Arcade games like Space by Breakthrough Gaming are designed to convey a “biblical truth”.
Perhaps you have already noticed: These strange 99 cent games in the PlayStation Store with crude arcade graphics and texts like from a translation software. Skating, Racing, Space or Baseball – Every Sunday Breakthrough Gaming publishes some games with retro pixel graphics, which then even land in the top 50 best-selling games.
The weird thing about it: Breakthrough Gaming games are designed to express “biblical truth”, they tell biblical stories. Yes, indeed, baseball, for example, is based on Chapter 5 of 1st Thessalonians.
We take a closer look at this case and clarify where the bland aftertaste actually comes from, which games with a religious message usually have.
Was ist Breakthrough Gaming?
According to the manufacturer’s website, which is reminiscent of the deep 90s with its neon design, Breakthrough Gaming has existed since 2001. The developer and publisher exclusively produces “Christian themed video games” – video games with a Christian theme.
These appear for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Windows PCs and mobile platforms. Otherwise there is hardly any information on the net. The Instagram profile is completely empty and the Twitter account soullessly tweets the new game releases to itself.
The games speak for themselves
Crude graphics without personality.
Breakthrough Gaming releases a few games from the series every Sunday Breakthrough Gaming Arcade with simple retro graphics and even simpler titles (Space, Track, Get to the Top, etc.). Tetris and the arcade classic Asteroids have already shown that with elegant design and a little ingenuity, a timeless aesthetic can also be created from 8-bit that skilfully bypasses the limits of the medium.
At Breakthrough Gaming, the presentation is loveless and heartless, without personality or clever twists. In short, the games are insanely ugly. The arcade look was not chosen out of nostalgia, but most likely because of the little effort involved.
A couple of these games from that very series Breakthrough Gaming Arcade make this clear again:
In Get to the Top you control a stick figure that hops on orange platforms to a target flag and dodges round bullets. There are a total of ten levels that are visually identical and gradually get more difficult.
In American Football On the other hand, let your character, a stick figure playing football, run across a field and jump over other stick figures. We can’t really talk about fun here. The games are successfully played through after around five minutes.
Qualitatively questionable, but still in the top 50
Racing from Breakthrough Gaming – The platinum trophy is received here after just a few minutes.
So why are the games still in the top 50 lists? Just because of the price? No, it’s about the trophies or successes! The games from Breakthrough Gaming are aimed at trophy hunters who want to expand their trophy collection with such games and bag a platinum trophy within a few minutes.
We only get a platinum trophy if we have earned all the other trophies beforehand. The games from Breakthrough Gaming are a good opportunity to expand your collection within a few minutes.
In addition, the games entice with ridiculously simple trophy tasks that can be completed effortlessly and almost accidentally, which quickly leads to a platinum trophy.
In Get to the Top we receive a trophy just for dying. If a projectile hits you, the trophy will also flash on the screen. True to the motto: You died – Congratulations! There is another trophy for each completed level. In principle, we can get a few trophies for 99 cents this way. The game itself has no quality of its own and serves as a kind of detour that makes this “platinum purchase” legal.
Can I tell you about God?
But cheap production and attractive platinum trophies are not enough. After all, we are talking about “Christian video games” here. The links to the Bible are, to put it nicely, very loose. A Bible reference is made for each game in the Arcade series on the Breakthrough Gaming website.
Some are halfway understandable: Get to the Top should remind with its obstacles and projectiles that God has a plan for us in spite of our arduous journey. Others, on the other hand, are already fetched: The opposing stick figures in American Football symbolize the obstacles that are put in our way. And with other games, the connection is created in such a way that it seems disrespectful: Baseball According to the website, it should show that we “should pay attention to the important things in life”.
The problem with the biblical references
Far fetched – the games are meant to symbolize the divine plan.
The bland aftertaste arises from the obvious hypocrisy. If Breakthrough Games made it clear that they were offering cheap platinum trophies in the form of arcade games, we might accuse the manufacturer of lack of imagination, but not dishonesty. But this communication is missing; this creates a strong and very unpleasant contrast between an alleged Christian message and a very earthly business model.
Likewise, it would be impossible to accuse a Christian video game that makes sense as such – as a learning platform for Bible verses, for example – with fraudulent intent. So the problem with breakthrough gaming isn’t the messages themselves, it’s their lack of meaning and the way they communicate.
In addition, religious messages create a certain amount of skepticism in any entertainment medium. This is not at all due to the messages themselves, but rather to the breach of the fourth wall, which indicates a lack of professionalism.
It depends on the “how”
It is understandable that, for example, the Marvel hero Captain America was conceived as an avowed Christian. However, if Steve Rogers were to look into the camera and proclaim his belief to all viewers, this would not only unnecessarily exclude fans of other faiths, it would also mean that the authors have no feeling for subtle character development.
In the popcorn cinema, such instructions are perceived as presumptuous because they go beyond the communicated content (good versus evil) – the “bland aftertaste” is not caused by the messages, but by the fact that the games from Breakthrough Gaming are simple Flash Staging games, but lacking their honesty.
Breakthrough gaming without comment: With all of this, of course, we also want to know what Breakthrough Gaming itself has to say about it and have asked for a statement. So far, however, there has been no answer.
