Why does it seem that there are no Catholic games for the Nintendo Wii video game system? I mean, there aren’t even any Christian ones. Sure, there are ones that are inoffensive, and Nintendo does try to severely limit the quantity of “M” games they carry, but that doesn’t mean there are actually any Christian games out there.
O.K., sure, there’s this:
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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And I like what they’ve tried to do, and it’s obviously a labor of love, but… really? Cross-shaped controllers you buy for this one game? Add kneelers to “get off the couch and into the action”? The video Church is completely full–but only with white people? In some ways, the game seems like a parody of Catholicism. Also, having everything be so literal loses the metaphorical aspects of art (which Barbara Nicolosi drills into her film students at Act One). The game’s very literalness, it seems to me, fails to push it to where it fulfills the duty of Christian art: to fill the audience’s imagination with new images of the Christian message. (It occurs to me that author Regina Doman has occasionally written on similar issues.) Finally, I’m not entirely comfortable with having the characters on the video sanctuary, in lay clothes, doing actions reserved to the priest.
Yet this game seems to be the best we have. And if this is the best, the top of the heap, that’s kind of embarrassing for all of us as Catholics.
But back to the original question: Why is there such a remarkable dearth of Christian video games?
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P.S.: No, Dante’s Inferno doesn’t count. Plus, it’s not on Wii.
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UPDATE: I was sucked in by a spoof. Wii Pray is a parody. That’s actually quite comforting, except to my pride.