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Cormier6083
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**Aug. 17, 2005 – ** With all the raunchiness and violence in mainstream video games, a group of Christian businessmen hears a call to provide a more wholesome alternative.
The Christian Game Developers Foundation held a conference in Portland, Ore., last month to create games with a different mission.
“I think the majority of gamers out there just want to play a great game,” said the group’s leader, Ralph Bagley. “They don’t really necessarily need intestines hanging on a doorknob.”
Bagley said wealthy Christian investors are planning to bankroll a slew of new Christian games to compete with their raunchier rivals.
In one game, “Catechumen,” players use a sword to convert Roman soldiers to Christianity to the cries of “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” In “The Bible Game,” players race across the parted Red Sea to battle Goliath with a slingshot.
In “Rebel Planet,” users explore the world before the great flood. And coming soon is a “Left Behind” video game based on the popular Christian book series and film.
Will Kids Like Them?
Mainstream game makers say their Christian counterparts may be on to something. “The current state of Christian games is very similar to what we see in Christian rock,” said Ian Bogost of Persuasive Games, noting that there were a lot of attempts to get the movement going and now it is very active and lucrative.
But to succeed, Christian video game makers will have to convert skeptical retailers — and kids. An informal focus group gave the Christian games mixed results.
“There’s not as much violence and stuff — it’s not as gruesome,” said Chris Lynn, 12, adding that he likes that in a game.
**NEW YORK Aug 17, 2005 **— A single, surprising phone call and it was over. That’s how Pierce Brosnan says he learned that his services as James Bond would no longer be required.
“One phone call, that’s all it took!” the 52-year-old actor tells Entertainment Weekly magazine in its Aug. 19 issue.
Brosnan starred in four Bond films. He says that before they stopped negotiations, the producers had invited him back for a fifth time.
“You know, the movie career for me really started with Bond,” says Brosnan, acknowledging that by the time “GoldenEye” premiered in 1995, he was already 42.
He then starred as 007 in “Tomorrow Never Dies” (1997), “The World Is Not Enough” (1999) and “Die Another Day” (2002).
His departure from the role was a “titanic jolt to the system,” says Brosnan, followed by “a great sense of calm.”
“I thought. … I can do anything I want to do now. I’m not beholden to them or anyone. I’m not shackled by some contracted image. So there was a sense of liberation.”
Brosnan says he’s grateful to have had the role, but adds: “It never felt real to me. I never felt I had complete ownership over Bond. Because you’d have these stupid one-liners which I loathed and I always felt phony doing them.”
He plays a foulmouthed, skirt-chasing hit man in the upcoming film “The Matador.”
“(For this) to come on the heels of my departure from the world of Bond is sweet grace, to play this one as a farewell to that chapter in time it certainly wasn’t planned.”
. I think a better name for this game would be “Crusader”.