The Sacred & the Digital

<p>Video game studies are a relative young but flourishing academic discipline. But within game studies however the perspective of religion and spirituality is rather neglected both by game scholars and religion scholars. While religion can take different shapes in digital games ranging from material and referential to reflexive and ritual it is not necessarily true that game developers depict their in-game religions in a positive confirming way but ever so often games approach the topic critically and disavowingly. The religion criticisms found in video games can be categorized as follows: religion as (1) fraud aimed to manipulate the uneducated as (2) blind obedience towards an invisible but ultimately non-existing deity/ies as (3) violence against those who do not share the same set of religious rules as (4) madness a deranged alternative for logical reasoning and as (5) suppression in the hands of the powerful elite to dominate and subdue the masses into submission and obedience. The critical depictions of religion in video games by their developers is the focus of this special issue.</p>