Canadian developer BioWare ( Mass Effect, Dragon Age) has in its offices several encyclopedias on religion, as well as the Book of the Dead. Video game developer Shigeru Miyamoto, who used to play outside as a child, used his experiences and memories of exploring the forest and discovering a Buddhist temple in the design of his video games. Video game developers use religious and spiritual themes to involve the player more deeply in the game. Themes and questions about life and death, innocence and guilt and violence are existential in nature while they are not immediately understood as "religious", they are about the meaning of life. A religious experience, however, does not necessarily have to be understood through an established religious framework. They often have sacred texts and holy places. Religions that are organized can be seen as cultural systems, with corresponding behavior and practice. 3.2 Use of video games in a religious settingĭefining religion and religious elements.
1 Defining religion and religious elements.Concepts and elements of contemporary and ancient religions appear in video games in various ways: places of worship are a part of the gameplay of real-time strategy games like Age of Empires narratively, games sometimes borrow themes from religious traditions like in Mass Effect 2. As one of the newest forms of entertainment, however, there is often controversy and moral panic when video games engage religion, for instance, in Insomniac Games' use of the Manchester Cathedral in Resistance: Fall of Man. Games involve moral decision, rely on invented religions, and allow users to create and experience virtual religious spaces. Video games increasingly turn to religion not just as ornament but as core elements of their video game design and play. Video games once struggled for legitimacy as a cultural product, today, however, they are both business and art. The study of religion and video games is a subfield of digital religion, which the American scholar of communication, Heidi Campbell, defines as "Religion that is constituted in new ways through digital media and cultures." (Campbell, 2012, p. 3).
0 kommentar(er)
