Movie
‘Gate Zero’ video game update: Templar Media acquires Bible X to expand ‘highly anticipated’ Bible-based gaming experience
Video game publisher Templar Media has acquired Norway-based development studio Bible X, securing the future of “Gate Zero,” a forthcoming Bible-based, time-travel video game aimed at a global audience of younger players.
Announced in a Dec. 17 press release, the acquisition brings Bible X — founded in 2020 under the nonprofit Christian media organization BCC Media — under the umbrella of the Atlanta-based publisher. Templar Media said the deal ensures long-term ownership of the “Gate Zero” intellectual property while providing expanded resources for development, marketing and distribution, including confirmed plans to launch the game on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, with a particular focus on reaching Generations Z and Alpha.
“’Gate Zero’ is a historical, semi-open world action-adventure with sci-fi elements, set in a dystopian future where a ruthless global regime is the sole arbiter of truth,” according to Templar Media.
“From the moment we saw ‘Gate Zero,’ we knew it had enormous potential as a high-quality game that was being created for a massive, yet underserved gaming audience,” added John Gibson, CEO and founder of Templar Media. “With this acquisition, we can now apply the full experience, support and resources of Templar Media into creating the incredible ‘Entertainment First’ experience that gamers worldwide have been asking for.”
Gibson, a games industry veteran, saw the acquisition as a cornerstone investment for the new publisher. The business deal complements the company’s “entertainment first” philosophy.
“Templar Media gives us the stability and strategic support to fulfill our original vision and expand on it,” said Arve Solli, studio head of Bible X based in Moss, a city near Oslo, Norway.
“Our goal from the very beginning of the project has been to take players on a fun and engaging journey back in time, allowing them to experience firsthand the events of the Bible during one of the most pivotal and significant moments in history. Now, we have even greater tools and resources to bring this vision to life in an even more powerful, immersive, and high-quality way.
“As proven by the commercial success of TV and movies like ‘The Chosen’ and ‘The King of Kings,’ there’s a massive audience seeking top-tier content that explores their values. With ‘Gate Zero,’ we plan to meet that demand with a full-featured, story-rich video game that allows the player to explore the history and stories found in the Bible, in a grounded and historically accurate way.”
The development of Bible X is part of a wider rise in popularity and engagement by players with Christian and Gospel genres in the video games space, according to Templar Media.
Solli has been working in Christian media and production since 2011. His involvement has seen him create content for children, and he has been working for that target audience for years as a producer and director, mostly for BCC Media.
In late 2019, he began working on an interactive Bible study tool complementing an international youth camp planned for 5,000 young people, creating an imaginative virtual tour inside the temple in Jerusalem. However, the COVID-19 pandemic cancelled the project, and Solli and his team had to rethink the whole concept and came up with the idea of creating a video game.
All the young people in the youth club were invited to play the prototype of the new video game. They were divided into 900 groups of four to seven people, and played the game together.
“They were [virtually] ‘living’ in Jerusalem, celebrating Easter and learning all the stories, and interacting for two months before [physically] returning to the camp two years later,” Solli previously told Christian Daily International. The first prototype of the game was completed in 2022.
Solli said the project plan had two purposes. First, to present the prototype at a mass Christian youth camp in post-pandemic Norway, involving youngsters from around the world. They had a tradition of doing a Bible study project together.
“The first prototype was meant to be that Bible study project,” Solli explained, “for then in groups but also interactive all over the world, competing inside the game and building up towards their youth camp in 2022. The other purpose was to confirm the assumption that a Christian Bible-based video game would be a really good idea.”
The manner of gauging interest was achieved by analyzing the interaction between the youngsters and the game with developers: “studying those results, and we also went specifically to the U.S. and interviewed youth ministries in several different churches with differing denominations to gather insight and validate our reasons for making this game.
“Our goal is that if you read the Bible, you can play the game. It’s basically playing the Bible so it’s for all denominations.”
Further development and changes were made to enhance gameplay, storyline, and graphics. The game’s quality subsequently improved. The first iteration was for groups playing, but an updated version caters to single players with an additional cellphone or tablet application facility to enable more players to join in the game.
The game’s storyline is 100% Bible-based, according to Solli, and participants play as “Max,” a teenager from the future, within a narrative created by the Bible X team.
Solli compared the tone of “Gate Zero” to George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984. Set in 2072, the game’s storyline says a governing power called “DeForce” controls every aspect of life to serve its own self-beliefs.
As Max, the game player is not convinced and sets out to learn the truth of history, thanks to his grandmother Charlotte with her Bible. Cousin Hector, with a time scanner, helps and Max becomes something of a “cyber archaeologist,” according to Solli, who wants to “bring back the history of the world.”
“They travel back in time to confirm and find evidence of that world, so they can rediscover the history of it, and by that people can learn about Jesus.”
Sources:Christianpost
Movie
‘I Know God’s Power’: Dallas Jenkins Reacts Moments After Filming Last-Ever ‘The Chosen’ Scene
“The Chosen” creator Dallas Jenkins was filled with gratitude last Thursday night just moments after filming the final scene of his popular biblical series.
Jenkins, who exclusively invited CBN News on set in Texas to witness those last moments, expressed his profound gratitude for how the show is coming to an end.
“I feel awesome because there’s no more days hanging over my head, no more seasons hanging over my head, we’ve done the work that we set out to go,” he said. “God provided everything that we needed.”
The last scene, which featured the disciples on a boat, was memorable because the vessel used in filming was the same seen in the first season of the show. The scene offered a literal and figurative full-circle moment.
“God has met us here in the waters so often,” Jenkins said. “I have nothing but gratitude.”
Ultimately, Jenkins said the mission behind the show has never changed, even as the audience has swelled to over 100 million people.
“We haven’t changed,” he said. “We’re still trying to do the work for God. We’re still humbled, we’re still surrendered, we’re still grinding.”
As for how the seven-season journey changed Jenkins, he said it offered him insight into God’s character and relationship with mankind.
“I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember,” he said. “I know God’s power. … I don’t think I knew quite as much as I do now from doing this show how intimate of a God He is, how personal of a God he is.”
Sources:faithwire
Hot News
Netflix’s Narnia is an Attack on Aslan’s Christ Figure
For more than 70 years, Christians throughout the world have enjoyed C.S. Lewis’ epic seven-volume masterpiece, The Chronicles of Narnia. The story, set against the backdrop of the mythical and magical land of Narnia, is meant to be a Christian “supposal” of sorts, a clear parable of the Gospel told in a way that children can understand.
At the center of all of it is the hero, the great lion Aslan. Aslan is the “Son of the Emperor Beyond the Sea,” the creator and savior of Narnia. Aslan gives his life to save Narnia (and the children who discover it) and comes back to life to defeat the evil White Witch and restore the people. Lewis describes Aslan as more than just a representation of Jesus Christ. He is a “supposal” of our Lord, what Lewis imagines the Biblical Jesus would be like if there were such a place with talking beasts and magical creatures.
In the age of film and movies, there have been several attempts to bring Lewis’ masterpiece to life on screen, but each with little success. The most recent and celebrated attempt came in the early 2000s, when Walden Media (in partnership with a pre-woke Disney) put “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” on the big screen with incredible box-office success. They then made a valiant but ultimately doomed attempt to do the same with all seven Narnia books, stopping production after “Prince Caspian” and “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader” each failed to repeat the success of the first movie.
Fast forward to today: Netflix, armed with director Greta Gerwig and the movie rights to Narnia, stepped in and made Aslan transgender. Yes, you read that right.
Critics will argue that I am speaking out of bias. But the proof is in the pudding. Just recently, Empire magazine confirmed that Aslan, the Jesus figure of Narnia, would be played by Hollywood icon Meryl Streep. To add insult to injury, the magazine released a first look at the King of the Whole Wood, complete with rainbow-colored whiskers, multicolored feminized eyes and shades of rainbow in “his” mane.
This is a well-known ploy of the enemies of God, to subvert and destroy symbols of Christianity in an effort to win a war of attrition for the heart of the culture. It is not just an attack on Lewis or Narnia. It is an attack on our faith, no matter how subliminal it seems.
Lewis portrayed the Narnians to be archetypes of Christians. They are the people of Aslan, as we are the people of Christ. And when they remembered the “old stories,” the truth about their creator and savior, they prospered. When they did not remember, disaster soon followed.
In the final Narnia installment, The Last Battle, Lewis ironically and unintentionally gave us an unsettling foreshadowing of what Netflix would do a mere 70 years later. In that tale, in the “last days of Narnia,” a donkey named Puzzle appears in the land and wears a lion suit at the behest of a conniving ape named Shift. Puzzle dons the Aslan skinsuit; the people are deceived. The downfall of Narnia follows shortly thereafter.
Netflix is simply doing what Shift the ape already tried.
Friends, we need to remember our Creator. We need to know Him for who He is, and we need to follow Him to the very end. Let’s cling to the old stories and fight for the glory of our King, who created us and died for us and rose again to save us.
For all of us, my hope and prayer is that you will never even consider investing in the stock of a company such as this. For many of us, it may also mean canceling the account and not giving them another cent of your patronage dollars.
But no matter what you do, there is a lesson for all of us, and it is this: We need to know and worship the King of kings as He is glorified in the Bible, not some pretend Jesus that fits into whatever the godless culture around us desires him to be.
He is the mighty King of kings and Lord of lords. May we honor Him as such in our hearts.
Sources: Breaking Christian News
Movie
Do Prophets Still Exist? Meet the Filmmaker Who’s Investigating This Biblical Phenomenon
Filmmaker Matthew Thayer is on a mission to explore whether modern-day prophets are still delivering important messages.
Thayer’s new film, “Can You Hear Me Now?” tackles this timeless topic, exploring whether the biblical dynamic of prophets delivering God’s Word to humanity is still alive and active today.
The film director said he “absolutely” believes God still speaks through prophets, explaining his perspective that individuals with this ability happened to “just kind of show up in the Bible.”
“There’s nothing that actually says, ‘Oh, this is what a prophet is,’ and so what that means to me is that the ancient Middle East — they were just there,” Thayer said of biblical prophets. “So the people of that era and the people that were originally receiving the words of the Bible originally just understood what a prophet was and a prophet’s function.”
The director believes it’s been proven that people have had dreams and experiences they can’t explain — sequences that tell them what will happen; Thayer said these are often quite accurate. He believes that’s because God has enabled them, through Him, to witness elements of the unseen realm.
When asked why some people in the church world might dismiss modern-day prophecy, Thayer held little back.
“Honestly, I think it’s because the dark spiritual forces that we war against, according to Ephesians 6, knew that communications with God was the first thing that they needed to take out,” he said. “Communications are taken out in warfare first … that’s just a standard warfare practice, and, so, if we are actually in a spiritual war, it would make sense that they would target prophets first.”
Thayer advocated being careful about the sources people gather their prophecy from, as false prophets can open people up to deception. Thus, discernment is key.
“To me, it’s more about who the prophet is pointing to,” he said. “Because that’s what Deuteronomy 13 very clearly stipulates … that there’s going to be false prophets and they’re going to be accurate. But if they’re pointing you away from Yahweh, if they’re pointing you away from God, then they’re a false prophet.”
Thayer understands some of the hesitation people have surrounding prophecy, explaining that his own skepticism came when politics and prophecy collided. He said it felt like some of those making proclamations — especially surrounding President Donald Trump in 2016 — felt like they didn’t quite land. But, over time, the volume of so-called “words” surrounding Trump shocked him.
“The amount of words that were coming out just kind of made me go, like, ‘I think God’s actually trying to do something,’” he said. “He’s trying to alert people to what’s going on and so that’s kind of one of the things that I was exploring with the documentary.”
Thayer recalled being in an auditorium in 2007, when faith leader Kim Clement offered up a prophecy many saw as predicting Trump’s presidency.
“We’re all standing there going like, ‘What? Like the apprentice guy? What?’” Thayer recalled, noting how Clement said Trump would be a trumpet. “Well, what does a trumpet do? A trumpet calls to attention, a trumpet calls people to action, and that’s actually really kind of very close to what [Trump’s] doing — like he’s pointing at things that we didn’t even know existed, and darkness, and corruption that was happening within our government.”
Sources:faithwire
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