If you walk into a couple of select Chick-Fil-A restaurants in California, you might see the following:

...four laptops are set up; three with the Charlie Church Mouse Games and one with Keys of the Kingdom. Customers are given a flyer with a coupon which offers a 20% discount when they purchase one of the games at the nearby Berean Christian Store, which is part of an 18-store chain in states from California to Pennsylvania.

It's an ongoing event called Video-Game-Night which the restaurant conducts with Left Behind Games, the folks who make those wretched wretched real time strategy games about the Rapture.

Now before you think this is somehow controversial, keep in mind that Chick-Fil-A is a privately owned chain founded by a devout Christian who makes no secret of his evangelical Christianity (for instance, see here for why Chick-Fil-A's aren't open on Sundays). But it's too bad the unsuspecting folks promised bona fide Video-Games instead got Charlie Church Mouse and Keys to the Kingdom. Like Christian music, what's disappointing about these things isn't that they're Christian. It's that they're bad. It's a damn shame Left Behind makes such uninspired derivative games. Rote imitations of Popcap puzzles or Command & Conquers do absolutely nothing to promote your faith. They simply sours the perception of videogames. What Christian gaming needs is its own Jenova Chen or Jonathan Blow to make a Flower or Braid, infused with a Christian perspective. Actually, just play Flower or Braid as is! Those games have a lot to say about redemption and sin, respectively.

So how well did the promotional tie-in work?

As a result of the success of the Video-Game-Night events, the head buyer for Berean confirmed that he has placed an order with his distributor for more than four hundred games.

But that's not all. Also in the press release:

According to Lori Powell, Manager of the Chick-fil-A(R) restaurant in Murrieta, California, the Video-Game-Night Event on Nov 10th brought their location more customers and revenue than the "Operation Christmas Child" event held there the previous week.

Ouch.