Designing the Game

In my continuing exploration of whether video games can convey the Gospel, I’ve decided to develop a Facebook game that incorporates some of my thinking along the lines of basic catechesis and apologetics. The basic idea is to have a Mafia Wars like game which has “catechetical tasks” instead of “jobs” and “apologetic encounters” instead of fighting.

I started by playing Mafia Wars to get a better feel for the mechanics. The basic mechanic is that you do “jobs” to gain experience, money, and “loot.” You use all these to do more difficult and involved “jobs.” You can also participates in fights and wars with other players, but I haven’t found that they are central to the game. The social aspect of the game involves gifting and receiving “loot” and leveraging your friends/”mafia” for assistance in fights.

For lack of a more inspired title and because the name was available for a Facebook app, I decided to call my game “Law and Gospel” (LaG). I replaced Mafia Wars “jobs” with idea of vocation. Players will have tasks such as “Study the Gospel of Luke” as part of there vocation as a “New Testament Scholar” or “Research the Trinity” as a “Theologian.” When players do the tasks, they won’t just earn experience points they will also receive instruction such as a Bible verse, prayers, or quotes from famous theologians. These nuggets of information will be valuable as theological instruction, but also to answer in-game questions and quizzes to earn “gifts” the LaG equivalent to “loot.” The only planned social activity is being able to give “gifts” to other players. I’m thinking about a “congregation” which would be equivalent to a “mafia” but I’m not sure what activities they would share in.

I think the most intriguing part of the game has no equivalent in Mafia Wars and that is the idea of the player doing apologetics. Players will be able to interact with Non-Player Characters (NPCs) who will ask scripted questions and allows the player to respond with a word of Law, a word of Gospel, advice, or some other possibilities depending on the exact question. Based on the response to the NPC’s questions, further interactions with the player will be affected. For example, if the player respond to a question with Law, the NPC may become upset and require a “gift” for further action to proceed. Or a word of Gospel may lead the NPC to continue in his/her problematic ways. This will obviously be the most complicated part of the game to design and implement.

That’s what I’ve got so far, I’m now doing some mockups to get a feel for what the interaction will be like and to get a better idea of what the data model will need to support.