Rock Band, faith and observations along the way.

If you don't know, I work as a youth pastor. That means that I am at least somewhat versed in youth culture. The big phenomenon right now in our youth center is the game Rock Band.
I admit that this is one seriously fun game. Watching students playing this game has got me thinking about video games and their evolution.

I grew up with video games. Atari 2600, Intellivision, and my personal favorite Colecovision. (I personally was a huge fan of Zaxxon). As I think about the video games I played as a kid, they were just about mastering the skill to get the high score or beat the game. There was no story, no interaction with friends (in fact the games were best played alone so you didn't have to wait until your turn when you died), no nothing but high scores and glazed over eyes.

I bet if I was pressed I could still do the pattern for Atari 2600 Pac Mac that would allow you to never die as long as you mastered the pattern.

Today's games are different. They are about stories, community and mastering the skill required to become proficient. You may not like the stories of today's games, but all the most popular ones have intricate story lines attached to them. Assassin's Creed, Halo, World in Conflict, No more Heroes are all popular games that use story to propel the game. Then you have games that are about community, like Rock Band, just about anything using the Wii. These games and are about being together and having fun. In fact they are not that much fun to play alone. Interesting, even sports games all have options to create teams, trade, go through a whole season and create a story line.

Today's video games are about much more than knowing what buttons to push and when. Although that is still important in every game, the games are more than that. They are about story and community.

**obvious jump**
How does the church learn from the evolution of video games? Have we relied too much on proficiency(having all the right doctrines, being able to give the right answers etc...) and not enough on community and story? I believe that doctrine is important, but I also think we are missing important aspects of our faith that the video game industry is hitting right now.

It seems to me that we cannot lose one for the other. We need both community and stories, and good doctrine. I think when we focus on only one, we end up with the equivalent of a boring game that is no fun to play for very long. Games need complexity, community, story to make them worth playing, and so does faith.

*Disclaimer- I know that you can carry metaphor and analogy too far and it always breaks down, that was not my intent. I was just making a general observation. You can agree or disagree.