Page 98 - Pure Life 11

Playing the Gospel of Video Games /97

They offer choises that will affect the player’s
character, they explore de notion of good and evil and the
most important they offer out of body experience,
whereupon the player will not realize that he or she spent
eight hours in a world of fantasy.
Jason Anthony, a video game designer, “describes
three particular kinds of religious games: catechistic
games that point toward the sacred or are situated in a
sacred context but are not themselves sacred; poimenic
games in which the divine manifests itself through the
game; and praxic games where playing the game is itself
1
a sacred activity.”
There exist numerous religious symbols, in the form of
churches, holy grounds or crosses and hidden in the form
of discrete messages, direct parallels between religious
icons and video game characters.
Video games are the next stepping stone for religion.
Walter Ong suggestes that religion began in a era of
orality, was transmitted into visual form through
manuscripts writngs as well as print, and has now entered
2
the world in a new way via electronic media.
People are not becoming less religious, rather they are
finding at once entertainment and spiritual fulfillment in a
every day activity in a video game and not through
conventional institution.
Some may say that games are authentic fakes: while
they contain all of the physical aspects of religion, they
ultimately fall short of being a real religion like
Christianity.

1. Anthony, 2012.
2. Ong, 1967. p. 46.