The 'Lamb of Comstock’: dystopia and religion in video games
In the article ‘‘The Lamb of Comstock’. Dystopia and Religion in Video Games’ I will introduce four high quality, commercially successful videogames: Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored and Brink. All these four games present a dystopian scenery as a background for an intelligent plot to critici...
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
WorldCat: | WorldCat |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Heidelberg University Publishing
2014
|
In: |
Online - Heidelberg journal of religions on the internet
Year: 2014, Volume: 5, Pages: 162-182 |
Further subjects: | B
Brink
B BioShock B cultural theology B Dishonored B Dystopia B Utopia B Videogames |
Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
Summary: | In the article ‘‘The Lamb of Comstock’. Dystopia and Religion in Video Games’ I will introduce four high quality, commercially successful videogames: Bioshock, Bioshock Infinite, Dishonored and Brink. All these four games present a dystopian scenery as a background for an intelligent plot to criticizes distinct modern political, philosophical and economical theories and practices: respectively the ‘hyper-capitalism’ of the Russian-American philosopher Ayn Rand, the idea of religion based American Exceptionalism, idealized industrialization and rationalism, and an ecological Apocalypse. Within these four games, religion - primarily different branches of Christianity - plays an important but often implicit role in the game narrative, sometimes supporting the dystopian scenery of the game, sometimes opposing it. In this article I will give a definition of the difficult term ‘dystopia’, introduce the four dystopian video games and demonstrate the importance of religion within the four game narratives. |
---|---|
ISSN: | 1861-5813 |
Contains: | In: Online - Heidelberg journal of religions on the internet
|
Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.11588/rel.2014.0.12163 URN: urn:nbn:de:bsz:16-rel-121632 |