Customize Yourself: Made in the Image

This week we’re going topical again and looking at the growing phenomenon of customization in video games and how it relates to our identity. Today we’re seeking to understand this trend by looking at the second of two possible answers to one question: Why do we want to create a new identity?

For people like Dwight, a virtual world is just another means of experiencing everything they like about themselves. When Dwight made a Second Life character, he was just who he was in real life…except he could fly. Dwight was comfortable with himself as a person, but the digital world still provided something above what he could experience in real life.

The character creator tools available in games today are getting better at allowing us to create something that looks close to reality. Yet no matter how advanced a game gets at providing customizing options, it still won’t allow us to change our actual identities. We will still come up lacking in real life. The character change options in real life are very few and mostly ineffective. Self-help books may help and perhaps moving to a new place may produce some changes, but there are still many things that we all have trouble changing.

The most profound problem that we cannot change is our engrained sinfulness. Our depraved nature is so central to our identity that there is no way we can escape it on our own. The embedded faults in our very identities go deeper than the surface level actions we perform. This is where Jesus comes in. Even non-Christians know that Jesus forgives sins- that is, behaviors. But what we need is something much more. We need new identities. Much like how Mass Effect 2 gave you the option to completely change your identity to whatever you wanted, regardless of the previous game.

"It's time for change....in space."

Jesus’ death not only takes away our sin, but also gives us a new identity in him. Accepting Jesus means that “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ.” God is in the business of making new people, not just a superficial makeover. He changes the basic structure of our identities, taking out the cold, sinful hearts of stone and replacing them with new hearts. This allows God to help us become what he intended for us to be without the effects of sin. God is able to redeem for us our true identity as he created us.

You are the product of God’s character customization engine. This world and everything in it is God’s giant game of Minecraft. Genesis 1 describes how God formed every aspect of creation, pixel by pixel. The account in Genesis 2 describes how God formed Adam with his own hands, and he has put just as much care into creating you. He painstakingly stitched together every aspect of your identity before you were even born. God is fully aware of every single hair on your head and how it got there (or fell out).

But there’s more! Much like Dwight chose to make a Second Life character in his image, God also made us in his image. This means that we bear traits of God that influence our identity. We have desires and impulses in us that originate from the very nature of God. One of these is the impulse to create.

So why do we want to create a new identity? Now we have our two answers:

1) We are dissatisfied with our sinful identities.

2) We have the impulse to create something new, much like the God whose image we bear.

Many players default to trying to make characters looks just like themselves, and that is one expression of the God who made us to be like him. Others just want to come up with something new and off the wall. Games like Spore are perfect for “playing God” in a sense.

"Wait...what??"

Now, let’s not fools ourselves. That very impulse to create something crazy comes from the God who made you. He has some pretty wild creations himself. Don’t believe me? Well, God made this:

Somebody REALLY loves the University of Texas

And this:

"How did you know I was gonna say that? It's like you can see into my mind or something..."

Aaaand this:

"This looks shopped. You can tell from the pixels and AHHHH!! Is it on me? I feel like it's on me..."

The gaming culture’s fascination with customization serves two purposes. First, it reminds us that our desire to live as a different identity comes from a dissatisfaction with our sinful selves. The only alternate identity that is of any worth is that of Christ, who gladly takes our old selves and makes us into new creations. Second, the complex customization tools that games provide to construct new things is also a reminder that we are made in God’s image and that we share his artistic impulse to create.

Question:

What’s the most crazy awesome character you’ve created? Provide links or pics if possible.

Has there ever been a time when you became too engrossed in an online identity?

Thanks for reading and come back soon. Next on the list is Dead Space, so try to get some sleep now.

Customize Yourself: Identity Crisis

This week we’re going topical again and looking at the growing phenomenon of customization in video games and how it relates to our identity. Today we’re seeking to understand this trend by looking at the first of two possible answers to one question: Why do we want to create a new identity?

We’re not satisfied with ourselves. When I made my Xbox Live avatar, I gave it more hair and a slightly thinner physique than what exists in reality. When you create a character in Mass Effect, does Shepard look exactly like you? Maybe there’s a lot of similarities…but perhaps you threw in a scar or two to add that “tough look.” Or maybe you went a completely different route and made Shepard the opposite gender and/or skin color. And then there’s the customization of abilities and skills. This is where video games really set themselves apart because they allow us to do far cooler things than would ever be possible with our own dumb non-magically/ technologically enhanced bodies.

This fixation on a world where we are able to be and do anything can become a real problem. For those who are extremely dissatisfied with themselves, the ability to live as someone else only fuels the addictive capabilities of an already-enticing virtual world. The Gerard Butler movie Gamer showed one example of what lengths people are willing to go to in order to obtain a different identity (or use that demand to provide an identity for someone else).

There are unfortunately many sad examples of what happens when the obsession with living out a different identity goes to the extreme. The one that stands out is the story of a Korean couple who neglected their three-month-old baby to play an online role playing game. While they were at their 12-hour gaming sessions at an internet cafe, their real-life baby starved to death. The horrible irony is that in their online game, they were using their characters to raise a virtual baby.

After reading a little more into the story you learn that their baby (the real one) was born prematurely and that neither of them had jobs. It’s hard to imagine how difficult it must be to take care of a premature baby without any income (which may or may not have itself been related to gaming habits), but that’s no excuse for their neglect. It does point to something telling about their motivations for pouring themselves into a video game…

They were seeking control. Their real lives were likely a wreck and they had an insane amount of stress that comes with raising a (prematurely born) child. Where they were powerless in real life, they were able to have control of things in an online game. The fact that their created identities had a virtual baby shows that they did indeed want a child, but they couldn’t handle the real-life responsibility of being parents.

That’s what video games offer- a better identity where you have more control. Are you a social outcast in real life? Online you can be a level 27 Dragonborne spellcaster and command the respect of an entire guild. Do you have difficulty managing money and keeping a job? You can fire up Fable and earn a living as a blacksmith and never get fired or lose money to mismanagement. Are you dissatisfied with your appearance and lifestyle? Go play The Sims to look like and do whatever you want.

There are people in the Bible who are no strangers to these feelings of self-dissatisfaction. One guy who was pretty dissatisfied with himself was the apostle Paul who wrote most of the New Testament. He uses a good chunk of one of his books to describe how he always manages to screw up no matter how hard he tries. At the end of this rant he exclaims, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” You thought everyone who wrote the Bible was perfect and morally superior? Not so. The Bible is clear that we are all under the control of sin because of our bodies of death.

Being dissatisfied with ourselves is sadly woven into the very fabric of our nature. All of humanity fell under the effects of sin and death because of Adam’s choice to disobey God in the garden at the beginning of time. Adam’s poor decision brought epic failure on God’s perfect creation…… but yet these fancy, shiny video games let us see and experience what it’s like to be what we want to be, without the frailty caused by sin and failure. Video games provide us with the opportunity to create an identity that is significantly more awesome than the pathetic, broken identities we have to look at in the mirror everyday.

These new ways to customize allow the opportunity to change our identities, but is it  really enough?

We’ll continue the discussion in the next post. Give us your reactions so far in the comments.

Customize Yourself: The Growing Trend

This week we’re going topical again and looking at the growing phenomenon of customization in video games and how it relates to our identity. We’re seeking to understand this trend by looking at two possible answers to one question.

Customization in the gaming world is everywhere these days. You can hardly look at a computer or game console without being asked 20 questions about your preferences on how something should function or look. The oldest and best example of this is role-playing games. Sure, it started with choosing races and player traits in the original IRL game Dungeons and Dragons, but RPG video games have been able to take that to a whole new extreme. The most popular example is perhaps World of Warcraft, but more recent games like Mass Effect and Skyrim have exponentially increased the degree to which you can customize a character. There’s also the more “casual” side of RPGs with games like Spore and The Sims.

The popularity of customization has now bled into other non-RPG genres such as first-person shooters and casual games. Halo: Reach allowed players to turn their experience points into new armor details and equipment. Call of Duty has taken that even further allowing players to customize the look and function of even the weapons in the game. Racing games now often come with infinite possibilities for decoration and personalization. If we want to get really crazy we can point to Team Fortress 2 around which a whole community of buying and selling accessories has exploded.

On the casual gaming front, customization started to become popular with the release of the Wii when people could make Mii’s to look just like themselves, or nothing like themselves as the case may be. Xbox followed suit with their Xbox Live avatars and related merchandising for the player’s game of choice (I currently have a portal gun for my avatar). Even mobile OS games like Hanging with Friends allow you to customize your character. The truly telling fact is that in many of these cases, people pay real, hard-earned money in micro-transactions to buy these customization options- for things that only exist in virtual reality!

So why all this fuss over customization? Sometimes what we create is the same as real life, sometimes it’s completely different, or perhaps a mix of the two. These games allow us to alter or virtually recreate how we look and act to our liking. That avatar is then used to experience a virtual world as someone or something slightly different from the skin in which we live. But why do we go to such lengths to create images of ourselves that are detached from reality?

There are two responses to this customization craze and both have some validity. Our task this week will be to discuss both possibilities by answering this question:

Why do we want to create new identities?

Go level up your thinking caps and come back next time when we’ll dig into this question with the first of two possible answers.

Mario and Manhood: The Princess

In this final post looking at video games and gender, we’ll examine the portrayal of women in gamer culture.

I gave Princess Peach a hard time in the first post in this series, but the truth is that she has it easier than most other women characters in the gaming world. If men are portrayed unfairly on TV, then women are portrayed especially bad through video games. Like Princess Peach, many female characters are just used as a romantic interest, a plot device, or as eye candy rather than as an interesting or important part of the story. Let’s look at some negative examples of women portrayed in video games.

1. Dead or Alive, specifically the Beach Volleyball version.

2. Duke Nukem “babes” that have to be rescued and are often naked or scantily clad.

3. Most female NPC’s in Grand Theft Auto games.

There are probably many more examples, but that gives you an idea. Women being degraded and objectified has been a problem for probably as long as there have been both women and men in existence. Unfortunately, this trend has made its way into games as well. But what does God say about how women should be viewed and treated?

When God created Eve, he did so to provide for him a helper. People immediately equate this situation with slavery or servitude, but that is not the case. The word for “helper” in the original language is also used in other places when God is called our “helper.” So therefore, being a helper does not imply inferiority. It should also be noted that Eve is the pinnacle of creation, the last thing that came directly from God’s hands before he declared creation to be “very good.”

So if sex and eye candy are the only factors that influence your view of women (you male gamers) then you are missing out. God created women to be more than just sex objects, but to be valued as treasures for every aspect of their being. Unfortunately, some game designers do not seem to understand this concept. There seem to be two ways in which games distort a proper view of women:

Distortion 1. Men and women are not equal and women are simply objects for the men to rescue. Princess Peach is a great example of this. In the early games, what did she even do? We’re given no idea as to what her value was to Mario other than a convenient plot device. This also shows that strong women and men cannot coexist and one has to be saving the other. Luckily, this distortion seems to be getting more rare as male and female characters are given equal importance and depth. One positive example is Mass Effect 1 and 2. Commander Shephard’s recruits are men and women to work together on a team and they all have skills to contribute. They may not all get along, but at least they have equal ground. This is a good picture of how men and women can compliment each other and work together, not to have one rule completely over the other. The women in the subplots are given special significance and depth that many other female characters are not given. However, the women in Mass Effect still tend to be scantily clad, which brings me to…

Distortion 2. Women have to be overly sexual in appearance and/or behavior in order to be interesting (particularly to male gamers). I ask you Bioware, and any other developers guilty of this, is it really necessary to make an alien female character with human female characteristics? Much less to have them dress provocatively? Another example is Halo, who’s beloved Cortana is effectively “naked” as much as a hologram can be naked. If you want to make the A.I. a female, great, but can’t she wear holo-clothes? While Cortana’s image wasn’t quite as gratitous, the point remains that many female characters placed in the spotlight in a video game tend to automatically be sexualized in some way, presumably to appeal to male gamers.

Games tend to depict women unfairly and the messages we receive from entertainment will determine how we treat them in the real world. There’s still a general lack of respect for women in gamer culture and I feel that it is up to the men to not only be discerning about how women are portrayed, but to stand up and protect the dignity and value of women in the real world. Women were created by God as the last and best part of God’s creation and they should be treated as such.

Questions:

1. What other positive or negative examples of women in games can you identify?

2. Who’s the most interesting female character in gaming?

3. Why do big, burly men get lots of thick armor, but the female characters in the same games have less armor and more exposed areas?

That’s it for this look at video games and manhood. Check back soon for a two-week series on Portal and Portal 2. At the end there will be cake.

Mario and Manhood: Select Player

In this second part we’ll talk about the types of guys that are predominant in the media’s portrayal of men and masculinity.

In the last post there was a description of men that turns out to be a pretty tall order for those who take it seriously. The story of Hosea presents a call to love the otherwise undesirable to the glory of God as an example of His love for us. Hosea’s righteousness as a man and as a husband ultimately came from God, but he does provide a good example of a man with integrity and faithfulness.

But what kind of examples do we have today? Unfortunately, positive examples of men seem to be in short supply. In pop culture, particularly on TV, there are two main images of how our culture views men. Here’s how they break down:

The Womanizer

This is the guy who cares about nothing other than taking advantage of women. He moves from one to the next with no sense of honor or commitment, the classic “hit it and quit it.” This type of guy rarely experiences the consequences of his selfish actions. He’s typically young, independently wealthy, smooth, lacking a moral compass, single (although sometimes perhaps not), and occasionally it will be revealed that he’s wounded or insecure in some way. This last point usually serves to explain the character to make it easier for the audience to relate to or accept him. The story will typically try very hard to show that this character actually has a heart of gold, despite spending the majority of their lives in meaningless pursuits.

Other adjectives that can describe this type of character are: sleazy, eternal bachelor, hedonistic, man-whore, the bad boy

Examples include: Charlie Harper (Two and Half Men), Joey Tribbiani (Friends), Barney Stinson (How I Met Your Mother), any guy from an Axe Body Spray commercial, Dave Lockwood (Ryan Reynold’s character from The Change-Up), we can also throw Duke Nukem in there

The Inept Suburbanite

This is the guy that everyone points and laughs at. This character’s masculinity (or lack thereof) is used for the purpose of comedy, not as a positive example. He is often domesticated and fumbles around avoiding his overbearing wife. His exploits include attempting to participate in a hobby without making the Mrs. too upset, or even allowing her to find out at all. This means that this character often partakes in the arts of lying and cowardice. Through his zany antics he often ends up looking like a complete fool. He’s typically being run over by his wife and kids. Nobody ever really takes this guy seriously.

Other adjectives that can describe this type of character are: henpecked, tame, clumsy, dweeb, idiot, incompetent, bumbling, whipped, emasculated, weak, useless

Examples include: The main male characters from King of Queens, Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond, and almost  any family sitcom from the 90’s to the early 00’s, also Phil Dunphy from Modern Family, Peter Griffin, Homer Simpson, and Michael Scott (The Office)

So what about gamer culture? The reputation that gamers have is this: twenty and thirty something single guys who still live with their parents, work very little (if at all), and sleep on Star Wars sheets. This by no means describes every gamer, but this stereotype is not uncommon within the nerd population. But if you look at video games, many of the male protagonists more or less fit the same mold: the mighty hero. The interactive nature of video games allows for players to become someone that they’re not. Thus it makes sense that the examples of strong men are all in video games and action movies. The gaming medium produces characters that players want to be rather than characters that we will laugh at or look down on. When it comes to the types of dudes in video games, they’re usually different packaging of the same product. These protagonists can be categorized as follows:

1. The space marine. Examples: Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, Commander Shephard (assuming you choose the male version), Duke Nukem, the guy from Doom

2. The non-space marine. Examples: every Call of Duty game or military shooter

3. The plucky everyman in a challenging situation: Mario, Gordon Freeman, Isaac Clarke, Desmond Miles

4. The daring adventurer: Link, Nathan Drake

The male characters in video games that men get to be are the brave, strong heroes who will always kill the bad guy and save the girl. The way men are viewed by pop culture is either as the petty womanizer or an emasculated family man. So where’s the best example of manhood in our culture? Is there one at all?

The Bible’s view of manhood is both unique and challenging. Hosea’s story is a great example of what real man is called to. God places dignity and an important mandate on the shoulders of every man. He doesn’t call men to philander around from one woman to the next, but to pursue a deep and meaningful commitment to one woman. He doesn’t view his created man as a mindless moron capable of only folly, but he endows each man with a purpose and a mission. As you can see from Hosea’s story (and Mario’s), committing to one woman fully and faithfully is a very challenging task, one that can only be taken up through the God-given strength given to a man.

So take Mario’s and Hosea’s example and man up, pursue a life of Godly manhood just as God has gone out of his way to pursue you.

Questions:

What messages (positive or negative) do you see from culture about what a man is?

Who’s your example of true manhood?

What other categories of guys do you see presented by pop culture?

Next time we’ll talk about the ladies and how they fit into gamer culture.