elfs | (Reply)

From:

SQUEEE. At long last, more coverage of the LB RTS. You've no idea what a pain in the ass it's been to learn more about this game; the secular press just isn't interested, or is derisory in all the most superficial ways (for pity's sake, people, well-researched antagonism is essential here) and the mainstream Christian press isn't engaging with it very well. I'm almost at the point of playing a game in order to do my own damned research. I don't play games, I read about them.

I'm not convinced that this article isn't missing the point, though. Inasmuch as an LB licensor has to be visibly bound up in a certain strain of evangelical pedigree to get the license to begin with, should our concern rest with that pedigree's agenda, or should we wait until the game gets played and reviewed?

The whole situation is frustrating. Post-Rapture North America, with emphasis on US urban centres, is just about the ideal place to set an RTS or MMORPG (or even a tabletop RPG), but no one seems to be doing it properly. Hell, pre-Rapture spiritual warfare alone has all kinds of potential for your choice of immersive fictive environments. There's a reason why there's a whole subgenre of independent horror cinema devoted to this sort of thing, and why novels along these lines have so much commercial potential when they're timed and positioned properly.

So far, the core LB novels have provided the only usable license for such an endeavour. Thief in the Night would be too inconsistent, Kirban's 666/1000 too incoherent, Omega Code too turgid, and the Cloud Ten films too character-driven (even -- especially -- in the case of their own LBverse).

I'd like to see a secular-owned property come up from scratch, because I want this to be a creative field exploited out of passion for the scenario instead of for the mission -- but I'm losing hope. On the tabletop, Rapture d20 spends too much energy on secret societies, and Armageddon feels like an ecumenical World of Darkness. One could generate an appropriate In Nomine scenario, but it'd take some serious doing -- and too much ecumenical ground has been put down to do a cinematic, canon Rapture properly at this stage. And if the tabletop isn't getting there, I can't hold out that much hope for any form of computer gaming, short of some secretive MU* -- the commercial stakes are just too damned high. (--more--)