We've heard about taking Bibles to unreached countries.
We've heard about putting radio stations over there, and we've done that with Trans World Radio. But what about the vehicle of a video game? Well, that's what this guy sitting next to me. Oh, look at him. He's unzipping it. He's got the whole container here. He's pulling out a nice little game module. Look at that. Your name is Drayton, sir, and tell us Drayton, Drayton Cosby.
Your passion, Drayton, is what? Tell us about this video game that is in even countries that reject the gospel. They're playing your game.
That's right. Yeah, we have a calling on us to take God's Word to where people are, but also to where people haven't been reached. And the next generation, 95%, believe it or not, 95% are playing video games in some form or fashion, whether it's a mobile device or a video game console or a PC. So we believe that, you know, we've been called, this is a 10-year vision for me, believe it or not. The Lord put this on my heart very strongly about 10 years ago, and I come from a place, Birmingham, Alabama, where there are no video game development resources or talent, but somehow God brought in our team about four and a half, almost five years now, where he did help me find some talent.
And these guys are working today very strong. They're very passionate about the Lord and obviously want to change people's lives for the better, but it's really the Bible that does that. It's having a relationship with Jesus.
The video game is just the vehicle. And, you know, we see so many opportunities for not only young people, but people that love to learn in that space and immerse in a story, you know, through art and creativity. And literacy is something that, you know, is a buzzword. But if you can actually bring somebody into God's Word and actually see it, you know, feel it, hear it, experience it, you know, neurons firing in your fingertips, all the same, it's multisensory learning.
So there's going to be a better chance that they're going to retain it. So that's our hardest. It's trying to meet people where they are. But obviously, you know, we believe that if we can get them excited about it, if we can get people engaged, you know, that movable middle, even we can get them over to God's Word and they're going to it's going to change their life, just like it changed mine and our team. Drayton, I can hear the older generation of which I am becoming more and more apart, sadly, in my old age here. I hear them saying, these kids are gaming all the time.
What are you thinking? We don't need another video game. We need that old time religion or whatever they're going to say. How is this development that your team has put together this video game that's now in 120 countries? How is it a vehicle to bring someone to the Word of God and to the gospel?
Well, I would ask the older generation to kind of think back to those days where they played games, and they may not have played video games, they may have played a board game, or monopoly, you know, something like that, you know, that taught them really what real estate is what it means to buy and sell apartment housing and, and how you collect rent from people, you know, video games aren't much different in that regard. It's just that we're using high tech, we're using a lot of different vehicles to teach the Word of God through experiences. So, you know, they actually go in and make morally upright decisions in our game, they're also going to learn, you know, what it means to make a wrong decision and what that's like, but doing it as David. And so the anointed, the anointed is the the brand that we're building, but heart of David is the first game. So what we're trying to get people to in the body of Christ to understand is that when they accept Jesus, they are actually anointed by the Holy Spirit. And so if they've accepted Christ in their heart that he's set them apart for a huge purpose, but to understand that we're drawing them back to David's story, and what that was like that coordination, you know, that ceremony, and what he did after that, you know, he went straight back to the fields, you know, he served, it took him a long time before he was actually crowned king. But to understand the qualities and characteristics of what it means to be a man's after God's own heart is something that's very powerful.
And I think this generation's prime for it, you know, they're ready for it. And we see a real problem with with with Bible reading in general, and this aren't my statistics, this is Barna. But you know, about 5% of people are reading the Bible daily. It's not good. We believe that we can reverse the trends and the video game space in general is a very dark place.
There's not a lot of light coming from that. So our mission, our real vision is to redeem it is to redeem the video game space for the glory of God. Wow. And so you've made a game to ultimately get people into the real game of life with Christ. So tell us a little bit take us back Drayton, Drayton Cosby, intelligent media and design, you create a video game, you've opened it, you fired it up, I'm about to play it here. Even a washed up basketball player like me, radio host can figure this out.
Okay, so what you can show me how to do that. Tell us about how you came to the Lord. Who were you before doing all this stuff? Everyone sees the guy, the big Christian guy making on the national radio show with big ratings, making these big video games that are going all over the world, bringing people to Christ. But how did you come to the Lord and where in that kind of linear of your journey?
Did he fire you up for this? Okay. You know, I can think of really two profound moments in my life. I grew up in church, got a very, obviously godly family, you know, that had an emphasis on making sure that we were there. Now, I come also from a divorced family. So, you know, when I was 10, things, I started to try to, I could see things were moving away, you know, in our family environment. So I tried to pursue the Lord the best I could during then but fell away for a period of time.
And, and I would say about a little over 20 years ago, I was at my darkest moment. Won't go in a ton of the details, but was living for myself was really looking for someone to take over the wheel, I did not do a very good job with my own life. And that's when I went back to Christ and prayed, Lord, just I need a godly relationship in my life.
And little did I know, you know how it all worked. But a couple of weeks later, I met my wife, and I would have never asked her out if the Holy Spirit just hadn't put it on me powerfully to do that, because I'm pretty much a natural, a shy person. So I felt compelled to ask her out. And you know, she's a pastor's kid, got me back into church.
We've been married now for almost 20 years. And you know, it's changed my life. I knew the Lord was with me. He answered a massive prayer for me that changed the trajectory of my life.
And the second was when I realized that I wasn't really living fully for Christ. I was compartmentalizing, you know, I was I was showing up helping, you know, my father in law plant church, I was going to church, but you know, during the weekday, maybe not doing it 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you know, having an audience of one in my mind completely. And I had a pastor sit down with me, a good friend, and he was asking me about my work and you know, what I did. And you know, I said, Look, I can sleep well at night.
He said, Drayton, if what you're doing is not in Jesus name, what's the point? And you know, it hit me, but it was something I needed to hear at the right time, the way I heard it, and I felt like a blindfold had just come right off my face. And automatically I started pursuing the Lord hard in prayer. I never had asked God, what is it that you've got me here for? Lord, is it is it to do what I'm doing now?
Or you call me for something more. And and within a few weeks of prayer of a very intense prayer and time with the Lord, he shared, he showed me this vision of a game on my daughter's iPad. But she was playing a different game at the time, she was actually playing a sheep of a simulation of a sheep on a farm.
And, you know, iPads and iPhones, and all these things were happening back through 2005 and 2015 technologies just advancing rapidly. And I was sitting with her and she was underneath my arm, and I was watching her play this little simulation game. And when I looked down, I saw her playing a different game. I saw her playing an angel, she was guiding an angel through what looked to me was like a Middle Eastern, you know, biblical site. And, and I could hear Jericho and Jerusalem and Bethlehem, I can still hear it. But I heard that when I saw it, and automatically, when I turned my head, it was gone. And, and it just, it stirred me up. Couldn't stop thinking about it.
Couldn't get it off my mind prayed against it for months. Lord, do you really call me to do this? Like, this is what I'm supposed to do. Take your word to where, where people are here in this format. I don't have a clue where to start.
I don't know anything about programming or development. And, and, uh, so, um, Tom went on, and I just began to learn and study and try to prepare myself the best that I could. To start what now what we have now is the Foundation for Intelligent Media Design. The doors opened a little over six years ago. And over time, I mean, it was just me and a conference table and a desk, no nobody trying to meet people who can I find. And he opened up the God just opened up doors and everybody really opened up when I started taking my Bible seriously.
You know, I think when I used to read through it, and check a box that, you know, things weren't quite opened. But the day that I put pen to paper, and started spending a lot of time studying, you know, just even a chapter a day, but hours, just just praying over it and observing it and taking it in, I just saw things start to open up because I was taking it serious. And, and from there, at a company, give us a game design document, which is like a business plan for a video game, which is now the the anointed heart of David.
And with with within a couple of weeks after that, right before COVID, I met my game designer, who had launched 14 games, he decided to quit his work, and come on to work with me for a lot less money. Because he saw the vision, he saw that we were trying to change lives for the better and teen suicide rate being as high as it is, you know, second leading cause of death and anxiety and fear and all these problems that teenagers face that if we can get God's word in front of them, that he's got all the answers. And I know these are things that you know, Stu, but you know, I don't know if our audience knows that enough. And that's what we want them to see. But we want to see how we want them to see how big God is. Yeah, where is the anointed video game now? And what's your long range?
What's your long term passion as we wrap up the show? Well, right now we've we've launched an MVP. We launched that a couple of years ago. And we've updated a few times.
It's David saves keyless one Samuel 23. It's on Steam. It's a PC gaming platform.
All you can do is just go to Google. And if you type in the anointed, you'll find the anointed David saves kilo pretty high in the search we've had so far with just on a few thousand dollars of marketing. We've had almost 44,000 downloads. We're in 130 countries 28 where the Bible's been, you know, the games in English only, we're about to update the game again and launch a Spanish version.
And we've got 198 more languages to go after that. But but the anointed hearted David is is the final release that we plan. I don't know when that will be should know within a month what our what our launch dates going to be. But the anointed is the franchise that we're building hearted David is the first game, we want to build multiples upon multiples of games about heroes in the Bible that people can learn from, and experience and connect to the stories better in the Bible.
So that's our plan long term is to do this for hopefully 40 years. We've built a multiplayer, we've got a mobile version prototype. So we're trying to get it in all corners of the earth. There are 3.3 billion gamers in this earth.
That's almost half the whole population, the world's staff, almost half, they all need Jesus, and I'm about to go on and play your game right now. We might get a little video clip of this. Yeah, but we got to go so we can do that. But give us your website.
So folks should learn more. Even parents, grandparents can learn more to get their kids something redemptive and to be praying for you. What's the website? That'd be great. If you go to IMD interactive.org, IMD interactive.org, you can go there, we'd ask you if you would subscribe to the website there.
You can sign up for news events. If you're interested in games, we actually have a prayer team. We've got hundreds of people praying for this.
We would love to have thousands upon thousands to do that as well. So we'd love to have you involved in however we can serve you. This game is free.
Know that it's a gift for you. And we're not trying to take anything from you. We're trying to get you connected to your young person and disciple them at home. Thank you for connecting us to another way to reach people with the good news of Christ, especially young people who are consumed with video games. Imagine a video game that pointed them to the King of Kings who won the ultimate game of life and gives us salvation. Amen. Thank you so much too.
