Fill Your Hypocrisy Meter in a New Video Game Starring Ken Paxton

When Austin musician and software developer Mark Sean watched Ken Paxton win the Republican senate primary, a lightbulb went off. 

Something about the attorney general got under Sean’s skin, he told me. “People in his own party don’t even like him,” Sean said. “He’s a classic example of the corrupt politician.”

So Sean made a game.

“I grew up on South Park. I have a subversive ense of humor,” he said. “I wanted to do something that would be more interactive and engaging with people.”

Sean describes Biblical Grounds as a “Game Boy-style RPG.” You play as present-day Ken Paxton, battling your soon-to-be ex-wife Angela Paxton, political opponents James Talarico and Ted Brown, the hemp industry, reporters, and a process server calmly trying to hand you an envelope. 

You begin in the AG’s office. Your first objective: do not get served. 

Back to front, the game is about hypocrisy. “Paxton’s is such a unique case study in political hypocrisy,” Sean said. “If you look at his history, he’s been indicted and impeached.” As you learn more about Paxton’s menagerie of run-ins with his own published statements, you fill your “Hypocrisy Meter.”

Chances are upon hearing the concept, your mind went to Paxton’s ongoing divorce. “The title comes from his wife’s reasoning for divorcing him,” Sean said. “On biblical grounds.” 

The second level imagines the Paxtons’ divorce proceedings. It heavily features Paxton’s 2015 statement after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision, where he called the decision “flawed” and complained “it is not acceptable that people of faith be exposed to such abuse.” Meanwhile, in Angela Paxton’s recently unsealed petition for divorce, she accuses her husband of adultery. Sean frequently reminds the player of the Ten Commandments (which Paxton so desperately wanted in Texas classrooms). Crucially number seven: “Thou shall not commit adultery.”

“Paxton takes the most fire here because this game is about hypocrisy, and I do not think anyone in Texas politics serves up more of it,” Sean writes in the game’s end credits. “That is not a claim that the others are clean – it is a claim about the distance between what he says and what the record shows.” 

And Sean shows the record. You collect 16 “RECEIPTS” throughout the game – links to the evidence behind the claims the game makes. 

“Part of that is just so I don’t get sued,” Sean explained, half-joking. “We have a first amendment, those are public figures, they’re fair game to be satirized.”

They also fulfill the game’s secondary goal: edutainment. “There are sources to show that any claims in the game are making fun of actual events. Go look these up.”

In support of this goal, Sean makes a point to include the libertarian candidate Ted Brown, alongside James Talarico. “Whether you like him is your business,” the end credits read. “Knowing you have more than two options is the point.”

Sean identified himself as a civil libertarian. “I’ve always been someone who is kind of partial to third parties,” he said. “China has one party, we have two parties. We could do better than that.”

Long-time readers of the Chronicle might be familiar with the name Mark Sean, who’s been an Austin resident for over a decade. “I went to college in Indiana, then I moved down to play music.” In 2019, his band Black Heart Saints won Best Metal Band at the Chronicle’s Austin Music Awards.

When asked why he didn’t write a song about Paxton, he simply said: “You know, there’s so many protest songs out there already.”

“I grew up playing a lot of Game Boy games,” Sean added. “It felt more natural for me to do a game.”

If you find all the receipts by the end, the game sarcastically congratulates you: “You read every receipt. That was the whole point.”

“I wanted people to not just always think about party,” said Sean. “Let’s look at the individual, let’s look at what they are about. What do they stand for? Look at the character of these people.”

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