I make this claim because video games can (even though they often don't) combine all of the most common and widely-used forms of artistic expression in a unique way. (Note that most of my examples below are not the only ones possible.)

• Visual arts: amazing things are being done these days with graphics and rendering utilities. Myst broke ground in the realm of stunning realism several years back, but that's hardly the only style on the market; just look at the darkly engrossing backgrounds in Fallout and the cartoon-like surrealism of King's Quest 7.

• Acting: virtually every game produced these days involves actors, whether just voice actors as in Quest for Glory 5, or people playing a part that will be seen in the game (e.g., Riven).

• Cinematography: this is related to live acting, but cutscenes (mini-movies within gameplay) are more and more commonly using only computer-generated imagery and animation (see Starcraft and Diablo 2 for examples). But whether live actors or computer-created, the cutscenes need to be directed, and that involves regulating scene changes, camera angles (actual or virtual), and everything that goes into directing a real movie.

• Music: this is a huge component of any video game, having evolved from the blorting and bleeping of the old NES Super Mario Land to games like Myst 3: Exile which have produced independent soundtrack CDs for sale. Where would Brood War or Quest for Glory 4 be without their music?

• Story: in my book, this is actually the most important component of most computer games. There are exceptions--I like Diablo 2's interface enough that I would probably play it if its story were half as good (and I wouldn't put it in my top 10 as it is). Also, certain genres like flight simulators and computerized board games aren't supposed to have stories. But generally, the story and characters have to work for me to appreciate a game. I talk more about good and bad stories later on.

In addition, players would not only appreciate the synthesis of all these arts, but could interact with them directly. What's more exciting, reading about Gilgamesh fighting the Humbaba, or fighting the Humbaba yourself? Reading about Oedipus tackling the riddle of the Sphinx, or trying to solve the riddle yourself? Hearing of Caesar engaging in great military campaigns, or waging those wars yourself (with no risk involved)?

But it's not the excitement that usually makes a game worth playing (in my opinion), it's the story and characters.

Quest for Glory 4 is a good example of that. Hands down, it is the worst-programmed game I've ever played; nothing I've ever seen (even Windows!) crashes as often for as many different reasons. But it's still my favorite Quest for Glory, and it's all because of the story and the mood and the music. It's the old classic: boy meets girl, girl runs away, boy find about curse on land, girl pops up again, boy tries to find girl, girl hides, boy falls in love with girl, girl turns out to be a powerful Nosferatu trying to bring darkness to the whole world by summoning an unspeakably evil beast from another dimension with the help of her vampire slave who just happens to be boy's old archenemy, boy still loves girl, girl realizes she's just sad and misguided but continues her evil plans anyway, boy isn't happy, girl magically forces boy to help, boy summons evil beast, boy's archenemy tries to kill boy, girl saves boy but is sucked into the other dimension, boy has to travel to Hades in the sequel to rescue girl, half the time boy loses girl anyway because he's already hooked up with someone else. I mean, it may be cliched, but it's still gripping!

Fallout and its sequel (innovatively titled Fallout 2) are thought-provoking works that ask the question, "What would happen after a nuclear holocaust?" How would society function (or would it)? What would people's everyday lives be like? Both works are set a number of decades after most of the world's population was wiped out by nuclear disaster, and deal with numerous human issues--trust and friendship, prejudice, justice, and what really makes people human.

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On Religious Objections to Evolution

Without talking about science just yet, it will be useful to get an idea of what sorts of beliefs there are in the United States about evolution, and to put those in the context of what the same people think science really is. I've ordered them here in a continuum based on two things: how much they trust the mainstream scientific community and its results, and what their religious position is on the matter. Without claiming that this is the best way to view the various opinions out there, I think it is a useful one. Obviously there's not always a sharp dividing line between categories, and not every individual will fit perfectly into this list.

• Flat-Earthers believe, based on the fact that nobody feels like they are on the underside of the earth, that the earth's surface lies on a plane. They are aware of the fact that several people have been around the world, and explain this by saying that the earth is a round disc. Pilots fly along this flat disc and are sworn to secrecy. All NASA missions are fraudulent, and all science (not just evolution) is a great conspiracy to keep people ignorant of the truth. It's particularly hard to get accurate information on people who believe this, since there are so many parodies around.

• Fixed-Earthers (not all of whom endorse everything at the linked site) believe that the earth is a sphere, and all agree that the Bible clearly teaches that the earth does not and never has moved. They cite Psalm 93:1 and follow Martin Luther in observing that Joshua 10 describes the stopping of the sun, not the earth. All science since Copernicus (including evolution) is viewed as a grand Satanic fraud and conspiracy.

• Young-Earth Creationists believe that the universe was created exactly as described in their reading of Genesis, and that by counting the genealogies scattered through the OT and NT we can piece together the age of the universe at somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years. YECs are more liberal in their acceptance of science than FEs, since most of them think science was doing okay as far along as Newton. They believe that science's primary goal is to seek and prove the validation of the Bible, and that any science which does so should be encouraged. Three major things which according to their interpretation go against Biblical teaching are evolution, the big bang, and dating methods that point to an earth older than 10,000 years. YECs believe there is no evidence to support these claims: since God didn't mention them in the Bible, which is his given historical account of the origins of the universe and life, those claims are mistaken and so there can't possibly be any supporting evidence. Two popular YEC sites are the Institute for Creation Research and Answers in Genesis, which give representative samples of YEC arguments.

• Old-Earth Creationists tend toward a more empirical approach to science than the YECs. The agreement on the earth's age between many independent varieties of radiometric dating methods (e.g. K-Ar, uranium fission tracking, isochron dating, rubidum-strontium dating, etc., and certainly not Carbon-14 dating, which hasn't been used for that purpose in more than 50 years) has convinced OECs that the earth is indeed as old as mainstream science claims it is (roughly 4.5 billion years), and astronomical data has persuaded them likewise about the age of the universe (roughly 15 billion years). Genesis 1-3 is often viewed as something of a parable, far more important for what it communicates about humanity and its relation to God than for any historical claims it makes. OECs, like YECs, observe that living species change from generation to generation; but OECs go so far as to call this "microevolution" (YECs typically avoid the term "evolution" in any form and instead call it simply "change"). OECs believe that it is impossible for one species to change into another, and it is on this basis that they reject both speciation (a.k.a. macroevolution) and the descent of humans from primates.

• Intelligent Design* advocates agree with mainstream estimates of the age of the universe, and also believe that microevolution is unavoidable. Many also observe that there isn't really a clear distinction between species, and on this basis accept the possibility of macroevolution and often the common descent of humans and primates. They take issue, however, with the notion of the mechanism of evolution, namely "random" mutations with natural selection, arguing that such a mechanism by itself could never have come up with species as complex as we see around us. They hold that it is possible to examine the evidence in a scientific way and conclude, scientifically, that a designer of some kind was involved in the descent from precellular organisms to present-day life. (There is also a huge political ID movement, but that is outside the scope of this work.)

• Theistic Evolutionists are like the ID proponents above insofar as they believe that genetic, geological, and biological evidence supports speciation and common descent. They differ in that theistic evolutionists don't believe that science, as a strictly empirical undertaking bound by Ockham's Razor, can ever point in a scientific way to a designer. That would be an infringement on the rightful domain of faith. They hold that "random" in "random mutation" doesn't mean purposeless or uncaused, but rather "unpredictable to us," much as the weather is completely caused but equally unpredictable in the long term. Some TEs believe privately that a higher power did in fact help evolution along (in unverifiable ways of course); others side with the Catholic idea that God didn't just create the world, he created it in such a way that it could help create itself. Still others don't distinguish between these two ideas.

How do all these groups respond to each other? Broadly speaking, people in any given group view those farther up the list as placing unnecessary and pedantic restrictions on the personality and power of God, and view those farther down the list as sacrificing too much to secularism or atheists or Satan (depending on how apocalyptic their theology happens to be).

My own view is that it's fine for people to examine the evidence and conclude on a personal level that there is or is not a designer. I am sympathetic to those who look at something like the brain and say, "If there was not a designer, how could this possibly have come to pass?" and also to those who look at the carnage of predation and say, "If there was a designer, what the hell was he thinking?" It's not an empirically decidable issue.

What I disapprove of, though, is arguing that the evidence clearly points to one view or another. I've heard from otherwise careful and cautious people things like the following:

"According to Roger Penrose (a noted Cambridge astrophysicist), the odds of the physical laws working out the way they have is one in 10^250--one in ten to the two hundred fiftieth power, or 1 followed by 250 zeroes. That's as likely as winning the lottery 32 weeks in a row. There's no way that's chance--something that unlikely just can't happen without outside assistance."

My objections to this are twofold. First, actually read Penrose's "The Emperor's New Mind" and you'll notice that he doesn't give that figure in terms of probability--he says there are 10^250 possible ways the universe could work out its physical laws. He never explains how he arrives at this figure. Further, he certainly doesn't say how likely any of them are, so we can't put it in terms of probability. (Not to mention the fact that we have no way of knowing which configurations of physical law would have actually led to life.)

Second, even if the 1 in 10^250 figure is accurate, so what? Consider the following experiment. Take four decks of cards, each deck having a different back. Spend an afternoon shuffling the decks together so that they're randomly mixed, and then lay them all out on your living room floor. Write down the order of the cards, also noting which deck each card came from. Look at what you've just written: the probability of getting that exact sequence is 1 in 260 factorial, which is roughly 10^283--millions of trillions of trillions of times less likely to happen than 1 in 10^250.

Did "outside assistance" help you to get that sequence? If not, how come something so much more likely (the universe's laws working as they do**) must have been assisted? That's not to say that they absolutely weren't--that would be way out of line. But judgment on the preponderance of the evidence could go either way, and will ultimately be influenced by more than empirical and quantitative concerns.

** Remember, we're assuming this probability holds only for the sake of argument. In real life we have no idea how likely it was in the beginning that physical law could have permitted life of some kind. (Back to probability)