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I used to be really good at being God.
At least, that’s how I thought of it when I played Sim City in my younger days. I’d plot out the land with high density forests, flowing streams that poured down mountains, and rolling hills that would fall into the ocean border on one end of my screen. It was beautiful; Pandora beautiful.
Then I would efficiently deface that work of art with my very own Sim City. A baseball stadium here, a few sky-scrapers there – all those engineered works of art. You could be God and a city planner all at once. But if you just wanted to be God, well, here’s your chance.
Just yesterday German based FIAA GmbH released the beta version of The Bible Online: Heroes, the first installment of a series of MMORTS (massively multiplayer online real-time strategy) “games” based on the Bible. And you’re like, whaaaaat?? It’s actually pretty simple. Just think Sim City or The Simms, but for Genesis. You can play the role of Abraham or another tribe leader: build a society, declare war on other society, even manage a budget. But as Rachel Wagner in Religion Dispatches points out, you get to play the role of God and that of Abraham. You’ve got to think that Isaac scene gets intense.
It raises some questions about how playing this game will sway one’s interaction with the Bible. The game will not be replacing old narratives; rather, it allows players to create new narratives in the gaps of stories. What is this kind of modern-day midrash?
I already tried to start my own account, but it doesn’t look like FIAA is allowing use from my “region”. I haven’t quite figured out what that region is, but I’ll look into it. Comment here if you have any success in the sandals of Abraham.
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