2/3 of Americans game. In fact, there are more gamers over the age of 45 than there are under the age of 18 (ESA, 2022). This is why Brent Dusing created TruPlay games, to be a light on purpose in a space where so many people go for purpose.
You don’t have to become a gamer to appreciate this. Each of us can think about what God has equipped us to do, what passions he’s planted in our hearts, and how He might use our talents to spread the Good News and share the hope of the Gospel — maybe even in video games.
Transcription:
Nathan Sutherland:
Welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast, a resource for parents who feel overwhelmed and outpaced as they raise healthy youth in a tech world. As an educator, parent, and tech user, I want to equip parents with the tools, resources, and confidence they need to raise kids who love God and use tech.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the Gospel Tech podcast. My name is Nathan Sutherland, and this podcast is dedicated to helping families love God and use tech. Today we are joined again by Brent Dusing, CEO and founder of TruPlay, a Christian gaming and content studio. Welcome, Brent.
Brent Dusing:
Good to be with you, Nathan, thank you.
Nathan Sutherland:
And we talked back episode 161, back in February, about TruPlay Games, the studio you’ve created to help share the truth of the gospel through video games. And it has been months. You guys are rolling out content as we speak. And so I just want to, I guess, give the listeners a quick reintroduction to yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? What brought you to the spot where you are making Christian games, running a Christian studio, and in this amazing season of releasing your big dreams?
Brent Dusing:
Yeah, yeah, thanks. Good news is we’re live. If you’re on an iOS device, on iPhone or an iPad, you can go to the App Store today, or go to truplaygames.com, sign up, and download TruPlay. It’s got a bunch of great video games, some cartoons, some great comics, all for you and your family. We’re adding new stuff all the time. We’re really excited about it. It’s been, gosh, it’s been probably three years putting this together, and really try to bring a whole bunch of content that’s just beautiful and excellent, but that also, hopefully, is a blessing to your family by bringing God’s truth right to your children’s screen.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah, and, I guess, walk us through that. Why video games as that medium? Because that’s something that clicked for me last time.
Brent Dusing:
The way we thought about it was, we looked at some statistics. There’s things you observe by living in the world, and then there’s things, there’s data that you read, and then when they coalesce, you realize you got to do something about it. So, few statistics; anxiety, suicide, and depression rates are all-time highs for children. I think the CDC said 22% of children in the last year have seriously considered suicide. But yet we’re in the most prosperous society in the history of mankind. And the story is always, you just need more money, the government should give you more money, and this and this. Well, if that was true, we wouldn’t have depression rates at all-time highs for children.
Secondly, the average male is exposed to pornography when he’s 11 years old. And when we started, it was actually 18… Or, sorry, it was 13 years old. So in just a few years it’s continued to get worse. Another statistic is only 32% of children believe in God without a doubt, compared to 62% of people over 40 in America. So the point is, for our children, there’s less and less and less belief in God. There’s more fear, there’s more anxiety, there’s more exposure to awful sexual content. And you ask yourself, wow. So the other shocking statistic is the average child is on a screen 52 hours a week. And they’re only at church 30 minutes a week, because only half of kids go to church, and those that do are there for an hour. And so there’s 30 minutes. So you’re getting 50 hours plus a week of content that’s often toxic. And a lot of it is video games. More money and time was spent on video games, on just phones and tablets, than at movie theaters in the last few years.
And people, it’s funny, in our culture, because movies are a hundred years old or more, they’re viewed as almost like the cultural epic of storytelling, whereas games have often been viewed by our culture, it’s kind of this silly time sink. But you know this, because we’re about the same age, if you grew up in the ’80s, like I did, you grew up playing games. Super Mario Brothers, Zelda, Sonic the Hedgehog, whatever that was, and people graduated into PlayStations and Xboxes and et cetera. And now it’s a very common part of the cultural experience. And yet all of this time and money is spent, whether it’s Fortnite, or Nintendo Switch, or the days of Candy Crush, or Minecraft. And yet where’s God’s truth? Where’s a message to a child that God loves them, that they have a purpose, that they’re fearfully and wonderfully made, that there’s hope? And that there’s hope in the name of Jesus? And that’s why we started with video games.
Nathan Sutherland:
It’s a huge undertaking, and I’m not aware of another group doing what you’re doing right now. You’re the tip of the spear, leading the charge, which has led me to think of, all right, you have an amazing team. You’re not designing every one of these games yourself. Who’s your team?
Brent Dusing:
Oh, it’s not about me at all.
Nathan Sutherland:
Can you tell us a little bit?
Brent Dusing:
We have a phenomenal team. TruPlay’s really become a movement. So, here’s the thing, all of my team… Well, most of us, are parents. Now, of course, there’s a lot of different folks, but they’re spurred by the idea that, look, we’re parents too, just like you guys who are listening to this podcast, we’re concerned about the future of our children’s wellbeing, the future of their souls. And all we see is worse and worse and worse statistics and messaging getting pushed on our children. And yet, where can we turn? Where could we turn three, four years ago? If I have a child, besides taking to church, and the local church is wonderful, we need to keep supporting local church. But besides an hour on Sunday and maybe an hour during the week, what else can you do to give your kids something that they actually want to engage with that contains God’s truth?
And so we started out, we have a phenomenal team here of people who share the same heart. Our chief product officer, 25 years of experience. He’s made some of the James Bond games at EA, he oversaw the FarmVille franchise, for those of you who played FarmVille on Facebook, whether you want to admit it or not. Our head of engineering, or director of engineering, Temi, if you’ve ever shopped at Amazon, and they say, “Split this order into multiple packages, this part will get here faster.” He created that algorithm at Amazon. We have a phenomenal story writing team. One of them has written books with Josh McDowell, which have sold over 3 million copies. Just phenomenal artists, designers, engineers, just really, really incredibly talented people, but who are also dedicated to do something about the future of our children.
And so we have teams that build video games, we have teams that do the writing, because we have digital comics inside the platform, we have people who do animations, and then we have, of course, the team that has to build a platform itself. When I say the platform, TruPlay is an app. Again, you can go to truplaygames.com to download it on your phone or your tablet. You download, there’s hours and hours of content, different games, different comics, different videos. And then, of course, there’s people who have to make sure the bills get paid, and the LEHR stuff too. So it’s just a wonderful team. It’s the best team I’ve ever had the privilege of leading, and it’s a really fun place to show up to work every day.
Nathan Sutherland:
It sounds star-studded, first of all, and that you guys, you’re a top-notch game and content facility. This is making excellent content, and making excellent content that glorifies God.
Brent Dusing:
Yes.
Nathan Sutherland:
Which is super cool. So, coming out with a whole host of games. Just a few, I was rolling through your stuff and the announcements on the website, Maple and the Forest of Words, it’s a platformer game. Little Light, Battle of Eldavar, Isabella and the Discerning Fruits, Ava & the Mirror of Truth. And they’re not all one type of game, there’s puzzle games, and RPGs, and platformers. I guess my first thought would be how does your team decide, on the creative side? And maybe this isn’t… Do they have a big meeting? Is it people just pick passion projects? Or is there a-
Brent Dusing:
Great question. Great question. So what I’ll start with is to say there’s almost different sections of content. So one world or one section is the Rhymverse. So Maple, Lucas, Ava, Benjamin, Oliver. And these are characters that you probably, if you go to our website, you’ll see it. Maple is a little girl who’s a bunny rabbit in a tiger costume. Lucas is a skunk in a crocodile robot suit that he made. They’re all characters who, of course, they live in this fantastical world, but they live in a world where God is real, and the Bible’s true, but there’s also real evil. And the kids themselves deal with real things kids deal with.
Maple is very headstrong, she’s a very strong Christian, but she doesn’t always pronounce all the words correctly, some kids don’t. Tries to use bigger words, and she stretches to say the big word and mispronounces it, and doesn’t really care about other people’s opinions. She’s going where she’s going, and what everybody else says is kind of irrelevant in her mind. I happen to know people like that.
Lucas, his brother died a year ago, and he was his best friend, it was his twin, and he’s having a really hard time processing it. And by the way, he doesn’t believe in God. He doesn’t know, really, who God is, or what it means, or where his brother is. He doesn’t understand. He just knows that he’s gone. But he’s also a brilliant inventor. He’s a little bit on the autism spectrum, and a lot of children are today. But he’s very good with his mind, his hands, he’s very intelligent.
Oliver is Maple’s, initially reluctant, companion in the Forest of Words adventure. And he’s adopted, and he has a lot of questions about God. He’s not so sure what happened to his original fox parents. He wears a bear costume because he wants to fit in with the bear family. And then there’s Ava, whose parents are divorced, and she’s getting bullied at school. And that’s a hard thing for her to process. She believes in God, but she has to learn in her journey your identity is not who people tell you what it is. Or when they lie to you, you don’t have to believe those lies. Your identity is who God tells you who you are. And your truth is you can stand on God’s truth.
And there’s adventures, and there’s bad guys, and there’s spaceships and laser beams and monsters, and there’s sword fighting adventures, that are told throughout these games and the comics and the cartoons. And by the way, if you’re listening, if you subscribe to TruPlay, we’re adding new content all the time. We’re adding a new comic, a new game, a new video, stuff all the time to add to the collection. So that’s first.
The second group is more from the world of the Bible. So we have a game called Stained Glass, where you collect stained glass pieces. You solve these puzzles, the glass pieces form a stained glass window, the window comes to life, and a character from the Bible tells you their story. So Eve talks about what it was like to live in the Garden of Eden. What was it like when I had to look God in the eye and He said, “Where are you?” And God knew where she was. He meant, “Where are you in your heart? Where have you gone?” And how she dealt with those emotions.
We’re very fortunate and excited to partner with the Action Bible. A lot of you out there probably know the Action Bible, my personal favorite kids’ Bible. I’ve read it to my son since he was two. We did a deal with them this year where we’re putting their digital comics on the platform. Great audio, by the way, sound, they’ve done a phenomenal job, and they’re just a great brand, they’ve sold millions of copies. So their content, we’re adding more comics all the time from them. And there’s-
Nathan Sutherland:
Are they animated?
Brent Dusing:
No, they’re digital comics. So you read them through the-
Nathan Sutherland:
Okay.
Brent Dusing:
… through a reader, basically, but inside the platform. So I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but if you look at the statistics, the number one readers on screens of books are kids, of course. My kids at home read all the time on their screens, and comics has still maintained as a very popular media form. And again, the Action Bible just did a phenomenal job with their printed Bible, and they’ve sold millions of copies. And so to bring that in the digital experience as well. And the characters are narrated by really great actors, there’s great music and stuff. So it’s a really well done part of the TruPlay platform as well, we’re pretty excited about that too.
So the point is, there are biblical games. We’re making a game about King David that’s coming up soon. So it’s a little bit, in some sense, like the Netflix model, where there’s content we have, then we’re adding new stuff all the time. A new comic, a new game, a new video, or new levels to a game that was successful. People really love the Maple Game, we’ll make more levels, those kind of things.
Nathan Sutherland:
Which, in twofold, first of all, that’s super cool about the Action Bible. My boys both have it. My daughter’s not old enough to read it yet, but seven and nine, that’s the wheelhouse of that group. And that’s amazing content to help make it a reality, that, “Oh, these aren’t just stories, these are accounts. These are revealing God’s goodness that’s made true in Christ.” So that’s awesome. And it sounds like you guys tackle some heavy stuff. Death in a family, adoption, divorce, it’s not all butterflies and, “Well, as long as you follow Jesus, then nothing bad will happen.” It’s, “All right, where is Jesus in the hard stuff?” And presented to kids. That’s awesome, and I look forward to seeing that as it rolls out, and as kids identify with themselves in these stories of like, “Oh, I can see that maybe God is in my brokenness, maybe God is in this hardship.”
And then the other part is, yes, listeners, as we subscribe to these kinds of… Our dollars speak. So when we’re putting our money towards entertainment and amusement, let’s be intentional about where that money goes, what it’s funding. Can you tell us a little bit about the process? You mentioned there’s an app, it’s subscription. What does that look like for people?
Brent Dusing:
Yeah, so you just go to truplaygames.com. You can buy it immediately on the website. You can also buy it through the app store, but if you buy through the website, you can read all about it and you can read about us. And we’ve been endorsed by phenomenal organizations; Billy Graham’s Evangelistic Association, Promise Keepers, pastor Jack Hayford, who unfortunately passed away earlier this year, had endorsed one of our games previously. He was such a great guy. We’ve been endorsed by Candace Cameron Bure, and just a bunch of phenomenal groups out there, that we’re really honored to be endorsed and supported by people like that. All of us kind of come together, we’re saying, “Hey, look, we’re starting this movement where we’ve got to have great content to speak to children’s hearts.”
And I guess, sorry, to finish your question. So you just come on, you subscribe, you can pay with your credit card, or you can buy it through the app store, you subscribe. It’s a subscription service, just like if you pay for Disney+ or Netflix, or you might use ABCmouse or Duolingo, things like that. You subscribe, you get a family plan, so all of you can have a different account for each of your kids, so they don’t have to fight about, “You messed up my level,” or “You used all my coins” or anything like that. There’s no ads, there’s no in-app purchases, there’s no chat rooms. We’re doing this for the betterment of children, so we take that incredibly seriously.
And here’s the thing. You’re listening, you, we need you to support this, because you’ve got to be part of this movement to see us succeed. We’ve been blessed, we’ve been well-funded by some phenomenal investors. But like any product, ultimately, the customers carry it forward. Whether it was Star Wars, or Nike Shoes, or Teslas, ultimately, it’s the customer that winds up driving the success of the company. And for us, although, of course, God comes first, but for us, there are so many parents that we talk to all the time that are so concerned about the messages their children are getting about how toxic content has gotten, how badly social media has affected children’s brains and self-images, and inappropriate sexual content, all this awful stuff. Okay, so what’s the answer?
It’s hard to say, “Don’t ever use a phone. Don’t ever use a tablet.” Now, I met a guy, a parent of two that can do that, and God bless him. But it’s hard for the rest of us to do that. And what I find all the time is there’s all this toxic stuff, and the platforms and the guide, the people who make all this awful things for kids, like, “Oh yeah, yeah, but if parents don’t like it, they just shouldn’t let their kids use it.” Okay, right.
There’s a hurricane coming to your house. You live on the beach. Hurricane’s going to destroy your whole house. What do I do? “Oh, don’t worry. Just sit at the beach and hold up your hands, you’ll be fine.” That’s the message parents get from content makers. No, no, no. It’s not the parent’s responsibility to play whack-a-mole. You don’t have 10 hours a day to look over your kid’s shoulder every two minutes. You need to have an experience you can trust, and know that it’s not just made with excellence, not just done to be fun that your kid’s going to enjoy, but that you can trust.
And so do we deal with difficult things? Yes, we do. Why? Because unfortunately, the world has thrust that on our kids. I wish that half of kids in America didn’t grow up in divorced homes, but they do. I did. I wish that you didn’t have young children dying, but there was a girl who was one of our testers, who passed away a year ago from cancer. It was a terrible story. I wish that wasn’t true, but it is true. I wish kids didn’t get bullied. I wish kids didn’t get lied to about who their identity is, but they do. So we’re not going to do anything that you’re going to find inappropriate. Are we going to deal with some things that are a little difficult? Yeah, we are. And are we going to bring God’s truth? Yes, we are.
And that can look like a game that’s about a Bible story. We’re going to talk about Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah building the ark. We’re going to talk about King David, we’re going to talk about Jesus. But we’re also going to have this fantasy world with bunny rabbits in tiger costumes, and skunks who fly around in a crocodile rocket suit fighting bad guys, because we want children to feel empowered and the excitement, just like you and I felt when we watched Star Wars when we were kids.
George Lucas in the ’70s, and I wasn’t quite born when he said this, he said, “Look, children of today, this generation,” he meant Generation X, “don’t have a fairytale.” They don’t. He said, “So I’m going to make a fairy tale for them to believe in.” And to his credit, I think he made the best, those first three movies, Episodes IV, V, and VI, I think he made the best movie series ever made. But his heart was, “I’ve got to do something positive for kids.” Now, for those of us who are Christians, was it Christian? No. But did good triumph over evil? Yeah. Did a boy grow up to be a man? Yeah. Did he learn, “I’m going to stand up and do what’s right, despite the odds?” Yeah. Is Emperor Palpatine a Satan figure? Yeah, absolutely, right? So there’s a lot of Christian allegory in that movie, and the point is, I think it spoke to and gave a lot of hope and encouragement to a generation. The thing is, I don’t see that for my children. That’s part of the reason we’re doing TruPlay.
Nathan Sutherland:
Which is so encouraging and such an awesome art to see, even in kids who want to be game designers. That’s something I’ve run into. “Well, my kid wants to be a game designer. What do they do?” They don’t want to go work on that kind of a game and to be like, “No, this is going to be a normal thing.” Our kids are going to grow up and work in a world where, of course there’s Christian games, like there’s amazing Christian musicians, and amazing Christian artists, and amazing… Sure, you could be a Christian game designer, either working in a public space and carrying God’s light and love in there, or actually creating content that represents the Bible.
I think, just a slightly lighter subject, I want to know two things to finish up our conversation. First is what’s the big… Was there an “aha” or a huge surprise for your design team, as you guys had a dream, bringing it to fruition now, what one thing stands out as the, “Whoa, we know we planned this, but this is the thing that we are pumped about and really excited as a team”?
Brent Dusing:
The art, the design, the UI. You can see the product on our website, or if you download it, it’s beautiful. It looks better than I thought it was going to look. And the other thing was with Maple and Oliver, the whole Rhymverse, the design of those characters. I don’t take credit for that. My team, my story writing team, built that. But I’ve been so blown away by the characters, the story. We spent a lot of time developing and crafting story, and then we apply it into our games and comics and videos. So to continue a Star Wars metaphor, if you’ve seen VII, VIII, IX, and you’re a Star Wars fan, you might have been a little disappointed. The story wasn’t very congruent. And part of this [inaudible 00:20:44]-
Nathan Sutherland:
Even between each other, even. VII from VIII, you’re like, “What just happened?”
Brent Dusing:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Compared to The Mandalorian where you can say, “Oh, okay, they’ve taken the time to really,” Jon Favreau and his team and Dave Filoni, “they took the time to really make the story make sense.” We’ve done our best to make this a story that makes sense within context that unfolds over time. But a lot of it is God has just shown up so many times for us. When you’re on something you’re called to do, and this is an encouragement for anybody, whether you’re a local pastor, or whether you’re called to the marketplace or whatever it is, God will surprise you sometimes, He’ll open doors that you didn’t think would open, or He’ll close the door that you needed to have closed. We’ve had so many incidents of that, even yesterday; we had to rerecord some lines from a voice actor because we’re releasing and it just wasn’t quite right. And he was there that day and banged it out, it was great, a bunch of great takes. So we got it all fixed, but it was right on time. And so just a moment of God showing up for us.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s amazing. This may or may not be way out of left field. My final question is, do you see TruPlay ever getting into creating competitive games, like games that are intended for competition play?
Brent Dusing:
That’s a great question. Look, there’s a lot of options that are on the table. We’re really focused right now on delivering a great experience for families. Over time, we will continue to build more types of games, again, more comics, more videos, more cartoons. But we look to our customers to see what they like to do. If people say, “Hey, this is a kind of a product I really want to see inside the TruPlay app, I want to see this kind of a game.” We’re certainly open to that. There’s all kinds of ways gaming has evolved. We’ll always do it in a way that honors God, we’ll always do it in a way that keeps children safe from some of the ways that multiplayer games can bring in some nefarious things. We’ll always start with that first. But again, those are options we can look at down the road.
Nathan Sutherland:
That’s awesome. Thank you for humoring that. I live in Washington State, the state is officially rolling out competitive gaming as a high school lettered sport.
Brent Dusing:
Wow.
Nathan Sutherland:
So our high schools will be having that, there’ll be a state competition. So, it’s top of mind for me as we think about, “All right, if kids are already going to be in that space, it’s encouraged by tax dollars and in our schools, how do we make it your potential first? You’re going to be a great citizen, a great student, a great friend, and then you’re going to win championships, in that order.” So my head is in that space and that’s why I asked. But thank you so much, Brent, for your time. People, we can go to truplay.com?
Brent Dusing:
Truplaygames.
Nathan Sutherland:
Truplaygames.
Brent Dusing:
Truplaygames.com.
Nathan Sutherland:
.com.
Brent Dusing:
Drop the E, so T-R-U-P-L-A-Y games. Please, again, if you’re out there, this is something you’re excited about, we’d love it for you to buy a subscription, everybody. We need everybody to join, to be part of this and participate, so we can continue to move forward and build great content for your family, and really see a change for this next generation of children.
Nathan Sutherland:
And it’s an opportunity to do that. Thank you again for your time, Brent.
Brent Dusing:
Thank you. Appreciate you. Good to see you again, Nathan. Thank you.
Nathan Sutherland:
Yeah, thanks for the conversation.
And thank you for listening and being a part of this conversation. If you’re interested in this, or just want to check out what TruPlay is about, go over to truplaygames.com. As Brent just said, it’s T-R-U-P-L-A-Y games.com. And TruPlay, it’s live, I’m looking at it right now. You can join it on any Apple device, iOS device. It’s $12.99 a month, it’s going to be billed monthly. So you get, basically, access to their batch of games. And I’m not telling you you have to play this. If you don’t play video games, like my kids aren’t playing this right now. That is not the point, the point isn’t you have to go play these games.
The idea that I love about this, and what Brent and the TruPlay team is doing, is they’re using their passion for the Lord, and their gifts that God’s given them to make something that is going to be a great fit for people that are in this space. Their kids like games, their family enjoys games, and they want digital games that match what their family expects for them to play, and they don’t just want to have to sift through all the junk and the brownies as they’re trying to be like, “Well, this game isn’t all bad, sure!” This is what I get the most, is when I set out a standard for what games should be, lining up with Philippians 4:8, for example. And people say, “But what can we even play?” TruPlay Games is going to be an answer to that.
Please don’t feel like you have to, but if you want to check it out, if you want to share it with friends, if you want to talk about it for Christmas when the family’s going to come over and you know games are coming out, maybe this is a compromise, or maybe this is not a compromise. Maybe this is a solution to the compromises we’ve been making. It’s an idea. So check it out. Thank you for sharing this with friends, and for being here for the conversation. And please join us next week as we continue this conversation about how we can love God and use tech.
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