Page 108 - Pure Life 11

Playing the Gospel of Video Games /107

Also the Islamic knowledge and the action of
recovering Islamic books are reduced in the game to
answering trivia-style question, objectives and bonuses.
So according to video game scholar Liel Leibovitz ”the
human construct with which video games have most in
common isn’t television or literature or warfare but
religion. It is a practice in rituals, ethics, moralities, and
1
metaphysics.” And he claim further that religion is like a
video game: ”As it sets out to order the world, religion
must first face a host of questions pertaining to the
relations between the world’s creator or creators and the
creation, us meek mortals.
Religion must explain just what that said creator
demands, and decide whether it believes we have the right
to refuse. And religion does so, generally, by presenting
us with a foundational story and a set of fundamental
rules. The story explains the origins of the universe to us,
its believers, and then dictates a list of expected behaviors:
Don’t eat pork. Take Communion. Pray five times a day.
Hurt no living creature.
Recite these texts each day, each week, each year etc.
As further motivation, religion offers a set of rewards for
compliance, as well as various punishments for different
magnitudes of transgression. And religion is sufficiently
layered so as to welcome into its fold a host of believers,
each willing to accept some but rarely all of its strictures.
Religion then, is exacting but modular, rule-based but
tolerant of deviation, moved by metaphysical yearnings
but governed by intricate, earthly designs. Religion is a
2
game.”

1. Leibovitz, 2013, p. 37.
2. Ibid.