This month, the Ontological Geek has a theme: religion and/or theology in games. We have a great bunch of articles lined up, from the very personal to the deeply theoretical, from both regular OntoGeek contributors and several guest writers. We’d love to hear from you with your thoughts on specific articles and the month as a whole – comment freely and e‑mail us at editor@ontologicalgeek.com!
The Mormons are a peculiar people. They will tell you this themselves. Despite a solid two decades of increasing efforts at aligning the church within the Protestant mainstream, they remain somewhat apart. They have their own stories, their own idioms, their own particular history, intertwined as it is with the expansion of the American West. They have their own holy tomes astride the Bible — extensions, additions, revisions, counterpoints. They are a people unto themselves, in many ways. I used to number among them.
The language remains with me, however. The stories and the concepts still inform my view of the world. Some things stay with you.
When we talk about videogames, we so rarely mention the religions we follow, or once followed, or are passingly familiar with. We so rarely speak of the ideas which formed us, of the symbols and the language that permeate our understanding of these little worlds that some little gods have made for us to inhabit. We speak of choice, and consequence, and agency, and rarely of the contexts in which many of us understand those terms.
A game, therefore, about videogames, about agency, about the Mormons, and about how I see them.
[CITATIONS] (if you want to quickly find specific paragraphs)
A Thousand Deaths originally appeared on AWTR, here.