All right, team, shall we? Shall we begin? We we need to wait for a couple more people, but we can have like a pre a pre session mini conversation as other people arrive. Uh, so I'll give a better introduction than this. But my name is Andy Patton and I'm going to talk. Thanks, Guy. I'm going to talk about what is a Christian game. So in the before the lecture proper starts, I'm going to pose that question to you. What is a Christian game? You chose to be here for a reason.
It's a game that's going to heaven.
The game that's going to heaven. Yeah. But the catch is you never know if your game is going to heaven or not.
Schrodinger never know. There's no certainty.
What was Nintendo Bible games back in the day? Nintendo Bible games. They had those. Oh, yeah.
You were Noah and you had to, like, uh, carry the sheep back to the ark. There was one in the spirit that was basically Zelda, but with hymns and spiritual warfare.
That's right. Somebody got paid a lot of money for that game.
The spirit. And then the things would either go to heaven or go down to hell. That was awesome.
Wow. Okay.
Wonderful RPG. That was like the fruits of the spirits. Were the character attributes for you? Like the Christian dad or whatever?
Yeah. Okay.
Weirdest one had nothing to do with Christ. It was like you're saving the space ticket. But before that, it was like a Bible verse. Yes.
Okay. So we're introducing some good concepts here.
We're done.
You guys are ready to give the lecture. I mean.
That's.
Yes.
I don't know, but what I'd like to see is if a game could be a liturgy.
If a game can be liturgy.
Of it from beginning to end. If you give some truth about Christ could be illustrated and could grow.
Mhm.
Is that a possibility.
We could explore that. Yeah we can explore that. So I'm just going to synthesize or summarize some of the themes I'm hearing here. So Christian content like Noah's Ark or a Bible verse, um, or fit in something about Christ, uh, that would make it more a Christian game that that is.
I mean, I don't think that's good. I just think that's what I would think of as a Christian game. Yeah.
I'm just.
Kidding.
I'm just kidding.
I didn't mean it like as a veneer of Christian concept, you know, like.
Yeah. Yeah.
I just really meant, like, in the mechanics.
Yes. Well, there's a whole conversation in game design about, uh, the didactic element of a game. And how do you integrate a message you're trying to convey? And should that be, should that be on the surface? Should it be mentioned at all, or is it a better game if you're trying to convey a message, but it is so deeply embedded that people are enjoying the experience and getting the message, but they don't know that they're getting the message. All that is, all that is good stuff to think about.
Any other thoughts? What is a Christian game?
I don't think it.
Has something to do with the gameplay itself. Um, you know, uh, what is the experience like? Is the experience one that, uh, is, uh, Christ honoring? Right? Is it addicting?
Is it addicting?
Is it.
You know, those types of things I think are also important.
Um, so you said something to do with the experience when you're playing this game. What kind of an experience are you being drawn into? Is it Christ honoring?
What is the fruit of the experience?
Yeah. What does the experience produce in you after you play the game?
The experience is telling you.
Yeah, this this. That's a great comment. I used to be a lab worker. And if you're if you're not familiar with La Brea, it's a place it's like a Christian retreat center. And people stop doing their normal lives and they come live at La Brea for 3 to 3 to 9 to 12 months. And we would have conversations about things every day. Uh, so I would I still am a La Brea worker a little bit. I, I felt something labreche rise up in me when you
said Christ honoring. I'm going to take that and, like, have a whole discussion about what does that even mean? How do you honor Christ, let alone how do you do it in a game? But I'm not a library worker anymore. I'm a rabbit room lecturer today. Okay, let's start the actual lecture now. Uh, I'm Andy Patton, and
I work for the rabbit room. And before I worked for the rabbit room, I worked for La Brea in England, and before I did that, I lived in Chicago and started a game company there at the same time as I started seminary. So there were some there were. This question or the topic at hand is what is a
Christian game? That was really bubbling around in my in my head during the years of seminary, because I was trying to get companies to pay me to entertain them with games and was, you know, by night and by day I was reading, reading theology and writing theology papers. So this this lecture was my capstone at the end of seminary. So looking at what what is a Christian game? Is there is there a a framework that we can apply to any game and assess it? Christianly. What does
that word christianly even mean? That's going to mean a lot of things to different people. Is that even a word that we can apply to things. And when we apply that to things, what are we assuming? What are we taking for granted? How deep does that have to go? Can there be someone brought up the idea of a Noah's Ark Nintendo game? I'm sure that was a huge seller right up there with with Mario. If it is dealing with Christian language or Christian stories or Christian imagery,
is it a Christian game? Can there be games like that that are un-Christian? Again, whatever that means. Can there be Christian games that have no level of reference to the Bible? No scripture quotations? They're not. They're not touching something that would be easily recognizable to Christians from something they might experience in church. I'm going to take a crack at some of those questions, but really, what I'm going to do in the next 45 minutes to an
hour is present. A framework that you can use to think through these questions on your own. So that's that's where we're going. And that's just a bit about who I am. So my my definition of what is a Christian or what is a Christian thing. I'll just say that at the outset, because in a room this size we will there will be many different understandings of that. So I'm laying my cards on the table. I think if something is Christian, it is something that helps us
be more human in the real, whatever reality is. So and there's some assumptions in that definition. One of the assumptions is God is reality. And God has created everything and has spoken into the world in such a way as to be understood. And one of the things that he did in creating was to create his image bearers people. We bear his image and that's a whole different discussion. We'll get into it a little bit. Yet that image is marred in us and creation is is marred. It
wasn't only the first two chapters of Genesis. The third and following chapters happened also. So there was a fall. So everything is a bit twisted. And the question of the hour is can games help with the untwisting? And I'm going to say, if the answer is yes, then in that sense it is Christian. So that's that's my thesis. There's going to be a lot of theology here. So buckle up. We have not one door but two in case you need to use them. Uh, but first we're
going to do a little game design theory. I want to introduce one concept called the Magic Circle. um. Johann Wiesinger is considered by some to be the father of game design studies, and he he he wrote a book called Homo Ludens. And here I'm going to read a quote from Homo Ludens introducing the concept of the magic circle. And then we'll be dealing with this concept throughout our discussion. So here is here's the quote. And it didn't print very well. So I'm going to use refer to my
notes here. This is from Homo Ludens. All play moves and has it's being within a playground. The magic circle forbidden spots isolated hedged round hallowed within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world. Dedicated to the performance of an act apart. So that's pretty wordy, but it's. He's saying something very A significant when it comes to defining what a game is and what happens inside of a game. So I'll read it again. All
play moves and has its being Bible reference. There must be a Christian quote within a playground. The magic circle. Forbidden spots, isolated, hedged, round, hallowed within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world. Dedicated to the performance of an act apart. So let's just let's just break that down a little bit. Uh, the the magic circle. He says the all play happens within a magic circle, and it's like a it's like a bubble.
It's like a bubble into another dimension. And special rules happen inside this bubble. And the the magic circle has three dimensions. There's spatial, social and temporal. So spatial. Just think about monopoly. Monopoly happens at a table. So that's its spatial dimension. It's somewhat limited. You've got the board there. You're interacting with things. It is social. You're playing with three to 3 to 6 people who are increasingly having
a terrible time. It's temporal. It takes you slog through several hours during during the course of a game of monopoly so that there there are those are the the boundaries, the dimensions of the magic circle. And different games play with those dimensions in different ways. So you could have a game that's the size of a postage stamp or the size of the whole world. You can have a game that takes three hours or it never ends. You can have a game that's you play alone or you
play with 6 million people. So all of that, the magic circle can be very it's it's very variable depending on what game you're playing. Another point about the magic circle is it's separated. There's a boundary, you can step inside that boundary and you're in. He says different rules apply. So the the magic circle has a start and a stop most of the time. I'm I'm now in the game and I step back, step up from the table to take a phone call. And I'm not playing the
game anymore. So what is magic about the magic circle? This is where it gets interesting. Inside the magic circle. New rules, he says new rules obtained within which special rules obtain. So it's it's like when you go to another culture, you get on the plane in Atlanta, get off in Paris, and you are in a world where new rules obtain things that you could do before you got on the plane. You can no longer do appropriately after you get on the plane. Playing a game is
like that. It's a temporary world that changes the meaning of things. So my favorite example of this is the game twister. So normally if I put my foot near your face that you would be insulted, you would pull back. There's a rule we all feel. And with that rule, we feel it at a deep level. I'm offended. And your foot stinks. But when you play the game of twister, that is why you play the game. It's funny. So
something that is offensive becomes funny. And we all, we all came to this mat with colored dots on it so we could put our stinky feet in one another's faces. And if you get offended by that, you are breaking the rules of the game and you should. If something goes wrong, the game becomes a little broken. Um, or think about Cards Against Humanity. Anyone ever played Cards Against Humanity? So it's uncomfortable. It's a game. It's like apples to apples.
You are the only one who raised your hand. That's amazing. Okay. Cards against humanity. Because not many of you raised your hands. Pairs things with other things. And Apples to Apples is a game you could play with your kids that does the same thing. Cards Against Humanity you could not play with your kids to varying degrees. So it takes these things that these norms that we all know and we all, most of the time abide by about what you can joke about and what you can't joke about. And inside
the magic circle, you can joke about them. Grandpa's ashes, the Holocaust, you know, different ethnicities. It's all very uncomfortable. I don't like to play the game. I think I think the game uses the magic circle against people. So you can. You're having fun doing something that you probably should not be having fun with. But it is interesting. The power of the magic circle. You can make these
jokes that would be painfully awkward. And inside the magic circle, that very awkwardness is kind of transmuted into humor, and if it wasn't awkward, it would not be funny. And Cards Against Humanity would not have made the millions that that it has made its creators. Um, so there, there, there's the magic circle. When we step into the world of games, we are stepping into another world. And it is.
It's crossing that barrier is is very powerful because you can use games to make people do things that they wouldn't otherwise do, like joke about grandpa's ashes. And so as a game designer, there's a there's a real responsibility there. And there's a real power because you are a world builder. You can make people, you can control people. You can make them do things that they wouldn't, they wouldn't otherwise do. And maybe they don't even know that they're being controlled.
So there's a real responsibility, and there's a real, um, for a person who is a Christian and a game maker, there's a whole there's a whole level of thinking that needs to happen. So for the remainder of what I have to say, I'm just going to, um, offer a collection of concepts that can be assembled into a framework that can help you think through this stuff. So here are the concepts. Games are created things. Games are expressions
of dominion. Games are intensifications of reality. They're vehicles of humanization or dehumanization. They are mirrors that show us ourselves. And they can be masks which can. Create healing. They can be healing masks. So let's jump in. Games is created things. And this is where the theology comes. Did God make games? What do you think? Yes. Yes. Okay. Did God make tag? Yes, yes, God made tag. He chiseled out the rules in the Ten Commandments.
He made the ability to do it, though, and he gave us the brain to enjoy it and think about it.
Yeah. Yeah, that's that's my next point. Well done. He gave us the ability to do it. Yes. He created the potentiality for the game of tag to exist. Yeah. So there's a sense in which often I've been in conversations in church settings about Eden and the world, the word perfect is thrown around. Eden was perfect. Genesis one and two God plops his image bearers down in this garden, this quote unquote perfect garden. But clearly it was not perfect because the story doesn't end there. It is good
in the language of the story. It is. It is good and very good. But it is not finished. So God made his, made a good creation, and then plopped his image bearers inside it and gave them the dignity of agency so humans can really cause things to happen. And the part of what it means to be an image bearer of God is to sub create, which is a word that this audience will be very familiar with. Tolkien made it up so we can't make something from nothing,
but we can make something from something. And actually, that was. That's the whole idea. Um, there is a there's a latent potential in God's creation. It wasn't perfect in the sense of being finished, but it was perfect in the sense of we had. We humanity, as God's image bearers, had everything we needed, needed to continue to spread the flourishing of the garden, so to speak. But that's not what happens. Actually, the opposite happens in Genesis three happens
to fall. God's image bearers turn away from him, and instead of spreading the peace and flourishing of the garden throughout the created order, they spread disaster. So Genesis four, uh, all the disaster begins to gather to a greatness leading up to the Tower of Babel. This is. We're just doing some Bible stuff where everyone is gathering their disaster together into this monumental pillar to what they can achieve.
So that was supposed to be a gathering of the flourishing that God had built latently into creation, and instead they gathered together to dominate. And the story of Genesis four to Genesis 11 is one of increasing mayhem and and God intervening to stop the disaster, stop the spread of the disaster. Um, so let's just think about think about cities. Were we supposed to make cities? The first
appearance of cities you get is in Genesis four. So people are drawing together and things get really ugly and really nasty. And the thoughts of humanity are always bad all the time. This terrible phrase. So we went from a garden of flourishing and peace to a city of disaster that would set up a. Seem to set up a dichotomy where gardens are good and cities are bad,
and cities are what happens after the fall. However, if you skip to the end of the Bible, you get a redeemed garden city that God calls the New Jerusalem and calls his home and his throne. So it's it's a very evocative and dense picture of this city that looks like a garden. So God had something he made and something fallen. Humanity made, and it's redeemed and becomes the ultimate expression of what? God and humanity. What beauty
can be made. So I would put stick games somewhere in that trajectory so that we are supposed to make, and we're supposed to make in such a way that it increases the flourishing of the garden, brings, draws the flourishing of the garden into time and space now. And games games are games are in there somewhere. So that's that's I remember I said framework. So this is an idea I've plopped into your heads and now you can think about, um, okay what is does this game do
this or does this. If your game designer here does this idea have for a game? How does how does that function? Uh, me as a as an image bearer of God called to bring order and flourishing to creation. Number two games as expressions of dominion. So here's a Old Testament question. What is the first temple? What is the first temple? Think about it for a second. This is audience participation. I have an idea in mind, but it's no shame if you don't say it.
Like first God's first temple or like Tower of Babel. Okay. Garden of Eden.
Say that again.
The Ark.
The Ark of the covenant. The Garden of Eden. It's harder to go far, too far back behind the Garden of Eden. What makes you say that?
Well.
I'd say that's an unconventional answer. Probably.
Yeah, well.
I heard this lecture once where they were talking about how the story of Genesis or the story of creation mirrors the building of a temple. And then the final thing you put in a temple is the image of the god. And the final thing that's put in creation is human beings in the image of God.
That was the answer I was looking for. The Garden of.
Eden.
The Garden of Eden? Yes. The Garden of Eden. Yeah. Most. The first official temple. Stone temple is the temple, which of course is preceded by the tabernacle during the wandering years. But farther back, if you look at the way the garden in Eden is described, it looks the tabernacle looks like it. And then the temple looks like it. It's got three tiers. It's got progressive holiness. As you extend away from the tree of life, the image of God
is in it. And then you get to the moment in the history of the Old Testament when the actual temple is being built, like the stone temple, and it's got jungle carvings all over it. And so it's got all these things that a people who have been shaped culturally by the stories of Genesis will recognize as, oh, this is this is Eden. It was supposed to be like coming back into Eden. Why did I start there?
So in Genesis, God says, God gives them what some would call the creation mandate, be fruitful and multiply and spread the peace that I've given you throughout all of creation. And like I said, that that isn't how it works. But that was the idea that the thing that's happening here will spread throughout, throughout all of creation, in increasing circles. Um, so the, the idea of having dominion. So this I'm talking about games as expressions of dominion, having dominion be
fruitful and multiply, have dominion over creation. That doesn't mean have babies and dig mines like exercising domination. But it's more along the lines, as I've come to think of it, as like the the Dominion that a gardener has over a garden, that I'm using my agency and the ability to cause things to happen to, to order and structure this little piece of the kingdom in such a way that it flourishes as a good gardener. Um, and that
is always, in a sense, the call of humanity. Even today, uh, we don't live in a time of history where part of worshiping God is going to a temple in Jerusalem. However, the the trajectory of what God's image bearers are supposed to take part in around them is still the same. So it's this increasing flourishing and ordering and promotion of
the good that God gave the world in your place. Um, the mechanics of redemption are always to move outward from God's people, establishing order from chaos, pushing back the effects of the fall to to one degree or another. Never completely, but pushing back the effects of the fall. Living in a new way in which different norms, special rules obtain to create sacred spaces hedged in and hallowed, uh, that
are always expanding outward. So I'm lining what I'm saying here about the call of God with what I was saying about what a game is. So to create this circle, this magic circle. And when you step inside, different rules obtain in some ways that's a that's a game designer's take on the kingdom of God. So that when I come here, when I come to this place or around this person, I'm entering, I'm passing through the barrier of a magic circle where this this might happen out there,
but it doesn't happen in here. So this is a new kingdom in which special rules obtain. And the call of the game maker and of the game player is to is to do in miniature what the call of humanity is to do on the macro scale and what God does, taking the stuff of creation and forming it in such a way that the a circle is created in which people enter and experience what life would be like under the Lordship of Christ to one degree or another. What is what is the Lordship of Christ? What does
it mean to be Christ honoring? Uh, that's that's again, a whole different discussion. This is a framework. Can it does it need to have a Bible verse? Can is it permitted to have a Bible verse? I don't know. Depends on the game. Okay, games can make us more human. So we've talked about games as created things. God made this in a sense, or made the potentiality for it to exist. Expressions of dominion. How we games fit into our work. What does it mean to be human? And
can games make us more human? Going back to my definition in the beginning, that a Christian game is something that makes us more human in a reality that is more real. What does it mean to be human in Genesis? You get in the beginning of Genesis, you get a complicated picture, and there's not a propositional definition of what it means to be human, but it is a dense, poetic. Truth ball. And you can look at that and be shaped by it. And a picture of what it means
to be human emerges. So there are some this is going to be an audience participation again, According to Genesis one and two. And if you are not familiar with the Bible, or even not a Christian in this room, I'm sorry. I am not slowing down more. I'm kind of digging from a seminary paper and trying to apply it in a way that's understandable. But if I'm saying the Temple and Eden and all that stuff and it's just like, what the heck is that? I apologize. Please
talk to me afterward. I can go over anything you want. Um, but in Genesis, for those of you who are familiar with the first two chapters, you get a picture. What is it like? What is it like to be human in Genesis one and two? I'm going to start some answers and then turn it over to you. They are social. It's not good for man to be alone. Adam was not always alone. What else?
There's an agency and authority in, like, naming the animals. Awesome.
Yes. God invites Adam to name the animals. God brings the animals to them to see what they are named. Adam gives them a name and then that is what they are named. It's like almost painfully detailing. This is real. This this Adam is causing things to happen. So there's a there's a work dimension. Um, he's not sunbathing all the time.
There's some order.
Order? Yes, it's very ordered. Yeah. The picture there is. They are. They're not inhabiting chaos. They're inhabiting a garden. There's rules. There's. There's things that they can get to satisfy their needs. Yeah, it's an ordered place. What else?
People who enjoy things.
Enjoy things. Where are you getting that?
Um. Well, because.
God.
Gave them, um, the fruit of any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He said, look, you can have all of this, And I guess the implication is that there wouldn't be this wide variety if it wasn't there to be enjoyed.
Um, and they're beautiful.
And.
They're and they're.
Beautiful.
They're beautiful and presumably delicious. Yeah. And God pronounces the things he makes good. Yes. There's that word Tov. That is a deep and rich goodness. What else?
There's boundaries.
Boundaries? Yeah. Do this. Don't do that. Mhm.
So you.
Can get kicked.
Out of.
It. Yes. There are boundaries and there they end up being exiled and they don't get to come back.
Consequences for.
Breaking.
Boundaries.
Yeah. Part of being human means to exist in a moral dimension.
So living. I mean, uh, what comes to mind is the idea that it wasn't meant for them to just be there, and then it just exists as it is for all eternity. It was meant for something to happen. There were raw materials, and they were to contribute, and something was to come out of it.
I think so, yeah. That's that. That needle is not threaded so explicitly in the narrative, but I think that's what the rivers mean. Actually, the rivers that go down into these other kingdoms, the Piece of Eden was supposed to spread, spread there. And instead the fall happens and the disaster spreads there. And those four places correspond to the four big enemies of the Old Testament Assyria, Egypt, Canaan, Babylon. Yes, but that's not what was supposed to happen.
Presumably the wilderness, which is like the first chapter of Genesis, is all about separation, separating the waters above from the waters below, the land from the sea. And then you get to the garden and it's like, continue that. You've got a garden here, which is like a very like you've got your separate plants garden now. It's not a big mess. This is my garden. And, uh, it's not the wilderness, right? So it's the rest of the world
is presumably wilderness. Then you've got a mission now to take that further than Eden.
Yeah. In Genesis one, the the opening scene. The curtain rises on a chaotic ocean, a sea where nothing is distinguished from anything else. And that's tapping back into the the ancient Mesopotamian mind. I would argue, and then God separates the water and causes the land to rise, and then does things to the land. So he's pushing back the chaos and creating an ordered space. And then he plants trees and people there.
I think also, I'm sorry that maybe it's implicit, but maybe I think it's worth mentioning that, uh, obviously God was there and, uh, and that he enjoyed it himself. The design of it, uh, which was collaborative and, um, but that he was central and that it all declared his glory.
Yeah. God was there. Um hmm. So there was a what we might call a spiritual dimension. Uh, but back then, it doesn't seem that the spiritual. It's easy for us to think about, like natural, supernatural, physical, spiritual, then those things seem to be much more closely entwined. You have God walking with his creations in the cool of the day.
You have this other spiritual being, the serpent, coming in, and they talk and they, you know, it seems to be this free exchange which is different than what happens after the fall. The the two realms are separated. Okay. Last thing, two last two things.
It may have already been mentioned or part of something else, but I think part of the order is that there's also communication. So it's not just order of where like spatially speaking, but like going back to the three, there's a social order of how communication goes between God and
his creation. And even in Genesis two and the making of Eve, the story seems to imply this sort of unfolding of truth through communication and finding out what is the true and better thing through Adam naming all the animals. And then there's yeah.
Yeah, there's language, communication, a sequence of events, there's development, The ancient Greco-Roman mind just thought of eternity as static. And then in comes the Hebrew mind, which is we are going somewhere. History is array. Okay last comment.
I really enjoyed the contrast between the two and the perspectives on what makes a story. So Genesis one is a very tidy story. It has a beginning, it has an end, it has progression throughout. And Genesis two jumps right into there's people. We don't know where they came from. They're here. And there's not really an end per se, because it's sort of like it's a mess. Hope it works out.
Um, and then you get the rest of the Bible.
Yeah. And it's, it's a really good perspective on like, even the if somebody views it as a complete set to somebody else, it's a story of chaos.
Yeah. What is the relationship between Genesis one and two? I think part of that answer is the Hebrew poetics and the way repetition plays and Hebrew poetics. So they get to make these contrasting stories, which are very different, as you're pointing out. But they they form like two sides of an inkblot. They're parallel and similar. Okay. Let's
thank you for participating. Uh, I have a list of 11 things which don't exhaust the the answer to the question, what does it mean to be human but social, relational, irrational. They can use their minds. They're embodied. They're not spirits floating around. They have a physical place to live. Spiritual, moral. It can cause things to happen. They're limited and they're dependent. They have needs. And those needs need to get satisfied.
They are. They build, they work. They create language and temporal. So they exist in time. They do not exist outside of time. They experience duration and sequence. Some things happen before other things. Well, that was fun. Hopefully that was fun. Let's get back to games. Um, Genesis one, two and three give a very rich, robust what what the seminarians would call anthropology. What does it mean to be a human?
This is it. Why? Why is everything so good, inescapably good and rich and abundant and broken and marred and fallen? Genesis one, two and three offer a story about that, and that's a story we can use to make sense of the world, however, so that that's a snapshot of what it means to be human. I would argue that in in this side of the worlds, both goodness and brokenness, we experience our humanness as something that ebbs and flows so it can dwindle. We can be dehumanized. It can
grow and become richer and stronger and more robust. And that happens in each of those Characteristics differently. So you can have a work, a job that you go to every day and you just sit in a cubicle and experience the the humanization of the body that modernity is good to good at making. And your mind is completely engaged as you click around on your computer and work in the digital world. So both of those things happen
at the same time. So there's kind of a dehumanization and a, um, and a moment when your rationality is being very engaged. So it's, it's it's a complicated picture. What does all this have to do with games? Games can do the same thing. They can dehumanize you and rehumanize you. I used to play a game called Zombies Run. Has anyone played zombies run?
I think so.
You should check it out because it is a lot of fun. It's a running, it's an exergame. It's a running app, and you pop your earbuds in and start the game, and it selects your playlist and you listen to a song in between songs. Zombies chase you and there's a whole narrative. It's pretty good. It's pretty good writing. It's a good story. And you can turn on zombie sprint mode. Yeah, download it right now. There's no shame
in the game. If you click Zombie Sprint mode on when those zombies come, you got to get moving and the sound of the growling gets louder if you're not running fast enough. I did it, I did it my first time and injured myself because it was so motivating. So it is impossible to forget that you have a body when you are playing zombies. Run! And for me, I've never been much of an outdoor exercise guy. This I needed a game to get me out moving my body. My wife has this picture of me hunched over a
computer and it's become this. Like I'm just curled up on the floor, hunched over a computer. The picture of modern man. And that if I apply no effort to my life, that is who I become. Zombies run was good for me. It humanized me in a way. Um, let's see another example. The University of Chicago Scavenger Hunt has a very famous, uh, in game design circles scavenger
hunt yearly. And people come from all over the place and try to get as many of these crazy goals knocked out during a fixed period of time as they can. And the winning team is the one that gets the most points by finding or doing things. And some of them are easy to do and find. Some of them are like ride an elephant through campus. Get a picture of yourself at the North Pole. Create a nuclear reaction.
And so teams do them and they get points. So it's this intense exercising of both the social dimension of what it means to be human, and the rational dimension. People sit around a dorm room, figure out how can we make a nuclear reaction. And that one was done. Interesting and terrifyingly enough.
Is everyone okay after that?
Yeah. Chicago remains so. Games. Games can rehumanize and dehumanize us. I'll check my schedule here. Since this is Hutch, let's talk about what Tolkien might have to say about this question. The next point is games are not an escape from the real, or they don't have to be, but they can be an intensification of the real. Tolkien wrote an essay called On Fairy-stories, and he lays out a very helpful concept that gives us a mirror, an image into a glance, into how he thought about his own fantasy.
And he introduced the primary world and the secondary world. So the primary world is our world. The secondary world is Lord of the rings, which has a has a lot of overlap to our world, uh, but is clearly not the same world. And so Tolkien was a fantasist in the sense that he promoted escape into the secondary world. And a lot of people have found solace there that they get to bring back into the primary world. So this fantasy and games can get a bad rap here
if they are painted as only an escape. And often fantasy and games can be that I'm just unplugging from reality and reading Lord of the rings again, or playing World of Warcraft. Um, but the criticism here is that we we need to live in a real world, and the primary world is not it yet is that distinction. Are you tracking with that distinction? So we need to live in reality, the primary world that we all know, in which we live and move and have our being,
is not it? Because it is. It is. Our reality is already distorted. The primary world is distorted. So Tolkien's argument is we can actually go into the secondary world and imagine a different way of living. And when you're talking about games, you can actually experience a different way of living that is untwisted and and from which the fall has been pushed back in a way that the primary world is distorted, and then you can experience that change inside of it and bring something back into the
primary world. Here's a C.S. Lewis quote. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness that has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. So he's saying that we need benevolent distortions of reality because we actually don't live in reality yet.
We live in a, we live in a a broken image and games or or fantasy in this example can restore the image in a way that is that you can bring back. So I've got a couple examples there. I'm going to skip them for the sake of time. I think I've made my point there. The paradox. There's a paradox of entering the secondary world of the game can become a deeper entry into actual reality that heals and fixes and accompanies you back to the primary world.
Next point games as healing masks. There's a phrase I came across somewhere beta living. So games can be a kind of beta living where you get to try something out, you get to experience something. A friend of mine. It's a game designer, and he worked in Chicago with kids that didn't have a good place to go after school. So they'd come to Nick's classroom and he would try to entertain them and give them something better than what they'd get with that time if they were just let loose.
So Nick was a game designer, so he made a game, and it was a role playing game like Dungeons and Dragons. But this was a the theme was basically the movie alien. So the kid, there was five kids in his class and he was like trying to get them involved in this kind of nerdy thing. And four of them were really excited. So they all pretended to be astronauts in the spaceship in which an alien was loose. It's basically, uh, the myth of myth of the Minotaur. So there's a monster.
You are in a labyrinth. How are you going to survive that? So Nick designed a game in which all that was turned into game mechanics. But one of the kids just he was too cool for school, did not like it, but he had to be there. So he he would just sit in the corner and heckle them and do his best to use all the pressures of that. Young children have to break down the experience that they were having. And so Nick started to realize that something meta,
there's a meta thing happening right here. So here are four students trapped in a room. One of them is trying to destroy the good thing that is happening. And so he invited the kid in the corner who is trying to break it all down to be the alien. And he loved it. And finally he the game kind of reached out and grabbed him and say, if this is how you want to play, we've got a place for you. So it there are all these, you can
kind of step back and see these five kids. There are obviously lots of boundaries and barriers between them that four of them could overcome, and one of them could not. He, his humanity and the relationship between the five children was being was distorted. So the game reached out and made a place for him. And inside that he could kind of put on. This is the game as a as
a healing mask. You put on the mask of the game, which in this example looked like an alien, and he played with the other four kids and then they they experienced, much to their surprise, a relationship started to develop and the game was over and everybody took off their mask
and they were friends. So there's this this sense in which games can, when you enter the magic circle in which different rules apply, you, you, you leave a bit of something you're able to you can you leave something outside the game and then move into the magic circle and certain if a game has been designed? Well, if the conditions are right, you can experience something inside that is that is very humanizing. So there's another story. I said in the beginning that I used to be a
lab worker. And again, that's just a it's a Christian residential study centre. And this one was in England. And there's lots of tea. Tea at 11 and 430. So everything stops for half an hour. We have tea. And a volleyball is a feature of tea time. So I was playing volleyball once and had this ridiculously overwrought fall. It was a fall that just kept happening somehow. And I was kind of going back, looking up lots of momentum, and then fell backwards and kept on falling. And 30
people saw it happen. So that was that was a it was happening inside a game. I put on the mask of I'm now volleyball player. And in the, in the something happened to me inside the game, which destroyed all this carefully crafted dignity that I try to conduct myself with outside of the game. And I was totally humiliated. And I was just getting, you know, everybody was so nice about it. They were like, ah, bad luck. Good try. It was not bad luck. It was not a good try.
I was just bad. My my inner badness at volleyball was exposed and put on display. But we're all just playing. We were all wearing the mask of volleyball and and that's what that's what volleyball does to you. Some people who came through were really good at it. Some people were really not good at it, but it was the rules of that game. That particular instance of volleyball are very safe. So everybody just embarrasses themselves and and it's okay.
And I point that out under the heading of games as healing masks because healing healing is something you can read a book, a self-help book, and try to overcome your problems. But healing is most potent when it's something that is experienced. So games can facilitate the experience of healing. And in reality, when I fell, I was actually embarrassed. There was a in the primary world, I was embarrassed. My face. My face turned red. But when I stood
up and everybody was saying, you know, good try. Bad luck clapping, laughing, I was still safe. So because the game was happening, I was both embarrassed and still safe. And that's that's a healing experience. So if you do that enough something, you can take something back to the primary world. All right. Last do we want to do the. I'm going to zoom through this last one so we
can have time for discussion. Games as mirrors. Many people won't play games because just as they intensify aspects of good aspects of reality and what it means to be human. They also can intensify bad aspects of what it means to be human and reality. So we've all got experiences about competitiveness turned sour, or anger or loss of perspective or cheating. I want to win so bad I'm going
to cheat to win this game. Now gloating in victory or the the the real sting of loss when you lose this, you know, made up contest, you're just in the magic circle. Nothing here really is real in that sense. But it it does hurt or something does go wrong. Boasting and people can brag about their performance in games. Isolation games can very much intensify isolation that we can labor under. So a dehumanizing aspect of our relational, the
relational dimension of what it means to be human. Put in the terms of the rest of the lecture isolation. I haven't talked much about video games Because though though I love them, that is a very different lecture. Um, I think they're much more of a mixed bag when you, when you play a video game more likely to be addicting, more likely to be isolating, hardcore gamers will have lots of examples to shout me down here, but yet I'm
still right. Uh, cultural idols games can intensify our cultural idols. Think of the gladiatorial games. There was this idol. We enough greco-romans could be gathered to one place to see people hurt each other. Um. Think about the exaltation of star athletes in our in our culture. We are already salivating for the things, uh, that every culture wants things inappropriately and that culture's games offer them those things in a predictable and controlled manner. Um, the idols of the heart. Uh,
There's ramifications for people's identity when games go wrong. I am my victory or I am my loss addiction. As someone said, people have played more World of Warcraft than the amount of time that humans have been alive on this Earth. If you log man hours, 6,000,000 hours. And this. I found that stat a couple years ago. I'm sure it's much more people have let their children starve because they wanted to play World of Warcraft. That's that has happened. Uh,
so there's. Yeah, there's all kinds of reasons not to play games. Um, that that is not this lecture, but I wanted to just respond to that idea that, well, when I play games, everything goes wrong. I get angry. Uh, my family has a shouting, a shouting match. What? What is good about that? How can that be turned around into a good thing? A friend and I recently were talking about the movie Cinderella man, Russell Crowe. He's a
boxer in the in the depression. And his wife at one point in the movie, his wife saying like, why do you do this? You know, we've got you know, we have so much struggle. We're in the middle of the depression. Why are you fighting? And he says, at least in the ring, I can see what I'm fighting against. Whereas he goes home and everybody is suffering under the depression.
Games can be like that. They can take they can take a thing, and then they can very clearly and painfully expose to you something that is broken about yourself or about reality or about the people who you love. And that is that's a reason many people have to step away from playing games. I know lots of people that just say, I don't like games because I can't handle what happens, but I would want to I would want to accept that and gently push a bit on that.
If you have a problem with anger, it's expressing itself in your life, whether you know it or not. If you play a game and you can't, you're not happy with the angry person you become. That's not. There are some ways you can consider that experience that cast it in the light of an achievement. Something has been achieved here, I have this, I have entered this experience and it has shown me something true about myself. Some learning that I have to do or something about something my community
can't handle. We can't handle this, the conflict that we're experiencing here. So that's just my my apology for even though even though games can intensify parts of the fault, you, at least when you play a game, you can you can see who you're fighting. Fighting against. They make things that are difficult to see. Very visible, painfully visible. That's all I have to say. Let's have some Q&;A. What
are you thinking about? I've offered a framework and applied it to some games, but there's lots more we could say.
I would be curious to hear maybe.
The.
Positive note one.
But I'm actually more curious about negative one. What did you consider and say a board game? Would you be to be a.
Dehumanizing game.
Mechanic? De-humanizing game.
Design?
We talked. So the question is what? What is a I had a lot of examples of rehumanizing games. What is a dehumanizing game that we were talking about, Cards Against Humanity. I think it's dehumanizing. I think it takes these things, which should be there's an inherent dignity to the human person, and that doesn't mean we can't have fun and laugh about things. And actually, that's in my
closest relationships. If I can achieve a point where I can laugh about my quirks and foibles with my friends and it's still safe, that's a that's a good thing. That's a that's a healthy place. It can be Cards Against Humanity. I think it abuses the power of the magic circle in such a way that we. Were laughing, but it's not safe. I've played it with African American friends, and I've been forced to try to make jokes about
their blackness, and that's really uncomfortable. And I thought when that happened, the last time I played, I thought, I just can't I just can't play this. I don't know how this is going to land with you. You know, this is not happening in the context of relationship. This is this is something I, I felt that I would use. Use the magic circle to perpetrate something against my friends and that the game was forcing that. And I didn't want to do that. That's an example that comes to mind.
I'd have to think more about that question. I suppose the example of video games that I hinted at a little bit more. I have spent so many hundreds of hours playing video games Names and they are so fun and I probably could have done better things with my college experience. That being said, a lot of my friendships in college were built around video games. So it's it's complicated. I hopefully one of the things that I'm conveying is this framework lets you say yes to these things and
no to those things, and understand why this is. Yes, and this is a no. Do you want to push back on that at all?
No, no, I actually I was going to give an example that I was thinking of for board games, um, like in college, at one point we played Settlers of Catan. It was a big thing. It was a lot of fun.
And at a certain point, though, and this is kind of I don't know if this is necessarily a thing of a game design or more like you were talking about exposing the heart, but there is two friends who decided that I was good at the game, which I was so-so, but whatever they decided was good against gaming and would gang up on me from the very start before I had any advantage. And so I. this happened twice games and in the second game I decided to make.
There's four people. The other person thus ruining both of those other two games as they decided to ruin mine. And we didn't play another game until there was a Catan. And so I think it's interesting to me what you brought up. Like, I don't know if that's a I've heard similar experiences of other people playing this game because
of the trading. I don't know if that's like a feature of it that exposes these hard things, or if the mechanics of the game being so cutthroat mean that you just kind of naturally gang up on people because the game mechanics, I don't know, I was just trying to puzzle that one through.
I do that strategy all the time. Love it. That that person's good. Let's stop him. Yeah. Yes, but it can be very frustrating. Yeah. I think that's an example of how the magic circle is a porous boundary. It's not. It's not an iron curtain. You bring who you are into the game and you bring dynamics that were in play before the game started. Into the game as well.
I was going to say someone. Somebody did that to me inside and it was like my wife. It was all my family. And like, I'm the youngest and it's my brothers and I'm going to beat them, right? So I beat them. I was about to win and my wife was like, haha! And made my drew were married yet made my sister in law win, who hates playing games with us. And I was so mad. And then I was like, oh crap like that convicted me because I was totally all about beating my brother. That's the
only reason. Like I was not bringing a good thing into the game. It's a really good point.
Yeah.
As I do have a question, but I want to a Cards Against Humanity report. Um, so the times we played it, it's been the exact opposite experience to where. So I'm a pastor of a church. A bunch of people in our church play it, and our church is made up of people who aren't Christians. Like, they're they're new and they're a this is awesome. Like, this pastor isn't horrible, but you get to things where you go, I won't, I can't say this, I won't say it.
And then it opened up beautiful conversation like, oh, you wouldn't say that. This is wrong, man. And like, oh, cool. Like, let's talk about that. Uh, so I guess that breaks the rule of the game, but it is fun. And you get to see like, oh, that's a line for you. Oh, but this isn't a line for me. But this one's a line for you. It was really interesting to see what people's lines were, where, you know, race is pretty
much everyone's line. But there's some other things like, oh, I'm interested that you would joke about that, but you wouldn't joke about this one. So with that said, isn't it all based on is it relative to perspective and audience and people playing?
Yeah. I wouldn't want to make a blanket condemnation of Cards Against Humanity. It's a great game. Uh.
Once you play it once, it's boring.
Yeah, I suppose so.
Only thing that sucks about the game is.
I've made this joke before. Yeah, yeah. No, it it it was only dehumanizing. It would not have been items one through five on Amazon's toys and games for so long, people. People are having fun and I'm sure there's so many thousands of stories just like that. One of good and beneficial conversations that have come about as a result of
dealing with these unspeakable things. And I think knowing the creators of that game, that is one of the things that they think that is a gift that has been built into the game, that there's all these things we can't talk about unless you play this game and you will talk about them, which is not bad. That can be quite good. It isn't automatically good, but it certainly can be. Sorry, you're next after that.
Um, so I was curious to hear your thoughts about as I was thinking through, it was just really great thoughts. So thank you. I love the the organization of kind
of logic behind all these different things. So I'm thinking about a lot of the Genesis one through three focus as sort of this, because I'm starting to see that if I can summarize the argument, it's less of what is a Christian gain, but okay, the existence of an idea of a game like this magic circle is inherently Christian because it goes back to the Christian God and
how the world came to be, and this kind of thing. So, um, what's interesting to me to press into, though, is that it seems like you have, uh, Genesis two, like development, like there's a I wouldn't even necessarily say a problem because I'll use that as another word. But like, you know, Adam's looking for a helpmate, and you see the story of how that develops. Right? But he's not exiled for not being able to find that helpmate on his own.
God helps him. Genesis three there's a problem, and the wrong solution is chosen, as it were, in this consequences. But then even beyond that, to a certain degree, you get to enable there's competition and there's additional sort of boundary and consequences that come from that. So development, problem solving, competition. How do you see those things as it relates to like what makes a game have sort of a Christian value? Because it seems like there's a way to have all
those three things in a Christian game. But it seems like as it develops in the first chapters of Genesis, there's kind of an increasing sinfulness. Yeah, but I'm just wondering what you think about that.
Yeah. I don't fully understand your question. So I'm going to say something and you can tell me if I am headed in the right direction.
Good at asking questions that don't make sense.
Aren't we all? Um, so you're asking, like given given how the fall can express itself in many different ways, like competition. You have Cain and Abel, murderous competition. What? What gives a game Christian value or redemptive value, if it also consists of things that are ways that the fall can express themselves, like competition? Yeah.
I think Yeah, maybe that's a better way to put it, is because I don't think either of us would say competition is inherently sinful and bad for a lot. Anything that has to do with that. Otherwise, we wouldn't be talking about games.
Otherwise the Olympics wouldn't be sinful, right?
So, but I do see a relationship between development all the way to competition. So how do you where do you wrestle along that spectrum when it comes to games? How they deal with that, that tension of, you know, I'm not I don't think playing a game where someone's life should be ended based on how they do.
Squid.
Game development, right? That's not a great.
Yeah, we can say no one should do Squid Game.
There you go. Yeah, there we go. So yeah, that's that's what I'm asking. Help us see maybe that spectrum and where what are some, like, waypoints along the way that might show us. Oh, we might be getting too far into this game. It's really just about competition. And that's not a very good thing to. Well, maybe it's just development and there's no problem solving. So just because Noah's Ark, isn't it? But there's no consequences for what I do. This is just a bad game. Does that make.
Sense? I think so. I think getting into this question, I structured the framework as I did so that it would have a goal that what is a Christian game? It is a game that makes us more human in a reality that's more real. And both of those God is a hidden player in how we define those things. So I think it was Solzhenitsyn that said that the line between good and evil doesn't run through, you know, your good and your bad, but actually straight through the
middle of everything. So there can be good competitiveness and evil competitiveness. So what I'm trying to do here is offer a framework that we can assess a game or a feature of a game, or a moment that you're having inside a game with a more complex chart, a more complex path to that goal of being more human. Obviously, Cain and Abel, what Cain did to Abel was very dehumanizing. It was competitive. and he murdered his brother. That's dehumanizing. And.
And he accepted terms of unreality and and and then made those terms real so that in, in this framework that would say we'd be able to say, no, that's bad. But competitiveness itself remains untainted by that because there is a good competitiveness. I've said that, and I'm still not sure I've answered your question. You're using the word development. We can leave it there or you can push back.
Well, I feel like I'm taking up a lot of time. I think I think what I'm trying to maybe figure out, and you're helping me nail down into the question is, um, is where what is the genesis of healthy competition? Because I think it's there, but I'm trying to find it as I work through development, problem solving, competition, if that makes sense. I'm trying to find it in, in in these frameworks that you've drawn. Drawn out here, I think
it's there. I just I'm, I'm struggling to have to think through that.
Yeah. Well we can you can leave. It is a really long conference, so we can just keep talking. We've got a couple days left.
That's right.
Okay. I'm gonna go over here.
Yes.
Um.
I have a question about video games, so I wanted to first acknowledge their mixed bag. I totally get that. Um, but I was curious if you had any examples of where a video game that you've seen has made, uh, something more human and a reality that isn't the reality where it's been humanizing either for you or for, you know, it could be a personal thing. It could be a game that is dehumanizing to other people. But do you expect.
But as long as I win, I'm feeling good. Video games. Well, again, I guess the, um, what it means to be human is is very complicated and diverse, and video games can humanize just using the terms that I've set out, humanize one aspect and dehumanize another aspect. Like when you're talking and this is maybe dating myself, but missed the game. Missed comes to mind. Puzzle. Puzzle solving. I loved it. Not a surprise given what I would go on later to do. And even that the game we're playing at
the conference, solving puzzles, that is. It's so good for your brain and it's so fun and really hard ones that take, you know, hundreds of people to solve. I think they're so good for being human. Um, video games are so rough on many other aspects of humanity. Let me think. Smartphones have given us have blurred the question a bit, because you don't have to sit in front
of a TV with a controller anymore. You can go out and go for a run and listen to zombies try to chase you, or you can play Pokemon Go with lots of other people, and the game makes you go to certain places and meet the people and play with them. And it happens all overlaid on the fabric of a neighborhood, and you find the game strengthens something. The neighborhood needs to be strong. So that's a maybe that's an example.
Andy, can I offer something to that question?
Yeah.
Um, I play a lot of weird indie video games. Um, and I have found that there's a lot of indie games can offer humanizing experiences, um, especially when they have the puzzle solving. There's games like, um, braid is the the classic in the beautiful and super hard. Yes. It's beautiful. Yeah. Um, braid or Fez. Um, but games that, um, that have these,
these that have puzzle solving and encourage, encouraged. You know, he felt this in mind, but also have good things to say, not necessarily in a didactic way, but you walk away and you're thinking about it and thinking about, okay, so this might take away from this game is making me think through what it means to be more human in this reality. Um, especially games that are beautiful aesthetically as well, like games that are, again, Braid or Fez,
games that are artistic or creative encourage you to create. Yeah. Um, within their particular magic circle. Um, I would throw that out as examples of video games that humanize. Yeah.
Or that dragon cancer. If you've come across that game, a, uh, a father made a game conveying the experience of experiencing his one year old son die of cancer. So in in the game, he kind of took that experience and expressed it in a video game in a way that's beautiful, but also very difficult.
I have a few perspectives to add to that too. That's okay. And then I also have a question for you.
Yeah. So I am involved in a group called Love by Nerd. And like one of their big things is like community building. Like they have like they're building up community thing, things like Destiny and Halo and like, among us. There was a group that was getting together regularly for that. Um,
you know, I one of the. So there, you know, or like, you can play you know, you're listing off indie games and puzzle solving, but there's a lot of things where it's like, okay, you can look at some of the like Triple-A games like Mass Effect and like thinking through all the choices. And, you know, there's a lot of complex moral decisions that you're making through the storytelling that in some ways I think are, you know, it's similar to like my comparison is I don't watch TV.
I play video games, you know? So, um, one thing, like one framework that I'm like, I literally heard this a month ago, so I'm still thinking about it. It's still very fresh in my mind. Um, but in for like in some in a field unrelated to recovery, someone was talking or unrelated to gaming, um, about recovery, someone was talking about the difference between self-care and coping. Self-care tends to be life giving actually helps you build connection
with people, helps you come back feeling refreshed. Coping tends to be much more of a self selfish, inward, that sort of thing. And so I think that's probably for video games. Honestly, any single video game can be great for one person and terribly addictive for a different person. Like I think like probably 85% of video games fall within, like, you know, anyone, you know, it's going to be like that. And so it's really is this giving you life? Is
this helping you be prepared for interactions with people. You know that you interact like people that you actually see. Not that. Or are you like, are you the college student who's failing because you're spending all of your time in World of Warcraft? You know, I think that's probably the differentiator. Um, so again, self care versus coping is something that I tend to, you know, I'm wrestling with. Okay. How much am I falling into more of the coping side with my own video game habits. Um, so I
think those were my perspectives on that. Um, or are you.
Or are you, like, for me, if I can interrupt you for a second? Lisa. Um. It's okay. We know each other, but, um, like or, you know, to your own point. Um, are you forming relationships with people in World of Warcraft that have a good influence on your life and make you a better person and therefore, you know, humanizing you? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. I mean, so it's it's about finding the balance because I'm very much an online community. It's definitely still community, but you can't do it for like, you can't lose your job over that sort of thing. Um, so the do.
You have a question? And then there was one other question here. And we're going to move toward wrapping up, because it's hot in this room and we're there's more to be had.
Um, the question that I had was, um, how like not being familiar with the games that you've actually designed. Like, can you kind of talk through, like how some of this has ended, like this framework has influenced your own game design?
Sure. Um, yeah. So how how has this framework influenced my own game design? Um, I. So, like I said, I had a game business in Chicago, and people would, companies would hire me to make something of their Christmas party or their, you know, social team building outing thing. Uh, so I was limited by that. All the games that I've made came out of that and then out of experiences at La Brea. So just people, I had people in rooms instead of on screens or on on the internet.
So yeah, all of this came in. It was all in play when I was making games for them. So thinking about can I is it okay as a Christian? Can I make people lie to each other? Is that okay? How do I think about that? So the magic circle helps with that, that actually in the game the symbols change. And so we can lie to each other and we're still safe. We can step out and tell one another the truth. And then having an idea of what it
means to be a human. Because like I said earlier, I had a real power over people I could make. I could humiliate people, make them humiliate each other. So there was some guardrails there about, oh, this is what it means to be human. And sadly, the companies that paid me the most to take control of their vent were also companies that paid a lot to have open
bars at their event. So I would know, like, okay, these people are going to be drunk and I'm going to that's the raw material I have to work with and I can how do I create, keep them safe and also not encourage them to do things that they would not that they will be uncomfortable with later on. So yeah, it was all it was in the background, um,
in the design process, mostly around the boundaries. And then at the end of the day, as a criteria for whether or not how I feel about the game that I've made for people and the experience that they've had, even if they're upset at me or laughing, laughing with their friends and talking about how how great a time they had. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Keeping people
safe was that was a big part of it. My thesis was how to make safe, pervasive games from a Christian perspective because people go crazy when they play games. I was thinking about, so I was hiding all those puzzles at this conference, and it brought me back to my Chicago days because I, I experienced firsthand how intense people can get, and I didn't. All those puzzles, the hiding places are so lame because I didn't want you to realize, oh, they're hidden in things and then take
everything apart because some of you would do that. So I just taped them to the wall. So thinking through how what are people like and, and how powerful is a game and what are they like in, in the games and trying to keep them safe. Okay. What you had one and then we're going to be done.
Uh, I was in the conversation ebbed and flowed, and I didn't pay attention to all the details. So I'm sorry if this is already said. Um, one of the very, very positive things that we have experienced with online gameplay is the real humanizing of and validation of people that don't always get it in real life. Mhm. Um, and because it doesn't have to be co-located, it can happen in an exceptionally safe way, um, where that person doesn't necessarily need to see us or interact with us the
next day. So if they work out something online that they're embarrassed about, they know that we're still there for them. Days later, when they're ready to come back.
Yeah. I yeah, all that is fair game. Uh, video games can be very humanizing. And I think some of the things you're, I'm just trying to think through your example on the framework, through the lens of the framework that I've laid out. Um, there is a, a dehumanization that people might labour under in the primary world that they can be free of in the secondary world. And that's actually part of the goodness and beauty of that digital community. Eliot T.S. Eliot said humankind cannot bear very
much reality. Which is such a wonderful thought. And so there is a there is a reduction of reality. It's thinner online in many ways. Even, like if I'm friends with you. But I've never met you. That's a reduction of what friendship is. And in in its most robust form. But sometimes that can be a doorway into a deeper humanization because humankind cannot bear very much reality. Actually, reality being what it is, if we were in the same room,
we probably wouldn't like each other or something. But we met online, and we built something online that we can bring into the same room. Yeah. Oh, that is fair game. I see people moving in the hall, so we're going to draw a dotted line here. Thank you very much everybody.