"You will need a man!"

My pleasure reading this week is Have a Nice Doomsday: Why Millions of Americans Are Looking Forward to the End of the World, by Nicholas Guyatt. Guyatt examines the apocalyptic movement in America and the popularity of the Left Behind series, intersecting it with politics and the popular culture surrounding belief in an impending apocalypse. It's a fairly unbiased look, introducing people who know very little about apocalyptic belief with some of the major movers and shakers in the field. So far, I think it's a good book and pretty even-handed. He's not mocking people who believe in an impending Rapture and apocalypse or anything.

Anyway, he mentions Left Behind: Eternal Forces at one point - this is the video game where believers run around NYC and try to convert people to fight against the Antichrist. When it came out in 2006, I heard rumblings about how some of the fundamentalist Christians didn't like the game because of it's violence - you have to build a Christian army to fight against the Antichrist and the Global Community forces. However, I hadn't heard anything about this:

"The apparently unintentional messages in Eternal Forces seem more troubling. When you move through the tutorial, you learn how to convert passersby and then how to train them to be soldiers, builders or disciples. When you convert men, they transform into identical preppy kids wearing V-necks. Women suddenly sport an orange jumper, like Velma from Scooby Doo. If you only convert men, you can do everything you need to do in the game. But if you bring women to Christ, the game starts giving you polite reminders that your options are limited. 'For the next operation,' says the cheerful voice in the tutorial, 'you will need a man. Take a moment to recruit a man before continuing!'

Girls can't do very much in Eternal Forces. Men can become disciples, builders or soldiers. Women can't. You can train them to become medics, but that's about it. Even then, they're not indispensable: men can do this, too, along with their many other talents. Helpfully, random men keep sidling up to you and your female converts if you ignore the injunctions to convert them, though this seems quite seedy if you haven't understood the game's regressive sexual politics." (199-200)

Kinda interesting, and a critique I hadn't heard from the various outlets that reviewed the game. I'd suggest checking out the book if you're interested in the apocalyptic culture but don't want to pick up something that'll try converting you. It's an attempt at an unbiased assessment, in my opinion.