Editor’s Religion Month Recap


Our first themed month was a suc­cess!  Over the course of April (and the very begin­ning of May) we pub­lished 12 arti­cles on reli­gion and/or the­ol­o­gy in games.  We received a vari­ety of won­der­ful guest arti­cles in addi­tion to our reg­u­lar staff’s work, and it was a plea­sure to read and pub­lish all of the great pieces!

In case you missed them the first time around, here’s a run­through of all the arti­cles we post­ed this month:

1. Bill Coberly explains why his expe­ri­ences with BioShock Infinite par­al­leled his expe­ri­ence with the lit­tle church he went to the week­end before he played it.

2. Guest writer Joshua Wise pro­pos­es an Empirical Metaphysic, sug­gest­ing that cer­tain out-of-fashion doc­trines of Christianity might be sal­vaged if we make an anal­o­gy between God/creation and player-or-designer/videogame.

3. Hannah DuVoix became uncom­fort­able with Skyrim’s fond­ness for mak­ing the play­er raid sacred spaces such as tombs.

4. Guest writer Tobe Cooper reads Final Fantasy X as a Catholic dystopia.

5. Guest writer Anne Winters explains how her devel­op­ment in her faith mir­rors her strug­gles with get­ting bet­ter at videogames.

6. Matt Schanuel com­pares God’s cre­ation of the world at the begin­ning of Genesis with cre­at­ing a world or set­ting in var­i­ous games, both video- and table­top.

7. Guest design­er Raymond Neilson puts togeth­er an insight­ful game about Mormonism, agency, and the most inter­est­ing games he played in 2012.

8. Aaron Gotzon pro­vides a thor­ough and enjoy­able his­to­ry of “Bible Games,” or videogames cre­at­ed by evan­gel­i­cal Christianity as an alter­na­tive to main­stream games.

9. Guest writer Ethan Gach explores the themes and dan­gers of mes­sian­ism both with­in Earthbound itself and in its fan­base’s treat­ment of the clas­sic game.

10. Guest writer Michael Elliott explores the Qun, a fas­ci­nat­ing reli­gion from the Dragon Age series, and explores its sim­i­lar­i­ties and dif­fer­ences with Buddhism and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, Taoism.

11. Jim Ralph writes a lengthy and intro­spec­tive piece com­par­ing the dif­fer­ences between reli­gious views of God and the views that play­ers have of char­ac­ters and events in games.

12. Guest writer Oscar Strik explains that while games talk a lot about reli­gion, they rarely talk about the tran­scen­dent, or the Holy, and explores why that might be.

I enjoyed post­ing each and every one of these arti­cles, and I hope you enjoyed read­ing them!  Go ahead and read through any you might have missed, and don’t hes­i­tate to leave com­ments if you have some­thing to add!

May will be a reg­u­lar “vari­ety” month, but we have other ideas for themed months com­ing up!  As always, thanks very much for read­ing the site, and you can reach me at editor@ontologicalgeek.com if you have any com­ments, ques­tions, or con­cerns.

Thanks,

–Bill Coberly
Editor-in-Chief


Bill Coberly

About Bill Coberly

Bill Coberly is the founder and groundskeeper of The Ontological Geek, now that it has shifted over to archive mode. If something on the site isn't working, please shoot a DM to @ontologicalgeek on Twitter!