CBCP to distribute catechism video game to schools

After its launching last week, a video game teaching Catholic catechism will soon be distributed to schools in Catholic dioceses nationwide. Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) will finance the distribution of 10 CDs of the game for each diocese. Called “Paolo’s Journey," the adventure game is aimed at youths aged 12 and up. It features a boy who gets lost in a forest and trapped in a cave. The boy, Paolo, can only escape the cave when the player answers questions about the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, and Christian living. The questions have varying levels of difficulty and can be viewed in English, Filipino, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. “Paolo’s Journey" was launched at the the CBCP headquarters in Manila on July 9. Game creator Fr. Maximo Villanueva Jr. based the game on Pope Benedict XVI’s Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. It was developed for him by the animation studio Secret6 for free. “Once I’d come up with the idea, I wrote to some animation studios about it. Ronald Schaffner, president of Secret6 in California, emailed me and offered his services free," Villanueva said. “I thought it was a joke. Other companies were quoting costs from US$25,000-50,000 to produce it. But Mr. Schaffner wrote again to explain that his wife is Filipina and Secret6 has an office near Manila where they could develop it," he added. Villegas had sent Villanueva to study computer animation at the New York Film Academy and bring “technology for new evangelization" back to the Philippines. While there, Villanueva had internships at Pixar Studios and Nickelodeon. –VVP, GMANews.TV