Braid

If you know me at all than you know my love of video games. A couple months ago I stumbled across this one as a download on the 360. It is called Braid and is kind of a high-brow artsy take on the whole Mario storyline (Save the princess, who always is in the next castle).

Anyways, the game introduces the protaginists quest with this text blurb:

"Tim is off on a search to rescue the Princess. She has been snatched by a  horrible and evil monster. This happened because Tim made a mistake."  "Not just one. He made many mistakes during the time they spent together, all  those years ago. Memories of their relationship have become muddled, replaced  wholesale, but one remains clear: the princess turning sharply away, her braid  lashing at him with contempt."  "He knows she tried to be forgiving, but who can just shrug away a guilty lie,  a stab in the back? Such a mistake will change a relationship irreversibly,  even if we have learned from the mistake and would never repeat it. The  princess's eyes grew narrower. She became more distant."  "Our world, with its rules of causality, has trained us to be miserly with  forgiveness. By forgiving them too readily, we can be badly hurt. But if we've  learned from a mistake and became better for it, shouldn't we be rewarded for  the learning, rather than punished for the mistake?"  "What if our world worked differently? Suppose we could tell her: 'I didn't  mean what I just said,' and she would say: 'It's okay, I understand,' and she  would not turn away, and life would really proceed as though we had never said  that thing? We could remove the damage but still be wiser for the experience."  "Tim and the Princess lounge in the castle garden, laughing together, giving  names to the colorful birds. Their mistakes are hidden from each other, tucked  away between the folds of time, safe.""

This reflection both introduces the story (to save the princess) as well as the primary game mechanic (you have to reverse time in order to solve puzzles). Later, other such reflections are introduces. For example, one level addresses the topic of time and space where as you move forward and backward in the level all the monsters/objects similarly move forward and back in time. It's all rather interesting.

However, I don't intend this to be simply a review of the game (although I do highly recommend it), but rather just a shallow inquiry into the state of our entertainment. It is possible to do a lot with small, simple elements. Sometimes our games/movies/art/books/whatever are filled with flashy gimmicks while not reaching deeper into the human condition. Again, I am not trying to be critical of anything in particular. But, why do we settle for less when we can acheive so much more?

Alain Badiou, a contemporary French philosopher, wrote 15 theses on contemporary art which can be found here: http://www.lacan.com/issue22.htm . Particularly interesting is the last couple points. For example, #13:

"13. Today art can only be made from the starting point of that which, as far as Empire is concerned, doesn't exist. Through its abstraction, art renders this inexistence visible. This is what governs the formal principle of every art : the effort to render visible to everyone that which for Empire (and so by extension for everyone, though from a different point of view), doesn't exist."

In many ways, this mimics our own challenge in ministry. How can we make sure that what we are doing is not simply mimicing the commercialism we are immersed in? How can we take seriously Jesus' radical challenge to build the Kingdom of Heaven from the perspective of the 'least of these'? How can our ministry and worship (which really is an art form) be continuously challenging our perspective?

I may have strayed from my original thought, which was on a game of all things, but I do believe there is a depth to everything and we just have to take the time to draw it out. As Badiou reminds us, it's dangerous to settle for less.