God Uses This Company’s Video Games to Teach Players About Him
By Movieguide® Contributor
TruPlay’s CEO and founder, Brent Dusing, explained the mission of his company and how teaching kids about the Bible through video games can have a revolutionary impact on their lives.
“The mission of TruPlay is to transform a while generation of children. You know, our children are in a crisis in America… anxiety, suicide and depression rates are at all-time highs. There are record cases of brain damage in kids because of the legalization and high-usage of drugs. So our kids are really in a bad place; and the worse stat is that only 31% of kids in America believe in God, compared to 62% of adults,” Dusing told Movieguide®.
Dusing believes this crisis comes from the media that our children are consuming. They spend over 50 hours a week on their technology and are bombarded with anti-biblical messaging that warps their understanding of the world and of themselves.
“So our mission is to transform a whole generation of children to believe in God, but we’re doing it by bringing world-class entertainment that they enjoy, that they’re gonna want to use and they’re excited by,” Dusing explained.
To achieve this mission, Dusing and his team offer dozens of video games that are infused with positive biblical messaging. While some teach about specific characters and stories from the Bible, others share themes and lessons present throughout God’s word.
They also actively avoid many of the problematic messages and themes shared across all media platforms to help kids grow up in a safe environment, rather than one plagued with troubles.
“The biggest problem [in the gaming industry] is the messaging…There are bad video games and there are good video games. So what are we combatting? Well, there is a lot of sexual content in games, frankly, sexual content that if you put it in 10 years ago and you were an executive at a video game company, you would have been fired,” Dusing said. “Today it’s encouraged.”
“[We combat] sexual content. [Stuff] you wouldn’t want to talk to anybody about, much less a six-year-old. There’s hyper-violent stuff — look, [TruPlay] has King David’s battles where you have sword fights. You know what, there’s fun, there’s adventure, there’s action on TruPlay, but the real gruesome stuff with gore and hyper-violence, you know, that’s a problem,” he continued.
While the games on TruPlay’s platform are primarily created with kids in mind, TruPlay aims to create media that is enjoyable for people of any age, similar to TV shows and movies of the past.
“We really target families,” Dusing said. “If you look at the core…we’ve got a lot of kids aged 5-12 who enjoy [TruPlay], we also have teenagers who enjoy it, we also have people who are 30 or 40 or 50 who enjoy it; meaning, we have a lot of parents or adults enjoy it too… So, the way we write and the way we create our games, they are made to be enjoyed by people of all ages.”
The platform’s statistics prove that their games are truly being enjoyed. TruPlay’s audience retention rates are extremely impressive, with twice as many players returning to their games a week and a month after first playing them than games like Roblox or Minecraft.
This success is emboldening not only Dusing and his team but also other Christian creatives in the industry who struggle with the work they do every day.
“There’s a lot of people who are at these secular gaming companies that it’s a really hard life because you’re discriminated against for your worldview or you have to make something [against your morals],” Dusing said. “I interviewed one woman who worked from home, and she had an 8-year-old daughter who walked in and saw the game she was working on, and she said, ‘Mommy, how can you even work on that? You should be ashamed of that.’”
“The woman was just devastated because the woman was a Christian. But the problem is, you know, you work at this company and you kind of get forced to work on this thing or you get fired, and it’s hard for people,” he continued. “So, we provide a haven for people who want to work on great stuff, you know. It’s not just great quality but it’s done in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Dusing encourages all Christian parents to give TruPlay a shot, not just for his own sake, but to show the large game companies that parents want content that is safe for their kids, not the sexual, hyperviolent games that currently flood the market.
“By supporting TruPlay, you’re supporting a movement that says, you know, we care about your kids and we want a different outcome for your kids than what toxic media is providing,” he said. “We’ve got it all coming together.”
Those interested in TruPlay can find out more here.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Brent Dusing explained why he created his video game studio TruPlay and why it is important for Christian parents to give their children video games made with the Bible in mind.
“I think as Christians we’ve done a lot of movies, we’ve done a lot of music, we have certainly done a lot of books, but given that games are so much a part of our cultural fabric, we’ve got to be right there with excellence,” Dusing told Movieguide®.
Given that the average American child spends over 50 hours on screens a week, and much of that time is spent on gaming, many of their views on the world come from what they learn from these games. Dusing saw this as an opportunity to spread Biblical teachings in a major way.
“Over 60% of Americans that are 40 years old or more believe in God, which isn’t really that bad compared to a lot of countries, but only 31% of kids [in America believe in God]. And you zoom out and you say, ‘Wait, how did that happen?’ Well, you know, I don’t think it’s right to blame the church at all. What I blame is the rest of society and culture,” Dusing said.
