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.

[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

All I know I learned from Civ2.

[Slayk]

Run through the tech tree, then go for Fundamentalisim. There repercussions for that form of government were far outclassed by the *amazing* ability to build wealth and power for your fight against the infidels.

Yup. Not portrayed realistically at all.

Obviously not talking about Japanese Games...

[Grey Ninja]

In Japan, religion is often portrayed quite heavily in games. Japan in general has a more liberal relationship with religion than the western world, and works of fiction aren't really lynched for not showing the church in a good light.

If you want some GOOD examples of religion in games, try Xenogears, Grandia, or Tales of Symphonia. All quite good games that deal with religion quite heavily. In the case of Xenogears, it was almost not released in North America, as the church would consider it to be almost blasphemous.

For a North American game dealing slightly more than average with religion... try Eternal Darkness. The game features a bit of the inquisition, and the main characters are using magick based a lot upon the pagan practices and rituals. I would guess that the church would be none too happy about this one either.

Religion

[falzer]

As long as the gods in nethack are pleased, I'm fine with it.

Re:Games?

[ArsonSmith]

Chess has bishops

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?

[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.

Re:Semi-serious?

[zhiwenchong]

I don't want to turn this into a debate, but I believe in critically analyzing the text we're reading. When reading the bible (like any other text), it is often useful to consider the entire context.

If you don't, then it is often possible to contrive any naïve and convenient conclusion, and then claim that's what the good book teaches when it doesn't.

Re your syllogism, it is a fallacy of the most rudimentary kind:

Eve eats fruit from tree of life to gain wisdom
God punishes her
Therefore Eve was punished for gaining wisdom?

Is that the only conclusion? Must it be? What kind of wisdom does the original Hebrew word talk about? What about other possibilities supporting facts? It is unfair to make any conclusion without considering these questions.

In reality, what most Christians are taught is this (now you may consider this "interpretation"): *God punished Eve for disobedience to his explicit command*. That's it. There are also issues of pride and rebellion, and supposition that one might be equal to God, but I won't get into those. I've made my point. Case closed.

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:Games?

[abb3w]

Ever notice that bishops and knights don't move straight, and well the king and queen can swing both ways.

I recall once seeing the moves expressed in terms of the powers of state (row/column moves) and church (diagonals).

• Foot soldiers/Pawns make progress through the authority of the state, but may only prevail in battle by the grace of God.
• 
  
  Rooks/Castles, as the embodiment of worldly authority, are immensely powerful in matters temporal, but impotent in matters spiritual. Bishops, as the representatives of the Church, are the other way around.
  
  The King and Queen are, British style, empowered with the authority of both church and state, and may elect to act with either as they choose. If you wonder why the queen seems more powerful, look to Elizabeth and Victoria. =)
  
  And Knights, due to their holy vows to defend the right, must always act simultaneously under mandate of both church and state, thereby transcending any obstacles in their path.

Any resemblance this has to why the rules are the way they are is, no doubt, purely coincidental-- but it's a servicable means to explain the moves to new players.

Religion is suppresed because writers are ignorant

[Znord]

There's been a big vacuum in the world of sci-fi / fantasy with religious overtones ever since the modern age of thought began back in the 1920s with Freud and the concept of "wishes" as a basis for fiction and dreams.

C.S. Lewis and (to a point) Tolkien did much to show that religious themes can easily coexist with fiction. The endless "let's try it from scratch" 60s put a bit of a kabosh on that... experimenting in ideas of myth-religion without knowing how much they repeated in old fiction.

Frankly, I see "religion" is actually present in many many spheres... but a new establishment has arrived. It's just the pop-psyche (i.e. Oprah) plus bits-of-new-age psuedoscience that we've had tons of in the 20th century. (practice X does Y for your spiritual Z condition, take two and call me in the morning).

Religion in Babylon 5, for example, was one of the first beginnings of a good treatment in mass media... because believers at least showed some positive though vague devotion as part of a plot (monks at one point, and the Minbari otherwise).

Most scifi religion is incredibly shallow and made for outsiders, with the constant drum of "Hey man, don't get all religious about stuff cuz it all looks the same to us." moral-of-the-story.

Even that only started from the 50s and earlier when tons of minor religious divisions mirrored ethnic/cultural ones (i.e. blacks, whites, immigrants etc..). I knew one old lady who declared the One thing she knew about her Presbyterian church was that she wasn't Baptist. Yikes. That has always scared authors.

Anyway the writing can only occur when religion is handled in a fashion that doesn't get everyone spooked about the loudest minorities involved. Someone's got to stop caring about Pat Robertson and yet still know who Jesus (or Bhudda) was without a minor "survey of religions" class.

Besides, atheism/materialism keeps framing the discussion (e.g. Babylon 5 came down to assuming all "gods" were advanced races) and that forms a rift on how much you're even allowed to describe beliefs. It's tough to write plot about followers of God X or Y when the author makes clear that they're idiots doing something for no purpose or reason except the cuteness of "blind" idealism.

What's gotta happen is that some story writer somewhere has to first avoid the swashbuckling loot-and-horde-and-kill plot. Secondly they need to leave mystery about something Bigger having a role in the story instead of mere science-and-discovery explaining it all by the last 5 minutes.

If it's "universal harmony" that someone deals with (i.e. Ultima V) so be it, but if its God in any fashion it makes the plot and reality of behavior much richer. Yes it makes NPCs *much* more complex... and a score isn't just "gold" or "life" anymore. Deal! I want to see that happen.

We're at the effective top for polygon counts anyway. Someone has to *THINK* that fiction matters someday in a game.

Most violent game... ever!

[awhite]

I would love to see a game based on the bible. It would be the most violent, debased game in history!

Those of you who've read the bible with any sort of objectivity know what I'm talking about. How many places in the OT does god command the jews to wipe out entire peoples, including women and children? There are even passages where he is angered because the jews decide to spare a few individuals or animals. So in any true bible game, genocide has to play a key role. And of course god doesn't leave all the fun to his chosen people; he certainly gets his hands dirty as well. Some of the more famous instance of god's handiwork include leveling Sodom and Gomorra, killing all the first born in Egypt when the pharaoh refuses to free the jews (interesting note: according to the text, god intentionally "hardened the pharaoh's heart" to Moses' pleas; god forced the pharaoh to refuse so that he could demonstrate his power via the plagues), and wiping out almost every living thing on the planet in a big flood cause he didn't like the way the humans he created were turning out.

Or, how about a Sims-type game? You could try to follow god's laws as they're laid out (mostly in Leviticus, IIRC) without getting stoned to death. Choose to pick up some sticks on the Sabbath? Sorry: you get stoned. Are you a woman who gets raped in the city? Sorry: you get stoned. In a city you should have been able to scream loud enough that someone would have heard. Is your Sim character a child who makes fun of a bald guy? Sorry: god sends some bears out of the woods to maul you. On the plus side, though, you can have slaves and multiple wives, sell your daughters, and have sex with your servants. (Yes, these are all actual biblical laws/stories.)

And the NT isn't much better. You've got the whole crucifixion thing, which is plenty violent (and intentional; not like the omniscient being didn't know it was going to happen). And then there's the problem that Jesus' core message is about as horrible a moral as you can find: "Worship me or you'll be tortured for all eternity, regardless of how good a person you are." And considering god's actions throughout the bible, could any truly moral person worship him in good conscience?

So yeah, I'd like to see a game based on the bible. I want to see the religious right squirm when a game based on the actual stories of their holy book makes Doom 3 look like Big Bird on Ice.

p.s. If you doubt the accuracy of anything I've said, I encourage you wholeheartedly to read the bible yourself. You'll see that the points above are but a tiny sampling of the atrocities the bible has to offer. I just discovered that some enterprising folks have even distilled a lot of the horrors (as well as the ridiculous "science" and many contradictions) of the bible for you: http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

"Insult to my intelligence"

[wtrmute]

except that for the most part, religion is false. (...) i know what's real and what's not.

That's rich. And you are, of course, able to perceive with complete accuracy truth from lies. Maybe I should start worshipping you...