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Posted on February 12, 2007.
Archived from dragfyre's long-running blog, doberman pizza.
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Back in the day (let’s say, oh, 1997) I was much more strongly into video games than today. For me, that included a plethora of various simple Macintosh-based shareware games (the Mac SE/30 was my first introduction to desktop computing), as well as first-person shooters such as Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena and Half-Life (as well as the now-legendary oldschool games such as Doom and Wolfenstein 3D). I did my share of fragging, rocket-jumping, camping, and sniping; I even distinctly remember pwning a n00b or two.
Now, the subject of video games is a touchy one with some people; much of this is due to the violence displayed in many of them, particularly the first-person shooter genre. Games such as Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake were shocking for their time due to their inclusion of animated blood, gore and guts (colloquially known as “gibs” or “giblets”). Perhaps as a reaction to this, many denounced video games and refused to have anything to do with them. Others, seeking to prove that the medium could be used in constructive rather than destructive ways, sought to innovate (or, as in the case of the biblically-themed Super Noah’s Ark 3D, to tone down the original versions).
I remember the idea of a Baha’i video game being tossed around a long time ago among enterprising youth seeking to become shining lights in the gaming industry. I even specifically remember discussing with someone an RPG game (e.g. Warcraft) based on Bahá’u’lláh’s Seven Valleys. At the time, there was a lot of skepticism—how could one relate the mystical grandeur and depth of the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh in the form of a game? Wouldn’t the message be hopelessly cheapened? How would one represent the abstract, sublime concepts found in the Seven Valleys in a pictorial form?
Well, guess what? Chris Nelson, a Masters student at Australia’s University of Ballarat, has produced a concept piece using the Unreal Tournament (UT) game engine to do just that: illustrate the unillustratable, and “subvert” the image of violent video games in the process. Yup, a UT mod about the Baha’i Writings. You can take a moment to let your paradigm finish shifting. A glance at the Seven Valleys website yields a set of beautiful screenshots and videos that show the kind of work he’s been putting into the design of the piece. There’s no shooting or killing—just experiencing the environment, making this sort of a mix between virtual reality and machinima. The mod itself isn’t downloadable (unfortunately), although he has been exhibiting it at conferences and the like. The website is definitely worth a look; go check it out and expand your mind (thanks to George at Baha’i Views for the link). Leave comments, too—what do you think about it? Is this where the wave of the future is taking us?