Jesus from "Gethsemane" at www.biblegamezone.com
Talking About Religious Video Games[]
This wiki uses a religious studies perspective to explore the diverse ways people are translating religious life into video game worlds. Because these are religious texts, whether they are "fun" is not the central question, but because they are games, whether or not anyone "believes in" them might not be the most important question either. These questions have to be approached together by looking at the tangled story, from production to play to critique, asking who makes these games both playable and meaningful and how. Each essay follows games as they respond to particular religious concerns and offer new contributions to those conversations. No game can represent the perspective of "all Christians," "Jewish people," "religious types," or any other vague collection of faceless people. These essays offer close readings of the games and their human communities, hoping to present windows into the negotiations over what it means to live a religious life with digital media.
Given that this is not a space for attacking anyone's religious expression, we invite anyone interested in joining us in examining the hundreds of video games created for religious audiences since the early nineteen-eighties.