Girl went out and got a couple of copies of this week’s Entertainment Weekly, and I can now happily say that their Must List consists of “Ten Things We Love This Week”, and that Bible Fight is number four. This puts us ahead of Rufus Wainwright, Vh1′s Charm School, and Pan’s Labyrinth. Sure, it’s just a spot on a list and a one-line description, but I really couldn’t be more pleased.

In other Bible Fight news, Greg Costkyan approves. I felt compelled to drop him a note saying thanks, as Greg is one of the people I have tremendous amounts of respect for in games and just knowing something I did made him laugh means a lot. The email was only a line or two long, but I suspect it still came out fawning. But such is life.

And maybe it’s just the wine, but I feel further compelled to answer a couple of the comments people have left on his post, as both are things I’ve seen said about the game in a lot of different places. This would quite probably be a terrible idea, so I’m going to respond to them here, where it’s much more likely that no one will ever see them. Behold, wine logic.

First up: “Why not really take a step and have a game where Jesus beats the snot out of Mohammed (sic)? I mean what are they afraid of ?” For starters, the game is called Bible Fight, not Bible Fights. For second…ers, bringing in outside deities muddles the oh-so important “Sunday School meets Street Fighter 2 high concept. Beyond all of that, though, I suspect the reason why it’s not called Religion Fight or Koran Slam is because I know next to nothing about Islam and a great deal about Christianity, having spent a good portion of my youth in Baptist churches in Alabama. Bibe Fight was more “write what you know” than anything else, and considering that the Old and New Testaments gave us more characters than we ultimately had room for, I think we went in the right direction. Besides, if I were to design a fighting game around another religion, Hinduism’s fantastic pantheon would win in a land slide.

And second: “If satirists really want to get edgy let’s see some Muhammad mocking games.” Let’s just state up front that you’re probably giving us way too much credit by even comparing Bible Fight to satire. The closest thing to an underlying message in Bible Fight is “Look, this whole thing is kind of silly”, and that can be applied just as easily to both game and subject matter. As my girlfriend will happily tell you, my personal exit from all things religious left me with kind of a nasty taste in my mouth, and that has since moved from the realm of bad feelings to the far more accepting place of “point and laugh.” Jim Rossignol quotes a bit from Charlie Brooker on his rather great blog occasionally that talks about the ridiculousness of one religion making fun of another’s odd beliefs that pretty much sums up my feelings on belief systems of all types. You’re all coming up with explanations for things you don’t understand, and you could all do with realizing some of your ideas are little bit, y’know, silly. This game was never about being edgy (which is not to say we didn’t realize the potential ramifications as it came closer and closer to being a real thing). It was about making people – that is, ourselves – laugh.

This should be the last thing here about Bible Fight for some time. Sorry to keep going on about it, and to those of you who enjoyed it and told me so, thank you. For those that found themselves unable to get past Eve without collapsing into a stuttering rage, thank you as well. Every hit counts, don’t you know.

Coming soon: Something with actual weight. And more wine, I think.

Filed under: Games