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Author Topic: Halo for Haloes??
KarlEd
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Apparently a number of churches are hosting "Halo nights" in order to attract teenagers and presumably therefore save their souls. "Halo" here refers to the popular and violent video game, with an "M" rating, that many other churches warn against exposing kids to. Full article here.

Personally, I look at this and just shrug, but I was wondering what the religious of Hatrack feel about using the worldly as bait to draw in teenagers and then expose them to "God's message"? How is this different than church sponsored Bingo, or Halloween parties? (Or do you, as some do, feel those are also wrong?)

If you think Halo is fine for this purpose, would you be OK with, say, Grand Theft Auto nights? If not, why, exactly?

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Scott R
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Hmmm...

The kids in our ward do a regular Halo night, but it's definitely home-sanctioned rather than Church sanctioned.

I was unsure why Halo (and Halo II) got the M rating-- it's not an especially graphic game, and the blood splatters look more like paintball mistakes. It's not a terrifying experience; it's not cruel or disgustingly violent.

But then every once in a while you come across the mangled bodies of human soldiers, and you think, "Aha. This is where the M-rating comes in.

Feasibly, it's acceptable to kill invading alien hordes; it's explicitly against the Christian code of conduct to have sex outside of marriage. That's the difference between GTA and Halo. I wouldn't be comfortable using either to bring kids to Christ.

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twinky
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Well, the Prophets form a Covenant and come to Earth in search of an Ark.

Added: For that matter, Master Chief is a messianic hero who isn't afraid to sacrifice himself to save the human race. (Note: I'm not implying that the Chief dies, for those afraid of spoilers.)

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Scott R
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So, you're saying that Halo is anti-Semitic?

[Razz]

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Blayne Bradley
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John 1:17

"I am the first and the last"

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TomDavidson
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Now I want to see a game where you have to have sex with invading alien hordes to save Earth.
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Belle
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My brother in law, who has a master's in theology and a master's in computer engineering and works for Microsoft, uses Halo regularly in the youth group he teaches. For him, it's not about "winning kids to Christ," it's about building friendships and relationships. He says you can take kids who would never sit together at lunch, who have nothing in common, who might even say they don't like each other, but put them on a Halo team together and suddenly they're talking and relating to each other.

He networks multiple XBox 360's together and plays tournaments, so they aren't even killing alien hordes, they're killing each other. But according to him, it's resulted in a stronger, more closely bonded youth group. Since one of the things you're doing as a youth pastor is trying to encourage your kids to build friendships with other Christian kids so they can support each other and hold each other accountable, he says it's very effective.

*shrug* I don't have a problem with it. It's just a step up from a basketball game, except that individual athletic prowess isn't a factor. You have a better chance at having a pretty even playing field, sure some kids will be much, much better, but presumably you can set up teams that fairly evenly matched. He changes regularly of course, to make sure that everyone in the youth group has to learn to work alongside everybody else. And they play team tournaments only, not individual ones.

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Scott R
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Tom--

Leisure Suit Larry and the Lounge Lizards.

Come on. You're not even trying.

[Razz]

EDIT: Actually, I don't think that game featured aliens at all...though my memory from the box certainly did.

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TomDavidson
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*blink* Have you played any of the Larry games?
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imogen
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Ohh! Leisure suit Larry!


That was the first mainstream computer game I ever played.

It was illicit.

It was pixilated.

It was (as I discovered years later) kind of seedy.

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Scott R
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No, but I did see the box in the computer game store in the mall when I was 12 or so...

[Smile]

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pooka
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I guess I can see how it's like basketball for youth.

Now someone explain to me why basketball in church is okay.

I guess it could also be compared to dancing, and all the energy that goes into selecting appropriate music.

There are probably other activities I would see banned that have nothing to do with church. Like feeding people cookies and punch, and pianos and all that. [Wink]

But for real, the game is really violent. I guess I could see a discussion about how a genocidal war against the Covenant is not anti-semitic might be productive. I thought it was weird how they have Hebrew looking letters on a lot of their stuff.

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MattP
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I played the Larry games. I don't remember any aliens. According to the Wikipedia page, there was a canceled installment of the series called "Lust in Space" so aliens were planned but they never went through with it.
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MattP
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quote:
But for real, the game is really violent.
I think we are a little over concerned about video game violence, but regardless of that I don't see Halo as a particularly violent game. I've spent several hours on Halo 3 in the last couple weeks and I went "huh?" when someone mentioned blood spatter. If there's blood in the game, there's so little of it that I didn't even notice. There is no dismemberment*, just people falling down when their shield/health meter gets to zero.

It feels about as violent to me as a paintball, lasertag, or even a competitive athletic event.

There are some pretty violent games out there, but Halo is mild enough that I allow my kids to play it and my wife, who can't watch Dexter because of the violent aspects, doesn't have a problem with it either. In fact, some of the best gaming fun I've ever had has been playing multi player Halo 3 with my 12-year-old and 10-year-old daughters.

* OK, there is some dismemberment, but only in the single player campaign when fighting against a certain group of aliens that don't show up in the multi player game.

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pooka
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So how many giblets come off the zombies when you shoot them? I could see where they might have toned it down from Halo 2. Certain of the zombies themselves are objectionable to me.

What's with them having RCA jacks sticking out all over in the latest iteration?

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MattP
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The only distinguishable "components" that I've noticed is arms. I see other random stuff flying into the air, but I don't know if there's a name for any of it. "Giblets" works for me.

I really really hate the those guys, but I think that's the point.

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twinky
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I think different people are working from different definitions of what it means for a game or movie to be "violent." I would say that Halo 3 is extremely violent, but it isn't graphic; Gears of War is both extremely violent and graphic (e.g. the chainsaw bayonet; skulls exploding like ripe melons on headshots). It'd be like the difference between Die Hard and Saw.

The reason I say that Halo 3 is violent is that the core gameplay is comprised of shooting enemies, blowing them up with grenades, and gunning them down or running them over in a vehicle. It isn't graphic because the violence is sanitized, and the game itself has a slightly cartoonish aspect (Grunt comedy, for example).

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MattP
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I agree that people are working with different definitions of violent, and additionally people assign different weights to the impact of violence on those exposed to it. For me, violence includes an element of emotion that I do not experience when playing Halo with the kids.

When I spot my daughter's avatar in a dark corner in the distance and kill her with a shot to the head from a sniper rifle, I don't view that as an analog to the brutal physical violence of actually shooting a person. Rather, I get the same feeling that I get when I discover her hiding under the sink when playing hide & seek in the house and her outward emotional response is very similar as well.

I tend to feel that the use of guns/grenades is incidental to the activity. The mechanics of a Halo game are similar to flag football, tag, capture the flag and many other competitive activities which we don't consider to be inherently violent.

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?
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quote:
John 1:17

"I am the first and the last"

Umm, were you supposed to be quoting John 1:17, because that's not right. "I am the first and the last" is in Isiah and a few other books but not John. John 1:17 talks about the Law being given by Moses.

?

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twinky
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The main character in the Halo series is Master Chief Petty Officer John 117.
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pooka
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quote:
When I spot my daughter's avatar in a dark corner in the distance and kill her with a shot to the head from a sniper rifle, I don't view that as an analog to the brutal physical violence of actually shooting a person. Rather, I get the same feeling that I get when I discover her hiding under the sink when playing hide & seek in the house and her outward emotional response is very similar as well.

I'm not quite with that. Stuff happens in Capture the Flag, but I dislike playing Slayer where you only get points for killing. The only exception is if it's on one of those awful maps with the waterfalls and the teleporters. I seem to find my way on those better than my husband.
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MattP
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quote:
I'm not quite with that.
That's fine. I think another element is our individual responses to experiences. For some people, playing Halo may be a violent experience. I wonder if if any FMRI work has been done to compare brain activity of people in competitive violent and non-violent activities.
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pooka
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Yeah, I'd say Halo is probably the most violent game I've played. I am not even sure how I wound up getting into it. :looks furtively around Hatrack:

The amount of money we spend on replacement controllers suggest that my children do not feel totally neutral on the subject of Dad "running riot."

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Nighthawk
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quote:
Originally posted by pooka:
Yeah, I'd say Halo is probably the most violent game I've played.

It's nowhere near as "violent" as other games I've played. Or games I've written, for that matter.
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Dr Strangelove
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I was just having this discussion with a guy from my apartment complex today. We were complaining about how Halo and GTA have the same rating. I find GTA pretty much entirely morally reprehensible and indefensible. Halo, on the other hand, I don't have a problem playing, other than the fact that sometimes I just ... am a little more sensitive to it than others. For instance, after watching "Flags of Our Fathers" I had a hard time playing any sort of shooting or war games. But eventually I rationalized it and spent a good portion of last night playing Halo 3 with my friend. [Smile]
As for the using it as a ministry tool ... my mom told me that my church back home is doing that. She had a slight reproving tone in her voice, but my response was firstly, I've known of many church sponsored paintball teams, and really, having played both, I don't think of Halo as any different. Secondly ... well, this is just sort of a personal gripe with the church, but I say why not? Most churches are already watering down the Gospel and promoting such a "cool" version of Christianity that it fits perfectly. If we're going to worry about Halo 3 being played, we should also much larger and more important compromises of faith which also happen to be much much more prevalent.
But I digress. I don't really have much else to say on the subject. Except that I expect if I were entirely honest with myself and not in the least bit hypocritical with my faith, I wouldn't play Halo. This is just a personal view, not one that I would assume for anyone else, but ... yeah. That's me.

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pooka
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I gave up Halo entirely for several months last year after an introspective moment in Church. I forget what caused my resolve to topple. Probably memories of the level named "Halo" in the original Combat Evolved. I also really missed "Two Betrayals" and to a lesser extent, "Delta Halo" in Halo 2. You know what I think it might have been? When I started playing Tomb Raider Legendary.

I have to say that while it's not as intensively violent, there are ways that Tomb Raider could be called worse than Halo. For one thing, you shoot human beings quite often. And when your avatar buys the farm, it's a pretty and often scantily clad lady instead of a faceless cyborg. There are verious deaths where one falls on to spikes, drowns, or otherwise explodes.

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Itsame
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If Christ were alive today, he would WANT us to kill evil alien invaders.
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Nighthawk
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So how does the church feel about Doom III. After all, you *are* fighting the minions of Hell, which I thought they would consider a good thing. Of course, rather than using scripture and Holy Water, I'm using a plasma gun and a chainsaw...
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twinky
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Presumably, the same way they felt about Doom and Doom II. [Razz]
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Samprimary
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Hopefully there is a difference between how the church feels about the Dooms I-III; it should be the church's official standpoint that Doom I and II were meritably revolutionary and innovative whereas III was evidently derivative and stale.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by Nighthawk:
So how does the church feel about Doom III. After all, you *are* fighting the minions of Hell, which I thought they would consider a good thing. Of course, rather than using scripture and Holy Water, I'm using a plasma gun and a chainsaw...

My seminary teacher, who is one of the grandest and most wonderful women I know, tried out Doom 1 and she LOVED it.

It was such a weird paradox, and yet it happened. [Big Grin]

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ketchupqueen
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Not something I would do AT a church. Like rock music. But something that I would leave up to the individual parents involved to sanction or not.
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