20th August, 2005
DAVID ADAMS

It stars the early Christian disciples Timothy and Titus and follows their story as they travel across the ancient lands of Crete, Ephesus and Rome, spreading the word as they go, in a quest to find some stolen letters.

Sounds like the latest swords and sandals epic from Hollywood? Think again. Timothy and Titus is in fact a 3D computer game for children, the first in a series Australian games company White Knight Games hope to produce as a Christian alternative to the violence and negative messages that permeate so many of games on the market today.

INSIDE A VIRTUAL AND ANCIENT WORLD: A screenshot from the soon-to-be-released 'Timothy and Titus'. PICTURE: Courtesy of White Knight Games.

“I love computer games and I’m really passionate about why there aren’t any Christian computer games,” says the company’s managing director, Laurence Escalante.

“In all my years of gaming, I’ve never come across a single one.”

White Knight Games was formed in November last year with the goal of “Christ first in Christian games”, when Escalante, a long-time computer gamer, and a couple of friends decided to produce a Christian game with the aim of donating 10 per cent of the game’s profits to help tackle poverty in the Philippines.

Escalante, who currently attends a Catholic church in Perth, says that while he was raised in a Christian household and has always regularly attended church, it was only in the last few years that his Christian walk had progressed as he’d like it to be and he became involved in a Salvation Army program operating in central Sydney.

“It was great - that was probably my first exposure to really different types of Christians and non-Christians who are really committed to charitable works...” he says.

“Dad’s been a long time member of St Vinnies and so I’ve always done a bit of charity work but it’s probably only been the last few years that my own Christian walk has taken me somewhere really special.”

Escalante says that he’s always been interested in computer games - as far back as the days of the once ubiquitous Commodore 64 - but it was only in October last year that he was drawn to the idea of making a computer game.

“It just really came out of the blue - there’s no other way to explain it other than divine providence or a divine prompting,” he says.

“And I thought, why not? Why not Christian computer games?”

The scope of the project was initially small. Escalante moved back to his childhood home of Perth at the start of the year and his first thought was to approach some students at local universities to see if there was any interest in developing such a game.

But one of his relatives, a senior telecommunications company executive who is based in the Philippines, mentioned there was a push for the creation of computer games in his home country. Escalante made some inquiries and came across a company called Anino Entertainment who had the honor of making the country’s first home-grown game.

Emails were subsequently exchanged and Escalante explained his idea and his budget (essentially based on what he could borrow). Then in January, he and two colleagues travelled to the Philippines to meet the Anino team.

Plans for the game were finalised with the idea being that he would retain creative direction while the staff at Anino built the actual game.

The game, which Escalante describes as a “Crash Bandicoot-style challenge”, is aimed at children in the eight-to-15-year-old market as an alternative to the adult games many are already playing.

“They contain often really graphic violent content which is not suited at all to kids of that age group but...these video games have come as such a rapid phenomenon that often parents haven’t had the time or inclination or energy to monitor exactly what (games their kids are playing). They can monitor TV shows or movies but games are another breed, they don’t know exactly what’s happen.”

Referring to the recent furore surrounding the release of the game Grand Theft Auto, he says that kids aged as young as six, seven and eight were often being exposed to highly inappropriate and negative content by playing such games and adds that even those games which simply rely on reflexes didn’t necessarily deliver positive messages to children.

With Timothy and Titus, the aim of the action-driven game is to recover the Biblical letters St Paul wrote Timothy and Titus while travelling through a world inhabited by Romans, Pharisees and Sadducees.

“As you collect them, you’re actually exposed to various parts of letters from St Paul to Timothy and Titus,” says Escalante.

He says all possible actions the heroes can take have been carefully examined to ensure they were appropriate for Biblical heroes,the two main protagonists were selected because they were real heroes people could look up to.

“The central theme of the game is to reward those that utilise non-violent Christian solutions to obstacles, even in the face of hate that so many early Christians faced as persecution...” Escalante says.

“By incorporating Christian virtues and actions in gameplay, by reinforcing Bible scripture and encouraging players to learn from the lives of St Timothy and St Titus, we believe we are able to put Christ and His message at the core of the players’ experience.”

The game, which will be initially made for use on the PC, is set to be released in Easter and Escalante says a sequel is already been planned.

- www.whiteknightgames.com