Drew
Harvey Mansfield on Manliness and Morality. Owen Strachan responds with Man, Temptation, and the Gospel. 

John J. Thompson hears echoes of faith at the top of the pop charts.

Our very own Jason Morehead has written an excellent Meditation on one of my favorite movies, Zhang Yimou’s “Hero”

Matthew Lee Anderson on Madmen and Conservative Nostalgia.

“Lying and art spring from a common impulse: to escape reality. Art is in fact a kind of lying, and lying a form of art . . .” Interesting article from Ian Leslie on the human fascination with story telling.

Stewart Brand, in an interview with the European, seems to think the world is getting better and better–this fascinating interview delves into morality, politics, climate change, and technological progress.

Your Kung Fu is Weak–Brad Williams recommends that Christians hit the hardest questions of the faith head-on lest we get punched in the mouth.

Frictional Games, developers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent (probably my favorite game of 2010) has posted an excellent article on how games create meaning: “Finding Videogames True Voice.”

Alan
Think humanism is dangerous? Consider transhumanism. In this insightful article, Fred Baumann considers the practical, scientific, philosophical, and theological ramifications of this movement, concluding: “Curiously, from the point of view of the original humanism, the project of transhumanism looks remarkably theological. After all, Kurzweil’s ultimate dream is of men made into gods.”

Humans are more depraved than you believe. Case in point: Nigerian ‘baby factories.’

On two lighter notes, I was amused/troubled by this MMA brand of Christian clothing called “Jesus Didn’t Tap” and by this trailer for The Waiting Game, a Christian movie about abstinence before marriage.

Rich
I guess I’ll start off with a bit of shameless self-promotion – here’s my latest column for Gamasutra: Turning Over Tables in the Chain World Temple.

Randy Pitchford REALLY insists that you must both play and love Duke Nukem Forever. For the record, he is wrong.

Here’s an interview with the guys who are making that abstinence movie Alan linked above.

If you remember last week’s link to Ponycorn, you’ll love this little write-up about Cassie’s experience showing her game to her kindergarten class.

L.A. Noire isn’t what you think it is.

Is videogame addiction causing divorce?

Former CaPC writer, Chase Livingston shares some personal struggles in The Road to Somewhere.

Kristi
This is a somewhat frightening theory made into literature. But if the internet ever did reach the level of human intelligence, would that make it human? After all, isn’t it really our spirits which make us human?

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We are the staff and writers of Christ and Pop Culture. Sort of like the Borg Collective, but way less monotone and intimidating.
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9 Comments

  4. Yes I did read it and he makes some valid points but I couldn’t help but feel he was expecting something that Rockstar/Team Bondi couldn’t possibly provide.

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  5. I mean, I disagree. First, it’s not really a hit-piece. It’s not like he hated the game. Second, how is it impossible to provide a world that doesn’t center entirely around the lead character? I’ve seen this done is pretty much every other open world game.

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  6. “As I played through L.A. Noire, I began to have what I can only call a paranoid existential videogame freakout.”

    Someone who become unhinged playing a videogame is exactly not the kind of person who should be playing videogames. Fabricated worlds of fantasy and non-real mechanics are clearly not something with which this kind of unhealthy mind should interact. Hamilton clearly has issues and his editors, by publishing this scrawl, are simply enabling the gradual fracture of his psyche. Reading that, it’s clear that he needs help.

    Hamilton’s article is a rambling monstrosity, a paean to a broken mind. It was painful to read but probably more painful is the truth that no one is going to help this young man overcome his obvious handicap. “Sure, Kirk. Have another game that you’re not remotely prepared to deal with psychologically. We just want to see what will happen when a man loses all hold on reality.”

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  7. I never said it was a hit piece. You said that LAN is not what people wanted it to be. I asked what that was. You said reality. That seemed fairly obvious in the review at hand. I don’t think LAN was ever going to produce that. I just feel he was holding LAN to a standard that no game can live up to. And Bioware games, by comparison are just as outlandish if we choose to delve into the dialogue trees and how awkard they are at times.

    Fallout and FNV come to mind as two pretty obvious open world games that center on the protagonist.

    The most awkward part of LAN is how people talk about you when you walk by–that is super weird but to be honest, that is the only example in the game of the world revolving around you.

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  8. Yeah, I’m with Drew. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk about how they imagined L.A. Noire would be a detective simulator. And reality is just about the last thing anyone should look for in something that has noir right there in its title.

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  9. Re Manliness
    I read most of that piece by Harvey Mansfield. Even if his points were obtuse, I congratulate him on penning an article with such confidence even though English is his second language. Most non-native speakers are hesitant to express themselves in an adopted language so publicly.

    I started reading the Owen Strachan article and then I realized I wasn’t interested in what he had to say. I thought I’d try skimming it, but stopped. He’s approaching things from such foreign ground from me that there really isn’t much that I can do with the article except say that I bet English is his first language and maybe express my bafflement that he was able to pull anything worthwhile from Mansfield’s writing. Who knows, maybe his book makes more sense and isn’t just a mishmash of groundless generalizations?

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