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A new Silicon Valley company has formed to produce electronic games that are both high-quality and family-friendly, without the violence and other negative content found in many popular videogames. And now the Christian computer game developer called Digital Praise has partnered with Focus on the Family to bring out a new line of interactive games based on the popular "Adventures in Odyssey" radio series.

Today's video and computer game market is flooded with fantasy games featuring shootouts, car crashes, kicks and punches, all sorts of heavy artillery and explosions, and realistic graphics – often grossly gory or designed to be sexually titillating. And these features are usually steeped in loud, stereophonic sound that often includes hard rock and rap music amid rough, sometimes even profane, language. And of course, from Mortal Kombat's merciless "Finish him!" to Diablo II's gleeful, "I'll make weapons from your bones!" – the typical content of these games is rarely if ever calculated to teach virtue or family values. However, gentler and more wholesome alternatives for gamers have been few and far between.

But now, a new company is looking to change that. The newly formed Digital Praise, Inc. is joining entertainment companies like Big Idea, N'Lightning, and others in pioneering the emerging interactive Christian games market. The Fremont, California-based company, privately held by its founders, is actively involved in the development of original, virtue-reinforcing, positive-value game titles for release under its own brand and for third parties.

President and CEO Tom Bean says Digital Praise "is founded on the principle that fun, exciting computer games don't need to be flooded with violence, sex, hate, or images of horror." With this family-friendly philosophy, the young Silicon Valley company is out to prove that electronic entertainment need not be foul, frightful, or fight-full to be fun.

According to Bill Bean, vice president of sales and marketing, Digital Praise is tapping into a major market opportunity. The recent success of movies like "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy and the perennial popularity of Christian-themed books, music, and television shows make it obvious that an enormous appetite exists for all kinds of Christian entertainment.

"We see a tremendous opportunity in the Christian games market," Bill Bean says, "an industry estimated between $100 and $200 million in annual sales. As long as new game titles are top quality – offering exciting game play and high production value – we believe that interactive games will skyrocket in popularity much like Christian music did 15 years ago."

With those standards in mind, Digital Praise has put together a crack team of computer gaming industry veterans. Between them they have released more than 20 well-known titles, including favorites like the "Reader Rabbit", "Carmen San Diego", and "Oregon Trail" games. Peter Fokos, who heads the company's technical operations, is himself a 22-year veteran of the entertainment software business and has worked with industry giants such as The Learning Company and Disney Interactive.

Fokos says of his engineering team, "We've pulled together a group of developers, producers, artists, and audio engineers as fine as any I've ever worked with. This is the kind of group that will keep producing award-winning titles and best-sellers."

A New Way to Enjoy "Adventures in Odyssey"