Game with God

Andrew writes "GamerDad has an article up about how religion is handled in computer gaming, titled 'Game With God'. The article features quotes from Sid Meier, Jane Jensen, Will Wright, Peter Molyneaux, Phil Steinmeyer, and Richard Garriott. Here's a snippet: 'While religion and spirituality add a lot to a game world, they often aren't used effectively. 'I don't think there are any games that treat religion at anything more than a superficial level,'; says Firaxis founder and Civilization creator Sid Meier. PopTop Software's Phil Steinmeyer agrees, noting that 'Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured.'"

Comments

Not surprising

[Xhad]

It's hard to feature serious topics like religion in an only semi-serious art medium like video games. I konw the RPG fanatics think video games are an art form just like movies, but the reality is that most video game stories are as deep as the average action flick.

What's the typical action flick treatment of religion? Barely existent if at all, and usually just an excuse to give people cool special powers.

Personally, I would go one step further.

[Bold Marauder]

I would state that not only is religion handled "ineffectively" in most games, but between the wish to be politically correct and catering to the predominantly anti-christian sentiments in the gaming community most games end up being downright disdainful of christianity.

What is worse is the fact that most games put out by christians fall into one of two categories; blatant propaganda which is more concerned with pushing a message than with providing an enjoyable gaming experience, and "fluff" mostly written for children.

What the christian community urgently needs is a development company to emerge which can balance both the needs of the gospel, and the needs of the game playing experience.

Re:Personally, I would go one step further.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much that religion is ineffectively handled; it's more that certain religions are usually targeted for ridicule. It's considered hateful to discriminate or ridicule someone based on their religion -- with the sole and unique exception that ridiculing any flavor of Christianity is acceptable.

Re:Personally, I would go one step further.

[Slime-dogg]

Tell that to Augustine or Galileo, some of the greatest minds were devout followers of the church. I'd be willing to bet that they rank higher on the intelligence scale than you do.

The best games that handle religion are the ones with invented lands, invented people, and an invented religion. Think Morrowind.

Re:Personally, I would go one step further.

[galen]

Tell that to Augustine or Galileo, some of the greatest minds were devout followers of the church. I'd be willing to bet that they rank higher on the intelligence scale than you do.

They may have been devoutly Christian, but they also lived during a time when not being a devout follower was enough to get you killed in any of a dozen nasty ways. Or, if the church was feeling generous, you'd merely be excomunicated. At which point you lost all rights as a human and citizen of the state.

Seems pretty obvious to me that regardless of what they truly believed, anyone smarter than gnat will happily swear publicly that they're devoutly anything.

~~Galen~~

Escapism

[DocStoner]

I always thought of games as escapism. Many wouldn't define religion as escapism, or at least those that strictly adhere to their faith.

To me, the two do not mix well.

YMMV

Semi-serious?

[*weasel]

Semi-serious? That's just an artifact of the youth of the medium and the lack of a real artistic indie segment.

There's nothing about the gaming medium itself that is semi-serious. It's perfectly capable of tackling any topic just as well as narrative fiction on celluloid or page.

Calling the medium semi-serious as of now is an unfortunate but true overview, but implying the medium is incapable of more is shortsighted and wrong.

Re:Semi-serious?

[(54)T-Dub]

I think it has less to do with the medium than it does with the audience. 99% of the dorks (and gamers) that I've met are aethiest or at least agnostic. As history shows, technology (read science) and religion don't mix well. Science tends to try to explain phenomena with laws that govern nature, while religion tends to use historical beliefs.

Most of the science fiction that I've read has been the same way. Religion tends to be refered to in an historical reference or as a backwater inhibiting aspect of a small group of society.

It's also interesting to look at the progression of religion as science has progressed. In the times of the greeks religion was used to explain elements of physics (why things fall, why things move through the sky). Once these things were explained with science religion moved to the body. It was used to explain illness and the interworkings of the body. Now that we have modern medical science God has moved to our head. He is used to explain our emotions like love and anger. Once we fully understand brain chemistry where will God go next?

Re:Semi-serious?

[Laur]

As history shows, technology (read science) and religion don't mix well. Science tends to try to explain phenomena with laws that govern nature, while religion tends to use historical beliefs.

Just remember a few core beliefs of Chrisitanity:

1. Even if you live a perfect life, you deserve to go to hell. Why? Original sin.
2. What was original sin? Pursuit of knowledge.

Kind of sums things up nicely.

Re:Semi-serious?

[dasmegabyte]

Actually, Sci-fi can have very deep spiritual (god I hate that term) overtones, sometimes backed up by science, sometimes not. Look at the religious aspects that spring up in Asimov's Foundation saga, and how those aspects change over the course of the hundreds of years that saga portrays -- as science is forgotten, it gives way to religious devotion to the purveyers of knowledge (who themselves worship the progenitor of their system as a prophet). Look at the importance of the Ben Gesserit order in Dune, or the Bejorran religion in Deep Space Nine and the delicate, reverent and earnest way each of these is treated. In the context of the story, there are believers and disbelievers and neither is outright wrong (in fact, in ST:DS9, the detractors are more often wrong...except where church politics have polluted the "true message;" shit, a minor villain of the series is a higher member of the church as are many of the heroes).

In fact, the biggest problem I see with the portrayal of religion in video games is that it's nearly always shown as a sham or a cult. This is just wrong. If you've got powerful gods duking it out in the primary plane of existance, with their hands directly influencing their followers and directly punishing their detractors, what you'd have is a state of immense fear and respect for religions of all kinds. Furthermore, there's a drive, especially among Japanese RPGs, to use scienfic order to explain away magical forces within the text ("magic comes from these blue rocks" or "the gods are just really powerful X and we can kill them with swords"). Also a cop out -- why not have gods that are just undefeatable, and the players have to deal with their lives within that context? Stories work best when properly restricted, and being a pawn in a war you can't affect is serious restriction.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had some interesting "religious" overtones, but they were kind of underdeveloped. Basically, they separated the light side from the dark side mostly on issues of social politics...if you chose the needs of the many over the needs of the few, you'd often lose light side points. Still, basing the outcome of the game (and indeed, the availability of skills and teammates) on moral decisions made for a fun game with lots of replayability.

Of course, I don't really think this is what GamersDad wants. I think the editorial is referring not to a figuritive God, but a literal one. The problem there is that integrating a Chrisitian/Muslim/Judaic/Hindu/Buddhist concept of God into a game effectively alienates the others, thus reducing your game's overall appeal and indeed often relegating it a position as a genre title. It can work -- I seem to recall some positive aspects of Chrisitanity in the old Sierra "Gabriel Knight" series of action games -- but on the whole, potrayals of any real religion, positive or negative, are delicate undertakings.

Re:Semi-serious?

[Dachannien]

1. Even if you live a perfect life, you deserve to go to hell. Why? Original sin.
2. What was original sin? Pursuit of knowledge.

That's a bit of a stretch. The Original Sin was succumbing to Lucifer's temptation and eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, but the story doesn't indicate that Eve ate the fruit of the Tree because of a desire to gain knowledge. Gaining knowledge of good and evil was a consequence of eating the fruit (one requiring some drastic measures on God's part), but was not necessarily the motivation behind the sin. Now, Lucifer, on the other hand, knew full well all of the consequences, and the entire reason for his temptation of Eve was to spoil God's creation.

A different (and probably better) interpretation, one that reappears throughout the Old Testament (see Judges), is that the Original Sin was doing whatever the hell you want (generally, whatever "feels good"), despite God's direct instructions to the contrary.

This is a good thing.

[ZeroGee]

A "serious treatment" of religion is not needed in games. Maybe in a form of edutainment, but not a game! Do you want to play SimWorshipper, where you choose your religion (Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Christian, and Jew, with Sikhs and Wicca forthcoming in an expansion pack) whereby you must go to synagogue/church/mosque once a week, or click to use the prayer mat, or else sit outside and meditate with nature? Then after 20 game-years have elapsed, you start trying to convince your game children to marry within the religion? Of course, we could always do "The Passion of the Christ, the officially licensed game," and give Icon Entertainment another few hundred million dollars, allowing you to be beaten for an hour and try to still stay alive by mashing the circle button. You could also argue there's been no real treatment of "sex" in video games either. Let's make a realistic sex game where the sheets smell and you have to do laundry, you have to rummage through your underwear drawer for condoms, and your roommate comes home in the middle and you have to suddenly get quiet! No thanks. Games don't have to address everything. They're supposed to be FUN.

Religion IS escapism

[mangu]

What can be more escapist than denying the worth of this whole universe? A non-escapist religion would be more worried about ethics than theological problems.

All religions I know of assume the existence of another, spiritual, universe that's truly important, compared to our material universe, which is considered more or less irrelevant. Their reasoning goes more or less like "we do not have to worry about this life, eventually we will all die, so we should be more concerned about what comes after death."

But that assumes the existence of that unproved afterlife. What if it doesn't exist? What if this life is our only chance and, once it ends, everything is over for us? To refuse to even contemplate this possibility is the Mother Of All Escapisms.

Duh

[Gogl]

"Religion is ignored in gaming, or if it is portrayed, it's wildly caricatured."

Insert *any* substantive intellectual or philosophical topic in place of "religion" and that sentence almost always holds true. They're *games*, they're not meant to provide truly rigorous analysis but rather to entertain.

The only game I can think of that has some rather sophisticated references to religious and philosophical concepts is Xenosaga (and presumably the prequel Xenogears, though I've not played it), but even then it's nowhere near as deep or intellectually stimulating as a good book.

So while this is not a hard and fast rule, I would say that the vast majority of games are, well, just entertainment. Very few games truly broach into what I would consider art or substantive dialogue.

Assumptions are irritating

[namidim]

The article falls flat on two fronts for me. The article assume that 1) religion means christianity 2)ethics are the sole domain of religion.

Outside of that particular pet peeve I would also argue that the article does not address the issue on its true scale: religion in mass media. Nor does it address the reason for the typically marginal role of religion in the mass media: there are a lot of people who either don't want to see it in that context(Christians included) or who do want to see it but can't agree on what it should look like.

Just looking at the miriad of splinter groups within the judeo-christian pantheon of religions and the innumerable hotly contested details that caused them to split in the first place should make it clear why a strongly religious game with mass appeal would be difficult to create. Now think in terms of the gaming demographic. That doesn't mean impossible, but outside of the occassional high production value rarity al-la Passion of Christ I wouldn't hold my breath.

And to get to the heart of the issue, is that really such a bad thing? Doesn't relying on video games to provide religion, education, ethical guidance, etc. simply mirror the TV as a baby sitter/parent problem?

Re:I think it hasn't been explored enough

[anubi]

Interesting take on it, Stormcrow...

It seems to me some good games based on theology may finally ignite some critical thinking on religion dogma. Just *what* is 'religion' and what is of God himself?

It is a strong belief of mine that earthly religions are the work of man and they are just using the name of God to bolster power for themselves. Even the Bible states Jesus had to throw the Scribes and Pharisees ( yeh, all those loud moaning prayer-sayers and interpreters of the Word that pontificate profusely in public so as to appear holy ) out of the temple.

There is a human condition called "cognitive dissonance", which is a strong drive within us to know we made the correct decision. The last thing a guy who just bought a car wants to hear is that he made a big mistake by doing so. He wants positive affirmation he made an intelligent choice. I see religious congregations in a similar light - once 'converted' to that religion, those members push it because if others join, that bolsters their belief that they were correct. Its a human condition we form religions - but I don't see these as really having anything much to do with God. Its just a gang of people - and they can be very dangerous if they are ever led to believe that doing violence in the name of God is acceptable.

I have a hard time distinguishing earthly religion from cult and superstition. Like I am not aware of any proof that Zeus or Thor do NOT exist, yet I have no faith in their power. Well, are things any different today?

Maybe some good games where a "supreme power" did indeed create us, and our goal is to find out about him, but along the way are all these people who have formed these little gangs to feed us misinformation and make us waste time until our lifetime runs out.

You know these little 'pyramid' schemes that run around every so often, where a few guys organize this financial ponzi scheme that require the contributions of lots of suckers so the guys at the top can get fabulously wealthy? Yeh, they print up these little business plans and have rows of lines for people to sign up for a measly donation of $1000 to get a $64,000 tax-free return. Their heads begin yammering like air compressors as their mouths begin spewing streams of words like "outpouring of wealth", "faith", "make a committment", etc.

But, once you've seen it, you recognize it for what it is. A ponzi scheme. A way for people to get money for just jabbering. A quick way for you to lose your resources.

I see earthly manmade religions in exactly the same way. This is not to say I don't believe in God - its just I know that Man will lie. And Man can be very cruel if he's ever led to believe he is just being an instrument of God ( as if the God who created the universe needed the services of Man! I think of it like asking my cat to fix a leaky faucet. ).

Please don't tell me I've got it wrong. I most likely do have it wrong. I may never find what I am looking for. I know Man will lie. And I know Man , even though he obediently follows all the religious rituals, can do unbelievably cruel things to others - and feel completely guiltless over the trauma left in his wake. ( Southern Baptist )

It would be nice to see a few games where people actually had to *think* about their relationship with our Creator and fellow man, instead of just being led by another man.

simulate religion in games?

[bob_jenkins]

What if you simulate a religion in a game? It would probably come out more like SimCity than Doom, but it seems like a reasonable thing to do. Religion posits that certain things exist, that if x happens you should do y, that if you do y then z will happen. Those could be built into the rules of the game simulator. For example,

• God speaks through fortuitous circumstances. When God wants to answer "yes", you happen to find what you're currently looking for.
  
• Murphy's law. If anything can go wrong, it actually does. Always.
  
• The laws of physics aren't reliable because God or Angels keep mucking with things.
  
• The devil can hear your innermost thoughts, but God only hears what you say. Or vice versa.
  
• What goes around comes around. Always.
  
• No good deed goes unpunished.
  
• Cleanliness is next to Godliness.
  
• You can't tell what your standing is until you die. (Might be useful to have several characters and a rewind button, so Iago can kill you off every now and then so you can peek at your standing without going to Hell due to suicide.)
  

You could configure the game to play by your favorite belief system.