Virtual Faith? Religion in (and out of) Video Games
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
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| Description | Virtual space has undoubtedly become an inseparable part of our world. In videogames, the players become part of a different world with different rules, different beings and also different religions. This paper tries to find answers to several questions – how is religion being represented in virtual space, namely in videogames? How does virtual reality overlap with reality in the means of religiosity of the gamers? And are there any religious systems in the “real world” based on those found in videogames? Until relatively recently, the topic of religion and video games has been quite neglected by scholars, however, nowadays this issue is being covered more and more extensively – one of the first publications dealing with the topic was The Handbook of Hyper-real Religions edited by Adam Possamai (2012), in 2014 a book called Playing with Religion in Digital Games (edited by Campbell and Grieve) was published, and there are now also several journals focusing on the topic – e.g. the Journal of Religions on the Internet, which has already published two thematic issues on Religion in Digital Games (vol. 05/2014 and vol. 07/2015), or an internet-based journal focusing solely on religion in video games called Gameviroments. The abovementioned publications and journal form an attempt to establish a new field of study, merging the fields of Digital Game Studies and Religious Studies. |
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