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MMORPG.com : General : The Aetherlight Launch Trailer (SPONSORED)
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MMORPG.com : General : The Aetherlight Launch Trailer (SPONSORED)
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Is it any good? Does it fit my game design preferences? Who knows? They don't want to talk about that. So why spend a bunch of money to advertise that you're some generic game?
They seem to be following the old Wisdom Tree model of not even trying to target people who actually play games, but instead, trying to get parents who don't play games to buy it for their kids because it's a Christian (TM) brand game, as opposed to those heathen games like Mario or Tetris.
If you're going to advertise, at least have something to say. The recent Chronicles of Elyria sponsored post had a lot to say about their game that wouldn't be true of many other MMORPGs, for example, and their kickstarter and web site had a lot more.
Wizard 101 tried to make their game kid-friendly, but they also tried to make a good game. And they were willing to tell you a lot of the things they did to try to make the game good. So it can be done.
So apparently Aetherlight has combat of some sort. So do lots of other games. Guild Wars 2, FFXIV, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Elsword, Wakfu, and Atlantica all have combat, but no two of them have combat that are at all similar to each other. How does Aetherlight's combat work? I have no idea, and couldn't find any details either in the video or on their web site.
I'm not taking shots at Christianity. But I don't see any real value in games whose primary justification of why they think you should buy it is explicitly religious (or for that matter, political), and nothing to do with game mechanics. For comparison, Civilization IV quotes from the Bible in numerous places--not all of which have explicit attribution. But if you asked the developer what the game is about, they'd give you a ton of information about game mechanics, not say that you should buy it because it quotes from the Bible several times. For that matter, they try to compare their game to the Chronicles of Narnia, and while C.S. Lewis did put some religious content into those books, he was also trying very much to tell a great story, with the latter as the justification for people to buy and read the books.
Ah well. It's nice to see a Christian gaming company putting some actual thought into a game instead of just filling a generic one with Bible passages and calling it a day. Most of them are about as subtle as the 'Jesus' imagery from the film Man of Steel, and more preachy and judgmental than twelve hours of Jerry Falwell. Those games are a source of embarrassment for myself and other Christians, just like those idiots screaming about hell on street corners, or the big fat ladies who try to tell people that Harry Potter is satanic and blah blah blah...
I wish this game and its developers the best of luck. Hopefully it does well enough to show other developers that a Christian game can deliver a good message through subtlety. After all, there's a lot of interesting material in the Bible which could make for some pretty awesome games in the right hands.
Solomon: Total War, anyone?
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
About 25 years ago, the Internet didn't exist in anything resembling its modern form. Games were almost strictly offline and predominantly for consoles, as computers cost thousands of dollars. You couldn't download games, but would go to brick and mortar stores to buy them. Which stores you'd go to didn't mostly depend on whether the game you wanted was made by Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Sega, or whoever else.
I'm not sure if Nintendo pioneered the modern game console business model, or if they were merely the first to be highly successful at it. Earlier Atari consoles had games for something like $10 each. Nintendo made it so that, in order to make games for their console, you had to buy cartridges from Nintendo for your games. The blank cartridges cost a few dollars to make, but Nintendo sold them for something like $25 each, which is how they made their money. Games at retail would thus cost closer to $50.
Nintendo's consoles would try to check whether a cartridge was a legitimate one from Nintendo, and refuse to work with it if not. If you bought Nintendo's cartridges and played by their rules (which included heavily censoring games), Nintendo would grant you their seal of quality. Nearly all developers of NES and SNES games did so.
There were two oddball developers that took totally different approaches from everyone else, though. One was Wisdom Tree, which made Christan (TM) brand games with names like Bible Adventures. They weren't sold where other games were sold, but instead, in Christan bookstores. Not in Christian bookstore and electronics stores along side other console games, mind you. Wisdom Tree's games would be the only ones for sale in the store.
The other oddball developer was Quattro Games. Their approach was to pack four games onto a single cartridge and sell them on television shopping channels. Their basic pitch was that they offered a better deal, with four games for the price of one. Remember that this was another era, before there were thousands of shovelware games that you could easily download for free. Their target audience didn't necessarily realize that one good game is more valuable than a hundred bad ones.
For both of these developers, the quality of the games was quite bad. This is about what you'd expect, as their sales pitches had nothing to do with the quality of the games. As one more recent blogger put it, the main effect of Wisdom Tree and Quattro on the market was to make it look like Nintendo's Seal of Quality actually meant something about quality, and not just that they paid Nintendo.
So what does this have to do with Aetherlight? Well, if you go to their site, they don't say, this game is fun because of such and such. No, they say, this game is safe for your kids to play because of such and such. We promise that they won't get addicted. (No really, they actually say that.) And the reason it's safe for your kids to play is because they've got some partnership with some Bible group and they're trying to be an allegory that emulates the Chronicles of Narnia.
Now, there is certainly a market for games that are safe for kids to play. Not all parents want their kids playing Grand Theft Auto. Even getting away from the rated M for Mature segment, we live in an online era where young children having unfettered contact with random strangers isn't necessarily the best idea.
But the gaming preferences of 10 year old gamers aren't really that different from those of 40 year old gamers. For the most part, fun games are fun games, regardless of the nominal target audience. Games that basically everyone over the age of 12 hates will probably also be hated by most gamers under the age of 12.
The developers don't even claim that Aetherlight is a fun game for you to play with your kids, and here's why it will be fun for the parents as well as safe for the kids. Rather, the web site is aimed squarely at parents who they assume won't play the game themselves, and trying to convince them that they should buy it for their kids. At that point, the quality of the game is irrelevant to the sales pitch, which is not a promising sign.
Which makes it really strange that they'd advertise the game on this site. I'd expect that not many of the regulars here are parents who aren't gamers themselves, but are only looking for something safe for their kids to play.
This could just be a problem of inept web site design. It's possible that they're sitting on a great game and merely not telling anyone what makes it so great. If that's the case, they need to add more content to their web site explaining the game mechanics immediately. But I'd bet against it.
Thanks for pointing out our lack of specific's on the website, and I'm working with our web guys now to get a few more pages up explaining game mechanics in more detail. If you have anything in particular you're looking to understand, feel free to ask, and I should be able to answer.
To quote quote the website: "biblical engagement for your children". In other words: indoctrinate your children with computer games before they can think for themselves and might ask questions.
No thanks.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Every game has a 'message' or 'indoctrination' to use your word. I admire these guys for making a game like Aetherlight. The more variety in gaming that we have means that we're all the richer for it.
What I'm wondering is if you have any moral objections to Tyranny that is purely based on being a minion of evil?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In many video games--both MMORPGs and otherwise--the message really boils down to, if some evil, malevolent person/group/entity is trying to conquer/destroy your city/country/planet/universe, then you're justified in using the technology/magic/martial arts/whatever else you've got at your disposal to stop them forcibly. Not many gamers object to that the way people would object if a game advocated one side of the debate on abortion, guns, socialized medicine, or any other hot political issue.
One other point is that I get the impression from the site that it assumes that the reader is not and should not be interested in playing the game. There's nothing wrong with making a game kid-friendly, but I don't see why you wouldn't also want to pitch it as a fun game for parents who are gamers to play with their kids.
At least not it's selling point.
That's pretty much the textbook definition of religious exploitation, they're taking people's faith and packaging it to them piecemeal. Troubling.
It's not packaging people's beliefs piecemeal. If it's not your thing, pass it up and teach your children your values and religious philosophy on your own. Better, if you're a Christian, play it with your child to see if it meshes. *facepalms*
It's easy to pick on games with a religious bent when far less umbrage is lofted at overtly sexist or political games.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
거북이는 목을 내밀 때 안 움직입니다
English is not my first language, and I'm not sure whether I understand your last question correctly. Could you rephrase it, so that I can give it the answer it deserves?
Yes, they have the right to do that. Same as people have the right to make a game teaching children about Christianity, they have the right to make a game teaching children about Islam, about Atheism or anything else. But having the right to do something doesn't mean it's a good idea.
I personally think that, in general, children should be given facts and options and having things explained to them, so that in the end, they can decide for themselves. And that should be true for religion too. My parents did that as well. They asked me what courses at school I'd like to take: religion or ethics? Would I like to get baptized? What do I want? They gave me options.
So I think that children should be taught what religions exist, what the differences are, what their histories are, what other philosophies exist, and so on. So that, when they're old enough, they can choose for themselves, and truly believe in that, for the reason of their own logic and not because they were taught to.
Like if you present them a large table with lots of food they don't know, and you tell them "this one is sweet and made of chocolate, that one over there is spicy, be careful, and this one is an exotic fruit which is somewhat sour to the taste". So that they can choose themselves, instead of you telling them "eat that, this is good, the rest sucks".
That's why I don't like games like these. In the end they're not actually games, since the aim of the developers was not to entertain, but to keep the leash short.
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Give me an open world with no distinct path or direction to follow and i would play it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
You want to see indoctrination? Go to just about any American public school, or better yet, university. It's disgusting what some of these 'professors' say and / or do, and if you don't conform to their ideology, you're in for a very rough time.
AN' DERE AIN'T NO SUCH FING AS ENUFF DAKKA, YA GROT! Enuff'z more than ya got an' less than too much an' there ain't no such fing as too much dakka. Say dere is, and me Squiggoff'z eatin' tonight!
We are born of the blood. Made men by the blood. Undone by the blood. Our eyes are yet to open. FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.
#IStandWithVic
So then, in what sense is Aetherlight pro-Christian? I don't know, but there's a huge difference between constantly bashing people over the head with "you're going to hell if you don't believe X" versus merely not being overtly sexual or encouraging immoral behavior.
As for biases, all media sources are biased. All that differs is what their biases are and how strongly they push them. I'd much prefer that they admit their biases up front than let you get 20 hours into a game only to have it start constantly bashing you over the head telling you that your opinions are stupid and evil. As I said above, most game developers try to avoid that situation--and in ways that television, movies, books, newspapers, and radio commonly don't.