mis-understood when you wrote "apocalyptic Christian masturbation novels."
I guess a better question would be, what did you mean?
Great more game developers taking lessons from Derek Smart.
It's the DS 3 step program to Big Success
Step 1. Make bad games
Step 2. When critics give your games bad reviews, threaten legal action.
Step 3. Now that all of your detractors have been silenced, let the cash roll in.
I meant the Left Behind series is spank material for Christian fundamentalists.
I thought this entry was brilliant! Thanks for the morning laughs Joel.
-Anon(I was banned or something?)
I'm afraid I didn't quite understand the comment from Spenser, who complained that he didn't quite understand Joel's post, but in case there's anyone reading along here who thinks that freedom of speech should end where religious feelings are hurt, I'd like to tell you something: fuck you!
Spenser, never mistake the Left Behind novels for religion.
I prefer the term "revenge pornography" myself, but I applaud the recognition by someone other than myself that this crap is how the fundies get their jollies.
The market is built in, the game a sucess no matter what the reviewers say. The books themselves are barely literate, to put it as kindly as possible, and go a long way to disprove the old adage that reading anything is better than reading nothing. To invent a new adage, the man of one book, whether it be a Koran or a KJV, is dangerous indeed.
Give em hell.
Spenser,
Well there is PC, and then there is deranged, misapplied, overweaning PC. The promotion of all belief systems (religious or otherwise) is open to criticism and expressions of distaste, as long as it isn't extreme or personally harassing. Its especially true when you factor in who was the first to throw stones, and who is operating from an arbitrary morality that amounts to bigotry and irrational hatreds.
Race, gender, sexual orientation, and religious background are a different matter. Negative comments about their fundamental nature can't be considered honest criticism.
I cannot see where the hell they cget the rationale for suing. They are the ones who released this catastrophe of a game onto the public.