About

Why I Gave The Pope Undertale is a video produced by The Game Theorists in which its creator Matthew Patrick revealed that he gave Pope Francis a digital copy of the 2015 indie role-playing game Undertale as a token of friendship during his meeting with the head of the Roman Catholic Church in May 2016.

Background

In May 2016, Matthew Patrick joined ten other YouTube personalities for a meeting with Pope Francis at the VI Scholas World Congress in the Vatican City, where they discussed how their influence on the Internet help bring people from various nationalities and cultures together by means of mutual interests. During the meeting, Matthews gifted the Pope with a Steam redeem code for Undertale, which he revealed in his Why I Gave The Pope Undertale video, uploaded on July 5th, 2016.

In the video, Patrick explains his reason for giving the code and states that gaming culture had been widely unappreciated by those outside it, evidenced by them belittling gamers and by reducing anyone related to gaming, be it journalists, reviewers, or actors, to the simple title of "gamer". Another point for this argument were the many controversies in which murders and acts of violence had been allegedly inspired by video games, which led media and politicians to propagate video games as "murder simulators" which would have negative influence over society. By giving Pope Francis Undertale, Patrick had hoped that him acclaiming the game would end the prejudices related to video gaming.

Online Reaction

The video was received by mixed reactions from the public, with a large majority of his subscribers supporting the idea, while a large number of non-subscribers criticized the idea on various grounds, particularly Patrick's comparison of racism and Islamophobia to gamers being belittled and generalized, him using the opportunity to meet the pope simply to give him a video game, and him using the then recent Orlando nightclub massacre as leverage for his argument that it's more important now than ever for Undertale's pacifist moral to be acclaimed by the Pope.

Additionally, people have ridiculed the idea of giving the Pope a video game, with many suggesting the idea of giving the Pope games other than Undertale or the Pope starting a Let's Play channel.^[8]

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