Video Games, Religion and the Role of Wonder
Interesting article on Gamespy about the apparent absence of God and religion from video games. The writer, Julian Murdoch, interviews a few video game industry executives comfortable talking about the issue, and also cites a few games that are exploring religion, including Assassin’s Creed 2, which the writer says, “tackles real issues of religion and faith, even if I may not like the conclusions.”
One executive, James Wyatt, talks about the role of wonder in exploring these issues in video games, saying, “Fantasy has this ability to open our eyes to the enchantment of our world, and to view real things with more wonder.”
He goes on to quote C.S. Lewis:
“[A child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing.” — C.S. Lewis, On Three Ways of Writing for Children
It seems to me that Hollywood has gotten a lot more comfortable exploring faith and religion over the past few years. I wonder if its not some grand effort of the gaming industry to avoid religious issues, but perhaps just harder to do, and so we see it less often.
