Christian and Bible Game Development, Alternate History, Emergence, and Artificial Intelligence.
One of the issues I believe with making Christian and Bible games is the issue of linearity, especially in story. Something in the Bible has to happen in ordered steps (as it is also historical), so a game with a Bible story has to at least reflect roughly that same order.
This goes against what games’ strongest suits are, something that explores alternate possibilities. If there is only one possibility or timeline, better watch the movie (or read the Bible)
Can Bible games explore an actual alternate history? Or would that be akin to blasphemy?
Say, what if Peter betrayed Christ before Judas did, the apostles did all ask if they were the ones who would betray Christ. All forsook Christ and fled in the end, not just Judas (and Peter). Judas was merely the first one. Peter was being sifted for the position by Satan as Jesus said.
And because we are blessed with hindsight of 20/20 vision, we think it was always meant to be Judas, but the Bible never actually says that until Judas actually pulls the plug, so to speak. The name Judas is not prophesied to be the one who betrays Christ, all the (Old Testament) Bible says is that a friend would do it.
Something like that could happen in an open world game. But if the people in the Bible truly had free will back then, then there was a possibility. (As someone said, prophecy is what will happen, free will is who will execute it).
How then can someone make a true non-linear Christian or Bible game? Consider the Conway Game of Life, basic rules are laid down, but from those rules, massive intricate patterns could emerge.
Basic rules for this hypothetical game would be:
- God is always holy
- Men sin because of Adam
- The Bible is completely true (if say, simulating the New Testament, since they only had the OT back then, it would be, the OT is always true).
And from those three rules, alternate history can arise that follow Christian principles. Of course, the issue would be, how would one code that in? Probably hard to do for most games, but with the advent of AI like ChatGPT, and like the first video games of old, this would probably work in an interactive fiction type thing first before simulations.
