Theological Productions: The Role of Religion in Video Game Design
In: Cultural Perspectives of Video Games: From Desiger to PlayerSearch for other papers by Robert M. Geraci in
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As video games have grown increasingly sophisticated, designers have often included religious themes, practices, and imagery in them. How and why designers incorporate religion into their games is an important point of consideration both for understanding player immersion and for understanding the relationship between gaming and wider culture. Game designers use several strategies for the inclusion of religion in video games, and religion is thus apparent in the rules, the play, and the culture of games. Interviews with game designers and analysis of games themselves amply demonstrate the important ways in which religion is a part of all three elements of game design. By integrating religion into one or more of these elements, designers enhance player immersion and maximise their games’ appeal. As a consequence, games can reflect, reject, or reconfigure religious ideas, and are a source for the production of religious practices and ideas in modernity. Because human beings are deeply religious in their thought and practice, the inclusion of religious phenomena is a necessity for culturally rich game design. Phenomenologically, religion is constituted of doctrine, myth, ethics, ritual, experience, institutions, and material culture; not all of these appear in game design, but the inclusion of some enhances meaningful play. While it is certainly possible to produce engrossing and enjoyable games without recourse to religious considerations, a meaningful and rich game will always have religious elements in its narrative or game play.