Programming as a Ministry Tool?

I attend a church with a lot of artists - singer/songwriters, video producers, and actual painters/illustrators. Throughout our Sunday Mornings we often try to find ways to utilize them in some form or fashion during the worship service, so they have a time and place to give back some of their talents to God. However, we also have some technical-minded people: programmers, database analysts, and web designers. It doesn't always seem fair that they don't get to find an outlet for their skills and talents to be used for worship or discipleship.

With this in mind, I'm always trying to help seek alternative ways to get people plugged into the lives of other members of the church. One of the major connect points for me with our college students has been the world of video games and the connectivity of Xbox Live and the PlayStaion Network, where we can play online together and know who's on when. So, I've been struggling with what the next step is... how can we go from shooting aliens together to meaningful, deeper relationship building?

I've found that whenever there is accomplishment together, memories are created. My buddies from college and I still talk about videos we made together, or random stupid stunts we pulled off. So as I was browsing the Internets, I ran across what might be the perfect tool to accomplish something together with others at my church:

Microsoft's XNA Game Studio.

XNA is an easy (well... easier) way to code a game that can actually be played on an XBOX 360 or PC. I experimented with it when it first came out a year or so ago, but today they released version 2.0 so I figured I would give it a second look and let you know about it here.

XNA is not a simple drag-and-drop and create-a-game tool. This is a real coding language (C#) that requires real knowledge and some real time investment. When I looked at it the first time, I poured over the documentation and actually was able to pull together a simple game of moving around the screen and eating some dots after a month or so.

So why am I talking about it here?

Because, if you're a techie like me and have been looking for a way to get involved in the lives of other people at your church, this might be the perfect tool for you. Hit up your young adult group or your youth group and ask if they want to make a game. Check in with your visual artists and your musicians to see if they might want be able to contribute some elements to the game. If you've never coded before, Microsoft has tons of support for you. If you already know how to code in C# at all, there are a plethora of tutorials out there to dive into XNA.

If people can have softball teams at their church, why can't you start a coding team?

And for me, the best parts of it would be the discussions around the concepting of whatever game you develop:

* What would be an entertaining, faith-based game?
* Is the story important? How do we as Christians handle the idea of story?
* If I'm a coder and you're a coder... who does the music? The graphics? Could the body of Christ be reflected in a video game?

So check out XNA Game Studio 2.0 and see if your church can make the next (first?) great faith-based game!

(Aaron Linne)

Comments

[Peter S]

It may also be worth checking out what some of the people have been doing with online games. Most modern consoles can work with web browsers and with the right coding you can do some neat stuff. I think someone even developed an MMO game that can be played on the Wii.

Something that might be worth considering would be WiiWare games. I don't know the cost for getting on-board with WiiWare, but with the Wii selling as quickly as it is right now and penetrating the non-hardcore gamer market it's probably worth checking out.

I'd love to see an allegory like Pilgrim's Progress, but updated for modern generations and with a little more subtlety. I definitely want to avoid some of the games that have been marketed as Christian that knock off FPS games in some way (smite the unbeliever if you can't convert them and all that stuff).

As for creating games, there are some free alternatives that target just the PC which have been used to do some really impressive games. I know that doesn't penetrate the X-Box market, but they can produce some great games with a little less of a learning curve. I don't have a link handy at the moment, but I know there were some great discussions lately around them. The one I've seen the most results from recently was the Adventure Game Studio, but that was primarily for Adventure-type games. In any case, creating graphics that look good and a great story still takes a lot of work.

I like the thought - this would be a great thing to get gamers involved if we could design a game that had a good story, played well, and allowed people to get immersed while hearing about the truth God wants to share with us.

-Pete