Book by Lars de Wildt
Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of wo... more Young people in the West are more likely to encounter religion in videogames than in places of worship like churches, mosques, or temples. Lars de Wildt interviewed developers and players of games such as Assassin’s Creed to find out how and why the ‘Pop Theology of Videogames’ is so appealing to cultural industries and their audiences. Based on extensive fieldwork, this book argues that developers of videogames and their players engage in a pop theology through which laymen reconsider traditional questions of religion, by playing with them. Games allow us to engage with religious questions and identities in the same way that children might play house or pretend to be soldiers. This requires a radical rethinking of religious questions as no longer just questions of belief or disbelief; but as truths to be tried on, compared, and discarded at will.
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Journal Articles by Lars de Wildt
Journal of Consumer Culture, 2023
Videogame companies are selling religion to an overwhelmingly secular demographic. Ubisoft, the b... more Videogame companies are selling religion to an overwhelmingly secular demographic. Ubisoft, the biggest company in the world's biggest cultural industry, created a best-selling franchise about a conflict over Biblical artefacts between Muslim Assassins and Christian Templars. Who decides to put religion into those games? How? And why? To find out, we interviewed 22 developers on the Assassin's Creed franchise, including directors and writers. Based on those, we show that the 'who' of Ubisoft is not a person but an industry: a depersonalized and codified process. How? Marketing, editorial and production teams curb creative teams into reproducing a formula: a depoliticized, universalized, and sciencefictionalized 'marketable religion.' Why? Because this marketable form of religious heritage can be consumed by everyone-regardless of cultural background or conviction. As such, this paper adds an empirically grounded perspective on the 'who,' 'why' and 'how' of cultural industries' successful commodification of religious and cultural heritage.
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Public Understanding of Science, 2022
Conspiracy theories are central to "post-truth" discussions. Official knowledge, backed by scienc... more Conspiracy theories are central to "post-truth" discussions. Official knowledge, backed by science, politics, and media, is distrusted by various people resorting to alternative (conspiratorial) explanations. While elite commentators lament the rise of such "untruths," we know little of people's everyday opinions on this topic, despite their societal ramifications. We therefore performed a qualitative content analysis of 522 comments under a Dutch newspaper article on conspiracy theories to study how ordinary people discuss post-truth matters. We found four main points of controversy: "habitus of distrust"; "who to involve in public debates"; "which ways of knowing to allow"; and "what is at stake?" The diverging opinions outline the limits of pluralism in a post-truth era, revealing tensions between technocratic and democratic ideals in society. We show that popular opinions on conspiracy theories embody more complexity and nuance than elite conceptions of post-truth allow for: they lay bare the multiple sociological dimensions of poly-truth.
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Games and Culture, 2020
2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s Games of... more 2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s Games of Empire, which has become a seminal book in videogame cultural criticism. Ten years later, there is still a pressing need for cultural and materialist criticism of the politics of production within game studies. In putting together this special issue, our hope is to identify new developments in the game industry and academia that are emblematic of 21st-century capitalism. Just as Games of Empire popularised critical political-economic perspectives ten years ago, we encourage others, as the authors in this issue did, to continue and maintain investigations into questions of ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations and radical struggle. Such analyses are necessary not only to trace but also to open up new directions in game culture and academia for decades to come.
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Games and Culture, 2020
2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter's Games of... more 2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter's Games of Empire, which has become a seminal book in videogame cultural criticism. Ten years later, there is still a pressing need for cultural and materialist criticism of the politics of production within game studies. In putting together this Special Issue, our hope is to identify new developments in the games industry and academia that are emblematic of 21st century capitalism. Just as Games of Empire popularised critical political-economic perspectives ten years ago, we encourage others, as the authors in this issue did, to continue and maintain investigations into questions of ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations, and radical struggle. Such analyses are necessary: not only to trace, but also to open up new directions in game culture and academia for decades to come.
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Games & Culture, 2020
2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s Games of... more 2019 marked ten years since the publication of Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter’s Games of Empire, which has become a seminal book in videogame cultural criticism. Ten years later, there is still a pressing need for cultural and materialist criticism of the politics of production within game studies. In putting together this special issue, our hope is to identify new developments in the game industry and academia that are emblematic of 21st-century capitalism. Just as Games of Empire popularised critical political-economic perspectives ten years ago, we encourage others, as the authors in this issue did, to continue and maintain investigations into questions of ownership, privatized property, coercive class relations, military operations and radical struggle. Such analyses are necessary not only to trace but also to open up new directions in game culture and academia for decades to come.
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International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2020
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International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2020
Religious icons and representations increasingly appear, in the West, as cultural heritage rather... more Religious icons and representations increasingly appear, in the West, as cultural heritage rather than active subjects of religious practice. While churches become tourist landmarks rather than places of worship; religions’ stories and characters – their intangible cultural heritage – survive as rich bases for popular media alongside their traditional use of mediating divinity. This paper studies one form of such popular media – Japanese videogames, using the Final Fantasy series as a case study – to ask: Which religions, folklores, cultures and their divinities are represented in videogames? (All of them, flattened non-hierarchically.) How are these divinities mediated in videogames? (Together, juxtaposed eclectically.) And what are the implications for including what are normally mutually exclusive mediations of divine worship into popular media together? (It re-introduces them to a practice common outside of Abrahamic, protestant conceptions of world religion, by freely combining cultural heritages and religious practices in what are called ‘multiple religious belongings’). While these representations of eclectic religion may seem to trivialise traditions by making them interchangeable, it also manages to de-objectivate them and reveal their fictional, artefactual origin as cultural heritage, while leaving them intact as contemporary practices.
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Information, Communication & Society
Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religi... more Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religious decline, recent scholarship has assessed that religious traditions and narratives feature prominently in videogames. In order to answer how player communities in game culture deal with religion in games, this study analyzes online discussions (N=100) and interviews with strategically selected players (N=20) to assess which games provoke discussions about religion, which religious topics are discussed about these games and what implications this has for theories of religious privatization. Based on the analysis, players are divided into four ideal-typical positions: players of all beliefs either Reject, Debunk, Debate or actively Connect with the worldviews presented in the games they play. In all, this online engagement with religion, gods and the nature of holy texts, presents a “pop theology” of amateurs showing an interest in and having a public conversation about religion in the face of a post-secular society.
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Information, Communication & Society
Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religi... more Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religious decline, recent scholarship has assessed that religious traditions and narratives feature prominently in videogames. In order to answer how player communities in game culture deal with religion in games, this study analyzes online discussions (N=100) and interviews with strategically selected players (N=20) to assess which games provoke discussions about religion, which religious topics are discussed about these games and what implications this has for theories of religious privatization. Based on the analysis, players are divided into four ideal-typical positions: players of all beliefs either Reject, Debunk, Debate or actively Connect with the worldviews presented in the games they play. In all, this online engagement with religion, gods and the nature of holy texts, presents a “pop theology” of amateurs showing an interest in and having a public conversation about religion in the face of a post-secular society.
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Information, Communication & Society, 2019
Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religi... more Players of videogames are talking about religion. Despite longstanding theories of Western religious decline, recent scholarship has assessed that religious traditions and narratives feature prominently in videogames. In order to answer how player communities in game culture deal with religion in games, this study analyzes online discussions (N=100) and interviews with strategically selected players (N=20) to assess which games provoke discussions about religion, which religious topics are discussed about these games and what implications this has for theories of religious privatization. Based on the analysis, players are divided into four ideal-typical positions: players of all beliefs either Reject, Debunk, Debate or actively Connect with the worldviews presented in the games they play. In all, this online engagement with religion, gods and the nature of holy texts, presents a “pop theology” of amateurs showing an interest in and having a public conversation about religion in the face of a post-secular society.
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British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2019
The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and popular media... more The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and popular media. Drawing from classroom observations in an urban primary school in Australia, this paper enters the technology in education conversation, more specifically through the use of videogames for learning. Based on classroom exchanges between teachers and students, we interrogate how the school's use of Minecraft, a best-selling commercial videogame, continues to reproduce myths of settler colonialism in the 21st century. Specifically, the curriculum mobilizes structures inherent to both Minecraft and modern Australia's treatment of its Indigenous populations. That is, both classroom and videogame interactions reproduced the myth of terra nullius: the doctrine that determined land, prior to colonization, was empty and unowned, and therefore available for settlement by the colonizer. We conclude that within videogames and classrooms, students' voices manage to interrogate the curriculum, resisting the reproduction of erasive coloniality in school.
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British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2019
The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and popular media... more The myth that justified the takeover of a continent lives on both in classrooms and popular media. Drawing from classroom observations in an urban primary school in Australia, this paper enters the technology in education conversation, more specifically through the use of videogames for learning. Based on classroom exchanges between teachers and students, we interrogate how the school’s use of Minecraft, a best-selling commercial videogame, continues to reproduce myths of settler colonialism in the 21st century. Specifically, the curriculum mobilizes structures inherent to both Minecraft and modern Australia’s treatment of its Indigenous populations. That is, both classroom and videogame interactions reproduced the myth of terra nullius: the doctrine that determined land, prior to colonization, was empty and unowned, and therefore available for settlement by the colonizer. We conclude that within videogames and classrooms, students’ voices manage to interrogate the curriculum, resisting the reproduction of erasive coloniality in school.
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European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2018
In contemporary ‘post-secular society’, videogames like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock Infinite or Wo... more In contemporary ‘post-secular society’, videogames like Assassin’s Creed, BioShock Infinite or World of Warcraft are suffused with religious elements. Departing from a critique on studies perceiving such in-game representations as discriminatory forms of religious Othering, the main research question of this article is: how does role-playing the (non-)religious Other in games affect the worldview of players? The study is based on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews held with 20 international players from different (non-)religious backgrounds. Rather than seeing religion in games as representations of ‘Othering’, the analysis demonstrates that players from different (non-)religious beliefs take on different worldviews while role-playing the (non-)religious Other. Atheists relativize their own position, opening up to the logic of religious worldviews; Christians, Hindus and Muslims, in turn, compare traditions and may draw conclusions about the similarities underlying differ...
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European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2018
In contemporary 'post-secular society', videogames like Assassin's Creed, BioShock Infinite or Wo... more In contemporary 'post-secular society', videogames like Assassin's Creed, BioShock Infinite or World of Warcraft are suffused with religious elements. Departing from a critique on studies perceiving such in-game representations as discriminatory forms of religious Othering, the main research question of this article is: how does role-playing the (non-)religious Other in games affect the worldview of players? The study is based on a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews held with 20 international players from different (non-)religious backgrounds. Rather than seeing religion in games as representations of 'Othering', the analysis demonstrates that players from different (non-)religious beliefs take on different worldviews while role-playing the (non-)religious Other. Atheists relativize their own position, opening up to the logic of religious worldviews; Christians, Hindus and Muslims, in turn, compare traditions and may draw conclusions about the similarities underlying different world religions. Other players 'slip into a secular mindset', gradually turning towards the position of a 'religious none'. It is concluded that playing the religious Other in videogames provides the opportunity to suspend (non-)religious worldviews and empathize with the (non-)religious Other. The relevance of these findings is related to broader sociological debates about 'post-secular society' and the alleged increase of religious fundamentalism, conflict and mutual Othering.
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Games and Culture, 2019
This article explores the cultural appropriation of the term avatar by Western tech culture, and ... more This article explores the cultural appropriation of the term avatar by Western tech culture, and what this implies for scholarship of digital games, virtual worlds, social media and digital cultures. The term has roots in the religious tradition of the Indian subcontinent and was subsequently imported into video game terminology during a period of widespread appropriation of Eastern culture by Californian tech industries. We argue that the use of the term was not a case of happenstance, but a signalling of the potential for computing to offer a mystical or enchanted perspective within an otherwise secular world. This suggests that the concept is useful in game cultures precisely because it plays with the ‘otherness’ of the terms original meaning. We argue that this indicates a fundamental hybridity to gaming cultures that highlights the need to add postcolonial perspectives to how issues of diversity and power in gaming cultures are understood.
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ToDiGRA: Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association, 2018
This article examines which bodies have access to participate in Digital Games Research Associati... more This article examines which bodies have access to participate in Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) events, and to DiGRA as an organization. It is based on a survey (N=174), among subscribers to the DiGRA “Gamesnetwork” mailing list. The survey included questions on age, gender, location and career level to gain insight into who is included in the DiGRA community, with further questions on problems and challenges faced by those who have had trouble accessing DiGRA. This paper does not proceed solely by statistical methodology, but draws on feminist theories of embodiment and qualitative methods. Through this diverse methodological approach, the paper analyzes which bodies have difficulties accessing DiGRA’s academic communities and conferences, which practices cause these difficulties, and which policies might be introduced to address these. The survey indicates that young, early-career and women’s bodies are in particularly precarious positions. This situation is perpetuated through various practices of economic and social inaccessibility. Upon reflection, the paper proposes a set of policies to address these practices. We conclude that this survey and its analysis are only a first step to making DiGRA a more diversely inclusive organization.
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In the literature on religion in games, two broad types of religion have been depicted: on the on... more In the literature on religion in games, two broad types of religion have been depicted: on the one hand, historical religions—Christian, Muslim and Buddhist narratives, tropes and symbols—and, on the other hand, fiction-based religion, referring to fantasy, myth and popular culture. In this article we aim to describe, analyze and explain the emergence of a new, unacknowledged repertoire. Building on two case studies—Fallout 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn—we argue that modern technology (computers, AI, VR, androids) itself is becoming a sacred object of veneration in fiction, specifically in post-apocalyptic games that imagine man-made annihilation. Although the themes and topics differ, this emergent form of techno-religion in game narratives is generally located in a post-apocalyptic setting. Although they are fictitious, we conclude that such narratives reflect developments in real life, in which technology such as artificial intelligence is feared as an increasingly powerful, opaque force.
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Modern game scholarship in the past two decades has known two dominant, yet paradoxical, tendenci... more Modern game scholarship in the past two decades has known two dominant, yet paradoxical, tendencies in theorizing the subject of play: an interpellationary account and a deconstructivist one. Going from Miguel Sicart’s concept of the ethical player as an initial compromise between the two, this article argues for an ideological subject of play that is a split subject. Aside from phenomenological presense through ‘playing subjects,’ as Foucaultian subjects constructed by the governing structure of rules, we must recognize the parallel subjectivity of ‘played subjects,’ inherent to – and narrativized by – the game as avatars, visual narrators or sheer content. In this constellation, the player appears to have a merely precarious position over the played, ready to lose control at the whim of the game.
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Journal Articles by Lars de Wildt
My presentation works through this paradox with the aid of Miguel Sicart’s ‘skin-subject,’ and Michel Foucault’s concept of governance in order to provide a model of the subject of play as one necessarily split between the played, playing and player-subject. Firstly, philosopher and game scholar Miguel Sicart proposes a perspective on games as spaces of morality in which the player can be present. This presence of the player does not fully correlate with the player as moral subject, but is rather a “skin-subject in contact with the world outside the game, which in return does have influence over how a player experiences a certain game” (2009, 102). Already, we may distinguish in this skin-subject the played entity of the avatar among the other presented content of the game; and distinguish it from the person outside of the game. As a case study, Galactic Café’s The Stanley Parable (2007, 2013) proves a case in point: the game takes a lot of effort to rhetorically differentiate these distinct subjects within the context of the game.
Such a playing, or controlling entity is often lauded as essentially autonomous, due to the freedom granted by interactive media. Already in the early 21st century this concept of ‘interactivity’ was problematized (cf. Aarseth, 1997; Raessens, 2005). Indeed, player behaviour is to a large extent meaningful only in that it is necessitated through the game’s ruleset and possible world: its presented affordances, constraints and goals amount to what is commonly called a ludic contract (Pratt, 2010) or lusory attitude (Suits, 1978, 35), a certain surrender to the fiction and goals of the game. The mechanism by which ludic structures function as governing structures is akin to a Foucaultian model of power relations. Much like the way in which power structures are prerequisites for the subject, a ludic structure provides a pre-requisite for the voluntarily subjectification of the playing subject.
A final reason to further differentiate the subject of play is that the playing subject is inevitably separate from the player-subject: the ludoliterate player behind the interface. The case study of Yager Development’s Spec Ops: the Line (2012) shows that it is necessary to distinguish the playing subject’s actions as necessitated by a ludic contract (until broken); and the player (or interpreting) subject as a classical reader capable of reflection. A reading of Spec Ops will reveal the distance between the split subjectivities of the subject of play as one that is both necessary and generative of meaning. This constellation – akin to narratological accounts of literature as spear-headed by Genette and, specifically, Mieke Bal (1985) – provides a methodology to adequately theorize the subjecthood of the players and his freedom within a ludic structure. Additionally, it provides a method to engage in close-readings of digital games such as Spec Ops: the Line and their possibilities of engaging in critical reflection through mechanics of Brechtian Verfremdung.
Works cited
Aarseth, E. (1997) Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Bal, M. (1985). Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (2nd ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Dyer-Witheford, N., & de Peuter, G. (2009). Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Foucault, M. (2001). Power: Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. Ed. James D. Faubion. London: Penguin.
Friedman, T. (1995). Making sense of software: Computer games and Interactive Textuality. Cybersociety; Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: pp. 73-89.
Galactic Café. (2007). The Stanley Parable, Source SDK, PC (Microsoft Windows).
Galactic Café. (2007). The Stanley Parable, Steam, PC (Microsoft Windows).
Pratt, C.J. (2010) In Praise of Spoilsports. Game Design Advance. March 30, 2010. Web. 21 April, 2014.
Raessens, J.F.F. (2005 [2011]) Computer Games as Participatory Media Culture. in J. Raessens and J. Goldstein (eds), Handbook of Computer Game Studies. MIT Press, Cambridge, 373-88.
Sicart, M. (2009). The Ethics of Computer Games. MIT Press, Cambridge MA.
Suits, Bernard. (1978). The Grasshopper: Games, Life And Utopia. Broadview Press
Yager Development. (2012). Spec Ops: the Line, 2K Games, Playstation 3.
Throughout each of No Towers’ pages, its protagonist’s shape is continually in flux: multiplying, shifting, even attacking itself through the boundaries of sequences. The author-protagonist can be seen breaking one of the panels, drilling into an enlarged image of his own head: it is as if the multiplication of Spiegelmans may extend to every single panel. Pictorially, the hero shapeshifts from himself into a perverse cheerleader for the War on Terror; the persona of Maus, or one of many widely divergent intertextual comic book adaptations.
Certainty of identity is structurally questioned, focusing on such doubts as the appearance and recognition of terrorists, and the displacement of guilt in politics. Equally terrorized by Bush and Al-Qaeda, Spiegelman shows himself a split subject, as objects, heads and other body parts replace each other from panel to panel during a sequence in which Spiegelman explains his concept of ‘displacement’ through a series of comparisons.
By bringing Spiegelman’s graphic novel into dialogue with the trauma theory of Dominick LaCapra and Cathy Caruth I will show that Spiegelman’s personal and domestic confusion is indicative of a wider, international, process of transformation and displacement during which the West was perceived as going from a pre- to a post-9/11 state. A process that was, above all, characterized by a return to a multiplicity of subjectivities and the eventual shape of which has yet to stabilize.
To address this question we took on the approach developed in cultural (media) studies, i.e. focusing on the process of “encoding/decoding” and consumer practices of “textual poaching” (cf. Hall, 1980; Jenkins, 2015). We adopt this perspective in studying religious meaning-making in games for two reasons. First of all: dominant representation-based studies in the field hold on to an approach that is more suitable with static or noninteractive (mass)media. Looking at representations in games is particularly problematic because it disregards the medium-specificity of digital game-play: players are not simply passive consumers but actively “reconfigure” games (Raessens, 2005) through the act of role-playing (partly) as their avatar (e.g., Rehak, 2003; Klevjer, 2007).
Secondly, representation-based research neglects the specificity, divergence of and differences between individual players. Players’ accounts of meaning-making are variable, often resulting in mutually exclusive understandings of the same video game. Specifically in the case of religion, we hold, players from different religious backgrounds understand in-game religious meanings in vastly different ways (e.g., Aupers & Schaap, 2016).
The research question, then, becomes specifically: in what ways do players with different (non-)religious identities play with the digital (role-play) identities provided by the characters and worlds of video games? In order to answer this question, we resorted to qualitative semi-structured interviews (N=20). A general call was put out on different video game forums to arrive at a set of theoretically selected Christian, Muslim, Hindu and different religiously non-identifying (atheist, agnostic, etc.) video game players. By interviewing them regarding their (non-)religious backgrounds, the religious content and characters of the games they played; and the connections they experienced between the two, we were able to formulate a number of conclusions.
Our research indicates that, rather than alienating themselves from religious ‘others,’ players frequently have meaningful experiences role-playing as the religious other. This activity of role-playing the ‘Other,’ so we demonstrate in our analysis, has three implications. Firstly, they come to familiarize themselves with religious worldviews and practices that they could not normally access, such as the mosque-filled streets and Islamic calls to prayer of Assassin’s Creed. Secondly, they came to distance themselves from their own (non)religious worldviews as a particular construction, rather than a natural and taken-for-granted reality. This process we conceptualize as
defamiliarization” (cf. Shklovsky, 1991). Thirdly, players suggested that their avatars allowed them to experience and temporarily believe what they could otherwise not. Religious players freely switched between worldviews that are otherwise in major disagreement with their beliefs; while also frequently reflecting on the assumed atheism of video game characters. In two cases, players underwent drastic de-conversions due to the roles they played. Meanwhile, religious ‘nones’ reported on the queerness and (re-)enchantment of a world with the certainties of rituals and gods. In all, players reported understanding and sympathy for the roles and worldviews they were brought to identify with, prompting one agnostic player to sum up: “What if I’m wrong? Is this how others in the real world use religion?”
Based on our study, we argue that (role-)playing in video games motivates a form of religious relativization that destabilizes the ‘absolute truth’ claims of many religions (cf. Berger, 1969); while fostering a general inclusiveness towards religious Others by allowing players to bracket their own worldviews, in order to temporarily adopt the ‘absolute’ truths of others’ worldviews.
How and why, if at all, do players relate to religious content while playing such games?
To address this question we took on a grounded theory approach, basing our answer in semi-structured interviews, conducted with 20 video game players of various religious backgrounds: variously Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist and agnostics. While representation-based studies in the field hold on to an approach more suitable to static, non-interactive (mass)media, we focused on the two-fold role of players in both “decoding” (or textually “poaching”) games’ meanings based on their own religious positions and convictions (cf. Hall, 1980; Jenkins, 2015) – as Christians, Muslims, atheists and so on – while also navigating the roles given them to role-play in “reconfiguring” the game (cf. Raessens, 2005) – to play as priests, druids, shamans, and so on.
Our research indicates that, rather than alienating themselves from religious ‘others,’ players frequently report meaningful experiences by having to act and think as their religious other. Based on our study, we argue that (role-)playing in video games motivates a form of religious relativization that destabilizes the ‘absolute truth’ claims of many religions (cf. Berger, 1969); while fostering religious reflection, understanding and a general inclusiveness towards religious Others by allowing players to bracket their own worldviews, in order to temporarily adopt the ‘absolute’ truths of others’ worldviews.
Works cited
Aupers, S. (2007). “Better than the real world”. On the reality and meaning of online computer games. Fabula, 48.3-4.
Berger, P.L. (1969 [1990]). The Sacred Canopy. Doubleday.
Bosman, F. (2016). “The poor carpenter.” Gamevironments 4.
Campbell, H.A., & Grieve, G.P. (Eds.). Playing with Religion in Digital Games. Indiana University Press.
ESA. (2016). 2016 Sales, Demographics, and Usage Data. http://www.theesa.com/
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. Culture, media, language, 128-138.
Jenkins, H. (2015). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. Routledge.
Krzywinska, T. (2006). Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories. Games and Culture, 1(4), 383–396.
Raessens, J.F.F. (2005). Computer Games as Participatory Media Culture. Handbook of Computer Game Studies. MIT Press.
Šisler, V. (2008). Digital Arabs: Representation in Video Games. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 11(2).
Trattner, K. (2016). Religion, Games, and Othering. Gamevironments 4.
To address this question we took on the approach developed in cultural (media) studies, i.e. focusing on the process of “encoding/decoding” and consumer practices of “textual poaching” (cf. Hall, 1980; Jenkins, 2015). We adopt this perspective in studying religious meaning-making in games for two reasons. First of all: dominant representation-based studies in the field hold on to an approach that is more suitable with static or non-interactive (mass)media. Looking at representations in games is particularly problematic because it disregards the medium-specificity of digital game-play: players are not simply passive consumers but actively “reconfigure” games (Raessens, 2005) through the act of role-playing (partly) as their avatar (e.g., Rehak, 2003; Klevjer, 2007). Secondly, representation-based research neglects the specificity, divergence of and differences between individual players. Players’ accounts of meaning-making are variable, often resulting in mutually exclusive understandings of the same video game. Specifically in the case of religion, we hold, players from different religious backgrounds understand in-game religious meanings in vastly different ways (e.g., Aupers & Schaap, 2016).
The research question is then: in what ways do players with different (non)religious backgrounds identify with and come to reflect on religious identities through the characters and worlds of video games? In order to answer this question we resorted to qualitative semi-structured interviews (N=20). A general call was put out on different video game forums to arrive at a set of theoretically selected Christian, Muslim, Hindu and religiously non-identifying (atheist, agnostic, etc.) video game players. By interviewing them regarding their (non-)religious background, the religious content and characters of the games they played; and the connections they experienced between the two, we were able to formulate a number of conclusions.
Our research indicates that, rather than alienating themselves from religious ‘others,’ players frequently have experience role-playing as the religious other. This activity of role-playing the Other, so we demonstrate in our analysis, has three implications. Firstly, they come to familiarize themselves with religious worldviews and practices that they could not normally access, such as the mosque-filled streets and Islamic calls to prayer of Assassin’s Creed. Secondly, they came to distance themselves from their own (non)religious worldviews as a particular construction, rather than a natural and taken-for-granted reality. This process we conceptualize as “de-familiarization” (cf. Shklovsky, 1991). Thirdly, players suggested that avatars allowed them to experience and believe, temporarily, what they could otherwise not experience: religious players frequently reflected on the assumed atheism of video game characters, and in some cases, underwent (small) conversions due to games they played. Meanwhile, religious ‘nones’ reported on the queerness of a world with the certainties of rituals and gods, prompting one of them to sum up: “What if I’m wrong? Is this how others in the real world use religion?”
Based on our study, then, we conclude that (role-)playing in video games motivates a form of religious inclusiveness towards religious Others and a form of relativism vis-à-vis one’s own worldviews.
Works cited
Aupers, S. (2007). “Better than the real world”. On the reality and meaning of online computer games. Fabula, 48.3-4.
Campbell, H.A., & Grieve, G.P. (Eds.). Playing with Religion in Digital Games. Indiana University Press
ESA. (2014). 2014 Sales, Demographics, and Usage Data. http://www.theesa.com/
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. Culture, media, language, 128-138.
Jenkins, H. (2015). Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture. Routledge.
Klevjer, R. (2007). What is the Avatar? Doctoral dissertation. University of Bergen.
Krzywinska, T. (2006). Blood Scythes, Festivals, Quests, and Backstories. Games and Culture, 1(4), 383–396.
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Part I on Encoding opens with Chapter 3, arguing on the basis of ethnography and 22 interviews with developers of Assassin’s Creed that commercial interests drive a corporation to create a nostalgic ‘Marketable Religion’ that commodifies belief by reducing it to an acceptable version for the largest possible audience. Chapter 4 argues on the basis of 35 interviews with independent developers that, despite the promise of their independence, religious and irreligious ‘indies’ alike similarly cannot escape a standardized, inherited conventions of religion in game design that are divorced from their own beliefs, and are as commodified as they are Eurocentric in the resulting use of religion in game design.
Part II on the Games themselves contains Chapters 5 and 6: two content analyses of two genres – fantasy and the post-apocalypse – that show the extent of how games historicize and combine religious cultural heritages into ‘Eclectic Religion’ or even apply it in new ways, by using divine metaphors to deify ‘Awe-ful Technologies’ such as AI and the atom bomb.
Part III on Decoding opens with Chapter 7, analyzing on the basis of 100 online forum discussions how games prompt players to discuss the meanings and meaninglessness of religion in videogames among themselves in a ‘Pop Theology,’ based on their personal religious beliefs. Chapter 8 further analyses the experiences of 20 such interviewed players to understand how ‘Playing the Other’ in videogames enables them to try on and drop others’ religious beliefs and identities as they wish.
The dissertation concludes that developers, games and players engage in a playing ‘at’ religion which reduces religions as sources of ultimate meaning to commodified, mediatized simulacra which allow for a ‘ludic epistemology.’ In doing so, games inspire us to play at religion like children play soldier or house: a rethinking of religious worldviews as no longer a question of belief or disbelief in ultimate truths; but as something to be tried on, compared and discarded. Thus mediatized, millions of players globally have all the possible beliefs in the world available to them, playing at religion with the push of a button.
Mo 18/09/17 – 15:50-17:20 – Room 3
Lars de Wildt, KU Leuven, & Stef Aupers, KU Leuven (chairs)
Vivian Asimos, Durham University (25 min.) (32)
Playing Mythology: Video Games as Contemporary Myth
Jane Skjoldli, University of Bergen (25 min.) (394)
Religious Interfaces and Immersion: How Game Studies Can Help Us Understand Real Life Religion
Frank Bosman, Tilburg University (25 min.) (14)
“Does This Unit Have a Soul?”: Robots and A.I.’s in Video Games as Thought Experiments
Discussion (15 min.)
http://kuleuvencongres.be/easr2017/articles/Programme/session/1
Religious sensations have arguably always been mediated. Sociologies and anthropologies of religion that focus on materialities emphasize this: religious contents are not just ‘there’, but are made possible and reproducible through (collective) practice and forms of mediation such as images, books and buildings (cf. Morgan, 1999; Meyer, 2006) – indeed it is hard to imagine religion without any form of text or building to be received, studied and interpreted. At the same time, there is something to be said for the specific role that a medium has in shaping religious traditions and identity – Protestantism and its focus on individual relations to God are much indebted to the invention of the printing press; just as lithographs of Hindu gods have become sites of worship (Pinney, 2004); and modern Charismatic Christianity thrives on the use of television and the internet, perhaps most evidently so in the case of multi-site (mega) churches (Campbell & Vitullo, 2016).
As one of the biggest sites of cultural production today, what role do video games play in the religious contents, practices and identities of the 21st century? In this panel we invite scholars of religion and games to present insights on the cutting edge of media research. Complementary to last year’s EASR panel on video game reception, we call special attention to the interface between video game content and player’s religions receptions and identities.
Academic interest in religion and digital games has been slowly developing over the past years. Different themes have been discussed, such as the depiction of Islam in games and opinions from Muslim game developers (Šisler 2008); the role of myth and mythologies in the world-building of MMOs (Krzywinska 2006; Aupers 2007); or the construction of postmortality in games (Ahn 2011).
This initial surge was followed by diverse attempts to conceptualize religion and digital games from the point of view of the Study of Religion (Campbell et al. 2014). Discussions emerged on how to analyze religion in digital games and the connection between religious actors, gamers and games (Heidbrink et al. 2014). Some examples include religious identification in RPGs (Bezio 2014); the relation of dystopian settings and religion (Bosman 2014); the concept of ‘god’ in the genre of ‘god games’ (Wiemker et al. 2014); and so on. Such activity has culminated in various scholarly groups (e.g., the International Academy for the Study of Gaming and Religion) and journals (online – Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet; gamevironments), indicating interest in this field is rising (Heidbrink et al. 2014; Zeiler 2015).
This panel takes the discussion to DiGRA by gathering scholars from both sides of this intersection of fields, who have worked in this area of study and would like to start an exchange of views. We want to ask how they approach the research of religion in games and how they link their work to the specifics of the medium. The first question wants to explore similarities as well as differences of how to conceptualize the highly malleable term “religion” in games. The second question focuses on games as a medium of multimodal meaning-making that relies on interaction with its players.
By addressing the structural parallels between ideology and digital games as organizations of quasi-natural conventions, I argue in this thesis that games have the capacity to model, propose and reflect on ideologies. Comparing roughly twenty years of scholarship on ideological play, ludology, narratology, game design, proceduralism and play-centred studies, I argue that games dynamically present stylized simulations of a possible world, occurring to the subject of play in a here-and-now that at once grants autonomy while doing so in a paradoxically rigid structure of affordances, constraints and desires.
That subject of play, meanwhile, is split between played subject (the presented avatar and the game’s content), the playing subject as demanded by the ludic power structure of rules and the interpreting subject that is tasked to understand and inform the process of game-play.
Through close analyses of Cart Life, the Stanley Parable and Spec Ops: the Line I argue for game-play as a dialectical process, past academic scholarship that posits either games as procedural systems of interpellation or play as mythical unrestrained creativity. An understanding of game-play as dialectical process akin to the relation between subjects and ideological power structures furthermore demands a recognition of the critical potential of game-play. Through theatrical techniques of enstrangement, game-play may reveal uncritical familiarity with the quasi-natural conventions of ideology – be they generic, social or political.
via https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/28571
Basing myself on the Brechtian/Benjaminian ideals of epic theatre's effects, I theorize the distance between player and character and its critical capability to allow for players' renewed insights into the material conditions and social relations of lived society. This distance is characterized by a wide scale of formal properties that identifies the player with or differentiates them from their in-game representation. Engaging with theories of interpellation, deconstruction, identification and phenomenological presence, I argue that with greater distance between player and character, comes reduced alignment with the representation, goals and actions of the avatar. The critical potential of a greater distance – a disrupted identification of the player with their in-game representation through enstrangement – is to provoke renewed insights into the material conditions and social relations of lived society. In this way, material conditions and social injustices that are regularly taken for granted may appear once again as they are: unfair, unjust or cruel.