Nativité, a pastoral Christmas game

My girlfriend has three sisters. Once, she had told me about a nativity game her parents played with them as children. Each daughter had a little toy sheep. When one of the daughters did something good, she was allowed to move her sheep a little towards a shared model of the Christ Child. But if, forbid, she did something bad, her sheep was turned back, away from Jesus.

No advent calendars full of chocolates, no Black Friday, no wish-lists; just girls competing in niceness to be a little closer to God. I found this story funny and charming. True, I was also raised in an austere and religious atmosphere, but one which condemned Christmas entirely as a pagan festival. Later, I celebrated Christmas in its modern form, a semi-secular commercial holiday. I suppose I found her childhood Christmas game so funny because it sounded like a genuine Christian attitude to Christmas.

Whereupon I decided to destroy the innocence of her childhood pastoral game by converting it into an app. I worked for a couple of days and nights before Christmas 2016, and this was her Christmas present. Behold, Nativité, the game of the Christ:

Here you see the web view, with a “pixel art” feel. There’s a secret “admin” panel, which I gave to my girlfriend’s parents. The admin panel lets her parents move the sheep forwards or backwards. When a sheep is moved, they move in realtime in the web view, and everyone receives an SMS, such as:

Sophie a fait une bonne chose! Dépêchez-vous, elle pourrait gagner le prix mystère!

The game played out well. I emailed her parents the admin link late on Christmas Eve, and the girls woke up to the game on Christmas morning. The game played out through Christmas Day. I’m reliably informed that the game changed the girls’ behavior, competing for their parents’ affections. I really liked this idea of a computer game played out in real life. It’s a gamification of the real world’s chores; a gamification of the Spirit of Christmas.

That was 2016. Coming this Fall, the Holy Infant is back (and this time he’s ... consubstantial?). Instead of playing out over a single day, I want the game to be drawn out over the advent period. This means it will start on December 3rd, Advent Sunday.

Tagged .

More by Jim

What does the dot do in JavaScript?

foo.bar, foo.bar(), or foo.bar = baz - what do they mean? A deep dive into prototypical inheritance and getters/setters. 2020-11-01

Smear phishing: a new Android vulnerability

Trick Android to display an SMS as coming from any contact. Convincing phishing vuln, but still unpatched. 2020-08-06

A probabilistic pub quiz for nerds

A “true or false” quiz where you respond with your confidence level, and the optimal strategy is to report your true belief. 2020-04-26

Time is running out to catch COVID-19

Simulation shows it’s rational to deliberately infect yourself with COVID-19 early on to get treatment, but after healthcare capacity is exceeded, it’s better to avoid infection. Includes interactive parameters and visualizations. 2020-03-14

The inception bar: a new phishing method

A new phishing technique that displays a fake URL bar in Chrome for mobile. A key innovation is the “scroll jail” that traps the user in a fake browser. 2019-04-27

The hacker hype cycle

I got started with simple web development, but because enamored with increasingly esoteric programming concepts, leading to a “trough of hipster technologies” before returning to more productive work. 2019-03-23

Project C-43: the lost origins of asymmetric crypto

Bob invents asymmetric cryptography by playing loud white noise to obscure Alice’s message, which he can cancel out but an eavesdropper cannot. This idea, published in 1944 by Walter Koenig Jr., is the forgotten origin of asymmetric crypto. 2019-02-16

How Hacker News stays interesting

Hacker News buried my post on conspiracy theories in my family due to overheated discussion, not censorship. Moderation keeps the site focused on interesting technical content. 2019-01-26

My parents are Flat-Earthers

For decades, my parents have been working up to Flat-Earther beliefs. From Egyptology to Jehovah’s Witnesses to theories that human built the Moon billions of years in the future. Surprisingly, it doesn’t affect their successful lives very much. For me, it’s a fun family pastime. 2019-01-20

The dots do matter: how to scam a Gmail user

Gmail’s “dots don’t matter” feature lets scammers create an account on, say, Netflix, with your email address but different dots. Results in convincing phishing emails. 2018-04-07

The sorry state of OpenSSL usability

OpenSSL’s inadequate documentation, confusing key formats, and deprecated interfaces make it difficult to use, despite its importance. 2017-12-02

I hate telephones

I hate telephones. Some rational reasons: lack of authentication, no spam filtering, forced synchronous communication. But also just a visceral fear. 2017-11-08

The Three Ts of Time, Thought and Typing: measuring cost on the web

Businesses often tout “free” services, but the real costs come in terms of time, thought, and typing required from users. Reducing these “Three Ts” is key to improving sign-up flows and increasing conversions. 2017-10-26

Granddad died today

Granddad died. The unspoken practice of death-by-dehydration in the NHS. The Liverpool Care Pathway. Assisted dying in the UK. The importance of planning in end-of-life care. 2017-05-19

How do I call a program in C, setting up standard pipes?

A C function to create a new process, set up its standard input/output/error pipes, and return a struct containing the process ID and pipe file descriptors. 2017-02-17

Your syntax highlighter is wrong

Syntax highlighters make value judgments about code. Most highlighters judge that comments are cruft, and try to hide them. Most diff viewers judge that code deletions are bad. 2014-05-11

Want to build a fantastic product using LLMs? I work at Granola where we're building the future IDE for knowledge work. Come and work with us! Read more or get in touch!

This page copyright James Fisher 2017. Content is not associated with my employer. Found an error? Edit this page.

Nativité, a pastoral Christmas game

Similar posts

More by Jim