@article {269,
	title = {Gaming at The End of the World: Coercion, Conversion and the Apocalyptic Self in Left Behind: Eternal Forces Digital Play},
	journal = {Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture},
	volume = {10},
	year = {2010},
	abstract = {Left Behind: Eternal Forces is a real-time strategy game based on Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins{\textquoteright} best-selling eschatological novels, an immensely popular series featuring embattled Christians fighting evil at the world{\textquoteright}s end. The spin-off game allows players to "wage a war of apocalyptic proportions" against the Antichrist{\textquoteright}s minions. The players defend themselves with prayer and hymn-singing; if spiritual means fail, however, more violent tactics are invoked as Christian alliances evolve into the military units of the "Tribulation Force." This merging of what the game{\textquoteright}s website calls "physical and spiritual warfare" has generated among critics the label "kill or convert"; the conflation of the two lies at the center of an ideological controversy that intensified when ABC News announced an evangelical group{\textquoteright}s plans to send the game to US troops in Iraq. This article explores eschatological representations like Eternal Forces as a way to instill, consolidate, and hierarchicalize identity by creating an apocalyptic self that is figured in violently contestatory terms. It addresses conservative evangelical leaders{\textquoteright} mobilization of that apocalyptic self in order to re-invest twenty-first century evangelicals in a renewed "combat myth" tradition that sees those of differing beliefs as fodder either for conversion or for annihilation in an ultimate battle between God and Satan. Left Behind: Eternal Forces is explored as a contemporary pop-culture expression and a new form of soteriological play in which that two-pronged choice is embodied and enacted, situating its players as divine co-strategists in an either/or world of forced and often punitive affiliation.},
	url = {http://reconstruction.eserver.org/101/recon_101_steuter_wills.shtml},
	author = {Steuter, Erin and Wills, Deborah}
}
