Religious Playgrounds: Playing with Ethics and Religious Identity in Video Games

I have been using video games in the classroom since 2019. While initially an experiment reflecting my personal interest in video games that also incorporated my experience speaking at large video game conventions such as PAX East, this effort led to the publication of a book on video games and religion, a subsequent book describing the landscape of this new subfield to be published soon, and the establishment of video games as a core component in several of my courses each time they are offered.

I wish to draw upon my experience by taking attendees through several gameplay demos of games I regularly used in my classes, talking about the ethical and religiously salient aspects of those games, as well as how students react to them, as I give examples of how they are played. It is important to emphasize that I use such games in the classes themselves, not as homework assigned to students. Some concerns raised in the call for this session, such as cost and skill, are addressed by playing games together with students in class. For the sake of time, I plan to focus on two games that connect best with my students.

Papers, Please is a genuine ethical playground. It should replace the trolley problem as the go-to ethical experiment in classes. Players control a boarder control officer in a fictional Eastern European country and process the paperwork of people trying to enter the country. Players are given rules to follow by their government, and those rules become increasingly strict due to concerns over terrorism. However, players get to do whatever they want. They can admit or reject every character that comes to their immigration booth, and some of those characters tell emotionally gripping stories about why the rules should be broken: one woman does not have the correct paperwork but claims to be fleeing a sex trafficking ring. What makes this game excellent is that it shows sympathy everyone involved, including border patrol officers. The player’s character has a family and pay will be docked if those with incorrect paperwork are allowed into the country, even if such a decision was made for morally pressing reasons. The result is that members of the player character’s family can get sick and even die if things like food and heat are no longer affordable.

For games that are too long to play in class, I have students watch complete playthroughs of the game on YouTube, similar to asking students to have consumed the plot of a novel prior to discussing it in class. Indika is one of those games. It does an excellent job of conveying how faith can invest even the most mundane tasks with meaning. Players control a nun, Indika, and the game starts by requiring players to retrieve buckets of water for the others at the Convent for a surprisingly long period of time. Faith is “leveled up” through experience gained from such seemingly trivial tasks, but when Indika experiences the suffering of others, as well as her own when acts of violence are directed at her, the player’s character basically has a crisis of faith through grappling with the problem of evil. Because video games are interactive, Indika does an excellent job of showing how crises of faith are often not merely, or even mostly, intellectual affairs. They are existentially gripping and embodied.

If time allows, I will also have Gone Home and 1979 Revolution: Black Friday with me on my laptop, perhaps to use as additional examples during question-and-answer time, if relevant. Gone Home centers on a girl in high school, Sam, realizing she is in love with another girl at her school, and how that created conflict with Sam’s Christian parents. Extensive reporting has shown that the game affected some players by directly causing them to switch their stance from being against same-sex marriage to supporting it. 1979 Revolution: Black Friday was made by a development studio created to tell underrepresented cultural histories through video games, and the lead developer lived through the Iranian Revolution, which is the setting of the game. Players can choose to take part in a call to prayer with other Muslims, or shun religion altogether. Regardless of their choice, players can read copies of real-world prayer cards recreated in game that outline the steps of a call to prayer. Those cards are also placed in front of an accurate washing station within the game.

If there is interest in, or lack of awareness of, the relevant scholarship in the field, I can shorten my gameplay demos and briefly describe some of the main resources available in the field based on my work for an introductory book to be released just prior to AAR this year. The work of Frank Bosman, Heidi Campbell, Benjamin Chicka, Craig Detweiler, Gregory Grieve, Mary Hess, Chris Goto Jones, Rachel Kowert, and Rachel Wagner will provide plenty of scholarly options for any course, despite the fact that there are many more figures starting to produce work on religion and video games. Video games are not an excuse to goof around in class, but the subject of serious scholarship.