Great thread.
I'm also a Christian and have put a great deal of thought into the idea of what is OK and what is not. I've gone back and forth on this in mind, but I do feel I've come to a satisfactory solution, but it's a personal one. This is an area where everyone must find their own answers.
What I've come up with for myself, personally, is that I have to feel like I'm fighting for good or in pure self defense. Obviously, that is the case in most games. And that is also why Grand Theft Auto is one of the few that I just can't see myself playing (yes, it is a sandbox game, but the premise of the game seems very bent on commiting criminal acts). A recent game that I would not play would be the recent Scarface game, for the same reasons.
And yeah, my worldview definitely affects how I look at games, and it is certainly a reason why I didn't like something like the language of Gears of War. Now, for me personally, it didn't bother me enough to stop playing the main campaign or multiplayer (I would say it is more of a taste thing than a spiritual issue at that point
.
The general opinion expressed by most on this thread, which is that we all have different tolerances, is true. I have a good friend whom I consider to be a good Christian guy (the sort that lives it, not just talks); yet he has no problem at all doing the most fiendish stuff in games. Give him any sort of "moral choice" game (Knights of the Old Republic, Fable, etc.), and he'll be as evil as he can get.
His mind just works differently than mine. I can tell that, for him, it's just a game (and that's what he says when I talk to him about this). When I played the same games, I would feel very guilty if I did anything "wrong." At the end of the day, using the force to cause innocents to jump off a cliff in KOTOR II is literally just a slightly amusing way to push a button, send an electrical signal, and cause some one's and zero's to bounce around.
But for some of us, maybe that sinister virtual act affects as in some other deep, untold way, and our conscience says to us, "don't." And I think it is obvious that children are far more susceptible to this sort of influence as well. But video games are not a clearly regulated thing, the Bible (or any other religious text) doesn't mention video games (and no, things don't have to be spelled out, since we can pretty clearly see that God wouldn't like it if I started a cocaine habit, just to be clear on that), so one just has to be cautious.
Anyway, it does please me to see the folks on this forum thinking about those issues. Too many people *don't care*.
-Rob