Playing with religion in digital games

Shaman, paragon, God-mode: modern video games are heavily coded with religious undertones. From the Shinto-inspired Japanese video game Okami to the internationally popular The Legend of Zelda and Halo, many video games rely on religious themes and symbols to drive the narrative and frame the storyl...

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Bibliographic Details
Contributors: Grieve, Gregory Price 1964- (Editor) ; Campbell, Heidi 1970- (Editor)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
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Published: Bloomington Indiana University Press 2014
In:Year: 2014
Series/Journal:Digital game studies
Further subjects:B Video Games Religious aspects
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Parallel Edition:Print version: 9781306694308
Description
Summary:Shaman, paragon, God-mode: modern video games are heavily coded with religious undertones. From the Shinto-inspired Japanese video game Okami to the internationally popular The Legend of Zelda and Halo, many video games rely on religious themes and symbols to drive the narrative and frame the storyline. Playing with Religion in Digital Games explores the increasingly complex relationship between gaming and global religious practices. For example, how does religion help organize the communities in MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft? What role has censorship played in localizing games like Actraiser in the western world? How do evangelical Christians react to violence, gore, and sexuality in some of the most popular games such as Mass Effect or Grand Theft Auto? With contributions by scholars and gamers from all over the world, this collection offers aunique perspective to the intersections of religion and the virtual world
Introduction : what playing with religion offers digital game studies / Heidi A. Campbell and Gregory Price Grieve -- Dreidels to Dante's Inferno : toward a typology of religious games / Jason Anthony -- Locating the pixelated Jew : a multimodal method for exploring Judaism in The Shivah / Isamar Carrillo Masso and Nathan Abrams -- The global mediatization of Hinduism through digital games : representation versus simulation in Hanuman : boy warrior / Xenia Zeiler -- Silent Hill and Fatal Frame : finding franscendent horror in and beyond the Haunted Magic Circle / Brenda S. Gardenour Walter -- From Kuma\War to Quraish : representation of Islam in Arab and American video games / Vít [S, HAC]isler -- Citing the medieval : using religion as world-building infrastructure in fantasy MMORPGs / Rabia Gregory -- Hardcore Christian gamers : how religion shapes evangelical play / Shanny Luft -- Filtering cultural feedback : religion, censorship, and localization in Actraiser and other mainstream video games / Peter Likarish -- The importance of playing in earnest / Rachel Wagner -- "God modes" and "God moods" : what does a digital game need to be spiritually effective? / Oliver Steffen -- Bridging multiple realities : religion, play, and Alfred Schutz's theory of the life-world / Michael Waltemathe -- They kill mystery : the mechanistic bias of video game representations of religion and spirituality / Kevin Schut
Item Description:Includes bibliographical references and index
ISBN:0253012635