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Comment by drewcoo | Hacker News Reader

IMHO, we don't need a game to teach people to see all interactions as religious persecution. That's already a ridiculous problem in our society.

The only worse thing I can imagine would be combining persecution complex-inducing game with an FPS.

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It's interesting that you say that. That really wasn't how I imagined it, and I'm a little confused how you interpreted it as such. My thought was that it's a point of view that most people haven't experienced or thought much about. Just because the playable characters would be from the LDS church wouldn't mean that all or even most of their interactions would have a religious motivation. I imagined it more like getting "boy scout badges" for good deeds from the perspective of that particular religious group and for the game to be more light-hearted rather than dead serious, or even suggesting any sort of religion to the player.

Maybe you're right and I'm suggesting something that isn't really appropriate. I would play games more if there were more slice-of-life type games from different perspectives, but with some humor in there too.

Honestly, I like the concept of this game. If you dropped all the proper names you mentioned and just call it "Just Be Nice" it would be palatable to 1000x bigger audience. You don't need to be religiously motivated to find it challenging to be nice in particular scenarios. It's a theme I've never heard of explored and I would like to play it (but without the Mormon stuff)

I guess that doesn't resonate as much with me. Your point is totally fair, and maybe people would like your idea a lot more. Despite my atheism, I'm much more intrigued about a game that's more from a particular point of view and I just don't have a problem with characters that are religious. A more culturally homogenous game might be less appealing to me. I'm sure it could be done right, though. The Mormon aspect, I thought, would give such a game a lot of interesting gameplay scenarios out-of-the-box that wouldn't be as easy to explain in a more generic game.

Thanks for the feedback. :)

FWIW: I think most members of the LDS church have a good sense of humor for things like this done in good taste, even if they're not 100% representative of their beliefs.

source: am one myself. This is true for the other members around me as well (friends, family, etc)

Agree with this. I would never give a "religious game" a second thought. Automatic pass, irrespective of the mechanics.

I am imagining they are aliens instead of Mormons, but they look exactly like humans. Maybe they moved here (secretely, of course) because some other mean aliens have taken over their planet. Since they are unfailingly nice, they just left their planet instead of fighting for it. Now they're here on earth and dealing with humanity's response to their niceness.

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