Jesus In Space Rhetoric

Even though our class discussion on Monday was based around community, I could not get the video game “Jesus in Space” out of my head. The procedural rhetoric behind that game was so mind-boggling to me and I’m still having a hard time trying to wrap my head around it even though I know I have the skills to analyze it. I’m still kind of torn between the idea of whether the game is brilliant or completely insane.

When we first started the game and listening to some of the introductory pieces I was pretty sure that the game must have been created by non-Christians because it was so outlandish and somewhat “off topic” for a Christian game. But, as we got further into the game, I realized that there was no doubt that the creators of this game must be of a Christian background because the information was very specific. I was pretty amazed at how strict the procedural rhetoric was behind the game considering that it initially seemed very informal like the PS2 Bible Game. I definitely think the creators were making a point by electrocuting the player’s character every time they got an answer wrong, as well as completely destroying the robots when they told the story wrong. Likewise, I thought it was really interesting that the game creators took pieces of the last supper story from the four different gospels. A common argument against Christianity’s legitimacy is that there are a lot of gaps between the different gospels, but the Jesus in Space game put these stories together to create the story in such a way that the player either told it “correctly” or “incorrectly.” 

Even though this game seems somewhat ridiculous and silly, in the short amount of time that we played it I could see that it definitely had parts with very strong procedural rhetoric. I would be interested to maybe play it more in the future and see if the other sections of the game have equally powerful rhetoric.

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