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Gaming at The End of the World: Coercion, Conversion and the Apocalyptic Self in Left Behind: Eternal Forces Digital Play

TitleGaming at The End of the World: Coercion, Conversion and the Apocalyptic Self in Left Behind: Eternal Forces Digital Play
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2010
AuthorsSteuter, E, Wills, D
JournalReconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
Volume10
Issue1
Abstract

Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy game based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' best-selling eschatological novels, an immensely popular series featuring embattled Christians fighting evil at the world's end. The spin-off game allows players to "wage a war of apocalyptic proportions" against the Antichrist's minions. The players defend themselves with prayer and hymn-singing; if spiritual means fail, however, more violent tactics are invoked as Christian alliances evolve into the military units of the "Tribulation Force." This merging of what the game's website calls "physical and spiritual warfare" has generated among critics the label "kill or convert"; the conflation of the two lies at the center of an ideological controversy that intensified when ABC News announced an evangelical group's plans to send the game to US troops in Iraq. This article explores eschatological representations like Eternal Forces as a way to instill, consolidate, and hierarchicalize identity by creating an apocalyptic self that is figured in violently contestatory terms. It addresses conservative evangelical leaders' mobilization of that apocalyptic self in order to re-invest twenty-first century evangelicals in a renewed "combat myth" tradition that sees those of differing beliefs as fodder either for conversion or for annihilation in an ultimate battle between God and Satan. Left Behind: Eternal Forces is explored as a contemporary pop-culture expression and a new form of soteriological play in which that two-pronged choice is embodied and enacted, situating its players as divine co-strategists in an either/or world of forced and often punitive affiliation.

URLhttp://reconstruction.eserver.org/101/recon_101_steuter_wills.shtml