Friday, August 12, 2011

Let’s play being Pope

One click of the mouse to register, one to select the team you want to join.  

On the third click, the challenge begins: the challenge to become Pope, even if only in a virtual world. 

The game is called “Vatican Wars”, it’s been online for just a couple of months but already it has been classified as the most clicked on game on Facebook: it is free and only works online, without the need for a CD.

Players compete on Facebook with other users from around the world: the aim is to get to the papal throne. But the cyber-road leading to St. Peter's is paved with surprises and obstacles.

Players are divided into two teams: Templars and Crusaders, based on ethical and moral beliefs.

The objective is to revolutionize the Church or impose a conservative line. Each participant must get out of ambushes created by slippery issues – from abortion to bioethical rights – and know the liturgical calendar, the saints of the day, as well as have some notion of theology.

The winner is the player with the clearest idea, the one who has a vision and is able to impose it on thousands of subscribers. "Before launching the game – explains Cheyenne Ehrlich, founder of Sgr, the company that produced the videogame – we held numerous polls among Catholics and were surprised to find that eight percent of them supported the endeavor."

The reactions, for now, are positive and are working like the survey – that may even be informal – to understand the positions of the Catholic world, even if on
Facebook there are those who criticize the gothic setting as being a world that is too far apart from the present one, in which the Pope navigates Twitter and Sunday mass is available on the iPad. 

"It will be interesting to see – Ehrlich continued – what kind of Pope people prefer."

Certainly not the one represented by the other videogame that sparked the technology expo in Cologne, entitled “Shadows on Vatican”. Developed by Art Studio of Torre del Greco, it will only be launched in September, but the preview has already raised a fuss. 

The protagonist is James Murphy, an American missionary tasked with investigating a series of events that have overturned peace at the Vatican, in the shadows of a Pope that is almost invisible. 

Mostly inspired by the novels of Dan Brown rather than history books, the creators of “Shadows on Vatican” mixed the Loggia P2, the Calvi  murder, the IOR bankruptcy and the Magliana gang.

“We wanted to place the questionable mechanisms of an entire power system under a magnifying glass" said Giandomenico Maglione, the person who headed the group that worked on the project, well aware that, despite the dark setting for the adventures of detective Murphy "the Church di not blocked in the Middle Ages."

The relationship between the Vatican and videogames is complicated. Benedict XVI was the first, at the “World Day of Social Communications” in 2007, to point his finger against programs which “for the sake of entertainment, exalt violence, reflect anti-social behavior or trivialize human sexuality" and those producers who, for the sake of “business competition”, reduce themselves to "lowering standards." 

Still, from the pages on World Youth Day to the social pages of the Vatican, the hi-tech change comes from Ratzinger.  

"Benedict XVI- proudly says Don Diego Goso one of the first Italian priests to land online ten years ago – has reversed a trend: once interactivity was considered a loss of time. Thanks to him, everything has changed."  

Videogames have entered the seminary and “Priestville” with its thirty thousand registered, has the  lion’s share. 

Players must create a community, manage it the best they can and involve the faithful.  

A virtual preview of the life to come.