Rod Humble's Life After Linden Lab: New Multimedia Studio & Ambitious Strategy Game About Religious Cults

Cults & Daggers is an ambitious new strategy game hitting Steam next February 12, sort of Age of Empires but with religious sects instead of national leaders, and its lead creator is someone New World Notes leaders know well: Rob Humble, a game industry veteran from Electronic Arts (Sims 2 & 3) and Sony Online Entertainment (EverQuest), and most recently, Linden Lab's last CEO, a role which ended almost exactly a year ago. And while Cults & Daggers isn't an open sandbox virtual world like Second Life, Rod tells me there's aspects of it that SLers will find appealing:

"Second Life users are incredibly intellectually curious, particularly about creative and social dynamics," he says, "so I hope they will be interested in the way I have modeled class and power structures within the game!"

The game takes during the birth of Christianity and Buddhism, so I asked Rod if the game might convey anything insightful about actual religion as it's practiced today:

"Perhaps a little," Rod tells me. "I was surprised at the amount of religions and cults which thrived during this time, it is interesting how this was such an intensive period of religious thought in the world. This is a game about the religions that did not make it and the people who devoutly believed in them. It takes a view point that individuals make a difference in the trajectory of a belief. My hope is that people of faith and non believers will both enjoy it, there is nothing in here which is likely to offend anyone, but some I hope to provoke thought."

Second Life and Second Life users, he goes on, are a reference point and inspiration for the game itself: "I think one thing which informed the game was Second Life takes away certain restrictions. So you see people behave a little bit like Greek Gods. If you cannot die but have power than your actions change in the world. Also seeing so many people log in and have such a blast creating their personal vision made me want to do the same! This is a little myth I wrote about the time of the Hellenistic gods. I hope folks enjoy it!"

Can't wait play. Incredibly conservative and risk-averse, the game industry tends to shy away from dealing with religion on such a direct level, and it's great to see Rod get back to his indie game designer roots.

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Comments

[Issa Heckroth]

.....can you slex? ^^

[Anubis]

Great idea! Hopefully it will cause people to think about how religions get started.

Rod says, "...there is nothing in here which is likely to offend anyone," however I will be surprised if it isn't banned in many Muslim countries, on the grounds that it promotes the sin of apostasy which is "the conscious abandonment of Islam by a Muslim in word or through deed." Therefore creating another religion would surely be deemed apostasy, even in the context of a game, and the penalty for that could be death.

[Anubis]

I've now read the manual for the game, and must say I am offended myself.

Not only do I not have the opportunity to play an ancient god (my obvious preference), but the ancient gods are always shown trying to destroy the world. In fact. we ancient Egyptian gods tried to restore Maat, the ancient harmony of the Universe.

It was these murderous cults which were destroying the world then, especially the one that won the Dark Ages, slaughtered all the pagan priests, and began the endless religious wars still being fought.

It is the murderous cults which gained power then, as well as new ones which arise today, that are destroying the world now, and make headlines with their religious wars.

So this game started with a good idea, but then got the theology all wrong when it blamed evil on all the ancient gods. I grant that many of the ancient gods were evil, but to imply we were all evil is wrong and offensive.