United States of America
a.k.a. Christopher Thomas Casberg or Chris Casberg.
Former Marine/SIGINT. Graduate of UNC Chapel Hill. Games, culture, faith, art, etc.
Disclaimer: Gamechurch is a nonprofit ministry. As such we do not publicly endorse or condemn candidates or political parties. We do, however, give our writers the freedom to honestly share their hearts, particularly when it comes to issues of human dignity. Consequently we do not censor our writers from sharing their political point of view.
Some years ago, the late film critic Roger Ebert weighed in on the debate over whether video games could be art: "Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form." Oh, Ebert.
The recent hit sci-fi video game promises an infinite galaxy to explore. Is that enough?
Eighteen years ago, a young Minnesota farmboy picked up a magazine left behind by his older brother, and his life changed forever.
Two monks left their cell and appeared before Abba Anthony, who was praying. "Abba," said one of the monks, "My brother is in error, saying that Squirtle is the best starter when Charmander is clearly superior." The other replied, "Nay, it is my brother who errs, for Squirtle has the best evolution."
It was a grey and gloomy day, and I suppose now it couldn't have been otherwise. I'd brought my daughter to the park. This is our daily rite, meant to initiate her into the mysteries of play and society.
In the course of my life I have died, by my best calculation, ninety jillion times. My many demises run the gamut of options: crushed, drowned, run over, smothered, incinerated, exploded, imploded, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. I am a connoisseur of ends; I've sampled them all. My palette is discerning.
VR's greatest strength is not escapism, but empathy.
The following is a reprint from the Theme section of Unwinnable Monthly Issue Seventy-Seven tackling Bad Luck. If you enjoy what you read, please consider purchasing the issue or subscribing. --- You ever wonder about the lives of henchmen? Do they have families? Hobbies?
Long ago, before gamers felt the Call of Duty or voyaged to the World of Warcraft, before they had Wiimotes to swing or an Xbox that watched them sleep at night with its lidless electronic eye, there ruled in the videogame kingdom the genre of Japanese role-playing games.
Three hours into Gears for Breakfast's new 3D platformer A Hat in Time , a startling but not unwelcome thought intruded upon the regular workings of my tiny creaking brainbox: "I'm having fun with this."
Ah, my dear Madeleine, asleep in your fuzzy tiger costume and strapped to my chest. You are a scant six weeks old, and your life consists entirely of sleeping, eating, bouncing in your parents' arms, and the occasional bout of thunderous flatulence.
By C.T. Casberg The end of the world's a funny thing. Everybody's got opinions on it, but nobody's been there yet, making what happens all a bit guesswork. Some think Earth will be pulverized by an asteroid. Some think it'll be robots that do us in, or that we'll meet our end via catastrophic weather patterns caused by global warming.
For whatever reason, God made human beings inside of time. We are creatures of linearity, of cause and effect. We experience events in single direction. There is no going backwards, not even in memory; for when we remember things, we are creating a new story in our minds, one that becomes hazier and more indefinite the further removed we are from the events in question.
If you haven't read Paul Kilduff-Taylor's expansive essay on the art and science of writing about video games, fix yourself. It's an incredible piece, and although I disagreed with it here and there I felt thoroughly refreshed by its humility and frankness.
Ancient texts are not irrelevant to today's debates for the plain fact that they are ancient. Rather, ancient texts prove that today's debates recapitulate eternal questions of the human condition. Last week I had the pleasure of reading The Wisdom of Solomon and viewing Avengers: Age of Ultron, both for the first time.