Spanish video game aims to boost church wedding rates | Spain
Facing a sharp decline in the number of church weddings, Spanish bishops have turned their eyes to the virtual world in the hope that a new video game will help attract more couples to the altar.
According to the latest figures, less than 18% of all weddings in Spain in 2024 (31,462 out of 175,364 weddings) took place in church. These numbers are down significantly from 2007, when more than 55 percent of weddings took place in a Roman Catholic church.
Declining numbers and high divorce rates have led the church to launch a series of initiatives in recent years designed to protect and promote the sanctity of marriage.
Its latest campaign uses a video game, Level Up! A Game for Two Playerstrying to discover and explain the qualities on which marriage is based. Retro game with the slogan: “El love, la aventura más épica” (Love is the most epic adventure) follows a young couple named Fran and Elena as they go about their daily tasks and earn rewards while learning the importance of patience, generosity, humility, honesty and empathy.
The goal of the game is to present players with real-life situations when they think about marriage, such as “problems at work, a bachelorette party at the resort, a relationship with an ex-girlfriend.” It is being released to coincide with Valentine’s Day.
“The campaign is also proactive and aims to show the beauty of Christian marriage,” he said in a statement to the Spanish bishops’ conference. “It is not primarily aimed at those who are already engaged, but rather aims to encourage couples who desire a stable commitment to consider a church wedding.”
The idea was suggested by students at the Pontifical University of Salamanca and developed by a professional video game designer.
“Presenting this as a game enters into dialogue with the gamified society in which we live, and at the same time makes it possible and easy to reflect on the deep and fundamental elements in the giving of human love necessary for marriage, which satisfies the human heart’s longing for happiness,” he said at the conference.
The church in Spain has also resorted to more traditional methods in its quest to encourage people to marry. Six years ago, the bishops’ conference inaugurated a two- to three-year premarital guidance course designed to prepare couples for a long-term journey. The course was designed after the church decided that the 20-hour classes offered to those who wanted to swear before God were not nearly enough.
Mario Iceta, then bishop of Bilbao and chairman of the conference’s subcommittee on family and defense of life, said his own experience with marrying couples showed that more groundwork was needed.
“You cannot prepare for marriage in 20 hours,” he said at a press conference in Madrid at the time. “You have to spend seven years in seminary to become a priest, but how about being a husband, wife, mother or father? Only 20 hours?”
Divided into 12 areas such as communication, fidelity, “the beauty of sexuality” and conflict resolution, the aim of the course was “to accompany, prepare and assist young couples towards the marriage profession”.
This scheme found him confronting the realities of the online world and advising against pornography, which he said “commercialises and distorts the beauty of the gift of marriage” and can be addictive.
