Andrew Lunstad of Eternal Warriors, makers of "The War in Heaven", offer some insights into their game and the Christian gaming market. Developer's Website www.eternalwarriors.com Check out our review of "The War in Heaven" action adventure game here

Andrew Lunstad one of the developers of "The War in Heaven" recently took time to answer a few of our questions.  There's some really interesting stuff here.  Christian video games on the PC is still very new and underdeveloped.  Here you can get a glimpse at not only some of the difficulties facing developers of Christian games but also hint at the great possibilities that exist.  Also note that the fact that the game allows players to play the evil angel has proved to be a consistent bugaboo with Christian distributors.  Most people picked up on the solid reason the had for doing this but it doesn't take much to scare away the "feint of heart." CG: Before creating the game, "The War in Heaven," what other games did you make? My partner and I started a secular game company before we even thought about Christian games -- Fenris Wolf. With this company we produced the Rebel Moon series of games. CG: What made you decide to create "The War in Heaven"? Hard to say exactly. One things that sticks with me is my wife challenging us on why we didn't make any Christian games. Our first response was skeptical, but on further review found much in the Bible that would support a type of game we liked. Furthermore, our pastor at the time, Greg Boyd, was writing a book called God At War. Consequently, many of his sermons were dealing with the subject of spiritual warfare. The story of Daniel waiting for the angel sent to answer his prayer because the angel was being attacked by the Prince of Persia (spiritual entity -- not game) was particularly inspiring to me. A perhaps deeper seated motivation is the fact that I grew up loving to read fantasy and science fiction books, but most of these books had a very humanistic or New Age bent. Although I didn't necessarily believe what the books told me, the cognitive dissonance produced by believing one thing and reading another tended to pull me towards that thinking. Being able to occasionally read books like CS Lewis or other Christian authors was like a breath of fresh air reminding me of what is true and who God is. I hope the War In Heaven will do the same thing for gamers. CG: What was your greatest challenge in bringing this game to market? Finding a publisher. There were a lot of secular publishers who thought the game sounded interesting, but were unwilling to take a chance on a Christian title. The Christian world was quite skeptical of a game that wasn't a Bible quiz or in some other way obviously Sunday school material. In ValuSoft we found a publisher that was open to the idea of Christian games. CG: The game has been placed in national software chains. What has been the game's reception in the secular market? It has mostly not been noticed. When it has, the reception seems to be pretty good. I get emails from people that start out 'I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw...' because they are so surprised that someone made a Christian game. CG: How has the game fared in the Christian market? Much better. Our Christian distributor has been very pleased with the response the product has gotten, even though it was not advertised at all. Our biggest hurdle there is that many Christian stores are loathe to carry a title that has a demon on the cover, or that allows the player to choose the evil path. CG: "The War in Heaven" represents the best first person engine ever developed for a Christian game. Do you have plans to continue to develop the engine for a future game? I have many plans, however, they will remain nebulous until we find a publisher for a sequel. We'd definitely like to bring in more role-playing elements and more stunning visual effects for example, but budget and other considerations will color what options we have. CG: What is in store for your company in the future? Any hints on your next game project for our readers? Again, the future is unclear at this point. I would like to be able to approach publishers and be able to point to the number of sales of WIH and say -- There is a Christian gaming market out there just waiting for quality games. However, while sales have been OK so far, we are definitely still in the early stages of developing a Christian game community. Yet, I am not despairing at all. The Christian music market took some time to develop, and it shouldn't surprise us that we are finding similar challenges in the game market. Let me be clear. My heart is to see some quality positive content out there to counter graphically awesome but Godless games that are currently the norm. CG: Is there anything you'd like to add or help clear up some misconceptions about the game? Many people wonder if the game was made by Christians -- the answer is yes, although our publisher is not a Christian publisher. Did we make the game to make money -- Haha. Good one. There are far easier ways to make money than this. We do, however, hope that the game is successful, because without that it is less likely that others will make Christian games. Others wonder why we would allow the gamer to choose the evil path. The answer is that we really can't teach much about making a good choice if there isn't any choice. I know that if a younger me were to play the game, and find no evil path, I would feel like someone was trying to pretend that evil didn't exist, that it wasn't tempting, and that there is no fun down that path. That is of course not true, and might even make me curious about what was being concealed. Evil usually starts out looking great, and sin *is* tempting (that's why we pray to be delivered from temptation). It is only further down the road that consequences are apparent. We wanted to reflect that with our game. CG: What do you see as the future of online gaming for Christians? I have no divine revelation here unfortunately, but God put making the War In Heaven on my heart. It is hard to imagine that the War In Heaven completed God's intentions in this area. I suspect that in the next 1-3 years we will see some break through Christian titles that will convince people that Christians want games that reflect their belief system instead of the world's, and that Christian game developers will create even better content to fill that need.