The Eric Metaxas Show - Brent Dusing

Episode Date: November 25, 2024

Brent Dusing CEO of TruPlay Games shares the needs for values-driven gaming in society. More at: https://www.truplaygames.com/

Welcome to the Eric Mattaxas show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, protein powder, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wub, vanilla. I wub, I wop, I wap, vanilla. Here comes Eric Mataxas.

Hey, folks. I don't mean to freak you out, but we are at the Union League Club in Philadelphia. Why are we here? That's none of your business. Actually, we're here to film Assocrates in the city to actually know. We're here to have a Socrates and City event tonight. By the time you see this, that will have happened. But I thought while we're here, you know, there's some friends in the area who I've wanted to get on the radio program for a while.

So we thought we would do it here. And number one friend, Brent Ducing, welcome to the program. Good to be with you there. Listen, you, it's always hard to know where to start. We share a passion to reach the culture with the things of God to protect children from evil. We share a hatred of the evil that has become the Disney Corporation. But the difference is I talk about it. You have done something amazing.

It's called TruePlay. Yes. Now, is it TruePlay.com? Trueplaygames.com. Trueplaygames.com. Okay. Now, I would love this to be a commercial for True Play, and I hope people will get all excited about True Play by the time we're done with this, because people need to know about it. But I want to start, how did you get to where you cared about what you care about? Where did you grow up? I grew up in Springfield, Missouri. Okay. Were you a Christian growing up? No. So I went to church growing up, and I believed God existed. So I went to a church that was one of those denominations that was sliding away from biblical orthodox. in the 80s. That's pretty much all of them. So yeah. Yeah, most of the denomination. So went there in the 80s, always believe God existed.

But, you know, is Jesus Christ the Son of God? As all the Bible true, those were unresolved question. Right. Graduated high school in 96, went to Harvard, late 96. You went to Yale. So you're not dumb like they say. You're smart. You went to Harvard. But it's kind of funny when people say, this is one of the reasons we connect because a lot of people go like, oh, Harvard, oh, Yale. And like, on one level that's true on another level you've entered you know the the ground zero of wokeery yes and i saw that in the late 90s so so you know you grew up in springfield missouri in the 80s and 90s and you know it's the buckle of bible bell and whether or not i was an uh you know an actual jesus prize follower i was certainly culturally a christian right you go in and it's the first

time you hear you know transgenderism right and it's it's fall of 96 and there's a girl who wants to live in the boys' dormitory. And I'm sitting around dinner, and I'm like, well, that's absurd. So, yeah, you've been raised well enough to know that that's loony, and you're encountering it. And, I mean, I encountered similar stuff a decade before at Yale, not transgender quite yet. Yeah. But the lunacy, but not just the lunacy, but the accommodation of the lunacy, kind of like if you want to be part of the club, you need to go along with the lunacy. and if you're raised the way you were raised or the way I was raised,

something inside you says, whoa, like what is this? Like, it's bizarre. It's bizarre. And so I remember sitting at the dinner table, and one of the things I really liked about my college experience was there really were kids. I mean, my best buddies were, you know, upper west side New York, you know, top prep school kids. But they were my friends. You know, we might have disagreed on certain things, but I love these people.

And one of my college friends was the number one student from, Singapore. And she was actually Malay, which is a discriminated against kind of population group in Singapore, but she was so good she won the scholarship to get to go anywhere in the world. So there's all these different people sitting around the table. And I go, well, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. And a friend of mine gives you this big lecture about how there's this big separation between sex and gender and this big difference. I'm blown away that you had this in the 90s. Like if people want to know how the world has gone insane, they need to understand that places like Yale and Harvard, you know, 20 years before it goes mainstream, this crazy stuff

was on the table. That's right. And you're hearing about this. And again, I mean, again, people need to understand this is stuff that has been in the mix for decades. It's been working its way down. It's kind of a trickle-down culture thing. And so, you know, you have the Frankfurt School in, let's say, the 1950s where they're

taking Marxism into the culture. And so it works its way down. Foucault, Jacques Derrickada, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And by the time we stumble into these places, kind of like thinking, hey, I'd like to get an Ivy League education, this stuff is now in your face. So it's funny you mentioned Foucault and Derrida. So I took a major called Social Studies, which I thought was kind of going to be more applied philosophy. What really was was applied Marxism. So it kind of walked you through the canon of, you know, leftist thought.

And so, you know, read a lot of Foucault. And, you know, when people, when you're young and impressionable, you know, you're in your late teens, your early 20s, and people see the world so differently than what you've been taught to see it as. It is fascinating, right? Yeah. Find out later, and I'm sure you know this, but most of your listeners probably don't. So you talk about wokeism and, you know, deconstructionism and intersectionism and all these kind of thing, cultural Marxism, however you want to frame, you know, the idea that, you know, kind of pitting groups of people against each other. Right. the godfather of that intellectually really was Michelle Foucault.

And a lot of people don't realize in the 1970s, he, Derrida, Sean Paul Sartre, the editor-in-chief of the Lamont newspaper, which for those listening, that's like the New York Times of France, wrote this open letter petition in the 70s that right at the time the age of consent for pedophilia was 15, that that was too high and that had to be reduced down to a lower bar. You know, I just- says that 12 and 13 year olds

are fair game. To me that's the most disgusting evil thing. And this is still a philosopher that's propped up in the universes all of the world. And it shows you this is where this is going. Like if you don't think things are bad enough, pedophilia is around the corner because the guy called the shot 50 years ago.

And to me that's the most horrific thing you could do. Well, we don't have time to get into it in too much detail right now, but this is a return to paganism by other means, right? And when I say paganism, people kind of think, oh, paganism, what's paganism? Paganism is human sacrifice.

Paganism is child rape. Paganism, in other words, we're talking demonic, demonic stuff. And people forget how evil, evil is. They forget. They think, what is evil? Oh, I step with my girlfriend, you know, before we got married. No, we're talking satanic evil. and most people

they're not exposed to this stuff they get the kind of sanitized version of it but you obviously reading Foucault I met Jacques Derridae really yes and it's such a bizarre thing because you're being you're being groomed

into thinking along these lines like all the cool people you know are kind of you're being brought down this thing but if you've been raised right and I think you just have this core that just says I don't know this is weird this is weird yeah but so you're exposed to this stuff and it's funny because when you mention that letter that was published in Le Monde in the 70s yeah I remember reading about that the weird thing I write about this in my book is atheism dead Jean-Paul Sartre who signed that

letter by the end of his life became a Christian is that right it's the most insane in all of his buddies and friends were enraged at him for being a traitor and all the stuff. But we didn't need to go into that. But so just so we understand, this was the climate in France. This was, you know, the cutting edge of this lunacy. But of course, it makes its way into American universities. It was there in the 80s, in the early 80s when I was at Yale. And it comes down, it comes down.

So, all right. So how do you... But what matters is that those French philosophers were the ones influencing philosophy inside American universities, training some of our most capable minds, right? That's why France matters in terms of where we are now, because it brainwashed generations of our leaders in this country. Right, that's right. If you want to know how do you get to Kamala Harris, how do you get Barack Obama, how do you get AOC, how do you get all that stuff in the ruling classes on the left?

This is, it's been prepared and prepared for the long march to the institutions that took decades. All right. So you graduate Harvard. What do you decide to do? So I take a brief pit stop. I took a year between my sophomore, junior year, I worked at a church in Johannesburg, South Africa. So this is 1998, four years post-apartheid, Nelson Mandel's president.

It's fascinating time. And I did that, and it's funny. I know now that God called me to. And this is an encouragement for those who are listening. You can get called to things without realizing God's calling it. So I didn't know what getting called meant. Okay, this is like great place. To hit pause, cliffhanger.

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Support your health while helping others in need. Go to Nutrametics. That's N-U-T-R-A-M-E-D-I-X.com. Neutrammedics.com. use the code Eric for 15% off again nutrometics n-ut-r-a-m-M-E-D-I-X.com. Nutrametics.com use the code Eric for 15% off. My guest today is Brent Dusing, who heads up something called TruePlay.

What's the website? TruePlaygames.com. Also on the App Store, it's True Play and the App Store. True Play. Okay. And it's an exciting thing, and we're going to get to that. But right now we're kind of going through your story of how you got to be the guy behind this.

and you, you know, you're an entrepreneur, obviously successful. So, but right now you're talking about you could feel a calling from God. What year roughly? So sophomore year in 1998, so just 57, 98 felt a calling to go to Africa. So I went to work at this church with homeless people and refugees in downtown Johanburg, South. Had you become a Christian? No, that's a funny. Like, again, I was a cultural Christian.

Yeah. But, you know, was I a price follower? No. You know, I believe the Bible is all true. No. I had a lot of unresolved questions. but I believe that God existed. And you also had a sense that I need to do good.

Yeah. So why am I going to South Africa to work with people? Yeah, I need to do good. I want to do something. And not just that, but stop doing things that are meaningless. Look, you know, college is important. And I'm not an anti-university, anti-college guy. Like some conservatives are, I think college matters.

Actually, I am, just to be clear. I pretty much am. We can agree to disagree. But the point is, what I will say, that what I was doing was fairly meaningless. You're writing papers graded by some 24. five-year-old grad students, stressing yourself out. It's like, no, no, no, let me go help real people with real things. So I was, you know, we were working with homeless people and refugees from Congo who couldn't

speak English and, you know, you need to find a church. So it was a very form of experience for me. You know, it's where you kind of go from being a boy to being a man, right? You learn you've got to live on your own and make it all work out, show up to work on time. The other thing was, Eric, I got this real insight. Okay, I can use my business skill to do good in the world. Now, that's obvious probably to most of our listeners to you. But again, if you rewind, if you're 19 years old and you're at Harvard learning communism,

all the fault in the world is because of capitalism and communism is the answer, that changed things in your mind. Do you realize, okay, no, no, this is a path for me. So it came back, did my last two years, graduated in 2001, first day of work, September 4, 2001. Where were you? Venture Capital for Menlo Ventures. So you're in California? Yep.

And the Silicon Valley. A few days before the big event. The big bank. So what was interesting for me in my career was I started my career at the actual nuclear winter of the dot-com crash, right? And that was a good thing for me personally. And it was hard for a lot of people. But because I was on the investment side, I learned, well, how do you value investments in the right way? What are the right reasons to invest?

Not hype, not eyeballs, right? What are the real fundamentals you're looking at to make good investments in early stage companies, which is not an easy trick to figure out? So that was a great experience for me. I then started my first company when I was 26 back in 2005. You probably haven't heard of the name. It's called Cellfire, but you might have used it. If you shop at a grocery store, they say use your, use coupons on your cell phone, use your cell phone to save money at the grocery store. That's our stuff.

So I invented that. We ran the company, sold it. and that was a nice outcome for people. And the next thing I did was I started a company that made games on Facebook, Christian games, Journey of Jesus, Journey of Moses. So when did you find faith in the middle of this? Oh, yeah. So I found faith in 2002. I woke up one morning.

I was in Mountain View, California, and I felt guilty that I hadn't been to church in years. Kind of like you'd feel if you hadn't called your mom for Mother's Day and her birthday. birthday like it is your fault of you there's no real excuse that's how i felt now today you'd call that the conviction the holy spirit but i didn't know what that meant right i just i just felt guilty had been to church because it's like said i believe god existed all the other details weren't clear in my mind and if you remember the yellow pages i open up the yellow pages and there's this little ad for um this little bible church and i grew up around the evangelicals i didn't like them because you know if you say a bad word they scowl at you if you say hey you want to have a drink no that's a sin well it's not but

people would say that right so i was like You guys are no fun, but I respect them because they walk their talk. If you say, well, why do you do this? Well, because it's in the Bible. Okay, that's consistent. I'd met people from other faiths that frankly would say one thing and do another. And you'd say, well, my religion's like a salad bar. I just take what I want.

I'm like, well, that's not truth. Right. Truth is Eric believes in gravity and Brent doesn't. On the top of this building, we both jump off. Who hits the ground first? It's a tie. Because it doesn't really matter what your opinion is, right? What matters is what's true.

And that's what I wanted. That was what I saw it out. So I went to this little Bible church. The pastor was really patient with me, I asked him a lot of questions, you know, is Jesus really the son of God? Where does the Bible say that is? What about Allah and the Hindu gods?

Are those real? Is that how amazing as a young man that this just happens to you, that somehow you just go to a church? I mean, that's kind of amazing. It's God's calling. I mean, you know, clearly. The Bible says the father draws you in, and I live that.

I live that. Yeah. Yeah. God goes after his children. So where was this? Where were you living? Mountain View, California. I mean, there are still churches in Silicon Valley. People might not realize that. Of course. But there are a couple. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

And so the pastor was wonderful. In fact, he's still a friend of mine today. In fact, his wife works at True Play, funny enough. So we've stayed friends for over two decades. But, you know, the truth is he was very patient. And again, I guess that's an encouragement for people listening. If you've, you know, got someone who's a seeker, the patience he had with me, you know, he recommended evidence that demands a verdict and the case for Christ. and I just devoured those things.

Because, again, I'd had social studies, right, basically philosophy classes in college, but I had never heard the intellectual underpinnings of our faith. You know, the kind of things you talk about all the time, I'd have zero exposure to. And most people don't have exposure to it, and that was exactly my experience. When I became a Christian, you know, four years out of college,

and suddenly I'm exposed to all these authors, and I thought, where has this stuff been hiding? And that's part of why I do what I do. I want to get this information out to people because it's true. It's interesting. It's fascinating. It's helpful. And in the mainstream media, you'll never bump into this stuff.

That's right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So that was really how it came to faith. And the other thing that really got me was the movie The Passion of the Christ. Right? Wow.

2004. Think about it. When you grew up in Christendom and you see a cross, it's a sign of a church. I mean, it's not what it's really supposed to be. It's supposed to be, you know, signification of Jesus's sacrifice. But you grow up, you see a cross. that's what you think. And I never heard anybody

preached the crucifixion. So when you see it depicted as it was, when you realize you're the guilty party in this equation, it has a real effect on you. The other thing it did was it planted a seed in my heart for what I do now. Think about why the passing succeeded, right? It was biblically authentic,

but it was well executed, right? It was beautiful. The actress didn't speak English, but you connected with them, the cinematography, the music, right? It's fantastic execution. So I realized at that time, man, if you can,

if you can make art or entertainment that's really high quality, that's beautiful, that's engaging, but that also tells God's truth, you can really do something special because it did something for me. And that's really been the impetus for what we do a true play. And that year was what, 2003? 2004. So it's now 20 years ago. Amazing. Okay, so keep going.

Yeah, so came to Christ and got married that same year to my wife was from South Africa. Kirkland, which is wonderful. We just celebrated our 20th year anniversary, wonderful woman, got very blessed to be with her. Three kids now. And so, like I said, it kind of did my self-hire company, and then I started building games on Facebook. You might remember there used to be games on Facebook. We built games that had Christian games that reached over 7 million people. We had 25,000 people come to Christ. We partnered with the Billy Graham Association. Yeah, you know, people kind of laugh like, oh, you know, video games are so silly. They forget that for men under 50 in this country, video games were a normal course of growing up.

When the Nintendo came in people's houses in the mid-80s, Nintendo was to video games, what Star Wars was to movies. It was a step function of difference, of experience. And video games became a part of the cultural conversation for men under 50. And then in the mid-2000s, video games became part of the cultural conversation for a lot of women, you know, Candy Crush, Mind Sweeper, Bejewel Blitz, you know, Hayday, now Royal Match. You know, games that a lot of women will play as well. So a lot of folks don't realize, especially Christians who think about impacting culture,

they think a lot about movies. And look, movies are important. We need great Christian movies. But they miss the point that more money and time are spent on video games every year, just on phones and tablets than on movie theaters. And that's been true for each of the last six years, and especially for children. The average child is on the screen 50 hours a week. The bulk of that screen time and money is video games.

on their phones and tablets. And so that's the mission field. You know, just like how Jesus reached people where they were. Did he preach in the synagogue? Sometimes. But where was he in the fields, on the streets at the parties? Right. Well, right now, for better or worse, you know, the mission field is a screen.

And that's why we're doing what we do at True Play. That is unbelievable. Wow. Wow. Okay. So when did you start True Play? I started True Play in 2020. I really felt called, Eric, you know, and just, you know, was,

I turned 40. I was asking myself, what am I going to do with the rest of my life? And I felt God showing me, okay, you know, you have, there's this real need to go build world-class tech companies, but that have a kingdom purpose. And that's what we do. True play was the first company in that, in that vein. And the problem is this. Things have never been worse, Eric, for children in America than they are today. Anxiety, suicide, depression rates, all-time highs.

you know, exposure to pornography. You know, the average male is exposed to porn when he's 11. Four years ago was 13 years old, so it's getting worse. You know, the child porn, the child exploitation has been documented. It's, let's just pause for a second. Wow. True play is spelled TRU, PLA-Y. That's right.

No E. True play. Well, when we come back, I just want to hear more. This is exciting. We'll be right back talking to Brent. Do sing. Hey folks, the story of My Pillow is a testament to faith and transformation. Mike Lindell, once battling addiction, found a new path when he embraced faith and began following

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That's promo code Eric, MyPillow.com. 800, 978-3057. Talking to Brent, Ducing. At least that's what he says his name is. Are you sure? You want to go with that? We're good with it. Brent? Okay. So you are at the point now where you're talking about how TruePlay, which is the company, comes into being. Yeah.

And that's only four years ago. But, well, what is the story? How have you, how is it going? Yeah. So the story is. you know was felt God calling me to it things has never been worse for children than they are today and and I kind of talked about a couple minutes ago anxiety suicide depression rates all time highs exposure to toxic content here's the number one stat only 31% of children in America believe in God without a doubt compared to 62% of adults so we've lost an entire generation by half I'm rarely staggered by statistics like I just go yeah yeah like I could have guessed that not this one yeah this is this i mean if you really want to talk about the secularization of the culture yes that is the classic statistic right there that something has happened and you could see this i mean this makes sense in europe you know especially at norwegian countries they're just operating without reference to god and it seems perfectly normal to them even though they have crosses on their flags the

scandinavian country well okay yeah they've got well of course it's weird i mean it's it's all weird i mean all the Ivy League schools were founded except for Cornell. All of them were founded as explicitly, dramatically Christian institutions. This country was founded explicitly as Christian, not officially, but all of the founders understood that without that you can't have real self-government. And on and on and on, people always understood this. But suddenly, you know, as you age, like time goes faster, suddenly, you turn around. And in 20 years, a whole generation has.

is in a different place. I mean, we have lived through this that when we were kids, certain things are taken for granted and suddenly get a statistic like that, which is stunning. Now, it doesn't mean that all kids are hostile to God. It means just that they're operating without any reference to the concept of God. They think we can just live in a world where that's just a non-issue. Yes. But you and I know, as we said in the first segment, when you're talking about Foucault and Derry Dada. What it will lead to inevitably is the dehumanization of human beings, that we are nothing, therefore sex is meaningless, therefore sex with children is not bad, therefore on and on and on, therefore killing a child, you know, nine months in the mother's womb.

None of this stuff has any meaning. None of this stuff matters. There's no good, there's no evil. That's what follows when you take out of the equation. and that's what happened in Germany in the 1930s. Of course, I've written about that. And that is what happens inevitably, and you're seeing it right now because there's no such thing as neutral secularism.

Secularism, when you take God out, you know, let's be honest. If you're a Christian, you understand when you take God out, you don't go to neutral, you go to demonic. You just don't call it that. You call it secularism, right? That's right. So that's what we're talking about. So all these kids with no reference to God, what would that mean?

If I'm a kid and I think, okay, there's no God, what meaning is my life that? If I'm depressed, why don't I just kill myself? If I have anxiety, why don't I kill myself? And that's where we are. And that's why those rates are all-time highs. In fact, Barnett just came out with a study six weeks ago because there's been known to be this massive mental health crisis for our children for the last 10 years. Now, part of it is the rise of social media on smartphones. You can look at a parallel graph of social media usage on smartphones and to be.

depression, anxiety, and suicide rates, and they exactly track. So that is part of it. But the other part of the story, which he correctly points out that we've been talking about for years, is why we do true play, is because we've extracted, as an American society, God out of every part of our culture. Let's talk about some examples. So I grew up in the 80s, okay? You would have, here we are in Philadelphia, okay, Rocky. He would do the sign of the cross before his fights.

He goes and talks to a priest, I think it's in Rocky One, to get advice, and he gets good advice. Yeah. TV shows today that they always put pastoral in the nice and bad life. Another example, Holcogen, silly as that sounds, right? War Cross, say your prayers, take your vitamins, brother. You know, that was talked about. That was a common thing. You would turn on TV when there were only five channels, and you'd see pastors on television.

It was just part of our fabric. You too, the Joshua tree, right? That's a reference to the cross. I still haven't found what I'm looking for. He's talking about trying to find Jesus. In fact, if you go to the Billy Graham Library, I'm sure as you know, Bono has a letter saying, thank you, Billy Graham. I came to Christ listening to you on the radio.

So we could go on, but it was just part of our cultural fabric in the 80s. Fast forward to today, you know, all the awful sexual stuff pushed on children and all the demonic stuff that's glorified. One of the most popular games, Diablo. Diablo 4 just came out, you know, recently. You think about how we've, the only time you hear in the name of Jesus Christ is as a cuss word, right? And so there's no reference to God, to truth, to beauty, or even who Jesus was. I give you another example. I live in Austin in Texas, right?

And I meet kids all the time who are, you know, families have been in America for generations, have no idea who King David is. They didn't know what I'm talking about. You know, there was just, you know, David and Goliath is kind of a common, you know, commonly used example. No frame of reference. And again, it's because, you know, when you're on Fortnite, when you're on Minecraft, when you're in Roblox and, you know, Diablo and all this other sick stuff on social media and YouTube, the things of God are viewed to be the enemy.

And the things of the enemy are viewed to be virtuous sometimes. Well, I was going to say, they basically turned pure rebellion into a virtue, right? And we know that rebellion against evil is a virtue, but they celebrate rebellion. And of course, Lucifer is the ultimate rebel against God. And that's – it creates a culture where that's cool. And so the devil is cool. They don't ever advertise what's true is that the devil wants to lead you

to misery and hell for eternity. They're not going to go there. They're just going to say, oh, this is cool. And you see a lot of that in the culture. Yes. The thief comes to kill, still, and destroy. Right? We have to go to another break.

We'll be right back. We're going to talk about true play when we return. We're going to reach before a following sea. She was making for the trades. Welcome back talking to French. You sing, B-U-S-I-N-G, who is the man behind TruePlay, T-R-U-P-L-A-Y. Okay, so let's get into it. So for people that are not familiar with it, what is it, how can they find it?

Yeah, True Play is one app. You find it on the app store. You can find it on your Google Play Store, phones and tablets, but it's an entertainment platform for families. Everything we do is beautiful, fun, excellent, but better than that, everything we do has a biblical foundation to it. So it's one app with a bunch of video games inside of it, games that you can play for hours and hours and hours each. There's over a hundred, I think there's over 120 hours of content on the platform, dozens of entertainment options. So

video games, most of which we've built, the tell stories, some of which are biblical stories, King David's battles. So you play David, and you play David right after he's gotten his anointing from Samuel, and you know, you get to fight the bear, and then eventually you go and fight Goliath, and then it goes on in the journey. That game is about, how a boy becomes a man. There's another game we have called Stained Glass, where you match these glass pieces and you collect them in the form a stained glass window.

The stained glass window comes to life, and a character from the Bible tells you their story. Like, kind of the conversation we're having, what if you got to do that with you? What was it like to look God in the eye, and he says, where are you? Not where are you physically? Where are you in your heart?

I love you, but you can't live here anymore. What did that feel like? Some of our games are based on this new IP we've built called the Rimverse. So you'll see if you go to True Play's website, this little girl who's a bunny rabbit, who wears a tiger costume. And, you know, well, that's not the Bible. No, it's not in the Bible. Her story is she's very headstrong, believes in Jesus. Doesn't always pronounce her words correctly. Doesn't really care about other people's opinions. You know, not always right, but never in doubt, kind of like one of my kids.

And so she charges into the forest to go rescue this kid, and she rescues this boy who's a fox who wears a bear costume. Why is he wear a bear costume? Because he's adopted by a bear family. So he's trying to fit in. He's nerdy. Kind of thinks God exists. Kind of maybe not. Not sure. As they go deeper into the forest, they find that the forest is deteriorating. It's getting darker.

There's monsters. Things are dying. And they learn over time that there's this evil queen who's confiscated all the Bibles out of their society. And as a result, the whole society has deteriorated. So in their world, there are Christians, and people have parts of Scripture, but no one has an entire Bible because she confiscated them. and she's oppressed the church.

So that's part of that story. There's another character who's our most popular male character, his name is Lucas. He's a skunk. He was a crocodile rocket suit. Why? Well, because rocket suits can fly and shoot laser beams. Let's be honest.

If they sold those at the store, you and I'd be wearing one in this interview. I mean, that's not meant to words. I will admit to that. So he's also an atheist. He doesn't believe in God. His mom's a Christian. He doesn't get it.

He's also autistic, like a lot of kids are today. And his brother died a year ago. So his mom goes, well, he's up there and heaven. He goes, fine. I'll just get on a spaceship and go bring him home. No, no, no, it doesn't work like that. But he takes all. He has a friend who's a Christian, who's a kangaroo that wears a shark costume. Noah is his name. Noah's kind of a bro. Noah's long boards and rock climbs and paraglides. And he's, bro, you know, you got to believe in Jesus, man. You can't just, like, fly off in your spaceship by yourself. So he tries to go with him to teach him about the things of God as

Lucas is on this journey to try to find his brother, right? So the point is there's each of these games tells these deep stories with characters who deal with things kids deal with today. There's one kid who's, you know, whose parents are divorced. She didn't ask for that. I grew up in a divorce home. You know, when you grew up in a divorced home, you don't ask for that. But she's got to deal with it anyway. She's getting bullied at school and she finds, she has to find out, you know what your identity is? It's not what people say who you are. Your identity is who God made you to be. And that's our answer to all this toxic identity stuff thrust on kids. It's not some fat fad of the day or some sexual thing.

Your identity is you're a child of God. You're fearfully and wonderfully made. Now, we don't get into, you know, toxic stuff in the True Play platform, but we are going to tell children, no, no, you're a child of God. You're special. God loves you. You have a real purpose. And so those are told throughout the stories, but these are fun games. You know, they go on adventures.

They fight monsters. They fly spaceships. There's sword fights and bad guys and, you know, fireballs thrown at people. all kinds of these wonderful adventures, but like most great stories, there's finding the bad guys, but the character changes themselves. You know, think about Star Wars, right? Luke Skywalker, sure he blows up the Death Star, but his real journey in those three first three movies are he's a boy becoming a minute, right? And that's what we do as we tell stories inside True Play. So how is True Play doing out there? I mean, it's, you know, I'm not in this space in my own life.

I mean, I'm creating a lot, you know, the reason we connect, yeah, is because I'm trying to do the same thing, you know, for adults essentially. And I realize that the opportunity, you know, this is a cliche, except it's true, it has never been greater. I mean, things are so bad that there's a hunger we have never seen. And for years, I almost, I could intuit this prophetically that God is saying there will be a time when the hunger is huge. You just have to do, you know, do what I ask you to do, but the hunger will be there. We are there. People are dying for meaning.

They're dying for truth. You know about the Bonhofer film that it just came out. People want something real and true. That hunger wasn't there before. We were all distracted, but things are so broken and explicitly evil that people are like, okay, I need something. Well, look at what happened with somebody like Russell Brandt, right? Where you see so much evil and you start to get open to the idea that maybe there,

maybe God does exist. And I think what we've been through as a nation in the last, not just four years, but I think in the last few decades of so much evil, so much toxicity thrust upon people. And then suddenly, it's mourning in America. Suddenly, to your point, there is an opportunity

for revival, for culture to change, for the positive, for people to believe in Jesus Christ, for a generation of children, rather than being lost into a cliff dive, to turn into a rocket ship. up you know if think about it if a generation of children at 30 percent if it was 40 50 over half of

kids believed in god the whole society would change you know what a regan say you know you can lose you know what freedom is lost within a generation or to paraphrase right absolutely so so our children are our most precious thing whether you're a christian or you're not every parent will say my child's my most precious thing that i have okay if that's true we're not doing very well society today why did we start true play because it's been culture has been movies and video games and music and social media that's warped. Okay. So now let's use it instead of the negative for the redemptive value.

And there's this massive opportunity, we believe, to replace what Disney's doing. You know, Disney has lost the trust, not just some Christians, but I think of just the average American. Oh, Disney is the enemy. What happened to Disney, it's like, if history books are written, I mean, it is an unbelievable thing. That was the gold standard brand when I was a kid. It has become absolutely the opposite. Nobody should ever, ever spend one dime for anything related to Disney. But on the converse, there's tremendous hope.

When we come back, we'll hear more about True Play. Don't go away. Welcome back. Final segment with Brent Ducing the man behind True Play. Okay, so how is True Play doing? Since I'm not a child who plays video games, I have no sense of... Here's what's blown us away. if you give a child true play or you give them Minecraft or Roblox.

And by the way, these are two of the most, these are multi-billion dollar companies. 80 million children use Roblox every day. And by the way, Wall Street Journal did an article. There's a lot of child porn, child trafficking, awful predatory stuff that happens on Roblox. Don't let your kids use Roblox. Okay. Still, 80 million kids use it every day. If you give a kid True Play or you give a kid Roblox, twice as many will come back after a week, three times as many after a month.

Like people love it. So it's not just that it's Christian, it's the children really love it. And we've been blown away by the usage rate. You know, we're coming up on Christmas. If you're listening, if you're a parent or a grandparent, buy it for your kids. It'll cost you less on a monthly subscription than taking a friend to Starbucks. And it's something that has eternal value to children that they'll love. You don't have to afford it.

It's not like Robitussin. Right. Robitin is, I know this tastes awful, but drink it'll help you call. Well, that's how Christian Entertainment's been sold to kids forever, right? Yeah. This is chocolate cake stuff with vitamins and protein and calcium. The kid wants to eat it for breakfast. And the mom's like, actually, this chocolate cake with vitamins and proteins better than the cereal I was going to give them.

So kids love it. And in fact, we have a lot of parents use it. We have parents do TikToks and videos for us all the time on Instagram saying they enjoy playing the games too. Because we write the stories and build the games to be enjoyed by all ages. Think about the original Lion King in 94. I love that movie. I enjoy that movie. Right.

So we try to make art in a way that's related. to people no matter what age they are and always leave in the truth of the Bible in Jesus Christ however we can well it's it's just amazing to hear about this we need hope and this this gives me huge hope I don't know how many people who listen to this program are aware of true play I hope that a lot of them who weren't aware of it will look into it I'm not getting paid to say this folks I want to be real clear people who know me who listen to the program know what I care about and I get so passionate about this kind of stuff. This is, you know, True play doesn't need to exist. We could just be here complaining about Disney, complaining about Roblox, but we're not.

Praise the Lord. God has raised you up to do this, and there are others doing similar stuff that I've had on the program. So what else can we say? We've got like a minute or so. I'd say, you know, look, I talk to guys all the time.

Christian, you know, a lot of your listeners are, you know, Christian men, 15 over, they're, you know, they're intellectual. There, a lot of them are successful business guys. and know a lot of these guys. You know, these guys listening, you want to get, you know, first of all, get something great for your children for Christmas.

Go on a true play and buy it for them. We have people buy for Christmas gifts as grandparents all the time. Secondly, get involved. You know, this is a movement. You know, we're building. We have opportunities. We're doing an animated series in the not too distant future. We're doing multiplayer games.

We're doing merchandise. We're really expanding and taking this forward. So for those people who are listening that want to get involved, they can reach out to us on our website at support at True Play Games. or reach out to me by LinkedIn. I'm not hard to find, but because this is a movement. Look, God has called us. You've been speaking into this, Eric, for years and years and years, God's raised us, not just me, but my team. I've got a phenomenal team to go move this forward as well, but it's a whole coalition of, you know, business partners and, you know, Billy Graham

Association is one of our partners. Kim Walker Smith, phenomenal singer. It's love Kim. She's one of our partners. Dean King, Kevin Sorbo have endorsed this, you know, promise keepers. So just, just a phenomenal group of people who have really helped to move this forward. And so for those who are listening, there's all kinds of ways to get involved and support what we're doing, whether people, you know, make, you know, financially contribute or whether they share this with their church or posts on social media. There's all kinds of ways to build a movement. I am so encouraged. And I hope everybody who's listening is similarly encouraged. Brent, do you saying, thank you for hearing God.

God's call and going forward with it. I just know that this is a real bright spot, and I'm just thrilled to know the details. Folks, check out TruePlay. Brent, thank you. Honor to be with you always. Appreciate you. Thank you.