Eric, I've got your "Christian-themed" video game right here: 

Video game giant Electronic Arts has admitted it funded a group of fake protesters who pretended to be Christians as a publicity stunt to spur interest in its upcoming action game very loosely based on Dante’s “Inferno.”

The game company hired a group of almost 20 people to stand outside the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles on Wednesday, the Associated Press says. The phony protesters passed out amateurish material and held signs bearing slogans such as “Trade in Your PlayStation for a PrayStation,” “Hell is not a Game” and “EA = Electronic Anti-Christ.”

Holly Rockwood, an EA spokeswoman, said the charade was arranged by a viral marketing agency hired by the company.

A web page in the crude style of 1990s web design was also created in connection with the stunt. It depicted crosses crushing the word “sin” and placed images of the King James Bible among phony condemnations and thinly-veiled promotions of the game.

“A video game hero does not have the authority to save and damn... ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE. and he will not judge the sinners who play this game kindly,” the site said.

It's been clear for a while now that the entertainment inudstry views Christians on the whole as priggish, thin-skinned fun-killers. (That swipe about our Web design skills might be most hurtful of all.) Clearly they don't read enough InsideCatholic, or they'd see what a market they're missing right here. Their loss.

That aside, though, the institutional acknowledgement that these kinds of protests are the best possible publicity for their target is something Christians might want to bear in mind when the next Dan Brown film rolls around.

And in case you were wondering what a game based on the Inferno would look like, here's a taste:

EA’s video game “Dante’s Inferno” claims to be inspired by the first book of Dante Alighieri’s theological poem “The Divine Comedy.” Its character uses a cross as a weapon.

While Dante’s epic poem placed his beloved Beatrice in Paradise, the EA game makes its Dante character rescue Beatrice’s soul from Lucifer, USA Today says.

Which raises the question: Has anybody at EA actually read the Inferno?